Studi sul Settecento Romano

 

Rivista annuale, ANVUR classe A

 

Studi sul Settecento Romano 38

Aspetti dell'arte del disegno: autori e collezionisti, II

 

a cura di Elisa Debenedetti

 

 

Corrado Giaquinto e/o Geremia Rovari nella Parrocchiale di Nettuno e altre opere di Giaquinto
inedite o poco note a Poggiardo, a Washington e altrove

 

Riccardo Lattuada

 

The essay faces a number of unpublished or unknown works by Corrado Giaquinto.

Paragraph 1 analyzes two versions of the Madonna of the Rosary: the one in the Parish Church of Nettuno by Geremia Rovari – an unfamiliar Giaquinto’s help, quoted in his master’s last Roman studio, who signed the unfinished altarpiece – and the one in the Parish Church of Poggiardo (Lecce), which seems to be a full autograph work by Giaquinto.

Paragraph 2 discusses the reappearance of an early Giaele e Sisara, showing the Neapolitan Arcadia’s influence on young Giaquinto, who trained in Francesco Solimena’s studio and was influenced by the works of Luca Giordano and Paolo de Matteis.

Paragraph 3 has a few Bacchanals and/or Seasons by Giaquinto, (extant and dispersed?) (the Autumn Allegory and the Winter Allegory now in the National Gallery of Washington DC), which can be linked to some sketches that appeared on the market to a set of Four Seasons.

Paragraph 4 has an unpublished sketch (or ricordo) of the Relics Translation of the Saints Acutius and Eutichetes for the big altarpiece in the Cathedral of Naples which provides a more detailed discussion regarding one of the most ambitious (and less known) works by Giaquinto.

Paragraph 5 shows an almost unknown side of Giaquinto’s works: the series of academic nudes formerly in the Falletti di Villafalletto Collection (Rome). In these intense exercises – regrouped into known and unpublished works – Giaquinto shows his Neapolitan heritage, testified also by documents that constantly define him “Napoletano”.

 

 

A set of Apostles: the work of Giovanni Battista Maini?

 

Jennifer Montagu

 

L’Apostolato qui preso in considerazione, che nell’insieme fornisce dieci delle dodici figure originali, deve essere ricostruito dai calchi distribuiti in quattro diverse località.

È lampante la derivazione dalle statue di marmo di S. Giovanni in Laterano, ma le differenze, di gran lunga maggiori di quanto generalmente avviene, tra l’altro sicuramente intenzionali, creano quello che Bellori aveva chiamato una “lodevole imitazione”.

I calchi in bronzo dorato della collezione Chigi, a Chicago, sono stati solitamente considerati come gli originali, tanto per la loro qualità che per il loro essere indicati con il nome del loro creatore, Leandro Gagliardi (che in realtà lavorava argento e bronzo, e non era quindi scultore), e la data, 1766.

È tuttavia noto da tempo che nello stabilimento di Richard Ginori è stata realizzata una più ampia serie da modelli già esistenti prima del 1743 – e che gli originali potrebbero essere stati anche precedenti.

Ci sono prove tanto documentali che visive che fanno ritenere che i modelli originali siano stati realizzati da Giovanni Battista Maini. Sebbene ciò non possa essere confermato, è da ritenere altamente plausibile.

 

 

Variazioni pittoriche nell’arte di Angelo De Rossi: un nuovo rilievo in cera con la Pietà

 

Cristiano Giometti

 

Angelo De Rossi (1671-1715) produced some very successful sculptural components, above all among the members of cardinal Pietro Ottoboni’s Arcadian circle, which were then reproduced in different materials by the same artist or by important silversmiths and melters like Adolfo Gaap and Giovanni Giardini.

The invention for the Pietà group is among those that stand out to which a version in wax recently appeared on the antique Roman market and up until now never critically analyzed, a precious piece allowing us to reconstruct the production process of the maestro and the fortunes of his refined compositions. In particular, the article analyzes the ‘pictorial’ nature of De Rossi’s style, highlighted by the sculptor’s biographers and traced back to his friendship and intellectual affinity with Francesco Trevisani. The confrontation with Sebastiano Ricci’s paintings must be added to this traditional source, who was present in Rome from 1691 to 1694, and in particular with The Transit of Saint Joseph altarpiece, publicly placed in the church of San Pantaleo and direct creative inspiration for the Pietà analyzed here.

