Abstract
Using the evidence of his 1698 death inventory, this article reconstructs how Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri’s collection of paintings and furniture was displayed in his apartment in the Altieri palace in Rome. Although scholars have occasionally cited individual objects, the inventory has never been published. Numerous entries are here linked to extant paintings, providing new provenance information for works in public and private collections. Paluzzo emerges as a cautious collector, single-mindedly directed towards underscoring his piety and his identity as a loyal ex-cardinal nephew. Analysis of the inventory provides a new foundation for considering the patronage dynamics of the important late-seventeenth-century Altieri family, and contributes fresh material to the study of collecting and display as self-fashioning in papal Rome. This is part one of a two-part study; the second part will consider Paluzzo’s other spaces in the palace, and a broader array of objects, including sculpture, decorative arts, and naturalia .
This article considers Cardinal Paluzzo Albertoni Altieri’s death inventory dated 14 July 1698 (Appendix 1) and attempts to reconstruct the ways in which his collection of paintings and furniture were displayed within his representational apartment - that is, the series of quasi-public rooms on the piano nobile of the Altieri palace on Via Plebiscito that were used for the complex social rituals of the papal court. 1 The inventory and the collection it documents are important as Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri (1623–98) was the cardinal- nephew of Pope Clement X (Emilio Altieri, r. 1670–76) and as such was one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Rome. Yet, because access to the private family archive has proved extremely difficult, this papacy and in particular the cultural activities and patronage of the Altieri family have remained obscure. 2 The inventory is publically available in Rome’s Archivio di Stato, and although scholars have occasionally cited individual objects, the inventory itself has never been published or studied systematically. 3
The future Pope Clement X, Emilio Altieri, was born in 1590 and educated at the Collegio Romano. 4 He trained as a lawyer and then embarked upon an ecclesiastical career, becoming auditor of the Papal Nunciate in Poland in 1623 and Bishop of Camerino in 1627. In 1644 he was sent by Pope Innocent X to be Apostolic Nuncio in Naples, where he remained until 1652. Pope Clement IX Rospigliosi appointed him Master of the Papal Chamber in 1667 and shortly before he died made him Cardinal. After a long conclave Emilio Altieri was elected Pope in 1670 and died six years later. Because of his advanced age and ill health, he delegated a great many responsibilities to his nephew, Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi Altieri ( Fig. 1 ). Cardinal Paluzzo was born Paluzzo Paluzzi degli Albertoni in Rome on 8 June 1623 to Antonio Paluzzi degli Albertoni and Laura Carpegna. He became auditor-general of the Apostolic Chamber during the pontificate of Alexander VII and was created Cardinal in 1666, acquiring Santi Apostoli as his titular church. During the pontificate of Pope Clement IX he became a close adviser to Cardinal Emilio Altieri, and when Altieri was elected Pope he adopted Paluzzo, bestowing the Altieri name on the newly minted cardinal-nephew.
Albert Clouwet, after Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi Altieri , engraving, published by Giovanni Giacomo de’Rossi, from Effigies Cardinalium nunc viventium, 1675–1698, Photo: Trustees of the British Museum.
Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri swiftly became indispensable to the Pope and wielded enormous power, a manoeuvre not uncommon among aristocratic Roman families. His meteoric rise to power was due to a manoeuvre typical of aristocratic Roman families. In 1667, Paluzzo’s nephew Gaspare Albertoni wed Laura Altieri and agreed to assume the Altieri surname in order to keep the family name alive. 5 Cardinal Paluzzo and Gaspare’s father Angelo were then brought into the family after Emilio Altieri’s election as Clement X; in 1672, Paluzzo was referred to as: Cardinalem Palutium iam Palutium de Albertonij nunc vero Alterius , or ‘Cardinal Paluzzo formerly Paluzzo de’ Albertoni, now true Altieri.’ 6 This arrangement enabled the Altieri line to continue, as without a male heir it would otherwise have been extinguished. Contemporaries explicitly referred to the new nephews as ‘adoptive’ or ‘adopted’ ( parenti adottivi ), and their absorption into the Altieri family fits the definition of adoption offered by Cesare Ripa in the 1618 edition of the Iconologia : “[a]doption is a legitimate act through which one is made a son, who is not, and . . . it almost imitates nature.” 7 From the point of view of the noble but impoverished Albertoni, the adoption provided access to much-needed funds. In an inventory drawn up in 1666, before his adoption by Clement X, nearly every item in Paluzzo’s apartments is described as old, broken, torn, or all three. 8
Clement X’s decision to take on the Albertoni nephews was not fully welcomed by contemporaries. An anonymous writer lamented that Clement X could have avoided the problem of nepotism, as ‘God call[ed] him to the Apostolate stripped of interests and of blood [relatives] as a sign that he could surpass the glory of every other more zealous pope in the rebirth of the decorum of the power of the church…’ 9 On shaky ground because of his adoption into the Regnanti – the ruling family – Paluzzo was evidently anxious to establish his authority as papal nephew. An avviso from 12 August 1670 informs us that, ‘His Eminence Cardinal Altieri, not wanting to be less than any other papal nephew, today has had a general proclamation posted renewing all the proclamations published up to the present date by the other popes.’ 10 Paluzzo’s concerns were apparently well founded, as his legitimacy and authority were repeatedly challenged throughout the Altieri papacy. Due to his decidedly prominent nose ( Fig. 2 ), Paluzzo was referred to by a number of different nicknames all orbiting around the famous Roman poet, Ovid Nasone (in Italian, literally ‘Ovid Big-nose’). In a satirical poem dated three days after Clement’s death, the anonymous author refers to Paluzzo as ‘quel gran Nason’ (that great Big-nose), who is the pope’s relative, but a ‘relative without relation.’ 11 Writer Gregorio Leti, in a satirical piece mimicking Clement X’s testament, assigned books from the pope’s collection to prominent members of the Curia – he ‘gave’ Le Metamorphosi d’Ovidio Nasone , Ovid’s Metamorphoses , to Cardinal Altieri. 12 Leti meant, no doubt, a double-edged stab, as the reference to Ovid allowed him to mock both Paluzzo’s appearance and his personal metamorphosis from Paluzzi to Altieri.
Lorenzo Merlini, Model for the bust of Cardinal Paluzzo Paluzzi degli Albertoni Altieri , c. 1698, terracotta, 78 x 78 x 43cm., Museo di Roma. Photo: Museo di Roma.
The Altieri Palace on Piazza del Gesù ( Fig. 3 ) played a key role in the adoption and in the new family’s identity. Laura and Gaspare were required to live in the palace because, as the marriage documents stated, ‘in that way the memory of the Altieri family is better preserved.’ 13 Gaspare’s father, Angelo, who seems to have been the least integrated into the Altieri, moved back to the Albertoni Palace toward the end of his life, suggesting that there had been political pressure to keep the entire adopted family under a single roof. 14 The expansion and decoration of Palazzo Altieri in the 1670s, which included the addition of a wing essentially dedicated to Cardinal Paluzzo, was thus the physical manifestation of the construction of the new Altieri family. In the new Palazzo Altieri, Cardinal Paluzzo unquestionably announced his dual family’s rise in status, and sought by means of its decoration to demonstrate his legitimacy as a profoundly pious cardinal nephew with deep Roman roots.
