Studi sul Settecento Romano
Rivista annuale, ANVUR classe A
Studi sul Settecento Romano 40
Il Settecento e l’Antico, I
a cura di Elisa Debenedetti
Il Parnaso simbolo di Villa Albani
Elisa Debenedetti
The well-known Parnassus of Villa Albani, the painting on the ceiling of the main Casino’s Noble Gallery, described by several authors from the second half of the sixties, is here reconsidered in order to confirm how, as a whole, we can recognize the echo of some romantic tendencies that particularly characterized it. These are moreover confirmed, albeit covertly, by the aesthetic and iconographic elaboration composed by Winckelmann and above all by Mengs in his treatise of 1762.
La costruzione sistematica della storia dell’arte
da Winckelmann alla allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft
Stefano Ferrari
This essay analyses for the first time the relationship between systematics and art history from Winckelmann to the allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft. The German scholar was not only the first modern art historian, but also the first systematic art historian. It was thanks to his teacher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, an indirect disciple of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Christian Wolff, that he became familiar with the notion of the system. During his readings, delivered to his manuscript library, Winckelmann came across authors who took a position both against and in favour of this concept. Systematics became the focus of a theoretical dispute between the German scholar’s early critics, from Christian Gottlob Heyne to Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Wolfgang Goethe. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Winckelmann was also targeted by many intellectuals, who challenged him on his historical conception and his adherence to systematics. Despite this, at the same time, thanks to the support of Neo-Kantian philosophy, systematic thinking was defended by individual scholars, such as Jacob Burckhardt and Ernst Heidrich, and by two of the leading exponents of the allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, such as August Schmarsow and Max Dessoir.
Laboratorio Winckelmann
Gabriella Catalano
The essay deals with reconstructing the history of Italian studies about Winckelmann focusing ones attention on the 1993 volume, Winckelmann between literature and archaeology, edited by Maria Fancelli, which gathered the documents of a conference held at the Colombaria Academy. A volume which marked a turning point and a new starting point. Attention towards Winckelmann was re-launched due to a reconsideration of Neoclassicism which specifically during the Nineties, was the subject of a rediscovery carried out by several parties. On the other hand, with regards to the German founder of art history, only a year later, in 1994, a largely unpublished notebook by Winckelmann was published, preserved at the Florentine Academy with the title, J.J. Winckelmann’s Florentine manuscript, edited by Kunze, with an introduction by Maria Fancelli. The outcome of the conference, attended by Germanists, art historians and archaeologists (Mauro Cristofani, Giovanni Camporeale, Steffi Rottgen, Luigi Beschi, Max Kunze, Paolo Chiarini, Emilio Bonfatti, Giorgio Cusatelli, Fabrizio Cambi) is in the reading of the individual contributions that deal with ekphrasis or Etruscan art, of Mengs and Winckelmann’s musical experience, the revival of the classic in Schinkel as in the allegory concept.
Padre fondatore di una nuova disciplina?
Johann Joachim Winckelmann e l’archeologia classica
Daniel Graepler
Classical archaeology as a university discipline often refers to Johann Joachim Winckelmann as it’s ‘foundation father’ which can be justified from a history of ideas’ perspective. However, if one examines this discipline from a sociology of sciences’ point of view, a completely different picture emerges. Winckelmann himself had no interest in organizing a new university subject. On the contrary, he had a decidedly distant relationship with the academic world. It was only around 1830, more than 60 years after his death, that there were clear signs of a consolidation of archaeology as a discipline in its own right. Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729-1812) at the university of Gottingen was the person whose work gradually promoted this result in a decisive way. From 1767 he was the first university professor to keep regular lessons on antique art having already laid the foundations for the first university collection of plaster casts of ancient sculptures in 1765. His main concern was to replace 17th and 18th century antiquarian research, which he considered to be completely chaotic with a well organized scientific system. According to him, the most important requirement was to have the most complete collection possible, not only the written sources but above all archaeological evidence for the history of antique art. Even though his contemporaries regarded him as a prominent figure in the archaeological field, after his death, his organizational merits were gradually forgotten and substituted by the personality cult, forever more dominant around Winckelmann. The significance of the latter in the history of ideas, however, far surpasses that of the founder of a university discipline.
