TOMB OF GAIUS PUBLICIUS BIBULUS

TOMBA DI GAIO PUBLICIO BIBULO
Piazza Venezia

First decades of the first century BC
It was erected by the Senate and by the people of Rome on the road out from the nearby Porta Fontinalis for special merits of this otherwise unknown AEDILE PLEBIS and of his descendants
The part visible in travertine marble is the upper part while the high base is still landfilled

VENEZIA PALACE - MUSEUM OF VENEZIA PALACE (second part)

MUSEO DI PALAZZO VENEZIA

Museum of Venezia Palace

In the rooms of the Cybo Apartment and in the premises of the Palazzo Venezia formerly Viridarium of Paul II Barbo (1464/71), which was dismantled and moved in 1911 of about 100 m (330 feet)

Ceilings 1916 by Ludovico Seitz (1844/1908) in imitation of the style of the sixteenth century

VESTIBULE and ANTEROOM

“Bust of Pope Paul II” by the workshop of Paolo Taccone aka Paolo Romano (about 1415/77)

Venetian Paintings

“Double Portrait” about 1502 maybe by Giorgio Zorzi or Giorgio da Castelfranco aka Giorgione (1477-78/1510)

Mysterious and extremely beautiful painting where the light shines differently on the two characters, creating an effect of almost photographic realism

The young man in the foreground holds a wild orange bitter and sweet at the same time that the Renaissance was associated with the sufferings and the joys of love

“Madonna and Child” and “Head of a Young Woman” maybe by Antonio Pisano aka Pisanello (about 1390/about 1455)

The head of a young woman maybe was part of the lost decoration of the Basilica of St. John Lateran that Pisanello had carried out with Gentile da Fabriano in the first half of the fifteenth century and which was destroyed during the works of Francesco Borromini for the Jubilee of 1650

“Madonna and Child” by Paolo Veneziano (active about 1320/62)

Emilia-Romagna Paintings

“Crucifixion” first half of 1400s by Stefano da Ferrara

There are few biographical information regarding this painter and there is much uncertainty in the attributions. In this painting the expressions of torment of the faces are remarkable and innovative

“Christ Carrying the Cross” by Bernardino Zaganelli (about 1465/about 1511)

“Adoration of the Magi” by Lorenzo Sabatini (about 1530/76)

“Pieta” about 1579 by Lelio Orsi (1511/87)

“In this work there are influences of Correggio's poetry, especially in the pathos expressed by the figure of St. John the Evangelist, whereas the plasticity of the body of Christ is livid expression of a strong influence by Michelangelo, disseminated through engravings. Not to mention that from an elaboration of an idea by Michelangelo, namely the Deposition for Vittoria Colonna, comes the pose of Christ lying in the lap of the Mother” (Official website of the Museum of Palazzo Venezia - www.museopalazzovenezia.beniculturali.it)

Lazio, Umbria and Marche Regions Paintings

“Head of the Redeemer” from an artist of the school of Pietro de' Cerroni aka Pietro Cavallini (about 1240/about 1325)

“Great Painted Cross” from the church S. Tommaso dei Cenci

Processional banner “Virgin Mary of Mercy” by the Master of Staffolo

Rooms 4 and 5 - Tuscan Paintings

“Marriage of St. Catherine” by the Master of the Coronation of Christ Church

Small panel “Prophet Hosea” by Gherardo di Jacopo aka Starnina (active 1387/1409)

“Nativity” end of 1400s by the school of Filippo Lippi and Pesellino with a portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent in the lower right

Remarkable “Head of the Redeemer” maybe by Benozzo di Lese aka Benozzo Gozzoli (1420/97), more probably by Fra' Giovanni da Fiesole aka Fra Angelico (about 1395/1455), maybe from the destroyed Chapel of Eugene IV Coldumer (1431/47)

“Episodes from the life of St. Catherine of Alexandria” by Bicci di Lorenzo (1373/1452)

“Vision of St. Bernard” by Francesco di Ubertino Verdi aka Bachiacca (1494/1557)

“Madonna and Child with Angels and Saints” by Mariotto di Cristofano (1393/1457)

Paintings on Canvas

Oldest and largest part of the collection added in 1919 from the collection Ruffo of Motta Bagnara:

“Marriage of St. Catherine” by Ciro Ferri (1634/89)

“Dance of the Nymphs” 1725 by Donato Creti (1671/1749)

“Restless temperament, haunted by an almost obsessive anxiety for perfection, Creti offers a varied range of expressive accents ranging from Veronese inclinations to his own classicism sometimes full of mannerism moods, some other times sublimated in purist formulas, almost neoclassical, largely ahead of its time. This work is a significant blend of his experiences: the party atmosphere is evoked with a Frenchified gallant grace, the traditional Arcadian landscape here is imbued with a rediscovery of more refined ways of the Emilian Mannerism, which give a more decanted and thin grace to this idyll” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)