‘Palazzo dell’Eccellentissima Casa Altieri nella piazza del Giesu’, print made by Alessandro Specchi, published by Domenico de’Rossi, 1699, from Il Nuovo Teatro delle Palazzi . . . di Roma Moderna . Photo: Trustees of the British Museum.
The Altieri palace had existed on the site next to the Gesù, and close to the Capitol for several generations and had been extended already in the 1650s. 15 But with the election of Emilio Altieri to the papacy in 1670 a much grander structure was required and the architect Giovanni Antonio De Rossi was commissioned to enlarge it. He kept the original palace with its archaic facade on the piazza and added a long wing along the Via del Gesù (now the Via del Plebiscito), parallel to the side of the Gesù, by means of acquiring all the houses in the block between the Piazza del Gesù, Via del Gesù, Via degli Astalli to the east, and the winding Vicolo di Santo Stefano del Cacco to the north ( Fig. 4 ). The additions meant the creation of another courtyard. Building took place in great haste, as the Altieri were eager to finish the project while the Pope was still alive. Money was poured into the project at the rate of 2,000 scudi a month for six years, and it was substantially finished by 1676. 16 Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri would later state that he had spent over 100,000 scudi of his own income on the structure. 17
Palazzo Altieri, extension of the palace down Via Plebescito. Photo: Authors.
The resulting palace was huge and showy, with its new façade consisting of sixteen bays of openings spanning three stories along the Via del Gesù. The newly expanded Altieri family inhabited it, with Gaspare Altieri’s apartment alone consisting of twenty rooms on the piano nobile , while Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri’s suite consisted of ten rooms. 18 The new palace was also famous for its sumptuous furnishings, grand staircase and courtyard ( Fig. 5 ), and for its Salone , which was decorated with an imposing fresco of The Triumph of Clemency painted by Carlo Maratti ( Fig. 6 ). Four bays of two vertically arranged windows each lighted this room, which was over 17 metres in height, and 20 metres deep. 19 Also notable was the library directly above it, which combined the libraries of the Altieri and the Paluzzi Albertoni families, the design and supervision of which was entrusted to Carlo Cartari. 20
Courtyard, Palazzo Altieri. Photo: Authors.
Carlo Maratti, Triumph of Clemency , Sala degli Staffieri, Palazzo Altieri. Photographs: Daytopia Press.
While Gaspare Altieri and Paluzzo Altieri may both have had access to the sumptuous Sala dei Staffieri at the top of the stairs, 21 their individual apartments were oriented in different directions. Gaspare Altieri had a suite of rooms that led off in a westerly direction, while Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri’s ten room apartment on the piano nobile consisted of rooms running to the east, along the Via del Gesù leading to the corner of the Via del Gesù and Via degli Astalli, and then continuing along Via degli Astalli ( Fig. 7 ). 22 Included in the suite was the impressive corner room with the balcony ( Fig. 4 ). 23 The other rooms situated on Via degli Astalli were vaulted, and apart from the initial Sala were decorated with elaborate, three-dimensional stuccowork that was recorded in a number of designs by Nicodemus Tessin. Vasi attributed the stucco decoration to the Roman sculptor Ercole Ferrata. 24 The large number of rooms in the Cardinal’s apartment reflected the fashion for increasingly elaborate etiquette, which by the 1670s required an increased number of different rooms in order to differentiate the social status of visitors. The Sala dei Staffieri in the Altieri palace was the equivalent of the Sala dei Palafrenieri or room of the Grooms in most other palaces. This Room, where the grooms waited, and where the servants of visitors would remain, was the most public of rooms in the Roman apartment. From this space visitors would individually proceed through the antechambers to the audience room where the visit would take place. Where they were met in the sequence of rooms by their host depended on their status. Very important visitors were met at their carriage or on the stairs by the host, while a groom would lead those of lesser status through the sequence of rooms. 25
Giovanni Battista Contini, Pianta del Piano nobile . . . rilievo eseguito nel 1711 con ripartizione del godimento d’uso , asr, Fondo Notai dell’ ac, Reg. 5125.
Altieri’s death inventory lists in great detail the contents of his apartment, beginning with the Sala , which could be accessed directly from the Sala dei Staffieri . The Sala was followed by three antechambers, the last of which formed his first audience room, followed by two more antechambers ending with l’ultima sala , which represented a second and more sumptuous audience room. The presence of two audience rooms on the piano nobile became more common towards the end of the century, with one reserved for receiving guests of higher rank. 26 This was followed by a room where his picture collection was displayed, and beyond that lay the chapel and two very small service rooms.
The first room in Cardinal Paluzzo’s representational apartment, the Sala ( Fig. 7 , p1), was minimally furnished and dominated by a large baldachin displaying the arms of the cardinal and the Maltese cross, with a wooden balustrade in front of it. Both the balustrade and the door hanging also displayed the Cardinal’s arms. The room also contained a very large copper candelabrum, for lighting the room at night. It contained no paintings but was richly frescoed, and lit by four large windows. The subject of the frescoed vault in this room, the Triumph of Romulus, carried into the sky by Mars before the Majesty of Jove, contrasts with the more papal message of the Triumph of Clemency in the Sala degli Staffieri next door. The fresco celebrates the new Altieri family, with references to the astrological signs of Gaspare and Laura Altieri’s three sons, Emilio, Lorenzo, and Giovambattista. 27 The iconography does not, however, specifically allude to Paluzzo’s horoscope, a curious omission that distances him from the room’s deeply familial paean. 28 Paluzzo’s concern in his own first and very public waiting room was to underline the old Roman pedigree of the Altieri and Albertoni families, by connecting them to the origins of Rome. 29
The first and second antechambers ( Fig. 7 , p2 and P3) after the Sala were also furnished in the height of fashion, the first with wall hangings of damask that were decorated with stars - a reference to the Altieri coat of arms - and fringed with gold, and twenty-one gilded chairs from Lucca, some of which were decorated with figures, and upholstered in crimson silk. The second antechamber was also furnished with Roman damask hangings, and nineteen chairs in the Venetian style, upholstered in crimson velvet.
The third antechamber ( Fig. 7 , p4) was similarly furnished with damask, but also contained a damask baldachin, and three portraits of popes, one of Pope Innocent XII, one of Pope Alexander VII and one of Pope Clement X. This was the large corner room with the balcony and represented the first audience chamber, where visitors would be formally received. Audience chambers traditionally contained a baldachin and it was customary to hang a portrait of the current Pope under it, in this case Pope Innocent XII. However Cardinal Paluzzo also displayed here portraits of those popes to whom he owed advances in his career. The stuccoes in this room depict the story of Aeneas, continuing the theme of Roman foundation myths from the first Sala,30 and the window embrasures were painted with views of Rome. The room contained twenty chairs identical to those in the preceding room, two large candelabra and a bronze crucifix by Alessandro Algardi with a cross of ebony and a crystal mount. 31 On display here was a complex silver sculptural group representing St. Michael with a drawn sword fighting the Devil on a flaming mountaintop with three gilded figures representing demons (fol. 545v).
