mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
who disliked its melodrama. The word was derived from a Portuguese
term that meant “deformed pearl.”
Uneasy about leaving any surface unadorned, baroque artists paid
particular attention to the ceiling, that most neglected part of a modern
room. When those of the twenty-first century enter a neighbor’s house,
we never automatically throw back our heads to gape at the ceiling. If
we did, we would no doubt be rewarded by the sight of white paint and
a lightbulb. But in the seventeenth century, the observer would look up
immediately to see clouds parting, revealing Paradise, and must have
felt as if he could climb a ladder and just keep going right into heaven
itself.
The most awe-inspiring ceiling of Olimpia’s expanded palace was at
the end of her seven chambers facing the Piazza Navona. The reception
room, designed by Borromini, stretched from the piazza all the way
back to the Via dell’Anima. This chamber, measuring one hundred feet
long and twenty-four feet wide, was used for balls and large receptions.
It is called the galleria of Pietro da Cortona because the famous artist
painted the story of Aeneas on the thirty-foot-high curved ceiling.
Oddly enough, the pope was depicted as the god Neptune, bare-breasted
and holding a trident, his right arm extended to quell the wind and
waves. Around him naked youths blow conch shells, as laughing nude
girls swim by. In the sky, worried cherubs hold the reins of white horses
rearing out of the water.
In addition to her galleria, Olimpia created an enormous music room
in the central section overlooking both courtyards. Here she staged her
operas and comedies. The acoustics were almost perfect, a great advantage
in an era without microphones.
But Olimpia had another building project in addition to the Piazza
Navona palace. On October 7, 1645, Innocent named her the princess of
San Martino, a church-owned territory three miles outside of Viterbo.
The site included a medieval church and abbey and a few hunting
lodges of the rich, including one owned by her brother, Andrea Maidalchini.
Olimpia hired Francesco Borromini to design a suite of princely
apartments on top of the fourteenth-century abbey and reinforce the
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