This week, we learned about the paper museum and baroque antiquarianism. I was really surprised when I saw Cassiano dal Pozzo’s work on his paper museum and Bernini’s Fiumi Fountain. Cassiano dal Pozzo’s paper museum was a really amazing work. There are different plants, flowers, animals, and even fruits in his paper museum. I believe Cassiano dal Pozzo’s work will definitely help 21st-century scholars and artists. Artists could better understand the way Cassiano used watercolor to paint all these things and analyze the style of his art. Historians, botanists, and zoologists could use Cassiano dal Pozzo’s work as a reference to see how these plants and animals have changed over time. They could also use the artwork in his paper museum to compare to the historical texts during that time period and trace it back. Bernini, his work included animals from across the world, rivers (representation and personification), and even the theme of globalism. Although some animals were based on Bernini’s imagination, it reflects the style of architecture during that time period. Modern scholars and artists can analyze the different things he included, for example, his use of personification to represent the 4 rivers, to find people’s views during that time period. For both Bernini and Cassiano dal Pozzo, their work included those natural subjects, it also tells us that the idea of naturalism was probably popular during that time. All these naturalistic artworks and architecture help our modern-day scholars study the history of Rome better and view these artworks as a reference that could be visualized other than historical text.
A Digital Resource