Baroque Rome

A MOST HAVE FOR THE ART HISTORIAN!

Dopo la pubblicazione del primo tomo, che raccoglie il patrimonio architettonico e artistico del Fondo Edifici di Culto di 129 luoghi di culto presenti in Piemonte, Veneto, Liguria, Emilia Romagna, Toscana, Marche, Umbria e Abruzzo, L' ERMA in collaborazione con il Ministero dell' Interno prosegue l' opera con il secondo tomo che conterrà il patrimonio artistico-culturale di Roma e del Lazio. Gli edifici di culto raccolti in questo secondo tomo sono 191 di cui 120 sul territorio laziale e 71 nella capitale. Tra i più importanti edifici a Roma ricordiamo Sant' Andrea al Quirinale, Sant' Andrea della Valle, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, la Basilica di SS. Giovanni e Paolo al Celio, Santa Maria del Popolo, Santa Maria in Aracoeli al Campidoglio, senza però tralasciare tutti gli altri edifici di culto con i loro relativi patrimoni artistici presenti sul territorio romano e laziale.

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Il Corpus Del Fondo Edifici Di Culto è una prestigiosa enciclopedia costituita da 4 volumi, di assoluto valore scientifico in cui saranno illustrati, attraverso delle schede e per mezzo di foto a colori di alta qualità, tutti gli edifici di culto facenti parte del patrimonio del Fondo Edifici di Culto del Ministero dell' Interno e tutto il patrimonio artistico-culturale in essi contenuti; il patrimonio del F.E.C., è costituito da oltre 730 edifici di culto di grandissimo pregio storico, architettonico, artistico e culturale, dislocati su tutto il territorio nazionale aperti al pubblico e concessi in uso gratuito all'Autorità Ecclesiastica ma gestiti dal Fondo Edifici di Culto, amministrato dalla Direzione Centrale per l' amministrazione del Fondo Edifici di Culto del Ministero dell' Interno. L' importanza dell' opera sarà messa in risalto dalla elegante veste editoriale dei 4 lussuosi volumi imperdibili per gli studiosi del settore ed i collezionisti.

Gregorio Allegri
Opere Inedite dai manoscritti della Collectio Altaemps
Musica Flexanima Ensemble

Dir Fabrizio Bigotti
Tactus Records 2014

Review with five stars by DAVID PONSFORD for the American Journal CHOIR AND ORGAN (May 2015):

Apart from the famous Miserere, Allegri’s other works are relatively unknown. Furthermore, the director of this ensemble of strings, cornetts, sackbuts, voices, lutes and organ, has edited and prepared no fewer than ten ‘new’ pieces that were included in the collection belonging to Duke Altemps, rediscovered in 1992 and recorded for the first time. Besides Allegri, composers include Bonomi and Anerio, all of whose canzonas and motets are excellently played and sung. Of special interest is Allegri’s Missa ‘In lectulo meo’for eight voices, based on Bonomi’s motet of the same name, and Lamentationes Jeremiae prophetae for four voices.


Review by JOHAN VAN VEEN for MUSICA DEI DONUM (February 2015):

...There can be no doubt that this is a most interesting disc which should contribute to the creation of a more differentiated picture of Allegri as a composer. In his moving back and forth between the "stile antico" and the "stile moderno" he was a precursor of many Roman composers of later generations who had to obey the ecclesiastical preference for the style of which Palestrina was the ultimate model. Even Alessandro Scarlatti composed some of his sacred music in this style. The Musica Flexanima Ensemble delivers fine performances. The singers have nice voices and create an optimum transparency. Bigotti rightly decided not to perform these works in the style of the 16th century, for instance in regard to dynamics. The instrumental pieces also receive good performances.

c) Le cronache di Santa Cecilia. Un monastero femminile a Roma in età moderna, (n. 5 of the book series “La memoria restituita – Fonti per la storia delle donne”), Rome: Viella 2009.

