The book tells the exhibition that, between March and October 2019, set Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs in dialogue with the settings of Cardinal Neri Corsini’s palace, now the Gallerie Nazionali Barberini Corsini in Rome, bringing out the principles of symmetry and varietas that inspired the photographer and the importance of collecting and of studying the old masters, which in his case meant the great photographers of the nineteenth century. It reflects on the relation between works and the spaces created for their enjoyment: the classical, yet disruptive, aesthetics of a great photographer.