The room immediately after the first audience chamber, called the fourth antechamber ( Fig. 7 , p5), was the first room whose façade faced Via degli Astalli. It was almost as large as the audience room, again furnished with hangings of Roman damask and contained an ivory crucifix on a wooden cross, fixed to a wooden urn (fol. 546r). The crucifix can perhaps be identified as a work now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which follows a ‘restrained type’ established by Guglielmo della Porta, and which has a provenance to the Palazzo Altieri. 32 The fourth antechamber also contained twenty-four chairs upholstered in crimson velvet in the French style with a gold fringe, carved pommels, and carved and gilded feet.
This was followed by the ‘fifth’ room ( Fig. 7 , p6), which was smaller, and similarly furnished with Roman damask hangings, and seventeen ‘old’ chairs of crimson velvet, with pommels in the form of stars and gilded feet.
After this came the ‘last room’ ( Fig. 7 , p7), indicating it was the last public room in the Cardinal’s representational apartments and indeed the last room in the enfilade of rooms in the Via degli Astalli wing. This room was large and even more richly decorated, with a baldachin of gold, and wall hangings of gold and crimson velvet. It contained twenty-four chairs of crimson velvet from Venice. Its furnishings indicate that it represented the second and more important audience chamber where the Cardinal could receive visitors. It also contained two portraits, one of Pope Alexander VIII, and one of Cardinal Ottoboni. 33 These portraits in his principal audience chamber deviate from papal protocol in that they do not include a portrait of the then-current pope, Innocent XII, who reigned from 1691 to 1700 and who was represented in the first audience chamber. They do however constitute a very public statement of allegiance to the Ottoboni family, as Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740) was the grandnephew of Pope Alexander VIII Ottoboni who was pope from 1689 to 1691.
Immediately following the ‘last room’ was a room described as ‘the other room called “of the paintings”’ ( Fig. 7 , p8), which contained forty-seven paintings by Renaissance and Baroque artists, the vast majority of which were devotional. By this time it was far more usual in Rome to display paintings in a custom-made gallery. Picture or sculpture galleries could be used to extend representational apartments and part of their popularity was due to their flexibility as spaces: they could be used to receive visitors, to hold banquets, to house temporary stages, or for strolling and chatting with guests. Sometimes they would be decorated for particular events. The galleria of the Palazzo Pamphili in Piazza Navona, for example, was the location of a lavish banquet given by Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, the ambassador of James II, for Innocent XI in 1685. 34 The Palazzo Altieri did contain at least two spaces on the piano nobile that could be identified as galleries, one of which was called the ‘Galleria non terminata’ (the ‘unfinished gallery’) on the south side of the courtyard, but neither were located within the Cardinal’s apartment. 35 As the building of the palace was supervised by Cardinal Altieri and not by the Pope, this arrangement suggests that he did not request a custom-made gallery. A clue to the location of this room ‘of the pictures’ is that the next room listed in the inventory, the chapel, was annexed to it, and the chapel appears to be the first small room of the three that run in parallel to the last three representational rooms on the plan ( Fig. 7 , p9), which indicates that the room displaying the paintings was situated between the ‘fifth’ room, which faced Via degli Astalli, and the grand Sala degli Staffieri , which was frescoed by Maratti. It had doors opening on to both the Sala degli Staffieri and the fourth antechamber, and could also be accessed by means of the semi-circular staircase located next to it. This was a large and well lit-room, with three windows overlooking the courtyard. Unusually it contained twenty-three chairs, in contrast to gallery spaces that usually contained little in the way of seating. Its position suggests that it formed part of the return itinerary of visitors after they had reached the ‘ultima stanza’ (the last room). They could exit the apartment by means of this room and the semi-circular staircase, without having to walk back through all the antechambers, or they could walk through this room to the Sala dei Staffieri , and descend the grand staircase. The conjunction of the room ‘of the pictures’ with the semi - circular staircase also suggests an alternative percorso through the palace and Paluzzo’s spaces - one that linked the pictures room and the library above, and was meant for the scholars and artists that frequented the palace, whose numbers included Carlo Cartari, Cardinal Massimo, and Gian Pietro Bellori. There was a similar connection in Palazzo Barberini alle Quattro Fontane between the library (which scholars could reach directly by way of the large spiral staircase) and Francesco Barberini’s guardarobba on the floor above. 36
The first work of art mentioned in this room was a bust of Pope Clement X, displayed on a wooden pedestal (fol. 547v.). Although those compiling the inventory do not attribute the work to a particular artist, this was almost certainly the unfinished portrait bust of the Pope by Bernini, who left it to Paluzzo in his will. The statue ( Fig. 8 ) shows a half-length marble of the Pope in the act of raising his right hand while holding two folded documents in his left. The extended torso enables the sculpture to make effective use of the hands, creating the impression, as Wittkower expressed it, ‘of a full-size statue in the act of benediction’. 37 In Bernini’s late work, such as the portrait of Gabriele Fonseca and the statue of the Beata Ludovica Albertoni hands become more expressive, effectively conveying the emotional states of the sitters. Compared with these works however, the gesture of Clement X seems measured. The portrait’s authority derives from the presence of the hands, the gesture, and the honest portrayal of an elderly man. The gravity of his expression contrasts with the dynamic folds of the cape, while his prominent hands with their long elegant fingers are particularly fine, their veined backs and slightly knobbly finger joints indicating his age.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Bust of Pope Clement X , c . 1676. Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, Rome.Photographs: Daytopia Press.
Baldinucci reported that in his will Bernini, who died in 1680, left an unfinished bust of the Pope to the ‘Eminentissimo Altieri’. 38 Eleonara Villa, who was able to work for a brief time in the Altieri archive, found the note of a payment recording that on the 11 October 1681 the sculptor Giovanni Battista Giorgi received 10 scudi ‘for having worked to finish the alb of marble and the tippet, and [for] having made the scroll in front of the portrait’. 39 Given the timing of the payment it seems likely that this refers to the portrait left to Cardinal Altieri in Bernini’s will, and that Giorgi was paid to finish the costume and to create the inscription in front of the portrait, but not to interfere with the face itself. That his intervention was not significant is suggested by the payment of only 10 scudi. The Swedish architect Nicodemus Tessin, who visited the Altieri palace in 1688 mentioned seeing a half-figure of the Pope in what he described as a ‘frescoed room’ in Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri’s apartment on the piano nobile, describing it as ‘Bernini’s portrait of the Pope in marble down to the middle, which is not entirely finished owing to the Pope’s death’. 40 It seems likely that he saw it in this room, where the Cardinal kept his picture collection. The existing portrait is unfinished and is of technical interest as it reveals the stages of carving prior to the finished piece, revealing the marble bridges linking the sitter’s right arm and left hand to his body, and between the fingers of the right hand. Fine lines from the sculptor’s claw are also visible on the face and hands.