The book includes the transcription of the Chronicles of the Monastery of St. Cecilia in Trastevere in Rome by Alessia Lirosi (pages 91-310) but also a wide essay by Alessia Lirosi (pages 31-90) and a Foreword by Professor Elena Brambilla of Università Statale di Milano (pages 9-29).

Between 2001 and 2010, the REQUIEM research project explored the Roman papal and cardinal tombs in the context of the history of art and persons. The introductory essay of the anthology summarises the results of the art historical and socio-historical research and gives an outlook on open questions and desiderata.

Francisco de Herrera el Mozo (Siviglia, 1627-Madrid, 1685) è uno degli artisti più singolari del Barocco maturo in Spagna. La sua presenza in Italia è stato sempre un nodo centrale, che la critica ha  cercato di sciogliere sin dalla notizia del suo soggiorno a Roma dove sappiamo che  trascorse un periodo di apprendistato come ci riferisce il  suo  biografo Palomino, rendendosi famoso grazie alle nature morte con pesci, che lo hanno fatto conoscere come“il spagnolo degli pexe”. Si presenta adesso un gruppo di disegni che crediamo essere il frutto del  soggiorno romano del  pittore sevillano  tra il  1648 e il 1653. Questi disegni sono stati fino ad ora attribuiti ad un artista della cerchia" di Pier Francesco Cittadini, e proprio per questo Catherine Loisel li ha voluti mettere insieme sotto il nome di “Le groupe Cittadini”, quando ne ha studiato la maggior parte della raccolta  conservata nel Museo del Louvr. Altri ancora  si incontrano nei fondi del Museo Nazionale di Stoccolma, all'Albertina di Vienna, e due versioni della Assunzione  della Vergine al Getty Museum e in una collezione privata, ricomponendo così  il catalogo delle opere grafiche di  questo artista in Italia.

The Roman and the Neapolitan school of still-life painting are in 17th Century among the most important in Europe. During the whole Seicento, these two schools are closely tied and produced a large amount of paintings of flowers, fruits, vegetables, fishes, game, woodland Scenes (sottoboschi)… This PhD analyses the evolution of still-life painting in Rome and in Naples and places it in the numerous stylistic and cultural exchanges between these two capitals. The place of still-life painting in the art market (circulation of works, merchants, prices, appraisals) and in the collections is studied. The Patrons’ taste for these pictures is examined. We carry out stylistics comparisons between works by Mario dei Fiori and Paolo Porpora, Michelangelo Cerquozzi and Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo or Giovanni Battista Recco and Gian Domenico Valentino. We also investigate the role of Abraham Brueghel, Andrea Bonanni, Alessandro dei Pesci and Andrea Belvedere.

The Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher SJ is among the prominent writers of seventeenth-century Europe, and his China illustrata (1667) was one of the most celebrated and influential works on China of the period. The present essay examines the contexts and sources for Kircher’s description of the fall of the Ming dynasty and the conquest of China by the foreign Qing dynasty, a monumental event of global significance that attracted the attention of European scholarly circles and foreign powers alike. Strangely, while Kircher’s network of social contacts provided him access to the best sources available on the matter, including eyewitnesses, as this essay outlines, his presentation of the events in China is odd, inaccurate, and, at times, misleading.
However, a closer examination of Kircher’s sources — especially the first-hand accounts of events from fellow-Jesuits visiting Rome — reveals tensions, disagreements, and conflicting narratives that existed within the Jesuit China mission during the transition period and might have influenced the author. Kircher’s intellectual enterprise was always intertwined with his religious piety and promotion of the Society of Jesus. Thus, this essay proposes that his ‘mistakes’ can be seen as an attempt to reconcile contradictory voices among the Jesuit missionaries and to offer a unified narrative to European readers, reshaped to fit the author’s devout vision of history as well as the religiopolitical needs of the Society of Jesus and its China mission.

