About
Upcoming Exhibitions
BGC Gallery will resume its exhibition programming this September with the return of Sèvres Extraordinaire! Sculpture from 1740 until Today, originally slated for fall 2024.
Bard Graduate Center is an advanced graduate research institute in New York City dedicated to the cultural histories of the material world. Our MA and PhD degree programs, Gallery exhibitions, research initiatives, scholarly publications and public programs explore new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

About
28th Annual Iris Foundation Awards
Honoring Irene Roosevelt Aitken, Dr. Julius Bryant, Dr. Meredith Martin, and Katherine Purcell
Events
Wednesdays @ BGC
Join us this spring for weekly programming!





Publications

Bard Graduate Center publishes award-winning exhibition catalogues, books, and journals focusing on scholarship in the decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

Contemporary Artists
Publications
Barbara Nessim
An Artful Life


Publications
Waterweavers
A Chronicle of Rivers

Publications
Sheila Hicks
Weaving as Metaphor

Publications
Richard Tuttle
What Is the Object?
BGCX
Publications
Ritual and Capital
BGCX
2020

Publications
What is Research?
BGCX
2021

Publications
What is Conservation?
BGCX
2023

The Baroque palaces of seventeenth-century Rome were centers for much of the artistic and cultural activities of the city. This book presents some of the magnificent furnishings from these palaces and explains what they reveal of the social life and art patronage of the major families of the Eternal City during this period.

Written by the foremost scholars in the field, the book includes discussions of the relationship of Roman Baroque decorative arts and the development of palace architecture; arts and their connections to music and spectacle; artistic sources of Roman Baroque decorative arts; and life in the palaces as social and political theater. Examples of carved furniture, silver, liturgical objects, textiles, drawings, prints, and paintings are accompanied by interpretive entries and full documentation.


Table of Contents
Director’s Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Abbreviations

Chapter 1. The Artistic Sources and Development of Roman Baroque Decorative Arts
Stefanie Walker

Chapter 2. Inside the Palace: People and Furnishings
Patricia Waddy

Chapter 3: Setting the Noble Stage in Baroque Rome: Roman Palaces, Political Contect, and Social Theater, 1600-1799
Thomas Dandelet

Chapter 4: The Creation of a Roman Festival: Berberini Celebrations for Christina of Sweden
Frederick Hammond

Chapter 5: Inventions and Reality in Roman Still-Life Painting of the Seventeenth Century: Fioravanti and the Others
Eduard A. Safarik

Chapter 6: The Prince Defended: Arms and Armor in Seventeenth-Century Rome
Maria Giulia Barberini

Chapter 7: Decorating the Palace: Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667-1740) in the Cancelleria
Edward J. Olszewski

Catalogue of the Exhibition

Bibliography

Index

Photography Credits
Images