Inside a box labeled ‘Anonymous’ at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York lies an unusual seventeenth-century drawing of the interior of New Saint Peter’s Basilica. Puzzle-like, the drawing fits together two sheets by two artists working at different moments. Together, the sheets depict a liturgical ceremony set in an idealized vision of the church’s crossing and apse. The scene includes an early, ephemeral version of the Baldacchino, partially adorned crossing piers, and the Cathedra Petri. Drawn from diverse moments in the history of the church’s ornamentation and the artists’ fantasies, these architectural inclusions exist simultaneously. The drawing capriciously joins together designed, realized, and imagined architectural elements.

Though frequently mentioned in recent literature on Bernini and Saint Peter’s, the curious drawing has yet to be put into the context of architectural fantasies, known in the period as capricci. The history of the capriccio intersects with early modern theoretical concepts such as invenzione (invention) and fantasia (fantasy). By reworking the interior of Saint Peter’s and combining anachronistic architectural elements, the draftsmen produced a capriccio that allows viewers to fuse imagination with reality.