Fontein met opdracht aan en wapen van Livio Odescalchi 1653 - 1691

This print of a fountain by Giovanni Francesco Venturini was made in Italy around 1689. It depicts an elaborate fountain with allegorical figures and the coat of arms of Livio Odescalchi, nephew of Pope Innocent XI. In seventeenth-century Rome, powerful families used public works projects like fountains to display their wealth and influence. The Odescalchi family, newly elevated through the Pope's position, would have been keen to assert their status in the city. Venturini's print, with its detailed rendering of the fountain and prominent display of the family's heraldry, thus functions as a form of propaganda. The fountain itself becomes a stage for performing power. To fully understand such an image, one would need to delve into the history of papal Rome, the social dynamics of its elite families, and the conventions of Baroque art. Art history, then, is not just about aesthetics, it's about understanding how art is always embedded in social and institutional contexts.