studi 20

Franco Moro
Il ‘Maestro del riposo’ primo passo caravaggesco di Pietro Paolini

One of the dilemmas that still affects the universe of the Caravaggesque studies refers to two candle light nocturne paintings both representing The Holy Family resting on the flight into Egypt, Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera and Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (figg. 1 and 2). These two paintings are surely by the same author and assigned for convenience to the mysterious ‘Master of Riposo’. The solution to the different past hypotheses is the proposal of the painter from Lucca Pietro Paolini as being the ‘Master of Riposo’: to his documented young Roman years - after the workshop of Angelo Caroselli - or soon after his returning to his native land.
The most evidential comparisons are to be found among the altarpieces of Saint Dominic receiving the Holy Rosary from Jesus (Bibbiena, Santa Maria del Sasso Monastery), The Virgin of the Rosary with Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine (Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi) and, above all, The Adoration of the Shepherds (fig. 1) rediscovered by the writer years ago, with provenance from the Mansi collection.
This study underlines the undeniable relationship between Paolini and his Roman master Angelo Caroselli. This is clear and understandable comparing some public commissions by the two painters. The same cultural background coming from the knowledge of the Ferrara Renaissance paintings. Works that were easily seen in Rome after the devolution of Ferrara in 1598.

Alessandro Brogi
Francois Perrier e i ‘bolognesi’

The studies on the Burgundian painter François Perrier, who spent his life and his career between France and Rome, have gradually focused, from the oldest to the most recent, his remarkable stature as an artist and his role far from that secondary in the two contexts within which he worked. The restitution to the painter, here, of two interesting paintings with the Fugue in Egypt, previously assigned to authors of the Emilia area, provided the opportunity to rethink the extent of a debt contracted by Perrier in his Italian stays and only partly already indicated by the critics, that is the one with the modern pictorial tradition of Emilia and more specifically carraccesca. Tradition with which he immediately came into contact, came down to Rome for the first time in about 1624, entering the workshop of Giovanni Lanfranco, and whose fruits can be grasped throughout his non-long career, measuring at the same time the extreme originality of results that that fruitful graft, together with others, produced.

Sonia Cavicchioli
Il cardinale Pietro Vidoni e l’omaggio ad Alessandro VII Chigi nell’appartamento del legato a Bologna (1665). Una decorazione politica

Cardinal Pietro Vidoni, born in 1610, was appointed as papal Legate of Bologna by pope Alessandro VII Chigi in the years from 1662 to 1665. Like his predecessors Bernardino Spada and Girolamo Farnese, Vidoni commissioned a fresco decoration in the apartment at the second floor of the Palazzo Comunale (Town Hall), where the legates lived, and realized the room still bearing his name, the “Galleria Vidoniana”. A contemporary short poem of 186 verses, composed in Latin by the literary man Vincenzo Maria Marescalchi, the Aula Vidonia, proves to be an important source in order to understand the decoration frescoed on the vault of the gallery by the Bolognese painters Domenico Santi, called Mengazzino, and Giovan Battista Caccioli. Published in 1665, the poem celebrates the patron, the pope to whom the decoration is devoted, and the frescoes. The article offers the first systematic study of these paintings, never approached before, dealing with the decorative patterns, the iconography, and their relations with Marescalchi’s verses. It also discusses the function of the room in the Legate apartment, considering both the meaning of the gallery (“galleria”) in XVIIth century Italian culture, and the fact that Marescalchi always refers to it using the latin word “aula”. The study shows that the frescoes are an erudite tribute to pope Chigi’s political virtues, expressed through emblems and copious references to ancient myths and allegories: these features and the perfect knowledge of the decoration suggest that Marescalchi (an influent member of the Accademia dei Gelati in Bologna) could have been the, or one of the, authors of the programme.