Other inventory listings that can be matched to extant works include the St Michael Archangel, St Charles, and Angels (St Charles Borromeo in Glory ) by Giulio Cesare Procaccini, now found in the National Gallery of Ireland (fol. 548r; Fig. 9 ). The painting was first recorded in 1628 in the Church of San Carlo al Corso, where it had been installed by Gaspare Mola. 41 By 1640 it had been moved to the Carmelite church of Santa Maria in Traspontina; however, a satisfactory place for the large picture (385 x 252cm - equivalent to the approximately 18 palmi listed for the picture in the 1698 inventory) could not be found, and it moved between chapels at least once before it was finally sold, in 1673, to Carlo Maratti for 300 scudi. 42 No further notice of the painting appeared until 1841. 43 The inventory of Paluzzo’s apartment now places the picture in the Altieri collection from at least 1698, but it is likely to have come into Paluzzo’s hands sooner, as Maratti was working in Palazzo Altieri in the 1670s on his Triumph of Clemency . Maratti appears to have been working as a kind of agent or adviser to Paluzzo, acquiring on the cardinal’s behalf, but he may also have purchased this picture on speculation, in the hope that the Cardinal would be willing to cover the painting’s notable purchase price. 44
Giulio Cesare Procaccini, St Michael Archangel, St Charles, and Angels (St Charles Borromeo in Glory ), c . 1620, oil on canvas, 385 x 252cm, National Gallery of Ireland. Photo: National Gallery of Ireland.
A painting simply described as being of Christ by Guido Reni, behind crystal, can be identified as an oval Christ Crowned with Thorns on copper by Reni, which was sold at Christie’s in 2008, with a provenance to Palazzo Altieri (fol. 547v; Fig. 10 ). 45 Another painting representing the four seasons, with four putti, ‘said to be by’ Guido Reni, is identifiable with a painting now in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples (fol. 548v). 46 A work of art long known by scholars to have been in the collection of the Altieri family is Nicolas Poussin’s Massacre of the Innocents (fol. 549r). This was not the famous Chantilly version of the subject, but the first version, and can be securely identified with the painting of the subject by the artist now in the Petit-Palais, Paris, 98 x 133cm; it has been dated by Anthony Blunt to 1625–26. 47 A painting described in the inventory as a nocturnal scene by ‘Monsù Gerardo’ of St Joseph working and the Christ Child holding the light (fol. 549r), 48 was a version of Gerrit Van Honthorst’s Childhood of Christ. Its measurement is given as ‘otto palmi’ and if this refers to the horizontal measurement, it is the equivalent of 178.7cm. A painting of this subject in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg measures 137 x 185cm, so could be this painting. 49 Salvator Rosa’s night scene of Christ Carrying the Cross (fol. 547v.) is now in the Musée Condée, Chantilly. 50
Guido Reni, Christ Crowned with Thorns, oval painting on copper, 49.0 x 39.5cm, sold at Christie’s in 2008. Photo: Courtesy of Christie’s Images Limited.
Another painting still owned by the Collezione Associazione Bancaria Italiana (abi), whose offices currently occupy part of Palazzo Altieri, is a copy by Andrea Sacchi of Raphael’s Galatea : ‘Galatea del Palazzo Farnese, copiata da Antonio Sacchi’ (fol. 549v). 51 The picture was recorded in Sacchi’s inventory when he died in 1661, and it appears to have been purchased by Paluzzo on Maratti’s advice – another example of the painter working as an artistic or collections adviser to the cardinal. 52 This is a large picture, and would have been a jarringly secular irruption in Paluzzo’s room of paintings. Another secular subject was a copy of Lanfranco’s Arminda and Rinaldo , depicting a scene from canto xvi of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata , when Rinaldo leaves Armida for the last time (fol. 549r). 53 Two other pictures from Paluzzo’s collection have recently returned to the Palazzo Altieri. A Sermon on the Mount and a Preaching of St. John the Baptist by Pietro da Cortona were purchased by the ABI in 2013; the two probably hung in Paluzzo’s picture room as a pair, following a common Roman mode of display privileging symmetry (fol. 548r and fol. 549v). 54 Paluzzo’s picture of St Peter by lo Spagnoletto, Jusepe de Ribera, was likely a Repentant Peter; Ribera painted several versions of the composition, and it was frequently copied. 55
Several well-known paintings are notable by their absence. Easily the most famous paintings with a provenance to Palazzo Altieri are the so-called ‘Altieri Claudes’, which were highly esteemed in England in the eighteenth century. These were Claude Lorrain’s A Sacrifice to Apollo, painted originally for Angelo Paluzzi degli Albertoni and The Arrival of Aeneas at Pallanteum . 56 These were not in Paluzzo’s collection because Gaspare Altieri owned them. In fact, according to the Liber Veritatis drawing that is linked to the second painting, The Landing of Aeneas in Italy, this was commissioned by Gaspare. 57 Kitson convincingly reconstructed the circumstances surrounding the commission, arguing that Gaspare ordered this work in order to pair it with the earlier Claude painting he apparently inherited. 58 Marcel Roethlisberger proved that Gaspare, not Claude, chose the subject. 59
So what can we deduce from the paintings Paluzzo chose to display in his representational apartments? Combined with the works he hung elsewhere in the palace, the total number of paintings he gathered together on this site numbered seventy-two. The first observation is that for a cardinal-nephew of great wealth and power, his collection (or at least the paintings he chose to display in the Palazzo Altieri) was very small indeed. 60 It is possible to directly compare its size to that of other Cardinal nephews. Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi assembled 300 paintings in the remarkable span of only twenty-nine months. 61 Francesco Barberini owned 341 paintings in 1636 and by 1649 this number had increased to 556. 62 By the end of the seventeenth century, collections of paintings and sculptures had become extremely important aspects of an aristocrat’s public representation. Vincenzo Giustiniani’s inventory of 1638, for example, listed a total of 570 paintings for his town palace alone, and while he may have been exceptional as a collector, his neighbour Cardinal del Monte owned almost 700 paintings. By 1671 Cardinal Antonio Barberini had amassed 935 paintings. 63
Clement X’s papacy was short and the initial extension to Palazzo Altieri expensive, factors that could have limited Paluzzo’s abilities to collect. Several of the significant works – such as the Procaccini and Sacchi’s Galatea – came into the collection through Carlo Maratti, and thus probably in the 1670s, while Clement X was still alive and ready funds available. Paluzzo was also not the recipient of a major windfall in the form of a pre-existing collection, like Pietro Aldobrandini’s ‘inheritance’ of Lucretia d’Este’s remarkable body of works. 64 That said, Paluzzo may well have inherited some of the pictures displayed in this room; for example, Gianni Papi has convincingly suggested that the two early works by Pietro da Cortona of Christ and John the Baptist, respectively, preaching, came from the Albertoni collection. 65 Bellori records that Paluzzo had a picture of S. Filippo Benizzi by Carlo Maratti in his apartment, which was hung “together with other noble paintings that he keeps”; the painting is now in Palazzo Barberini ( Fig. 11 ). 66 Pope Clement IX Rospigliosi originally ordered the picture, but after his death it was given to Clement X and passed on to Paluzzo. The painting seems to have suffered for several centuries from a case of mistaken identity. There is only one painting in the inventory that could match this work, namely ‘a large [picture] representing S. Gaetano with various figures’, by Carlo Maratti (fol. 548r.). Inventory writers frequently err in attributions, but it would seem that in this case the attribution was correct and that it was, rather, the subject – the saint casting lightning at blasphemers – that caused confusion. 67 In any case, Paluzzo did not actively acquire the picture, instead it came to him as a gift, the result of Benizzi’s order, the Servants of Mary (or perhaps Maratti himself?), looking to gain favour with the new Altieri pontiff. Compared to earlier avaricious and determined collectors such as Cardinal Scipione Borghese or Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, Paluzzo’s collecting appears positively lackadaisical.
