View of Castel Sant'Angelo

Etching, 1657, signed at lower left “Gio. Fran. Grimaldi Bolognese Inven.”; al lower right
"Gio. Batta Galestruzzi Fiorentino fece 1657". At upper right the numeral “244”

This plate belongs to the opera La vita bumana; overo, Il trionfo della pietà of Marco Marazzoli and Giulio Rospigliosi, the future Clemens IX, performed in Rome at the Barberini palace in honor of Queen Christina of Sweden. The opera is a moralizing allegory of "human life, or the triumph of piety. Galestruzzi illustrated the opera with five etchings.

Three reproduce faithfully the drawings made by G.F. Grimaldi for the scenography of the work (Batorska, 1994, pp. 42 s, Figs 2, 5, p.45 Fig. 7), the fourth - presented here - a view of Castel Sant'Angelo, the fifth the Proscenium of the theater of Palazzo Barberini.

The fireworks that concluded the opera, as seen in Galestruzzi's rendering, may he merely celebratory (the triumph of good over evil), or they may, in fact, fit into the moralizing structure of the narrative. That is, fireworks, whose brilliance is so rapidly extinguished (consumed in the very act of consummation) may here function as a kind of memento mori, and Life is, after all, instructed by her guides, Understanding and Innocence, to "think of death" in order to live well.

Its function, therefore, as well as its dependence on a text into which it is embedded, deviates from that of "autonomous" images of the Castel Sant'Angelo. This fact may account for the license it takes in altering the canonical view of the Castello established in the previous century. By siting St. Peter's at center stage, the basilica (the fons et origo of Christianity) assumes the perspectively determined locus of greatest importance. Its audience would not have failed to grasp this. (cfr. K. Salano, Incendiary Art: The Representation of Fireworks in Early Modern Europe, 1998).