Francesco Petrucci
La visione del venerabile Juan DE Palafox del Maratta

The essay brings to the attention of the studies an unpublished painting by Carlo Maratti recently passed on the spanish art market, depicting the apparition of the Virgin to the blessed Juan de Palafox y Mendoza.
The composition was documented until today trough a rare engraving by Miguel de Sorelló (1734), a workshop version studied by Stella Rudolph, a copy already attributed to Mariano Salvador Maella preserved in the Museum of the Cathedral of El Burgo de Osma and a derivation of Francisco Bayeu in a private Spanish collection.
The new version testifies further the “marattesca” practice, established by documents and also confirmed by Giovan Pietro Bellori, the artist's principal biographer, to replicate his most successful inventions, sometimes introducing small or large variations.
There are all the conditions for the painting to correspond to the canvas of similar subject present in the collections of the King Carlos de Borbón, described in the 1789 inventory of the Royal Palace of Madrid.

Chiara Teolato
L’“Impresa” di Luigi Valadier. Produzione di piccole e grandi sculture in bronzo nell’Inventario del 1785 e nel Catalogo della Lotteria del 1792

In 1759, after the death of his father Andrea, the silversmith Luigi Valadier assumed for a short time the direction of the family workshop. Four years later, in 1763, he started his own manufactory that soon became firmly established in the Roman art market of the late 18th century. He specialised in the production of silverware, as well as large and small bronzes, reproducing both ancient statuary and contemporary sculpted busts – a versatility that allowed him to satisfy the most disparate of requests from collectors and patrons. This article reconstructs the multifaceted activity of the Valadier manufactory through the unpublished inventory listed after Luigi’s death (1785) and the subsequent lottery catalogue (1792) arranged by his son Giuseppe to advertise and sell the contents of the family shop. These documents shed light on the complex organization of Luigi’s activity, on the artists and craftsmen who worked under his direction, and on the models he produced and sold; thus allowing us to identify with certainty those surviving Valadier pieces still kept in public and private collections.

Valeria Rotili
L’idea e il lavoro. Collaborazioni virtuose e variazioni della prassi artistica nelle botteghe di Carlo Albacini e Giuseppe Valadier: alcune commissioni esemplari

The private archive of the sculptor Carlo Albacinis a privileged source for focusing on some aspects of artistic praxis in Rome between the end of the Seventeenth and the beginning of the Nineteenth century, as well as for defining better the biographical features of the artist and his role in the network of the arts system.This is a completely new set of data, chosen as the cornerstone to reconstruct some aspects of the Albacini and Valadier workshops production.
After the death of Luigi Valadier (1785), Albacini was helped by the son of the famous bronzist, achieving a different activity management compared to previous period. This aspect was also underlined in the documents traced by Chiara Teolato and her essay in this same volume. It is possible to follow the different degrees of participation among the Albacini artists through the analysis of some works commissioned by Domenico Venuti for the court of Naples and a centrepiece ordered by cardinal Giuseppe Spina with the interest of Angelika Kauffmann.

Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi
Controversie tra scultori: Paolo Cavaceppi versus Francesco Gesuelli

A document dated 1771 provides interesting information on some legal litigation between two little-known sculptors of the varied Roman milieu, useful to evaluate how the artists of that time lived, probably not without difficulty, producing works of invention, working as restorers and trading antiquities.
Sometimes they could be allowed to exhibit their creations in public places in the city, but other times they were forced to accept a precarious "day" jobs, in rented or subleased studios, within a very close network of relationships that were not always easy.
Gesuelli belonged to this environment, but also won the execution of a bust for the important Russian general Ivan Ivanovich Šuvalov, while Paolo Cavaceppi, brother of the most famous Bartolomeo, had a good reputation working as a restorer for Cardinal Alessandro Albani.

