Like other artistic styles, the Italian Baroque was anything but homogeneous, but nowhere did the style blossom more clearly than in Rome, where it manifested itself through the multitude of monumental sacred buildings. After overcoming the shocks of the Protestant Reformation, the power of the Vatican consolidated and made Rome once again the centre of the arts. Through the building activity of the popes, with the aim of staging the all-encompassing power of the faith throughout the city, Baroque art became an expression of ecclesiastical authority.
nach Jacques Franquart 
