Various fresco decorations

Pietro da Cortona, painter and architect, was one of the founders of the Roman High Baroque, comparable with Bernini in sculpture. He painted his most famous work, the huge ceiling fresco, Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power, for the palace of the Barberini family in Rome. This fresco is a huge illusion, with its central field apparently open to the sky and scores of figures seen coming into the room itself or floating above it. He painted similar frescoes in the Pitti Palace in Florence, where his Allegories of Virtues and Planets have elaborate stucco accompaniments uniting the painted ceilings with the framework of the rooms. This form of decoration was widely influential, not only in Italy, but also in France.

Cortona painted many other frescoes in Rome.