Secondly, compared with other Seicento patrons and collectors Paluzzo’s taste was austere, conservative, and strongly religious. Of the forty-seven pictures listed in the Stanza de’ Quadri , the majority (twenty-eight pictures or 59.5 per cent) have sacred subjects. Of the secular pictures, only seven were described as landscapes: two by il Borgognone (Jacques or Guillaume Courtois), two by Salvator Rosa, a pair of oval paintings inherited from Cardinal [Francesco?] Albrizzi, and one stormy seascape by Francesco Maria Borzone. 68 While this is a surprisingly small number considering that by this date landscape paintings were well represented in a number of Roman collections, as a percentage of the modest total displayed in this room it was average (approximately 14 per cent). For example landscapes consisted of 12 per cent of the paintings in the collection of Maffeo Barberini in 1623, and 10.3 per cent of the paintings in the 1671 inventory of the collection of Cardinal Antonio Barberini. 69 Exceptional in this regard was Cardinal Massimo, with 24 per cent of the paintings on display in his gallery in 1677 representing landscapes. 70
Carlo Maratti, S. Filippo Benizzi Punishing Blasphemers , 1669, oil on canvas, 244 x 356cm. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Palazzo Barberini, Rome.
Paluzzo’s collection of paintings displayed in this room was also remarkable for the absence of other genres, particularly still life paintings, genre scenes and portraiture, which were becoming very popular by the second half of the seventeenth century. There were only two pictures of vases of flowers by Mario Nuzzi (Mario dei Fiori) and two battle scenes by il Borgognone (probably Jacques). Again, this set Paluzzo apart from other cardinals in his collecting. Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, for example, displayed more than forty still-life genre scenes, of mammals, fish, birds, flowers, and fruit in a room in the family’s palace on Piazza Navona. 71 The display was later recreated, with even more specificity, in Cardinal Benedetto’s palace on the Corso, where he had a single room decorated with fifty-seven paintings of dead birds. 72
Even more surprising was the almost complete lack of portraiture in the collection. The 1671 inventory of Cardinal Antonio Barberini’s collection for example, contained 269 portraits (almost 29 per cent of the collection), including a number of portraits of Cardinal Antonio himself, and a number of portraits of his uncle Pope Maffeo Barberini, his brother Cardinal Francesco, and of the King and Queen of France. He also owned portraits of well-known contemporary ecclesiastical figures and other Cardinals, as well as a considerable number of earlier Renaissance portraits. Paluzzo by contrast displayed very few portraits on his piano nobile, and those he did display hung in his audience chambers, in order to explicitly signal his allegiance to Pope Clement X Altieri, and to the Ottoboni family. The lack of family and other portraits is noteworthy, as they were traditionally used in picture collections to demonstrate the owner’s aristocratic lineage. In particular the total absence of portraits of members of the Albertoni family suggests he was here deliberately excising his Albertoni heritage in order to re-fashion his identity as an Altieri family member and papal nephew. That Paluzzo thought of the uses of portraiture primarily in political, rather than dynastic, terms can be seen in the one major project he undertook in the genre: the ‘Gallery of Popes’ in the Altieri’s feudal palace in Oriolo Romano. The gallery contains 242 portraits of popes in a gallery 70 metres long; the majority of the pictures were copied after the pre-1823 series of papal portraits in San Paolo fuori le Mura. 73 Even well outside Rome’s city walls, Paluzzo’s primary interest was underscoring the papal prestige of the Altieri family.
With Clement X’s new nephews came a particular devotion to Ludovica Albertoni, a Roman noblewoman and the nephews’ ancestor, who was beatified on 31 January 1671. She is immortalized in Bernini’s statue in the Albertoni Altieri chapel in S. Francesco a Ripa (1673–4). Although much of the literature on Altieri patronage identifies Paluzzo as the decisive figure in family projects, it was in fact Angelo who paid for and oversaw Bernini’s work in the chapel. 74 Paluzzo seems to have had little interest in proclaiming ties to his natal family, as his collection of portraits suggests. On 15 February 1674 Clement X issued a special dispensation to his nephews that allowed them to erect images of the beata in the family chapels in Palazzo Altieri. 75 Inventories indicate that the family had several paintings of Beata Ludovica Albertoni in their palace, including a large one with a black frame in the main gallery and another with a gold frame in the lower guardarobba . 76 None, however, were to be found in Paluzzo’s possession. The altarpiece in his chapel depicted the Assunta; Pietro Rossini’s Mercurio errante of 1700 attributes the painting to il Borgognone. There is a painting by Guillaume Courtois of this subject, dated to around 1670 (oil on canvas, 75.0 x 68.5cm, private collection: ( Fig. 12 ) perhaps this was Paluzzo’s altarpiece? 77
Guillaume Courtois, Assumption of the Virgin . c . 1670, oil on canvas, 75.0 x 68.5cm, private collection. Photo © Agnew’s London/Bridgeman Images.
Even his secular and allegorical pictures tended toward the pious, as revealed by his picture of Charity and his copy after Lanfranco’s Armida abandoned by Rinaldo , the original of which belonged to Cardinal Sannesio. This is again in contrast to other collectors like Cardinal Antonio Barberini who owned a number of paintings of Baccanals, for example. There were very few fully secular pictures in Paluzzo’s collection: Veronese’s Venus and Mars Embracing , Antonio Sacchi’s copy after Raphael’s Galatea in the Farnesina, a picture of a putto playing a tambourine on the seashore, and Borgognone’s battle scenes. 78 The first seem to have been present by virtue of their connection to famed ‘Old Masters’ (the putto is given by the inventory to Titian), rather than for their subject matter. Further, copies of the Galatea were not unusual in seventeenth-century Rome, where they often functioned as more than simply indicators of the fresco’s fame and prestige. The Sacchetti family owned a copy of the picture by Pietro da Cortona; Sergio Guarino has suggested that it was commissioned by Marcello Sacchetti as a means of linking himself to previous papal treasurer, and the original picture’s commissioner, Agostino Chigi. 79 Paluzzo may well have been aiming with his copy to suggest a similar connection.
Veronese’s Venus and Mars probably worked as a pair with the other picture in the collection attributed to the Venetian master, of Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the well, which had the same tela d’imperatore dimensions (in Rome, approx. 98 x 130cm). The two would have made a striking contrast – the lascivious sensuality of the pagan gods versus the chaste encounter and conversion narrative of the Christian tale. Of the two, only the Venus and Mars was hung with a red taffeta curtain, suggesting that the pairing was only revealed on particular occasions, no doubt for the moral (and artistic) edification of the cardinal’s visitors.