Giovanna Capitelli
Lo staffage nella pittura di paesaggio ideale a Roma all’inizio dell’Ottocento. Johann Martin von Rohden, Johann Christian Reinhart e gli scritti di Karl Ludwig Fernow

Staffage in the Ideal Landscape Painting in Rome at the beginning of the 19th century: Johann Martin von Rohden, Johann Christian Reinhart and the theory of Karl Ludwig Fernow

The article investigates a precious collection of figure studies by the Nazarene circle carried out in Rome in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The works originate from the studio of Johann Martin von Rohden (1778-1830), the well-known German landscape painter who lived for many years in the Eternal City. The collection includes drawings by the Nazarene painters (Peter von Cornelius, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Philipp Veit), from the circle of landscape artists associated with Johann Martin von Rohden (Carl Philipp Fohr, Joseph Anton Koch and the Dutchman, Hendrik Voogt), but also rare examples by the Mongolian-Russian-German artist, Feodor Ivanovich Calmuck, and works by Konrad Eberhard, Johann Cantius Dillis, Hieronymus Hess. These figure studies (also including reclusive monks, pilgrims, shepherds and Roman country folk) reveal a secret aspect of the finished landscape paintings of Johann Martin von Rohden. To create the small figures (known in German as Figurenstaffage) in his oil landscapes that can today be found in museum collections in Kassel, Weimar, Fulda and Winterthur, von Rohden had recourse to the work of his friends, who supplied sketches of figures to help him lend “character” to his landscapes, as the renowned art critic Karl Ludwig Fernow put it.

Eva Toffali
I dipinti Contini Bonacossi nella Germania di Hitler. Vendite, depredazioni e recuperi (1940-1947)

The following essay springs from the finding of a series of letters that are preserved in Rome’s Archivio Centrale. The correspondence allows to better understand Alessandro Contini Bonacossi’s stand with reference to the Fascist and Nazi regimes and to shed light on what happened to his collection during the Second World War and in the following years. At the time, several Italian antiques traders and collectors were involved in negotiations with German collectors of Hitler’s entourage, to whom they sold their paintings, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not, but often eluding controls by the Italian authorities for heritage conservation. Such illicit trades were object of investigation at the end of the war and according to the conditions of the Armistice.
In addition, following the finding some clarification is required on what has already been written about Contini’s activity, because the documents provide dates to the origin and development of his trades, and confirm the use of those strategies that so far had only been hypothesized analysing the origin of the works of art.