Materia viva per i vivi. Winckelmann tra biografia e mito
Federica La Manna
Biography can act as a mirror of cultural and ideological evolutions. Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s heritage also passes through his biography which, from 1700 to this day, was gradually reread and reinterpreted. Since his death, there have been many different biographies, which have demonstrated how each era has tried to shape the biographical narrative based on specific cultural needs. Winckelmann’s life story can also offer a tool for reflecting on changes in the perception of the form and function of this literary genre. It is a genre that lies between historiography and poetic narration and is capable of adapting and transforming in response to the tastes and sensibilities of each era. Winckelmann’s life was elevated to an exemplary model, transforming the scholar into a symbol adaptable to different narratives and interpretations. In fact the biography shows, through this dynamism, the ability to create a myth.
La collezione Colonna nel XVIII secolo: la raccolta ereditaria di Caterina Maria Zeffirina
Salviati (1703-1756) e il rapporto della contestabilessa con l’antico
Tiziana Checchi
In 1718 the contestable Fabrizio Colonna married Caterina Maria Zeffirina Salviati, who was the daughter of the Duke Antonio Maria and Lucrezia Rospigliosi. Salviati’s death in January 1704 marked the extinction of the Roman branch of the family and the merging of the hereditary patrimony into the hands of the Marquis Antonino of Florence. The long lawsuit that arises finds its conclusion in 1732, after which the contestabilessa received part of the goods preserved in the Salviati palace on the via Lungara, among which were various antiquarian pieces, bronzes, tapestries and numerous paintings. Once having reached the Colonna Palace at the SS. Apostles these works came to enrich the huge artistic heritage of the family which at the beginning of the 18th century had reached the heights of magnificence with the conclusion of the Gallery. The aim of this study is to reconstruct, for the first time as a whole, this significant page during the 18th century history of the Colonna collections, defining the group of sculptural and pictorial works inherited by Caterina Salviati and their display in the residence at the SS. Apostles. The relationship that the noblewoman had with the antique is also outlined, attempting to reconstruct which paintings she chose to qualify the environments reserved to her, the criteria adopted in the exhibition and the relationship with the most pagan of subjects, considering that she was the person to commission Stefano Pozzi in veiling the nudity of the “4 Venuses” by Bronzino and Michele di Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio.
L’incompiuta villa Colonna fuori Porta Pia. Marmi antichi, architettura, giardini
Alessandro Spila
Upon the death of Prince Girolamo Pamphilj (1678-1760), last member of the family, his nephew Cardinal Girolamo II Colonna (1708-1763) is the universal heir of the boundless heritage. The Colonna family will benefit from this immense legacy for 3 years only, when Pope Clement XIII will resolve the controversy that arose in favour of Giovanni Andrea Doria Landi (1705-1764), when the countless assets go definitively to the new Doria Pamphilj Landi dynasty. Amongst the few exceptions, we have the small rustic estate along the via Nomentana previously built by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj (1653-1730). As a result of the massive expansion and renovation interventions wanted by the Cardinal Girolamo II (which remained unfinished due to his death), the villa outside Porta Pia remained in the possession of the Colonna family until 1797, when it was purchased by Giovanni Torlonia, who entrusted the well-known renovation to Giuseppe Valadier.
The vast construction site promoted by Cardinal Colonna remained largely unknown until now, thanks to an unpublished, extensive archival documentation, which is be of great historical and artistic importance, by the little known architect Ignazio Muratori. In addition to the expansions of the main Casino, with a second one (later known as the “Casino dei Principi”) plus the garden, we have the statuary as the absolute protagonist. Working on the historic collections, massive displacements of ancient sculptures from the Colonna garden on the Quirinale hill and above all from the famous villas of Marino as well as new purchasing campaigns on the antique market, restorations by sculptors like Pietro Pacilli and Giovanni Testa, the Cardinal gives life to a rearrangement according to a clear concept of villa-museum, which seem to dialogue, at least in part, with the new requests that were being registered in Rome during the same years.
