Vestire i palazzi. Stoffe, arredi e parati negli arredi e nell'arte del Barocco

At the heart of this volume is the recognition that display as a phenomenon proper to textiles. By the early modern period, this gesture of displaying, manipulating, and exploiting textiles had become so much important: no wall in a baroque palace could be “unclothed” or bare. A palace must be dressed, whether with parati, suites of ornate textile panels that covered all the walls, or with corami, suites of decorated colored leather hangings. Even the frescos on the walls of Roman palaces frequently took the form of feigned tapestries or fabrics, often trapped in the narrow band between the cornice and the uppermost reach of the parati. Once the parati and their coordinated trimmings had been hung, all that was needed were a few chairs, tables, and a bed and the envoy could move in.