Indice dei nomi e dei luoghi


Studi di Storia dell'Arte 29 21x29,7 bross, *pp. 340; ill. b/n e col, 2018 - ISSN* 1123-5683 - € 60,00
COMITATO SCIENTIFICO Liliana Barroero, Giovanna Capitelli, Stefano Casciu, Stefano Causa, Enrico Maria Dal Pozzolo, Cristina De Benedictis, *Cristina Galassi, Gert Kreytenberg, Francesco Federico Mancini, Enrica Neri Lusanna, Steffi Roettgen, Pietro Ruschi, Erich Schleier, Nicolas Schwed, Angelo Tartuferi, Anchise Tempestini. Marcello Castrichini direttore responsabile*
Annamaria Bernacchioni Arte e politica. Duccio, Giotto e Ambrogio Lorenzetti nella Firenze orsiniana Art and Politics Duccio, Giotto and Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Orsini's Florence (Firenze Orsiniana) The study represents a political and historical-social interpretation of the events of florentine painting between the end of the thirteenth century and the first decades of the fourteenth century, when the conflicts between Guelfi and Ghibellini were solved by the diplomacy of Orsini's family, through its prestigious members like the cardinals Napoleone and Gian Gaetano. Through sources and documents this study analyzes the artistic commission of famous works of art, realized by the Great Masters of that period: the Maestà of Duccio di Boninsegna, the Crocifisso of Giotto for Santa Maria Novella and the artworks of Ambrogio Lorenzetti that are located at the Uffizi Gallery. Especially for the Beata Umiltà, we identify the client in Giovanna Caponsacchi, a rich heiress widow who is one of the protagonists of the Dantesque Florence. Gert Kreytenberg Una mezza figura di San Paolo, opera sconosciuta di Goro di Gregorio da San Gemigniano Eine bisher unbekannte Halbfigur von Paulus (figg. 4-6) stimmt künstlerisch mit dem Angelo reggisudario (fig. 1), mit einem Apostel (fig. 2) und dem segnenden Christus (fig. 3) in San Gimignano überein, die Bartalini 1990 überzeugend Goro di Gregorio zugeschrieben und einem monumentalen Grabmal nach dem Vorbild des Sieneser Petroni-Grabmals in der 1553 abgebrochenen Kirche S. Francesco zugeordnet hat. Zu dieser Zeit wurden die Statuen von Paulus und Christus zu Halbfiguren verkürzt, um in einem neuen dekorativen Kontext wieder verwendet zu werden. Als Pendant zu Paulus (fig. 4) muss es sich bei dem Apostel (fig. 3), von Bartalini als Evangelist Johannes (?) identifiziert, als Petrus gehandelt haben, dessen rechte Hand eine Geste von antiken Oratoren übernimmt, die bereits von Nicola Pisano adaptiert worden ist. The unknown half figure of Saint Paul (figg. 4-6) is compatible in a stylistic and artistic way with an Angel reggisudario (fig. 1), an Apostle (fig. 2) and a Christ benedictory (fig. 3) in San Gimignano, attributed by Bartalini in 1990 to Goro di Gregorio and assigned to make part of an monumental tomb with reminiscences of the sienese Petroni tomb in the San Francesco church demolished in 1553. At this time the statues of Saint Paul and Christ have been shorten for being used again in another decorative context. Considering the Apostle a pendant to the statue of Saint Paul (fig. 4), the figure - considered by Bartalini perhaps the Evangelist John - , must be instead of the immagine of Saint Peter, which right hand makes an oratory gesture just adopted by Nicola Pisano. Joseph Polzer The Figline Master Revisited There has been a recent surge of interest in the oeuvre of the Master of Figline, also known as the Master of the Fogg Pietà, a remarkable painter highly regarded in his time since he collaborated on leading projects with no less than Simone Martini as well as Giotto. He worked as a mural and panel painter as well as a master of stained glass windows. Joanna Cannon and Austin Nevin at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London organized the Master of the Fogg Pietà - Maestro da Figline Project in 2008. Its purpose was to coordinate the analysis of his painting technique by the curators of the museums and cities that owned his paintings. As a consequence a number of his Florentine works have been recently restored, with some startling results. His style, remarkably inventive, is considerably diversified ranging from realistic portraiture, some of it quite reduced, to intricate issues of perspective. It is quite distinctive and definitely separate from Giotto’s. As has been observed, in its late stage it is closest to that of Buffalmacco in his murals in the Campo Santo of Pisa. He may well have been the Andreas Tafus olim Ricchi who appears in the list of painters enrolled in 1320 in the Florentine painters’ guild. In his Trecento Novelle written toward the end of the trecento Franco Sacchetti states that Buffalmacco was Tafus’ apprentice. High resolution color photographs of leading paintings by the master offer a firmer basis for the analysis of his oeuvre. Luca Castrichini Frammenti di un perduto ciclo di Benozzo Gozzoli a Città della Pieve Fragments of a lost cycle by Benozzo Gozzoli in Città della Pieve Several simple fresco fragments, dating back to the mid-fifteenth century and attributed to the Florentine