Il ‘modello Roma’? I molteplici modi di diffusione europea delle raccolte romane
attraverso la rappresentazione grafica
Cristina Ruggero e Timo Strauch
As of the 16th century, the fame of the Roman antiquities’ collections has benefited from the di- versified possibilities offered by graphic reproductions (drawings and prints) which made them ‘accessible’ to an increasingly vast and heterogeneous public. With the engravings from Raphael’s workshop, and the publisher Antonio Lafreri there Giovanni Battista Cavalieri’s corpora about statues and their numerous reproductions, the works of Francois Perrier, Pietro Santi Bartoli and Pietro Bellori and Michel-Ange de la Chausse, Paolo Alessandro Maffei and Filippo Buonanni’s books, where different strategies were pursued from time to time about the selection, method of representation, information content and the systematic of the antiquities depicted. The success of these approaches is demonstrated both by the growing circulation of printed volumes plus copies of individual works in other (new) publications and further explains how the quantity of illustrations on antiquity available has stimulated their diversified allocation into new contexts. It is precisely the ‘fragmentation’ of the Roman context and the comparative juxtaposition with artefacts from other areas both in terms of origin, discovery, or collection of the works, that calls into question the ‘Roman model’. Examining two case studies – the ‘Teutsche Academie’ die Joachim von Sandrart (1675-1680) and ‘L’Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures’ by Bernard de Montfaucon (1719-24) – where the contribution aims to shed light on this interaction between the exemplarity and a reduced significance of the Roman antiquities’ collections through the illustrated corpora that circulated in 17th and 18th century Europe.
Architecture of Museums, Architecture of Books:
From the Walls of Museums to the Pages of Musea
Eleonora Pistis
Questo articolo esamina il passaggio dei musei di antichità dalla pietra alla carta, eviden- ziando una serie di collegamenti riscontrabili tra le effettive collezioni di marmi antichi e le rela- tive opere a stampa. Il focus è su due casi studio della metà del Settecento: i famosi Musei Capitolini e il meno noto museo di Scipione Maffei a Verona. Quante caratteristiche di un vero museo possono essere catturate nelle pagine dei Musea a stampa? Cosa è perduto e cosa è invece guadagnato nel trasferimento su carta? Ampliando la letteratura esistente, questo articolo dimostra che, se tale trasferimento può essere visto come un impoverimento dell’esperienza diretta di una vera e propria esposizione, i musei cartacei hanno tuttavia offerto nuove, ampliate possibilità oltre ad aprire la strada alla successiva pratica museale di esporre architetture a grandezza naturale. Così facendo, l’articolo mira anche a fornire un quadro per una futura e più ampia indagine sui Musea cartacei e sulla loro maggiore capacità di contenere oggetti architettonici, promuovendo così la mobilità dell’architettura attraverso i media, la dimensione e lo spazio.
La formazione del giovane Canova nella Galleria veneziana di Filippo Farsetti
Lorenzo Finocchi Ghersi
The contribution intends to shed light on the impressions received by Antonio Canova upon his first arrival in Rome, due to the comparison with the magnificence of ancient sculpture and architecture. In detail, some of the letters sent to Venice reveal the importance, for the artist’s training, to attend the Farsetti Gallery in Venice, which brought together plaster casts taken from famous classical statues and numerous terracotta sketches by sculptors active in Rome during the seventeenth century. Exibiting Antiquity was the new fashion which the sculptor could meditate on by comparing the Venetian collection and the famous Roman collections, such as those of the Campidoglio or Villa Albani, which seem to be at the basis of the avant-garde design of the pontiffs’ funerary monuments. Clement XIV in the Holy Apostles’ church and Clement XIII in St. Peter’s. In them, as in the definition of the successful invention of the funerary stele, Canova seems to keep in mind the contemporary display characteristics of Antiquity, arriving at a revolutionary reversal of the seventeenth-century Roman tradition of the funerary monument.
La chiesa di San Norberto all’Esquilino:
vicende, ruolo dei cardinali protettori Albani e opere sopravvissute
Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi
The church and the college of St. Norbert were demolished in 1915, just under three hun- dred years after the foundation and have never been analyzed from an artistic point of view. The fundamental events of this residence of the Premonstratensian Canons Regular have been reconstructed on the basis of contemporary sources and important iconographic documents preserved at the Tongerlo Abbey. In the eighteenth century the cardinals Annibale and Ales- sandro Albani, protectors of the order, were certainly protagonists in the choice of the artists in- volved in the transformation and decoration of the small church. Some paintings and a marble group are analyzed here, they were originally in St. Norbert and are now in a different location, works done by Stefano Pozzi, Georg Abraham Nagel, Karel (or Charles) van Poucke, whilst the paintings done by Lambert Krahe are still missing.