 

 

Le vicende della collezione Colonna tra fine Settecento e primi Ottocento
all’epoca di Filippo III (1760-1818): provenienze, dispersioni, ritrovamenti
e divisioni alla luce di nuovi documenti e inventari inediti

 

Maria Cristina Paoluzzi

 

I

La collezione Colonna all’epoca del contestabile Filippo III (1760-1818):
le alienazioni sul mercato inglese

 

This essay reconsiders the history of the Colonna collection in Rome during Philip III’s time (1760-1818), based on documents kept in Saint Luke’s Academy, and the role played by Pietro Camuccini (1761-1833), Alexander Day (1745-1841), Gherardo de Rossi (1754-1827), James Irvine (1757-1831), and Domenico Venuti (1745-1817) in dispersing parts of the collection to England and the United States between the two centuries. Special attention is given to the legal dispute between Sir Simon Houghton Clarke (1764-1832) and the Camuccini-Day firm, regarding paintings like the Pala Colonna by Raphael (New York, Metropolitan Museum), the Ecce Homo by Correggio (London, National Gallery), The Burial of Christ by Guercino (Chicago, Art Institute), and the Marriage of St. Catherine by Sassoferrato (London, Wallace Collection).

 

II

L’inventario di Filippo III del 1818 e l’allestimento della quadreria dei Principi Colonna:
Andrea Sacchi, Carlo Maratti e Franc esco Trevisani

 

This essay examines an unpublished inventory of the Colonna collection in Rome (post 1818) dated after the death of Philip III (1760-1818) here transcribed for the first time. The comparison between the display of the collection in 1730 the (watercolours by Salvatore Colonnelli Sciarra), the description offered by Dalmazzoni in 1804, allowing us to reconstruct the state of the collection in the early 19th century, after its partial dispersion at the end of the previous century. The essay also presents a few findings: preparatory drawings by Carlo Maratti for the canvas with Saint Stanislaus Cured by the Angels, (Dusseldorf and Madrid), and two paintings by Andrea Sacchi, mentioned in the inventories and up until now considered lost. It also clarifies the history of some of the paintings that are no longer in the collection, such as the Adoration of the Shepherds by Nicholaes Berchem of Bristol, and the Triumph of David, by Guercino in Burghley House. Particular attention is devoted to the works by Francesco Trevisani: the Raising of Lazarus, still in the collection and Sofronia and Olindo, sold by Philip III.

 

 

La collezione dell’avvocato Agostino Mariotti (1724-1806)
all’alba dell’Ottocento tra display e storia del gusto

 

Ginevra Odone

 

The article is an extract from the PhD thesis regarding the Roman lawyer Agostino Mariotti (1724-1806) and it’s concentrated on how the lawyer arranged the paintings inside his Roman home. Analyzing the inventory found in Mariotti’s papers, which are now kept in the Vatican Apostolic Library archives, helped us reconstruct the room by room arrangement of the paintings which are often accompanied by descriptions allowing us to know the subjects, the author (real or presumed) or the date. All this information put together made it possible to have an idea of the display of the Mariotti collection in his home. There are only a few indications regarding the arrangement of the works of art within the Roman collections at the turn of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, so this article is of interest for all the scholars of History of Collecting. The graphic elements accompanying the text are used for visualizing a great quantity of information present in the article and highlighting l’horror vacui that characterizes the Roman lawyer’s taste.

 

 

Prove sparse di concorsi accademici: Andrea Orazi, Antonio Manno e Agostino Masucci

 

Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò

 

From the mid-seventeenth century throughout the eighteenth century, the San Luca Academy selected a number of young artists from all over Italy and Europe through its competitions. Today most of these graphic proofs are kept in the Academy: the ones to be produced immediately called ex tempore, the copies from the most famous works of the past and finally the compositions to illustrate the subjects assigned to them. However many of the other results remained with the artists or were discarded and sold in the nineteenth century, when the Academy was transferred to Palazzo Carpegna, to end up in private collections. This is the case of the two drawings by Andrea Orazi (1670-after 1724) and Antonio Manno (1739-1810), their enrolments leading back to academic tests, and various copies.

Apart from the official institution, private academies arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, organized mostly by artists with a classical taste, where young people were encouraged to copy from the ancient and modern masters, as well as the head masters. One of these head masters was Agostino Masucci (1690-1758): in fact, his invention regarding a theme from an episode of Roman history The Continence of Scipio, was copied of which we have both a drawing and a painting attributed to Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari.

 

 

Riflessioni e nuove proposte su Francisco Vieira de Matos, detto Vieira Lusitano,
“eccellente disegnatore [...] felice e franco nell’inventare”

 

Dario Beccarini

 

This contribution would like to exhibit some new unpublished drawings by Francisco Vieira de Matos (1699-1783), known as Vieira Lusitano. The drawings are a useful instrument in partly getting to know the ties between the artist and his clients i.e., the Portuguese and the Italians.