School, are all that remains of an old crypt decoration in the ancient parish church of Città della Pieve. The church was completely demolished in the seventeenth century, all the way down to the capitals of the stout columns which supported the ancient building. Besides these two fragments – two tondi with Eve and Saint Christina, some drapery elements, a meadow, and little more – other fragments were discovered as well during recent restoration work. These include ornamental moulding around an archway, consisting of a green laurel band with budding and blooming red flowers. This motif was interrupted when an attic was built during seventeenth-century renovations, and now reappears above the archway, in an area that is now relegated to a secondary and hidden corridor of the Cathedral. Here, another large and significant fragment which decorated the inner surface of the same archway has been preserved. This work can be attributed to Benozzo Gozzoli, as it is identical to a laurel decoration which the painter, one of Beato Angelico’s collaborators at the time, created in the upper area of the vault in Orvieto’s San Brizio chapel, before the master left for Rome. Other very convincing similarities with the figures in the tondi can be found in several works from the Gozzoli repertoire – The Expulsion from Earthly Paradise and Saint Christina, with the drapery motif and flowery meadow, and in particular a decorative panel on the soffit with two large saints - Magdalene and a Holy Martyr - as well as a decorative swirling motif with monochrome flowers and angels that were frequently produced in the Gozzoli shop. A small sinopia, which closely resembles the painter’s way of working, also came to light during the parish church restoration. The chronological position for what originally must have been a very large painting cycle should lie at the end of the 1440s. This was when the artist was starting to free himself from his great master’s influence so that he could follow his own career; in fact, Gozzoli stayed in Orvieto, hoping to receive the commission to complete the San Brizio Chapel. Luca Marchigiani Dalla Pieve a Duomo di Città della Pieve From Parish church to the Città della Pieve cathedral It was a great surprise to discover this cycle of fifteenth-century painting in Città della Pieve, which can be attributed to Benozzo Gozzoli; due to the loss of diocesan archives, there are very few artistic exemplars from this period all the way up to the mid-seventeenth century. Perhaps this discovery will also launch a new source of research regarding the training of Perugino, who was actually born in Città della Pieve. Valentina Balzarotti Lorenzo Sabatini in palazzo Vizzani a Bologna. il fregio con Storie di Ciro Beyond palazzo Poggi, palazzo Vizzani is the most representative crossroads of experience and artists of the second half of the XVIth century and a very significant site for the development of painting in the artistic context of Bologna. The frieze with the Stories of Cyrus, executed by Lorenzo Sabatini at the beginning of the Sixties of the XVIth century, has not been studied in depth, neither from the stylistic nor iconographic point of view; yet it is the first major private commission assigned to Sabatini and it testifies the high regard the painter enjoyed at this time in the city. This paper aims to clarify the identification of the scenes and to demonstrate how the cycle of Palazzo Vizzani constitutes a crucial passage of Sabatini's stylistic path. In fact, the coexistence of punctual quotes referring to the Roman world of Perino, Tibaldi, Salviati and Taddeo Zuccaro allows to grasp the richness of Sabatini’s language, which results up-to-date with the facts of the Roman-Tuscan culture. Gert Jan van der Sman Un nuovo tassello per Barthlomeus Spranger a Roma A native of Antwerp, Bartholomeus Spranger lived and worked in Rome for approximately nine years (1566-1575). During that period he had the privilege of working for patrons as prestigious as Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and Pope Pius V. He became acquainted with the central figures of Roman Mannerism, and he is known to have collaborated with Giulio Clovio. After the death of Pius V in 1572, the artist embarked on independent public projects, including three or four altarpieces. In those years, his figures became increasingly monumental: voluminous form is swathed in yet more voluminous drapery, yet the figures maintain a mannered composure, and the heads and hands are treated with a delicacy that is typical of Spranger. The Flemish master also made himself known among Roman collectors through the production master also made himself known among Roman collectors through the production of "many small works" (Van Mander). A recently discovered painting of Saint Andrew sheds new light on the “monumental in miniature” style that Spranger adopted towards the end of his Roman sojourn. The figure, enfolded in rich drapery, is characterized by a subtle, Zuccaresque monumentality, while the colour scheme