San Bernardo alle Terme: Interior

Caterina de’ Nobili Sforza (1535-1605) was one of the women patrons of art in the period. She built the circular church of San Bernardo alle Terme out of the ruins of one of the circular pavilions at the corners of the ancient Baths of Diocletian. Each of the bays around the Pantheon-like structure is decorated with an inscription commemorating members of her family. She commissioned Camillo Mariani, newly arrived from the Veneto, where he had specialized in decorative plasterwork for Palladian villas, to fill the niches with heroic-sized statues referring to her family and to herself (St Catherine of Alexandria and St Catherine of Siena). For the first time outside of royal commissions, the independent patronage of women took on a public scale equal to that of male donors.