An analysis of the religious paintings in this room reveals that Paluzzo overwhelmingly favoured scenes from the life of Christ. Unsurprisingly, he also owned several pictures showing the Madonna and Child with saints – among them St. Joseph (in a painting after Raphael, probably a Holy Family ); St Francis (Ludovico Carracci); St Charles and St Catherine (also Ludovico Carracci); and St Catherine, ‘martyrs’, and St Sebastian. He also had pictures representing most every stage of Christ’s life – the Adoration of the Magi , the Circumcision (Federico Zuccari), the Flight into Egypt (studio of Francesco Albani), Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the Well (Veronese), Christ at dinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee (after Veronese), Christ preaching to the Crowds ( Sermon on the Mount , Pietro da Cortona), the Carrying of the Cross (Salvator Rosa), the Deposition (one by Giovanni Battista Caracciolo and another anonymous version, in the maniera antica ), and the Entombment. While these paintings were stylistically diverse, and included both Seicento artists and earlier Mannerist paintings, their subject matter is remarkably coherent and it is possible that some of these were intended to be read sequentially, as stations of the cross. The overwhelmingly devotional nature of his collection suggests he may have been using his picture collection to demonstrate his extreme piety and devotion to Christ in particular, rather than the Virgin. A visitor strolling around the room would be encouraged to interpret the collection in this light, as the achievement of a devout cardinal-nephew whose inner spiritual life was paramount.
Some of the subjects apparently held a more personal meaning for Paluzzo. He owned two pictures of scenes from the life of St John the Baptist, one by Pietro da Cortona of the saint praying and another attributed in the inventory to Ciro Ferri showing the Baptist giving a lamb something to drink, as well as an anonymous picture of the saint. Paluzzo’s funerary chapel in Santa Maria in Campitelli was dedicated to the Baptist, suggesting a particular devotion. The saints that appeared more than once in his collection include St Charles Borromeo, the renowned reformer; and St Michael the Archangel, victor over evil. 80 The picture of St Filippo Benizzi, who was canonized by Clemente-x in 1671, provided [a means etc] a means for Paluzzo to indicate his support of his uncle’s achievements as pope.
Overall Paluzzo’s painting collection was conservative, cautious and extremely pious. Its overtly religious nature, and lack of other genres appears to be deliberate, as the devotional character of the collection served to reinforce his legitimacy as a prince of the church. Paluzzo may have felt compelled to underscore his devotional credentials, as his political position was rocky. On an individual level, critics repeatedly challenged his status as papal nephew. In the same sense that adopted children were depicted as thieves of a family’s patrimony, adopted papal nephews could be seen as usurpers of power, influence, and funds to which they had no right. 81 In 1674 Paluzzo had sent a man to prison who had appeared in Rome claiming to be Clement X’s long-lost nephew. Eventually it was discovered that an embittered abbot named Benedetti, who had briefly served as Cappellano segreto to Clement X, had put up the new ‘nephew’ to the charade. A more serious incident occurred in 1674 when Paluzzo introduced a tax on all foreign goods entering Rome, including those with diplomatic immunity, triggering an international rebellion on the part of the city’s foreign ambassadors. On a systemic level, Paluzzo’s years as a papal nephew, as well as the remainder of his career, played out against a growing resistance to nepotism, the very practice that had vaulted him to wealth and power. While the basis of his political authority was under near constant erosion, at least he could enlist his palace and picture collection to project the image of a successful, devout and devoted cardinal nephew to the outside world.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank John Weretka for his assistance with the transcription of the inventory, and David R. Marshall for reading an earlier draft of this article and making suggestions. Thanks are also due to Sydney University for supporting this research. This is the first of two projected articles analyzing Cardinal Paluzzo’s inventory. The second will investigate other spaces occupied by the Cardinal within the palace, and the objects they contained.
Notes and references
On the organization and use of such representational apartments see P. Waddy, Seventeenth Century Roman Palaces. Use and Art of the Plan (New York, Cambridge, ma , and London, 1990).
The archive remains with the descendents of the Altieri family. Armando Schiavo, in the 1960s, was the last person to work in the archive in any depth; it is not open to scholars.
The inventory has been cited by several scholars, among them: P. Barbieri, ‘Harpsichords and spinets in late Baroque Rome’, Early Music 40, no. 1 (2012), p. 66, and U. Meroni (ed.), Lettere e altri documenti intorno alla storia della pittura: Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione detto il Grechetto, Salvator Rosa, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Monzambano, 1978), p. 103.
On Emilio Altieri, see: L. Osbat, s.v. ‘Clement X, papa’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 26 (1982), pp. 293–302. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/papa- clemente-x_(Dizionario-Biografico)/
Archivio di Stato di Roma (asr), Fondo Notai Auditor Camerae, Laurentius Bellus, 871, 386r-390v.
asr, Fondo Notai Auditor Camerae, Laurentius Bellus, 871, 427v.
C. Ripa, Iconologia , 1618 edition, ed. P. Buscaroli (Turin, 1986), p. 255.
Archivio Capitolino (ac), Rome. Pr. 2. Fasc. 54. Paluzzi Albertoni, Angelo, 54. 11 October 1666. 1295r.
British Library, Add. ms 8288. ‘Al Sacro Colleggio Em.mi e Rev.mi Sig.re Decembre 1674’ , 143r-v.
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (bav), Barb. lat. 6405. 12 August 1670. 80v.
‘V’è per chi di colpa non va senza / il detto quel gran Nason, quel suo Parente / ma Parente però senz’attinenza.’ British Library, ms Add. 8288, ‘A di 25 Luglio 1676 Roma’, 139v.
bav, Vat lat 14137, 92v. In the bav as ‘anonymous’, but published elsewhere with an attribution to Leti.
asr, Fondo Notai Auditor Camerae, Laurentius Bellus, 871, 389v. “. . . perche in tal modo si conservi ancor maggiormente la memoria della detta famiglia Altieri. . .”.
He was recorded as a resident there in parish records of 1692 and then in each subsequent year until his death in 1706. Archivio Vicariato, Stati d’Anime, Santa Maria in Campitelli , 1692, 246r.
For the building history of the Palazzo Altieri see A. Schiavo, Palazzo Altieri (Rome, 1960) and F. Borsi et al.,Palazzo Altieri (Rome, 1991), pp. 51–58. Although Schiavo’s monograph on the palace is now the much older study, he draws on documentary evidence from the family archive, which was not available to the authors of the 1991 study. Borsi et al . describe the extensions made to the palace in the 1650s at the instigation of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Altieri in some detail.
A. Stella, s.v. ‘Altieri: Paluzzo Paluzzi degli Albertoni’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 2 (1960), p. 562.
Borsi et al. , op. cit. (note 15), p. 155.
Schiavo states Cardinal Altieri’s apartment consisted of ten rooms, Borsi et al . estimate it was eight rooms, while the Contini plan drawn up in 1711 indicating who occupied which spaces in the palace reveals his apartment consisted of eight large rooms, and three much smaller rooms, which were not public.
Although most commonly described as the Sala degli Staffieri, this room was also known as the Sala Grande, or Sala dell’Udienza.
Paluzzo’s belief in the importance of an impressive custom-built library may have been strengthened by the emergence in the 1650s and 1660s of two influential examples; the Biblioteca Angelica, which was finished in 1669 and the Biblioteca Alessandrina which was built in 1659–60, but the decoration of which continued into the 1660s. G. Cecchini, ‘Evoluzione architettonico-strutturale della Biblioteca Pubblica in Italia dal secolo xv al xvii’, Accademie e biblioteche d’Italia 35, no. 1, (1967), p. 45.
