PROPAGANDA FIDE PALACE - MISSIONARY MUSEUM OF PROPAGANDA FIDE (second part)

Museo Missionario di Propaganda Fide

It opened in December 2010 by the will of the new prefect, Cardinal Ivan Dias

Multimedia temporary exhibit space on the missionary activities of the Catholic Church and rooms with an interesting collection of paintings owned by the congregation

The interiors were largely designed by Francesco Borromini, with beautiful decorative solutions

Among the works:

“Pentecost” by Corrado Giaquinto (1703/66)

“Flood” by Salvator Rosa (1615/73)

“Romulus and Remus” by Marco Tullio Montagna (1594/1649)

“Massacre of the Innocents” maybe by Marco Benefial (1684/1764)

“In 1750, Count Nicola Soderini had assured his protection to the painter: this allowed Benefial to paint quietly during the last period of his life, drinking again and again at the inexhaustible source of the Bolognese seventeenth century art, impetuous and raw in tragedy as in the Massacre of the Innocents now in the Palace of Propaganda Fide, idyllic and almost frivolous in the mythological scenes now in Palazzo Corsini, but always aiming to search for historical truth, in a clarification of the detail, never giving in to decorative frills, and proceeding alone on the scene of contemporary painting. He died in April 1764, without pupils of merit and, if not forgotten, certainly underestimated until today” (Evelina Borea - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Treccani)

“Annunciation” maybe by the Flemish Denijs Calvaert (1540/1619)

“St. George” maybe by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri aka Guercino (1591/1666)

“Portrait of Ezzelino Romano” by Antonio Canova (1757/1822) who made this portrait as a joke trying to make it look as a sixteenth century painting

Some “Landscapes” by Jan Frans Van Bloemen aka Orizzonte (1662/1749)

BORGIA ROOM

Some objects and paintings from the collection of Cardinal Stefano Borgia (1731/04) from Velletri distantly related to the infamous Spanish family

It was an extraordinary collection of antiques of all kinds and origins disparate now dispersed between the Vatican Museums, the Vatican Library, the Museum and the Museum Luigi Pigorini Capodimonte in Naples

BARBERINI LIBRARY

Monumental shelving of the eighteenth century and seventeenth-century ceiling in wooden beams with bees of the Barberini family. The anteroom by Francesco Borromini is spectacular in its simplicity

NEWMAN CHAPEL

Refined room by Francesco Borromini with questionable small later adjustments. Dedicated to the English Cardinal John Henry Newman who was declared blessed in 2010