ODESCALCHI PALACE

PALAZZO ODESCALCHI

Piazza Ss. Apostoli 80-81

Begun in 1622 by Carlo Maderno (1556/1629) for the Ludovisi family

He modified the courtyard of a building they had bought in the previous year from the Colonna family

The original structure was a turreted building of the fifteenth century. It belonged to the Benzoni family

FAÇADE

1664 by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598/1680) for Flavio Chigi, who had taken it in usufruct in 1661 and had expanded it by buying the Mandosi Palace overlooking Via del Corso

In the years 1745/50 it was extended doubling the sides and in the middle (with sixteen pillars instead of the eight by Bernini and two gates instead of one) by Nicola Salvi (1697/1751) and his assistant Luigi Vanvitelli (1700/73) for the Odescalchi family

They had bought in the same year, even if they had lived here in rent since 1693

“The additions of Salvi did not prejudice the revolutionary importance of Bernini's design. Various architectural elements were combined here in a project of true nobility and grandeur. Bernini had found the formula for the baroque aristocrat palace. And the immense influence of this building extended far beyond the borders of Italy, for example in Vienna and Leningrad” (Rudolf Wittkower)

FAÇADE ON VIA DEL CORSO

1887/89 Raffaele Ojetti (1845/1924) who repaired the damage from a fire in 1887

The palace is still owned by the Odescalchi family and they rent it out partially

The Odescalchis own and keep in the palace a stunning work of art:

“Conversion of St. Paul” 1600/01 by Michelangelo Merisi aka Caravaggio (1571/1610), oil on wood of cypress for Monsignor Tiberio Cerasi

This is the first version, mysteriously never put in place, of the canvas placed in 1605 in the Cerasi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo

“Work of incomparable beauty, still relevant to the first ways of Caravaggio, it was all inserted in the Mannerist style, filled with a golden light that emphasizes a warm and rich palette of color. Yet some deep dark tones hint the revolution that the painter will bring about shortly thereafter in painting. The Odescalchi Conversion shines with its own light, it is made with a smooth and refined painting style that can fully respond to the narrative component of the subject which was inspired, as a homage from the artist to the more famous Conversion frescoed by Michelangelo in the Pauline Chapel. The turmoil of the characters, the wild horse, the Christ that flows from heaven and, not least, the astonishing parallelism, spotted by Cristina Acidini Luchinat, of the gestures of the group of angels in the upper right of Michelangelo's fresco with the angel holding the Christ of Caravaggio's Conversion are clear evidence” (Francesco Buranelli)

FALCONIERI PALACE

PALAZZO FALCONIERI

Via Giulia 1

Built in early 1500 for the Ceci family

Sold in 1574 to the Odescalchi family and, in early 1600s, to Mario Farnese

Sold again in 1637 to Orazio Falconieri belonging to a family of Tuscan bankers who had the FAÇADE (in part), the LOGGIA and the ROOF TERRACE restructured in the years 1646/49 by his friend Francesco Borromini (1599/1667) with the proceeds of the salt trade

The Falconieri family died out in 1865

Since 1927 it is home of the ACCADEMIA D’UNGHERIA (Hungarian Academy) with a library of over 20,000 volumes

“The U-shaped façade overlooking the river, dominated by the loggia proves the versatility of the extraordinary genius of Borromini. His problem was to merge the old and new parts in a unit uniquely marked by his own style. He solved it by gradually increasing the height of the four floors and inverting the traditional graduation of the orders. The ground floor is divided by simple wide bands; in the following floor the same motive is given more prominence; the third floor has ionic pilasters and above these are the columns of the loggia that are set back. So instead of decrease from the ground up, the divisions of the walls grow in importance and plasticity. Only in the context of the entire façade is revealed in full the unconventional and anti-classical style of the motive for the loggia” (Rudolf Wittkower)

Red room, blue room and two green rooms with stunning “Stucco ceilings” made in 1646 by Francesco Borromini

Strange mixture of symbolic, Masonic and hermetic vocabulary (the three circles of gold, the axis mundi) which show one of the most surprising decorative styles of the Roman Baroque

The plasters were originally white and were painted in 1781 on the occasion of the marriage of Constanza Confalonieri

In a room on the ground floor in the vault fresco “Parnassus” maybe of the end of the sixteenth century by Federico Zuccari (about 1542/1609)