Giovanni Battista Contini’s plan of 1711 indicating which rooms were enjoyed by which family members, clearly labels this room as belonging to Gaspare Altieri, not Cardinal Paluzzo, although in general such grand rooms were shared by family members. Giovanni Battista Contini, ‘Pianta del primo piano Nobbile conforme . . .’ asr, Fondo Notai dell’A.C. Reg. 5125, published in Borsi et al. , op. cit. (note 15), p. 152 (subsequently referred to as Contini 1711).
These are described as the rooms ‘di sua Eminenza verso S. Marco al piano nobile’. Schiavo, op. cit, (note 15), p. 79.
The rooms of ‘sua Eminenza verso S. Marco al piano nobile: Cammera del cantone della ringhiera; Lavoro dell’adornamento di detta stanza fatto fare dal Signor Carlo Maratti’. Schiavo, op. cit. (note 15), p. 75.
M. Vasi, Itinerario istruttivo di Roma (1794), from G. Matthiae, Roma del Settecento (Rome, 1970), p. 70.
All such discussions of etiquette and Roman representational apartments are indebted to Patricia Waddy’s fundamental study: Waddy, op. cit. (note 1).
Waddy, op. cit. (note 1), p. 12. Also common by the end of the century was a Stanza del Zampanaro, or representational bedroom, which first began to appear in Roman palaces in 1648.
E. A. Safarik, ‘L’Apoteosi di Romolo,’ in D. di Castro and G. Reina (eds), Roma Palazzo Altieri: le stanze al piano nobile dei cardinali Giovanni Battista e Paluzzo Altieri (Milan, 1999), pp. 26–8.
E. Urban, “The Sala Bologna in the Vatican Palace. Art and Astronomy in Counter Reformation Rome,” Ph.D. dissertation (Rutgers University, 2013), pp. 228–229.
The creation of a family ‘foundation’ myth that went back to the origins of Rome or linked the family to Roman mythology was very common among papal families, and can also be seen for example in Pietro da Cortona’s fresco in the gallery in the Doria Pamphili palace in Piazza Navona. However the Altieri and Albertoni families were unusual in actually being old Roman families, a fact Paluzzo was emphasizing in his fresco cycle.
J. Montagu, ‘Canuti: ceiling painting in the Palazzo Altieri’, Master Drawings 6 (1968), p. 157.
Matched sets of chairs were the dominant element in audience rooms in seventeenth-century Rome, and these would be rearranged by the maestro di camera for different occasions. For more on this see P. Waddy, ‘Inside the palace: people and furnishings’, in S. Walker and F. Hammond (eds), Life and the Arts in the Baroque Palaces of Rome: Ambiente Barocco (New York, New Haven and London, 1999), p. 28.
Notable Acquisitions, 1982–1983, (selected by Philippe de Montebello ), exn. cit., Metropolitan Museum of Art, (New York, 1983). Entry by J. D. Draper, p. 29.
Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740) was an extraordinary patron of the arts, renowned for his lavish sponsorship of music, particularly opera, and literature and painting. See E. J. Olszewski, ‘The enlightened patronage of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740)’, Artibus etHistoriae , 1 no.1, (2002), pp. 139–65. Ottoboni’s rooms in the Palazzo Cancelleria were furnished in a very similar manner to those of Cardinal Paluzzo - his two state bedrooms contained crimson damask and gold braid, while other rooms in his representational apartment were covered in wall hangings in gold brocade (E. J. Olszewski, ‘Decorating the palace: Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (1667–1740) in the Cancelleria’, in Walker and Hammond, op. cit. (note 31), p. 97).
See the engraving by Arnold van Westerhout, from J. M. Wright, An Account of His Excellence, Roger Earl of Castlemaine’s Embassy . . . to his Holiness Innocent XI (London, 1688) which shows the table setting for a banquet given by Lord Castlemaine in the Pamphili gallery for 86 guests.
Both gallery spaces appear to have been for the use of Don Gaspare Altieri. Contini, op. cit. (note 21).
Waddy, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 200–201.
R. Wittkower, Bernini: the Sculptor of the Roman Baroque, (London 1955; 1997 edn), p. 298.
E. Villa, ‘Un episodio sconoscuito della ritrattistica del’ 600: Clemente X, Bernini e Gaulli e altre novità sulla committenza Rospigliosi, Altieri e Odescalchi’, in V. Martinelli (ed.), L’Ultimo Bernini 1665–1680: nuovi argomenti, documenti e immagini, (Rome 1996), p. 139.
Villa, op. cit. (note 38), p. 140. ‘p. haver lavor.o in finire il Camisce di marmo e Stola, e fatto la Cartella avanti il Ritratto della fel. me: di Clem.e X.o fatto dalla bo: me: del s.r Cav.re Bernini’.
Wittkower, op. cit. (note 37), p. 298. The translation from the German is Wittkower’s. For more on Altieri’s apartment see Di Castro and Reina, op. cit. (note 27), p.16 and Cipriani in Borsi et al., op. cit. (note 15), pp. 184–8. The richness of the furnishings in Cardinal Paluzzo’s apartment is attested to by Pinaroli who described it in his 1725 guidebook as follows: ‘. . . passando per la sala si entra nell’apparetamento nobile del signor Cardinal Altieri nel quale si vede un ordine di camere magnifiche ornate di tappezzerie di Damasco con Gallone d’oro; la camera dove si teneva udienza è parata tutta di fondo d’oro e velluto cremisi con sedie compagne, sulla volte di queste camere vi sono diversi festoni e cavalli di stucco fatti da ottimi artisti’, quoted by Cipriani in Borsi et al., op. cit. (note 15), p. 184.
P. Nash McKenna, ‘St. Charles Borromeo in Glory,’ Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 69 (1980), p. 211.
Ibid., p. 213.
Ibid., p. 213.
By 1725 the painting had apparently been moved to the chapel. G. P. Pinaroli, Trattato delle cose più memorabili di Roma tanto antiche come moderne 3 (1725), p. 154.
Sale 7609, Christie’s, Important Old Master & British Pictures Evening Sale, London, 8 July 2008, lot 9.
Guido Reni, Four Seasons , oil on linen, 175 x 230cm, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, inv. no. s 84055.
‘Altro in tavola di p.mi sei, e cinque rapp.te la stragge dell’Innocenti con Cornice intagliata, e dorata, opera del Pussino’. See A. Blunt, The Paintings of Nicolas Poussin: A Critical Catalogue (London, 1966), cat. no. 66, pp. 46–7 where Blunt refers to the painting’s provenance to the Altieri collection.
‘Altro di p.mi 8 con Cornice di legno dorata rappt.e una notte con S. Gioseppe, che lavora, et il bambino che tiene il lume, opera di Monsù Gerardo’.
Hermitage Museum (oil on canvas, c . 1620, 137 x 185cm). The earlier provenance for this painting is unknown.
V. Lavergne-Durey, Chantilly, musée Condé. Peintures de l’École italienne (Paris, 1988): cat. 75, pp. 144–145. Caterina Volpi dates the picture to c . 1660–1665. Caterina Volpi, Salvator Rosa (1615–1673 ) (Rome, 2011), cat. no. 253.
