When being a Roman photographer in Rome means something

Luckily enough, being a photographer can get you trapped into a paid photoshooting around Rome, the Eternal City. A new client of mine, indeed, requested a shooting in the center of Rome. For privacy reason, I am not going to reveal the new project of my client or the reasons for this shooting, but I kindly got the approval for sharing with the #Hive community some of the shots I took two days ago, very early in the morning, in the city center, during the shooting.

It was weird to see very few tourists visiting very famous spots like Piazza Navona and Campo de' Fiori which were usually super crowded before the pandemic.

While this emptiness can be sad, from the photographer's perspective it is the perfect moment for actually taking pictures of monuments and squares without any contamination of the human physical presence. Just like a dream!

Fountain of the Four Rivers by Bernini (1651) in front of Church of Sant'Agnese in Agone by Borromini (1672). The famous legend in Rome tells about the rivalry between the two Baroque artists, Bernini and Borromini; according to the same legend, the statue visible here, a man figure representing the river Rio della Plata, is rising his arm towards the belltower of Borromini's Church in order to protect himself from the possible fall of the building itself. Of course, this legend is clearly misleading: to be true, the statue of the Fountain of the Four Rivers by Bernini had to be completed after the construction of the Church by Borromoni, but in fact the former was inaugurated almost 2 years before the latter began to be constructed.

According to the very legend, also in this case, the statue representing the river Nilo is covering his face with a mantel to avoid the sight of the Church by Borromini. However, as we already saw, the legend is untrue, and the statue was made this way as a symbol of the yet unknown springs of the river Nilo itself at that time.

While the Baroque style can be perceived as heavy and sometimes even extremely ostentatious, it is unavoidably acknowledged also the fact that a Baroque masterpiece precisely like Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers appears as light as the air and space hollowed out from the center of the main marble stone which is the core of the entire fountain and supports Domitian's obelisk. In other words, Bernini's Baroque is strong like the marble and light like the air.