clearly derives from Michelangelo and Clovio. Interestingly, Spranger developed an original technique to add to the preciousness of his small paintings. He used gold to highlight the edges of the draperies and make fine details glow (notably the buckle on Saint Andrew’s breast). His friendship with Clovio as well as his cooperation with the illuminators of the Choir-Books of Pius V seem to have favoured the development of this technique, that he continued to adopt at the courts of Maximilian II in Vienna and Rudolf II in Prague. Francesco Piagnani “Il fine strano e lugubre” di Cesare Pollino Cesare Pollino’s “strange and lugubrious end” Extraordinary master of the Late Manierism, Cesare Pollino is especially known for the scant number of his miniatures, all characterized by exceptionally high standards in terms of artistry. His life and activity, however, still lack a precise chronological border. By looking into the dramatic circumstances regarding the artist’s death sentence, who was found guilty of murder, this paper sheds light on his onomastic identity and inscribes his activity within a safely-established chronology. Rita Randolfi Federico Zuccari e la Calunnia Orsini Lante Caetani Through the Lante’s inventories it is possible follow the history of the Zuccari’s painting La Calunnia, now in Caetani’s palace in Rome, but belonged to Alessandro Orsini. According to Baglione, the painting is the first version produced by Zuccari, earlier than the Hampton Court. Erich Schleier Un capolavoro del Lanfranco ritrovato: il Ritorno del Figliol prodigo della collezione Giustiniani This painting depicting the “Return of the Prodigal Son” emerged in a sale in Paris of November 11, 2016 as “école caravaggsque”. It was recognized as a work of Giovanni Lanfranco by Umberto Giacometti, who bought it and sold it in March of 2017 in Maastricht to a known private collector. As the paraphe on the back of the original canvas proves, it is the picture, which is described as by Lanfranco in the post mortem inventory (February 1638) of the estate of the marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani, as a sopraporta in his Roman palace. Vincenzo Giustiniani commissioned the painting in 1624 ca. The composition has already been known since 1931 from a 17th century copy in the Museo del Prado, which has been on loan to the museum in Zaragoza since 1933. That picture had been attributed to school of Caravaggio (Porcella 1931), to a painter of Southern Italy or Spain of ca. 1640-50 (Zeri 1954), to the Genoese school (Pérez Sánchez 1970) and to Giacinto Brandi (Schleier 1970). Connected with this composition of three half-length figures is a small painting of bust size of a youth who wears a cap with feathers, in the Galleria Spada in Rome, which had been already published as by Lanfranco, painted shortly after 1620, by the present writer in 1970. It is an autograph ricordo of the figure of the elder brother who holds the clean sheets, on the left of the composition. It was probably commissioned in 1624 by Cardinal Fabrizio Veralli (died 1624), who had been a little known patron of Lanfranco. He was the uncle of Maria Veralli, who in 1636 married Orazio Spada. This “return of the prodigal son” is the only painting by Lanfranco, commissioned by Vincenzo Giustiniani, which so far has come to light.	Franco Moro Il ‘Maestro del riposo’ primo passo caravaggesco di Pietro Paolini One of the dilemmas that still affects the universe of the Caravaggesque studies refers to two candle light nocturne paintings both representing The Holy Family resting on the flight into Egypt, Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera and Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (figg. 1 and 2). These two paintings are surely by the same author and assigned for convenience to the mysterious ‘Master of Riposo’. The solution to the different past hypotheses is the proposal of the painter from Lucca Pietro Paolini as being the ‘Master of Riposo’: to his documented young Roman years - after the workshop of Angelo Caroselli - or soon after his returning to his native land. The most evidential comparisons are to be found among the altarpieces of Saint Dominic receiving the Holy Rosary from Jesus (Bibbiena, Santa Maria del Sasso Monastery), The Virgin of the Rosary with Saint Dominic and Saint Catherine (Lucca, Museo Nazionale di Villa Guinigi) and, above all, The Adoration of the Shepherds (fig. 1) rediscovered by the writer years ago, with provenance from the Mansi collection. This study underlines the undeniable relationship between Paolini and his Roman master Angelo Caroselli. This is clear and understandable comparing some public commissions by the two painters. The same cultural background coming from the knowledge of the Ferrara Renaissance paintings. Works that were easily seen in Rome after the devolution of Ferrara in 1598. Alessandro Brogi Francois Perrier e i ‘bolognesi’ The studies on the Burgundian painter François Perrier, who spent his life and his career between France and Rome, have gradually