From his first trip to Rome, with the Marquis of Abrantes, Vieira meets Cardinal Ottoboni’s refined court, getting to know prominent personalities of his time like Domenico Scarlatti and other important artists, like Francesco Trevisani and Benedetto Luti.

Vieira will also be very impressed by Carlo Maratti’s works and those of his pupils, in particular by Agostino Masucci, to the point of employing the graphic techniques and the maratteschi style.

The drawings throw new light on the Portughese’s ability as a very skilled draftsman, admired by various connoisseurs and collectors like Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri.

Finally, the examples and case studies show the use of drawings as an instrument for the circulation of figurative models between Rome and Lisbona.

 

 

«La prima accademia di Roma»: disegni e disegnatori dalla bottega di Benedetto Luti.Riflessioni e novità su Giovanni Antonio Grecolini, Giacomo Triga,
Giovanni Domenico Piestrini, Pietro Bianchi, Placido Costanzi

 

Vincenzo Stanziola

 

After Carlo Maratti’s death (1713), Benedetto Luti seems to be the principle candidate to succeed him as master painter in Rome. One of the reasons is the activity of his studio, where artists like Placido Costanzi, Pietro Bianchi, Giovanni Domenico Piestrini and Antonio Grecolini were habitués, painters who had been trained under different masters. The heterogeneity of the figurative culture in each of them is particularly evident in their graphic production characterised as much by the stylistic legacies of their respective first masters as by the common ‘lutesco’ teaching, an essential component of which was the study from life. Analyzing their drawings (among which several unpublished are here presented for the first time) allow to better define each personality.

 

 

Riflessioni sulla vicenda artistica di Stefano Tofanelli, le David des Luques:
un riesame critico dei suoi esiti figurativi nel confronto con Bernardino Nocchi

 

Alessio Cerchi

 

A prominent painter within Rome’s artistic life during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but almost ignored by the critical studies during the last thirty years, Stefano Tofanelli had long awaited an updatex and a re-examination of his artistic career.

While Stefano slipped into an oblivion of indifference after his death, this essay aims in restoring the figure of an artist who was, at least in life, recognized among the greatest exponents of the “Roman School”, favored by great patrons and honored with important assignments.

Comparing the figurative results with Bernardino Nocchi, his fellow citizen and fellow disciple, Tofanelli develops an original manner having the classical statuary in mind reached through a stylistic code formally purified, while not free from critical issues.

 

 

Il palazzo di via dei Prefetti di Giovanni Stern ‘fuori’ dal suo tempo e ‘oltre’ dal successivo

Altre iconografie e notizie per il palazzo di via della Stelletta

 

Enzo Bentivoglio

 

The current palace in Rome in via della Stelletta 8, with its original shape and extension – was originally occupied by more antique buildings belonging to the convent of the Benedictine nuns of Santa Maria in Campo Marzio. In 1776 they had a new building constructed to rent out, more conducive in providing better income, to which the architect of the monastery Giovanni Stern was entrusted, it still exists today, complete in its architectural facies and in the general planimetry together with the internal primary distribution path that due to its particularity drew the attention of Pierre Letarouilly.

 

 

“Combinare con il commodo un’elegante maestà”.
L’opera di Giuseppe Palazzi nella perduta Sacrestia di San Giovanni dei Fiorentini

 

Emanuele Gambuti

 

The historical sacristy of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini was placed on the inside of the Hospital building, to the right of the basilica, demolished in 1937. Through some of the Lanciani Collection’s drawings and the Cooper Hewitt Museum, we can reconstruct the architecture by Giuseppe Palazzi and the decoration by Matteo Orta. The documentation in the Florentine Ancient Confraternity Archive allows us to follow the different phases of the construction (between 1792 and 1795), the choosing of the site, the modifications done to the pictorial decoration, and the production of the wooden furnishings. Comparing Palazzi’s project with other six and eighteenth century sacristies, we can see how the necessary functionalism of the wardrobes have been combined with requests for representation and monumentality using a synthetic and simplified language together with a close dialogue between the architectural structure of the church hall and the conformation of the furnishings.

