Anyone fascinated by the Metropolitan Museum’s recent exhibition of paintings by Evaristo Baschenis, the Northern Italian inventor of the still life of musical instruments, needs only the most minimal excuse to arrange a trip to London. The reason? Not an opportunity to see more works by Baschenis, pleasurable as that might be, but something far more ambitious and comprehensive: an exhibition at the Royal Academy promising a rapid refresher course in the context from which Baschenis emerged. “The Genius of Rome, 1592–1623,”[1] a survey of the formative years of Italian Baroque painting, is a thoughtful examination of the innovations and influence of the period’s most powerful painters—Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, and Peter Paul Rubens.

The three decades explored by the exhibition were a remarkable period in Rome’s long history, a time when the papacy passed through the hands of three powerful and notably cultivated families. In 1592 Ippolito Aldobrandini was elected pope (choosing to become Clement VIII), while 1623 saw the end of the pontificate of Gregory XV, a Ludovisi; in between came Paul V, a Borghese. During this span, Rome was the center of patronage and of art and architecture on a dazzling scale. In this city of luxury and elegance, where political acuity, piety, and sumptuous living coexisted, papal nephews appointed to the rank of cardinal (as they routinely were) commissioned splendid decorations for their villas and palaces. They also commissioned equally splendid works for the churches they administered, since