Un’ulteriore testimonianza grafica sull’irrealizzata tomba di Clemente XI in S. Pietro
e il disegno del monumento di Urbano VIII: le sorprese del manoscritto 132 del Fondo
Lanciani in due fogli inediti di Pietro Bracci e Paolo Posi e di un anonimo di fine Seicento
Rita Randolfi
A further graphic testimony regarding the unrealized tomb of Clement XI in St. Peters and the drawing of Urban VIII’s monument the surprises about manuscript 132 of the Lanciani Fund in two unpublished sheets by Pietro Bracci and Paolo Posi and by an anonymous artist from the late seventeenth century.
Manuscript 132 of the Lanciani collection, preserved in the homonymous room in the Library of Archeology and History of Art in Rome, contains a collection of drawings relating to the Vatican Basilica. Among these, sheets 19 and 20 reproduce the sepulchral monuments of Clement XI Albani and Urban VIII Barberini. The first testifies to the existence of a project for a tomb, never realized. Pope Albani only wanted an earthen tombstone, but his nephew Alessandro had the intention of erecting a more imposing monument. However the uncertainties regarding the choice of the sculptor to whom entrust the task led to the realization of the uncle’s wishes. The drawing of sheet 19 can be attributed, based on comparisons with other drawings and testimonies of a different nature, to Pietro Bracci, perhaps assisted by Paolo Posi. Bracci, reworking a project by his colleague Bouchardon and, referring to Bernini and Legros, proposed the statue of the deceased, standing.
It’s more difficult to trace the author, who up until now has remained anonymous of sheet 20 which on recto presents a study of Urban VIII Barberini’s tomb, and on the verso some caricatures and apocryphal writings with signatures by Michelangelo, Jacopo de Duca and Carlo Maratta. In any case the sheet testifies to how much Bernini’s monument was studied and considered a reference model.
Agostino Masucci per il cardinale Niccolò Del Giudice
Maria Celeste Cola
A leading political protagonist in Pope Albani’s Rome, Niccolò Del Giudice (1660-1743) was a prominent notorious figure also with regards to artist patronage.
The long and prolific relationship with Agostino Masucci (1691-1758) testifies to the cardinal’s infallible taste who in the space of a few years brought together an extraordinary collection of paintings carefully set up in the Orsini Palace in Piazza Pasquino.
The meeting with Masucci thanks to Cardinal Alessandro Albani who had commissioned several works from the artist that were destined for Urbino and noted by Michel Angelo Dolci in his Notizie delle pitture che si trovan nelle chiese e nei palazzo d’Urbino (News of the paintings found in the churches and palaces of Urbino) was decisive in choosing the painter in more than one occasion.
It was thanks to Nicola Pio (1677-1733) that Monsignor Niccolò became one of Agostino Masucci’s principal clients and patrons. In the artist’s biography he recalls “How the artist did many works for Monsignor del Giudice, the Pope’s butler”. Furthermore, Pio knew Del Giudice well, having been the only reader of the Vite manuscript. The author himself reported it in a letter published on 6th Novembe 1731 to the marquis Alessandro Gregorio Capponi to whom it was offered for sale.
The essay reconstructs the privileged relationship between the cardinal and the artist through the analysis of a series of paintings present in his picture gallery and the relationship with the biographer. It’s known, moreover, that between 1723 and 1724 Agostino Masucci had been, together with Luigi Garzi, among Pio’s collaborators for the drafting of the drawings depicting the deceased painters’ portraits which should have accompanied each of the lives, providing thirty two of them.
Antichità, luoghi, atelier di artisti, Accademie di Roma
osservati, nel 1827, da un colto viaggiatore
Enzo Bentivoglio
An anonymous personality is in Rome during the spring of 1827 and he travels through its antiquities, its places, goes into churches and palaces, goes to nearby towns, carefully visits the St. Luke and French Accademies and Camuccini, Thorvaldsen and Canova’s ateliers. This experience is handed down into an accurate manuscript of 42 sheets (the topics are distributed into 133 ‘paragraphs’) entitled “Notabili /delle cose vedute in Roma/ 1° Aprile 1827” (Notable things seen in Rome, 1st April 1827). His stay in the city must have been, as we read in one of the paragraphs, the 84th, at least until 8th June. Sufficient evidence suggests that our tourist had a pronounced interest in works of art, particularly pictorial ones.