focused, from the oldest to the most recent, his remarkable stature as an artist and his role far from that secondary in the two contexts within which he worked. The restitution to the painter, here, of two interesting paintings with the Fugue in Egypt, previously assigned to authors of the Emilia area, provided the opportunity to rethink the extent of a debt contracted by Perrier in his Italian stays and only partly already indicated by the critics, that is the one with the modern pictorial tradition of Emilia and more specifically carraccesca. Tradition with which he immediately came into contact, came down to Rome for the first time in about 1624, entering the workshop of Giovanni Lanfranco, and whose fruits can be grasped throughout his non-long career, measuring at the same time the extreme originality of results that that fruitful graft, together with others, produced. Sonia Cavicchioli Il cardinale Pietro Vidoni e l’omaggio ad Alessandro VII Chigi nell’appartamento del legato a Bologna (1665). Una decorazione politica Cardinal Pietro Vidoni, born in 1610, was appointed as papal Legate of Bologna by pope Alessandro VII Chigi in the years from 1662 to 1665. Like his predecessors Bernardino Spada and Girolamo Farnese, Vidoni commissioned a fresco decoration in the apartment at the second floor of the Palazzo Comunale (Town Hall), where the legates lived, and realized the room still bearing his name, the “Galleria Vidoniana”. A contemporary short poem of 186 verses, composed in Latin by the literary man Vincenzo Maria Marescalchi, the Aula Vidonia, proves to be an important source in order to understand the decoration frescoed on the vault of the gallery by the Bolognese painters Domenico Santi, called Mengazzino, and Giovan Battista Caccioli. Published in 1665, the poem celebrates the patron, the pope to whom the decoration is devoted, and the frescoes. The article offers the first systematic study of these paintings, never approached before, dealing with the decorative patterns, the iconography, and their relations with Marescalchi’s verses. It also discusses the function of the room in the Legate apartment, considering both the meaning of the gallery (“galleria”) in XVIIth century Italian culture, and the fact that Marescalchi always refers to it using the latin word “aula”. The study shows that the frescoes are an erudite tribute to pope Chigi’s political virtues, expressed through emblems and copious references to ancient myths and allegories: these features and the perfect knowledge of the decoration suggest that Marescalchi (an influent member of the Accademia dei Gelati in Bologna) could have been the, or one of the, authors of the programme. Francesco Petrucci La visione del venerabile Juan DE Palafox del Maratta The essay brings to the attention of the studies an unpublished painting by Carlo Maratti recently passed on the spanish art market, depicting the apparition of the Virgin to the blessed Juan de Palafox y Mendoza. The composition was documented until today trough a rare engraving by Miguel de Sorelló (1734), a workshop version studied by Stella Rudolph, a copy already attributed to Mariano Salvador Maella preserved in the Museum of the Cathedral of El Burgo de Osma and a derivation of Francisco Bayeu in a private Spanish collection. The new version testifies further the “marattesca” practice, established by documents and also confirmed by Giovan Pietro Bellori, the artist's principal biographer, to replicate his most successful inventions, sometimes introducing small or large variations. There are all the conditions for the painting to correspond to the canvas of similar subject present in the collections of the King Carlos de Borbón, described in the 1789 inventory of the Royal Palace of Madrid. Chiara Teolato L’“Impresa” di Luigi Valadier. Produzione di piccole e grandi sculture in bronzo nell’Inventario del 1785 e nel Catalogo della Lotteria del 1792 In 1759, after the death of his father Andrea, the silversmith Luigi Valadier assumed for a short time the direction of the family workshop. Four years later, in 1763, he started his own manufactory that soon became firmly established in the Roman art market of the late 18th century. He specialised in the production of silverware, as well as large and small bronzes, reproducing both ancient statuary and contemporary sculpted busts – a versatility that allowed him to satisfy the most disparate of requests from collectors and patrons. This article reconstructs the multifaceted activity of the Valadier manufactory through the unpublished inventory listed after Luigi’s death (1785) and the subsequent lottery catalogue (1792) arranged by his son Giuseppe to advertise and sell the contents of the family shop. These documents shed light on the complex organization of Luigi’s activity, on the artists and craftsmen who worked under his direction, and on the models he produced and sold; thus allowing us to identify with certainty those surviving Valadier pieces still kept in public and private collections. Valeria Rotili L’idea e