 

 

Un’aggiunta su Ferdinando Fuga e Benedetto XIV
Un disegno inedito per il completamento di Porta Pia

 

Daniele Pascale Guidotti Magnani

 

Attention is drawn here to an unpublished drawing by Ferdinando Fuga concerning the completion of the upper part of Porta Pia in Rome. The architecture, at Michelangelo’s death, had not been completed and it’s still uncertain whether it had ever been finished, according to Faleti’s engraving (1568). The drawing in question, kept in Bologna’s Archiginnasio Library, shows how the door was during the first half of the eighteenth century; Fuga (probably helped by collaborators) added two hypothesis for completion, one crenellated and the other with Benedict XVI’s coat of arms, leaving speculation about dating and commissioning. The project delves into an unpublished work in Fuga’s career.

 

 

“Quare lacrymae”. Il catafalco per Luigi XVI nella chiesa di S. Luigi dei Francesi

 

Angela Maria D’Amelio

 

In the Museum of Rome a drawing was discovered showing Luigi XVI’s catafalque and its identification with that staged in the S. Luigi dei Francesi church on 12th November 1793, allowing us to reconstruct the history of the double client.

Cardinal Bernisne assigns the sculpturing to Giuseppe Barberi, being among the artists who enjoy his protection and author of the catafalque, previously erected always in the same church, in memory of Luigi XV. The assignment is however revoked – considering perhaps it unbecoming for it to be done by an artist whose two sons are involved in Jacobin affairs – preferring the less known but more reliable Francesco Belli.

For the exact identification of the drawing, apart from Chracas’ account, particularly valuable are both an anonymous printed pamphlet, published for the occasion and transcribed by Leone Vicchi, plus the information obtained from Giustificazioni di pagamento, kept in the Pii Stabilimenti Francesi Archive.

Matching the drawing to all the above descriptions, others not having been traced, we can most probably identify it with the original one. This is particularly relevant since it is the only iconological testimony of the entire apparatus, of which only the funeral urn was known through an incision by Giuseppe Perini, based on a drawing by the same Bellial to which our sheet could also be attributed.

 

 

Lettere inedite dello scultore Felice Festa
al Principe Giuseppe Alfonso Dal Pozzo della Cisterna 1790-1796

 

Arabella Cifani e Franco Monetti

 

Sixteen unpublished letters between 1790 and 1796, from the neoclassical sculptor Felice Festa (Turin 1762 – Rome 1825) to Prince Giuseppe Alfonso Dal Pozzo della Cisterna (1748-1819), great patron and Turin collector belonging to one of the most noble Italian families are examined here. The letters are important due to this rare artist, allowing us to understand his artistic beginnings; anticipating his presence by at least six years in Rome.

After an initial training in Turin, Festa was in Rome from 1790 to complete his sculpture studies.

Prince Dal Pozzo financed and encouraged him during his difficult apprenticeship and Festa sent him various works of art. He was the Savoy’s sculptor par excellence during the Napoleonic years. From his studio in Rome, he sculptured the Maurizio Giuseppe of Savoy’s monument in 1807 for the Alghero cathedral and during the same year the one for Placido Benedetto of Savoy for the Sassari cathedral and the Benedetto Maurizio monument in 1809, now in the Church of the Holy Shroud of the Piedmontese in Rome. Other two Savoy tombs were produced by Festa: Maria Giuseppina of Savoy, who died in 1810, now in the Cagliari Cathedral plus King Carlo Emanuele IV of Savoy in Sant’Andrea al Quirinale; which he never finished before dying.

 

 

Lo studio di Carlo Albacini tra copie, restauri e arredi

 

Valeria Rotili

 

Antonio Canova – who, little after his arrival in Rome, went to Carlo Albacini’s atelier in via de’ Greci and described the intense activity –, the intention here intends to give a view of the varied production of the artist’s laboratory analyzing some exemplary cases through a series of unpublished documents.

Albacini specialized in making copies, in various dimensions, of the most famous ancient masterpieces commissioned by foreign travellers to Rome, making various restorations and integrations, complying with the antiquarian tastes of the time.

The sculptor, at the head of a large group of collaborators and having a good organized work ability, managed to reply to the ever growing market demands. Albacini distinguished himself through the creation of furnishings, including fireplaces for the Quirinal Palace and the famous surtout de table, commissioned by the Queen of Naples, of which the expense register was found with the cost annotations for materials together with the different workers involved.

La vigna di Canova: una curiosità documentaria di fine Settecento

 

Antonella Pampalone

 

In this article the legal procedure established by the chamber legislation on the transfer of an asset of a leasehold nature is clarified; this was applied to end the case between Canova, creditor of 300 scudi, and the melter Angelo Casini who was obliged to pay off the debt with the leasehold sale of one of his vineyards located outside Porta Latina. The identification of the characters mentioned in the attached document, the texts in the proceedings and the neighbours of the vineyards, illustrate the mercantile and social dynamics of artists, collectors, entrepreneurs and papal state officials.

