Guido Reni, designer and printmaker

Design for the First Arch.

For the visit of Pope Clement VIII to Bologna in 1598, the artist Guido Reni etched the plates for this volume that recorded and explained the decorations for the pope’s ceremonial visit. The city constructed temporary triumphal arches that flattered the pope’s power and proclaimed the city’s gratitude to him, marking the route for his entourage. Here, Reni shows us the first triumphal arch framing the long, wide, main street with its regular and classicizing facades, turning the papal entry into a classical Imperial triumphal procession. The ephemeral arch frames a sharply perspectival view of the city and the next arch in the distance. Both arches only remain known to us in these black-and-white etchings, which the text tells us were “all painted with the finest colors” and decorated with stucco and papiermâché
statues and Latin inscriptions praising Bologna’s prosperity under papal rule.