il lavoro. Collaborazioni virtuose e variazioni della prassi artistica nelle botteghe di Carlo Albacini e Giuseppe Valadier: alcune commissioni esemplari The private archive of the sculptor Carlo Albacinis a privileged source for focusing on some aspects of artistic praxis in Rome between the end of the Seventeenth and the beginning of the Nineteenth century, as well as for defining better the biographical features of the artist and his role in the network of the arts system.This is a completely new set of data, chosen as the cornerstone to reconstruct some aspects of the Albacini and Valadier workshops production. After the death of Luigi Valadier (1785), Albacini was helped by the son of the famous bronzist, achieving a different activity management compared to previous period. This aspect was also underlined in the documents traced by Chiara Teolato and her essay in this same volume. It is possible to follow the different degrees of participation among the Albacini artists through the analysis of some works commissioned by Domenico Venuti for the court of Naples and a centrepiece ordered by cardinal Giuseppe Spina with the interest of Angelika Kauffmann. Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi Controversie tra scultori: Paolo Cavaceppi versus Francesco Gesuelli A document dated 1771 provides interesting information on some legal litigation between two little-known sculptors of the varied Roman milieu, useful to evaluate how the artists of that time lived, probably not without difficulty, producing works of invention, working as restorers and trading antiquities. Sometimes they could be allowed to exhibit their creations in public places in the city, but other times they were forced to accept a precarious "day" jobs, in rented or subleased studios, within a very close network of relationships that were not always easy. Gesuelli belonged to this environment, but also won the execution of a bust for the important Russian general Ivan Ivanovich Šuvalov, while Paolo Cavaceppi, brother of the most famous Bartolomeo, had a good reputation working as a restorer for Cardinal Alessandro Albani. Giovanna Capitelli Lo staffage nella pittura di paesaggio ideale a Roma all’inizio dell’Ottocento. Johann Martin von Rohden, Johann Christian Reinhart e gli scritti di Karl Ludwig Fernow Staffage in the Ideal Landscape Painting in Rome at the beginning of the 19th century: Johann Martin von Rohden, Johann Christian Reinhart and the theory of Karl Ludwig Fernow The article investigates a precious collection of figure studies by the Nazarene circle carried out in Rome in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The works originate from the studio of Johann Martin von Rohden (1778-1830), the well-known German landscape painter who lived for many years in the Eternal City. The collection includes drawings by the Nazarene painters (Peter von Cornelius, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Philipp Veit), from the circle of landscape artists associated with Johann Martin von Rohden (Carl Philipp Fohr, Joseph Anton Koch and the Dutchman, Hendrik Voogt), but also rare examples by the Mongolian-Russian-German artist, Feodor Ivanovich Calmuck, and works by Konrad Eberhard, Johann Cantius Dillis, Hieronymus Hess. These figure studies (also including reclusive monks, pilgrims, shepherds and Roman country folk) reveal a secret aspect of the finished landscape paintings of Johann Martin von Rohden. To create the small figures (known in German as Figurenstaffage) in his oil landscapes that can today be found in museum collections in Kassel, Weimar, Fulda and Winterthur, von Rohden had recourse to the work of his friends, who supplied sketches of figures to help him lend “character” to his landscapes, as the renowned art critic Karl Ludwig Fernow put it. Eva Toffali I dipinti Contini Bonacossi nella Germania di Hitler. Vendite, depredazioni e recuperi (1940-1947) The following essay springs from the finding of a series of letters that are preserved in Rome’s Archivio Centrale. The correspondence allows to better understand Alessandro Contini Bonacossi’s stand with reference to the Fascist and Nazi regimes and to shed light on what happened to his collection during the Second World War and in the following years. At the time, several Italian antiques traders and collectors were involved in negotiations with German collectors of Hitler’s entourage, to whom they sold their paintings, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not, but often eluding controls by the Italian authorities for heritage conservation. Such illicit trades were object of investigation at the end of the war and according to the conditions of the Armistice. In addition, following the finding some clarification is required on what has already been written about Contini’s activity, because the documents provide dates to the origin and development of his trades, and confirm the use of those strategies that so far had only been hypothesized analysing the origin of the works of art. Indice dei nomi e dei luoghi