Ancient Web: Roberto Piperno Found Rome Laughing at Its Own Monuments

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Rome's monumental art is expected to look grand, solemn, and authoritative. Roberto Piperno noticed that some of its grandest settings contain small carved faces that seem to be laughing at the whole performance.

Visit Laughing Masks in the Streets of Rome.

The essay belongs to Piperno's hand-built Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller, a vast photographic and historical guide. This particular page focuses on masks hidden among portals, heraldic decorations, fountains, and architectural sculpture, especially work from around 1550 to 1750.

A joke beneath the official inscription

The page begins with the Quirinal Palace, a grand institution that has served as a papal, royal, and presidential residence. Piperno singles out its portal, designed by Carlo Maderno in 1615 for Pope Paul V. Beneath the celebratory inscription, he points to a tiny mask that punctures the ceremonial mood.

Then the visitor meets Gian Lorenzo Bernini's decorations at Palazzo Barberini. Some elements of its frieze frame expressive faces with bat wings. Piperno also identifies masks in the heraldry of the Fountain of the Four Rivers and the pedestal of the Obelisk of Minerva.

The effect is cumulative. A carved face that might go unnoticed in a street photograph becomes part of a pattern across several centuries of commissioned public art.

Piperno is not claiming every face is a secret code. He argues that artists and patrons sometimes incorporated playful or irreverent details into objects designed to project institutional power.

A walking guide made out of hyperlinks

The page's many links lead outward to locations, families, popes, and related buildings. It works as an itinerary and a reference index at once. Readers can follow an architectural feature through Rome rather than restricting themselves to a single monument.

The photos are Piperno's own and clearly copyrighted; there is no reason to lift them into a new article when the original gallery remains available. The page says it was revised in October 2020, reflecting an old-style reference that continued to receive attention.

An earlier Ancient Web article covered this site's comparison of Giuseppe Vasi's eighteenth-century engraving with the modern Porta Pinciana. The masks gallery is a separate subject: a connected photographic investigation of humor tucked into ceremonial stonework.

Rome has thousands of monuments. This page offers an excellent reason to look at the smaller details when everyone else is looking up.

Follow Piperno's original photographic tour of the laughing masks.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.