Chiesa dei Santi Domenico e Sisto te Rome 1669 - 1670

Giovanni Battista Falda created this print of the Chiesa dei Santi Domenico e Sisto in Rome sometime before 1678. Falda, living in a Rome bustling with artistic and architectural innovation, captures not just a building, but a nexus of power, religion, and gender. The church and monastery were home to Dominican nuns. Enclosed religious orders like this one provided women with unique avenues of expression and autonomy. Although cloistered from the outside world, these nuns wielded considerable influence through their prayers, charitable works and artistic endeavors. The architecture itself speaks to the gendered dimensions of religious life. Falda’s print invites us to consider the complex interplay between visibility and enclosure, piety, and power that defined the lives of these women. The image becomes a window into a world both apart from and deeply embedded in the social fabric of Baroque Rome.