“David and Abigail” and “Finding of Moses” by Giuseppe Maria Crespi known as the Spanish (1665/1747) from Bologna

“Dead Christ” by Orazio Borgianni (1578/1616)

“The sons of Francesco Orsini” 1597 maybe by Tiberio Titi (1578/1637), the son of the painter Santi di Tito and official portraitist of the Medici Grand Dukes

“Wedding at Cana” by Francesco Solimena (1657/1747)

“Cleopatra” by Carlo Maratta (1625/1713) who represented the Egyptian queen with the face of his daughter Faustina as she dissolves a pearl in vinegar to prove her indifference to luxury

“St. Peter weeping” by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri aka Guercino (1591/1666)

Golden terracotta “Baptism of Jesus” and “Terracotta bust of Pope Innocent X Pamphilj (1644/55)” by Alessandro Algardi (1598/1654)

PALACE OF THE GENERAL INSURANCE COMPANY OF VENICE

PALAZZO DELLE ASSICURAZIONI GENERALI DI VENEZIA

Piazza Venezia 11

1902/06 Arturo Pazzi (XIX/XX centuries) and Alberto Manassei (1855/1939) with the participation of Guido Cirilli (1871/1954) for Marco Besso

The idea of replicating the structure of Palazzo Venezia across the square in fifteenth-century Venetian style was Giuseppe Sacconi's (1854/1905)

Built on the site of the destroyed Palazzo Nepoti and Palazzo Torlonia by Carlo Fontana

On the FAÇADE “Lion of St. Mark” of the sixteenth century from the Walls of Padua

On the right side of the building there is a PLAQUE commemorating the site of the house where the divine artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475/1564) lived and died

BONAPARTE D'ASTE PALACE

PALAZZO BONAPARTE D'ASTE

Piazza Venezia 5/angolo Via del Corso

1658/65 Giovanni Antonio De Rossi (1616/95) for Giuseppe and Benedetto D'Aste

“Only the Borromini-inspired rounded corners and the pure, unorthodox arrangement in three rows, which includes the four sides are mildly progressive. All the decorations, including the curved pediments of the windows, are quite simple. Confidentiality and an immaculate sense of proportion are the virtues of this style. The intelligent fusion carried out by Rossi of the decorative details inspired by Pietro da Cortona and Francesco Borromini and the transformation of this into a personal idiom relatively light and pleasant foretold his important part in the development of the architecture of the eighteenth century” (Rudolf Wittkower)

In 1760 it was sold to the Marquis Ranuccini of Florence

From 1818 it belonged to Letizia Bonaparte, Napoleon's mother, who lived and died here in 1836

She notoriously used to peep through the famous corner balcony, known in Italian as mignano

In 1972 it became the property of the Assicurazioni d'Italia (Insurance of Italy)

ANCIENT ROMAN APARTMENT BLOCK ON PIAZZA VENEZIA

INSULA DI PIAZZA VENEZIA

Piazza Venezia

Second century AD, six or maybe even more floors: ground floor with tabernae (shops), mezzanine and three floors, with traces of a sixth which maybe was not even the last one

It was inhabited until 1929

It is estimated that originally it housed about 380 people

Augustus had established a law according to which the dwellings should not have exceeded 21 m (69 feet) and Trajan imposed a limit of 18 m (59 feet): hence numerous insulae in Rome were six or seven floors high, with exceptions such as the monstrous INSULA FELICLES of the second century AD, famous throughout the empire for its dizzying height. We do not know how high it was but we must assume it must have been pretty tall for the stupefied reactions in front of this ancient skyscraper. It was located in the area between the Pantheon and The Column of Marcus Aurelius

According to the Cataloghi Regionari (list of monuments and buildings of Rome in the fourth century) the insulae under Septimius Severus (193/211) were 46,602, a ratio of 1 to 26 with the domus

Insulae was the name given to these units by Guido Calza obtained from ancient sources, but recently it was established that the insula was a unit of property projected on the ground and it was not really a specific type of building

In the Middle Ages the church of S. BIAGIO MERCATELLO was built on the insula of which are visible the bell tower and, in an arched niche, a fresco of "Christ between the Virgin and St. John the Evangelist" of the Lazio school dating back to the early fifteenth century. It was rebuilt in 1643 as S. RITA DA CASCIA IN CAMPITELLI, by Carlo Fontana (1634/1714) and then moved in 1929 near the Marcellus Theater