Rom bildete im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert die zentrale Bühne für die Außendarstellung der europäischen Mächte. Zur Feier dynastischer und militärischer Ereignisse empfingen die auswärtigen Gesandten die römische Elite in den Botschafterpalästen und Nationalkirchen und erfreuten das Volk mit ephemeren Festapparaten, Huldigungsmusiken und Feuerwerksspektakeln. Der Band analysiert die Feste als multimediale Inszenierungen, die im komplexen Zusammenspiel visueller und auditiver Elemente auf die Vermittlung politischer Botschaften und die Emotionalisierung des Publikums zielten. Die Feste eröffneten einen Kommunikationsraum, den auch Akteure rivalisierender Mächte für Kritik, Persiflage und Sabotage nutzten.

By examining how Queen Christina of Sweden collected, what she collected, and where she displayed objects, we can better understand her motives for amassing what became the Early Modern period’s largest collection of antiquities owned by a woman. This dissertation argues that personal and political reasons motivated her to develop what could be considered a borderless, genderless, classical persona, that is represented in her display of antique objects. When her collecting habits are assessed alongside her sponsorship of classical scholarship, it becomes clear that Christina’s development of antiquities collections was inextricably tied to the large body of allegorical imagery associated with the queen. I claim that she sought a hybrid historical identity as both Swedish and European, and that the necessity to maintain political authority in both political contexts gave shape to the queen’s self-fashioning through the antique. Through an examination of her scholastic connections, artistic patronage, and adoption of antique guises, this analysis coalesces seemingly disparate aspects of Christina’s visual, rhetorical, and political agendas, re-framing them as parts of a lifelong campaign to figure and redefine her Gothic identity.

“The Twin Aviary Pavilions of the Farnese Gardens on the Palatine: Roman Antiquity, the Levant, and the Architecture of Garden Pavilions.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome vol. 59/60, 2014/15, 361-398.
This paper investigates the architecture of the aviary, an important component of early modern villas and gardens in Italy. Investigation into the origins of the Farnese aviaries’ architectural form reveals the genealogy of their design – a combination of a cubic block with an ogival roof, the former derived from the classical tradition and the latter from the Levant, highlighting the merging of the classical tradition and the influence of Ottoman culture in the architecture of Baroque Rome. In the mid-sixteenth century, the aviary was still a rustic structure with more emphasis on the utilitarian than the aesthetic, and not much attention was paid to the ornamental aspect of its exterior appearance. It is from the turn of the seventeenth century that a radical change is observed in its architectural form. From around 1600, aviaries began to invade the realm of high design, and the most prominent architects of the time came to be involved in their planning and execution. With its embellished exterior, the aviary was brought into foreground of the garden as an iconic feature of the patron’s self-representation.

In 1593, as the science of magnetism was undergoing important advances, the aristocratic students at the Jesuits’ flagship school, the Roman College, adopted as their academic emblem a lodestone—a naturally occurring magnetic rock—that attracts a string of iron rings by means of its own mysterious force, along with the motto ARCANIS NODIS (by hidden links). This clever device provides the interpretive handle for understanding a series of engravings with rare and often unique subject matter, commissioned by the young men of the college to embellish their thesis broadsheets. These enigmatic images riff on the poetic meanings of magnetism: attraction, direction, force, connectivity, and community. The paper explicates a selection of the prints and positions them in the context of the Jesuits’ educational agenda, with its humanist commingling of rhetoric and science. A catalog of all known thesis prints featuring the emblem is included in an appendix.

The marble heads known as the Anima beata and the Anima dannata, a pair of masterpieces created by Bernini in his youth, still pose many questions relating to their origin, dating and meaning. This article presents new documentary evidence from the inventory of assets of their first known owner, an important Spanish cleric residing in Rome, don Fernando de Botinete y Acevedo. The inventory, compiled in 1632, offers a fascinating alternative interpretation of these sculptures as a Nymph and a Satyr, rather than as Christian souls. This document suggests two possible circumstances: on the one hand it might be argued that both sculptures were originally conceived as mythological representations; or, on the other, that these works were created by Bernini without clear identifying attributes in order to produce a deliberate iconographic ambiguity.