 

 

Domenico Venuti e il rinvenimento delle matrici dei Monumenti Antichi Inediti
di Johann Joachim Winckelmann

 

Micaela Lujan Capone

 

With the entry of the French troops in Naples in 1799, the historical-artistic heritage of the Bourbons underwent a real diaspora. The following recoveries, based in Rome and directed by Domenico Venuti (1745-1817) between the months of October 1799 and May 1800, represent the focus of this essay, restoring attention to the crucial role played by this enthralling character. Capturing the favourable situation, Venuti, the Bourbon crown’s art agent, will also manage to hoard goods from the most important Roman families’ collections, fuelling ever more, a climate of strong socio-political tension that overwhelmed the papal city. The first results of an ongoing research will therefore be presented, based on the exam of some unpublished documents coming from the correspondence between Venuti and the Ministers of the Kingdom, from which emerges the story about the discovery of a batch of copper stolen during the period of the Roman Republic from the Albani Library and then arriving in Naples, which still raises many questions.

 

 

Immagini inedite di ville ‘minori’ di Roma

 

Dario Pasquini

 

This essay continues the research which merged into the article “Maria Ponti Pasolini’s Photographic Archive and Architectural Conservation in Rome” published in the Burlington Magazine in December 2021. In particular, unpublished photographs are introduced dating from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century – kept in a private collection and in the Archive of the Study Centre for the History of Architecture, Rome – as well as plans and drawings kept in public collections, showing Roman villas, now lost. Among the villas represented we have: Villa Odescalchi at Porta del Popolo; Villa Piccolomini Albani and vigna Maffei in via Aurelia; Villa Sannesi Cavalieri in via Flaminia; Villa Sannesi Cavalieri in Monte di Santo Spirito; Villa Poggi Medici/Colonna, subsequently Balestra in the Parioli; Villa Narducci in via Tiburtina (formerly believed to be end of the nineteenth century); Villa Clementini in Monte Mario; a Casino with a tower on the via Flaminia; Villa Barbiellini on via Salaria; Villa Tre Madonne in the Parioli; Villa Amici on via Salaria; Villa Quarantotti in Castro Pretorio; Villa Curti Lepri on via Nomentana.

 

 

Due proprietà immobiliari poco note dei cardinali Annibale e Alessandro Albani

 

Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi

 

Two minor Albani properties are taken into consideration here, both destroyed with the possibility of being restored thanks to iconographic documents and testimonials.

The first Casino, along the via Aurelia in a locality called Pidocchio, was bought and maintained by Cardinal Annibale for thirty years (1713-1746), which he transformed into a small delight, taking care of the garden above all, rich with various fountains, as a splendid painting by Gaspar van Wittel reveals, which originally belonged to the Albani’s. Although the name of the architect who followed and directed the works is unknown, the facies of the building reveal a similar taste to Alessandro Specchi, certainly known to the proprietor.

The second little building, near S. Maria Maggiore, was bought in 1726 by Cardinal Alessandro in the hope of creating a “gallery of statues”, in a moment when his antique art collection was in expansion. The difficulty in obtaining the neighbouring lands of the Casino obliged him to resist the attempt, but the historical events of the building are followed up until the nineteenth-century sale.

 

 

Un libro recente sui Colonna

 

Elisa Debenedetti

 

In Palazzo Colonna, destined to become the real modern Domus Aurea, during the eighteenth century (1730-1763) two clearly distinct phases follow each other, that Alessandro Spila manages to disclose drawing on unpublished archival sources. A first phase, where we have Nicola Michetti at work, succeeding Alessandro Specchi and Gabriel Valvassori, Cardinal Carlo Colonna’s architect, imprinting an international rococò style, elaborated together with Filippo Juvarra, Francesco Fontana and Matteo Sassi: a style meeting with favour in Vienna and Turin, who were also political allies, but will be disliked in Rome during the thirties. During this period the façades are erected on the square, the coffee house and the uncovered loggia as a continuation of the large Gallery. Whereas in the second phase – in the name of an antithetical trend introduced by Cardinal Girolamo II’s architects, Butler of the Sacred Apostolic Palaces and in contact with the important urban renewals wanted by Benedict XIV – there emerges, as well as a so far ignored Nicola Salvi, the figure of Paolo Posi, a follower of Ferdinando Fuga who continued the Corsini style, with whom the latest extension works of the building are promoted together with the arrangement of the garden.