Ann Sutherland Harris’s attribution of the painting to Andrea Sacchi is thus confirmed by the inventory. A. Sutherland Harris, Andrea Sacchi (Oxford, 1977), p. 49, cat. no. 1.
Maratti also supervised the installation of antiquities in the palace. S. Fox, ‘Le antichità del Palazzo e della Villa Altieri a Roma. I materiali,’ Xenia Antiqua 5 (1996), p. 163.
The original is now in a private collection. Lanfranco, Rinaldo’s Farewell to Armida, 1614, oil on canvas, 109 x 178cm, private collection. This original is signed and dated on the hull of the ship ‘ioa.s lanfrancus parm/1614’.
The paintings were rediscovered by Gianni Papi and published in 1995. G. Papi, ‘Due opere giovanili di Pietro da Cortona e un committente imprevisto’, Paragone 46 no. 50 (1995), pp. 30–41. F. Cappelletti, ‘An eye on the main chance: cardinals, cardinal-nephews, and aristocratic collectors’, in Gail Feigenbaum (ed.), Display of Art in the Roman Palace, 1550–1750 (Los Angeles, 2014), pp. 78–9.
A version now in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, at 112cm by 91 cm comes close to the tela d’Imperatore size given for Paluzzo’s work. Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, Inv. no. 1576 Pint, Jusepe de Ribera, c . 1640–1650, Gift of George Demotte (Paris).
Claude Lorrain, The Father of Psyche Sacrificing at the Temple of Apollo, 1662–3, oil on canvas, 175.3 x 222.9cm, Anglesey Abbey (National Trust), and Claude Lorrain, The Arrival of Aeneas at Pallanteum, 1675, oil on canvas, 172.5 x 221.0cm, Anglesey Abbey (National Trust).
The Liber Veritatis drawing for the Arrival of Aeneas has the following inscription on the verso: ‘quadro facto per Ill.mo et Eccell.mo sig.re principe don Gasparo Altieri Claudio Gillee, inv. fecit’.
M. Kitson, ‘The Altieri Claudes and Virgil’, Burlington Magazine 102 no. 688 (1960), pp. 312–18.
M. Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain: The Drawings (Berkeley, ca, 1968), no. 1077.
It is important to note that this was not the sole Altieri residence; in addition to the papal portrait gallery at Oriolo, the Altieri also built a villa on the Esquiline Hill, which was substantially finished by 1680. See B. Amendolea and L. Indrio, Villa Altieri sull’Esquillino a Roma (Rome, 2009).
C. H. Wood, ‘The Ludovisi collection of paintings in 1623’, Burlington Magazine 134 no. 1073 (1992), p. 515.
R. Eskridge, ‘Patrons: Attitudes towards Landscape Painting in Seventeenth Century Rome’, MA dissertation, Oberlin College (1980), pp. 174–77.
Ibid., p. 137.
F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations between Italian Rrt and Society in the Gge of the Baroque (New Haven, 1980), p. 25. C. D’Onofrio, ‘Inventario dei dipinti del cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini compilato da G. B. Agucchi nel 1603’, Palatino: rivista romana di cultura 1–3 (1964), pp. 15–20, 158–62, 202–11; P. Della Pergola, ‘L’inventario del 1592 di Lucrezia d’Este’, Arte antica e moderna 7 (1959), pp. 342–51.
Papi, op. cit. (note 54), pp. 38–9.
Gian Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects: A new Translation and Critical Edition , trans. by Alice Sedgwick Wohl (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 406–7.
Amalia Mezzetti has suggested that the painting of S. Gaetano was instead by Lazzaro Baldi, but no second, similar large narrative painting of a saint is listed in the inventory. It seems more likely that there was only ever one picture, and a considerable confusion over the subject. A. Mezzetti, ‘Contributi a Carlo Maratta’, Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte 4 (1955), p. 339. In eighteenth-century guidebooks to the palace the picture is also called a ‘S. Ignazio’ and a ‘S. Giacomo’. Pinaroli, op. cit. (note 44), p. 154. P. Rossini, Il Mercurio Errante delle grandezze di Roma, tanto antiche, che moderne . . . 4 (1776), p. 388.
These may have been by Goffredo Wals, who favoured this format.
M. Aronberg Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and Inventories of Art (New York, 1975), iv lnv. no. 71: Inventory of Cardinal Antonio Barberini, 1671, of his possessions in the Palazzo ai Giubbonari, Rome, pp. 291–336. If only those paintings explicitly described as landscapes in Antonio Barberini’s collection are counted (excluding marine paintings, seascapes, port scenes and mythological paintings that are also landscapes) the number is nitety-seven out of a total of 935.
For Massimo’s painting collection see L. Beaven, An Ardent Patron: Cardinal Camillo Massimo and his Artistic and Antiquarian Circle (London, 2010).
Cappelletti, op. cit. (note 54), p. 87.
Ibid.
R. Gemma Cipollone, Palazzo Altieri Oriolo Romano (Rome, 2003), pp. 24–5.
K. J. Lloyd, ‘Baciccio’s Beata Ludovica Albertoni giving alms ’, Getty Research Journal 2 (2010), p. 4.
Schiavo, op. cit. (note 15), p. 175.
‘Uno [quadro] grande della Beata Ludovica con cornice grande e negra’ (in the main gallery) and ‘Un quadro grande della Beata Ludovica con cornice d’oro d’intorno.’ ( Robba, che sta nella guadarobba da basso ). asr, Fondo Notai Auditor Camerae Laurentius Bellus 871, 502r and 507r.
M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Pietro da Cortona e i ‘cortoneschi’, Gimignani, Romanelli, Baldi, il Borgognone , Ferri (Milan, 2001), pp. 72, xlii.
The subject of the ‘fleeing youth’ by Tintoretto is unclear – it could have been a representation of Joseph fleeing Potiphar’s wife.
S. Guarino, ‘Galatea’, in A. Lo Bianco (ed.), Pietro da Cortona, 1597–1669 (Milan, 1997), cat. no. 13, pp. 299–300.
The inventory lists a ‘Madonna col Bambino in braccio, S. Carlo, e S. Catarina con cornice intagliata, e dorata, viene da Ludovico Caracci’ (fol. 594r). It seems likely that this is connected to – perhaps a copy after or another version of – a composition featuring that combination of saints by Guercino (oil on poplar, 50.2 x 40.3cm, Cento (Ferrara), Faondazione della Cassa di Risparmio di Cento). Guercino’s work drew on a 1583 painting of Catherine’s mystic marriage with saints by Ludovico Carracci, and in turn inspired a closely related work by Emilio Savonanzi. The subject- matter and the stylistic connection to Ludovico suggest that Paluzzo’s work was related to this constellation of paintings. On the Guercino see: P. Di Natale, ‘Lo sposalizio mistico di santa Caterina d’Alessandria alla presenza di san Carlo Borromeo’, in R. Vodret and F. Gozzi (eds) Guercino, 1591–1666. Capolavori da Cento a Roma (Florence and Milan, 2011), cat. no. 5, p. 74.
See: N. Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance. Orphan Care in Florence and Bologna (Baltimore, 2005), pp. 13–14.