Between 1675 and 1690, a decisive span of years in Carlo Fontana’s career, the Roman publisher Giovanni Giacomo De Rossi produced some books of prints illustrating the major buildings of modern Rome: palace facades (“Nuovi Disegni delle architetture e piante dei Palazzi di Roma”, circa 1675), church facades (“Insignium Romae Templorum Prospectus”, 1683 and then 1684 in a new expanded edition), and finally church interiors (“Disegni di vari Altari e Cappelle”, 1688 or 1689). The paper focuses on the relation between De Rossi’s publications and the self-promotion strategy adopted by Fontana to attain professional success.  Initially, he ensured that two of his works were included among the buildings presented in “Nuovi disegni” (Palazzo Bigazzini) and “Prospectus” (San Marcello al Corso), even before they were completed. Later, he achieved to be present in “Disegni” with more plates than any other living architect, and one can even suppose that he actually played a role in planning that publication and selecting the works to be shown there. Furthermore, around 1690 German editions of both “Prospectus” and “Disegni” were published in Nuremberg by Johann Jakob von Sandrart and they spread rapidly throughout the Empire and the kingdom of Prussia, and even more widely in Europe.

Il contributo indaga su di un  "Ritratto di prelato" agli Uffizi, attribuito a Caravaggio. Rigettando l'attribuzione al Merisi ma riconoscendone l'ambiente caravaggesco, il saggio prova piuttosto ad associare l'identità del ritrattato con quella di Serafino Olivier Razali, la cui realizzazione di un dipinto di Caravaggio è testimoniata dal poeta dilettante Marzio Milesi, amico del pittore e conoscitore, attivo a Roma a cavallo tra Cinque e Seicento. Scopo del contributo è testimoniare la priorità del nome di Razali, in vista di un eventuale ritratto autografo, come personaggio storicamente attestato nella ritrattistica clericale del Merisi, oltre che ribadire la validità del Milesi come fonte.

This article examines the progress of a series of ambassadorial visits to Rome by emissaries from the Kongo, Japan, and Safavid Persia as they unfolded over the reign of Pope Paul V. Close attention is paid to the visual representation of the ambassadors, and of their actions, in engravings and in the decoration of the Quirinal Palace. The author argues that the public aspects of diplomacy, and of the visual representations based on it, played a significant role in articulating the Papacy's missionary ambitions and sense of its global position. Furthermore, it is argued that the diplomatic and courtly practices of the papal court played a significant role in mediating the representation of "other " cultures in early modern Europe.

For the individual chapters, see the section 'MAJ 13 The Site of Rome' her on Academia.

."Chapter 1. Julie Rowe (La Trobe University): Rome's Mediaeval Fish Market at S. Angelo in Pescheria
Chapter 2. Joan Barclay Lloyd (La Trobe University): Memory, Myth and Meaning in the Via Appia from Piazza di Porta Capena to Porta S. Sebastiano
Chapter 3. Louis Cellauro (Deutsches Studienzentrum, Venice): Roma Antiqva Restored: The Renaissance Archaeological Plan
Chapter 4. Donato Esposito (Metopolitan Museum, New York): The Virtual Rome of Sir Joshua Reynolds
Chapter 5. Lisa Beaven (University of Sydney): Claude Lorrain and La Crescenza: The Tiber Valley in the Seventeenth Century
Chapter 6. David R. Marshall (University of Melbourne): The Campo Vaccino: Order and the Fragment from Palladio to Piranesi
Chapter 7. Arno Witte (University of Amsterdam): Architecture and Bureaucracy: The Quirinal as an Expression of Papal Absolutism
Chapter 8. Tommaso Manfredi (University ‘Mediterranea’, Reggio Calabria): Arcadia at Trinità dei Monti. The Urban Theatre of Maria Casimira and Alexander Sobieski in Rome
Chapter 9 . John Weretka (University of Melbourne): The ‘Non-aedicular Style' and the Roman Church Façade of the Early Eighteenth Century
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