The room
was known as GALLERY OF THE CARDINAL and was designed in the years
1636/37 by Paolo Marucelli (1594/1649)
Ceiling
decorations “Four parts of the
world, the four elements and the four seasons” 1698/99 by Michelangelo
Ricciolini (1654/1715)
“Portrait
of Youth” maybe by Annibale Carracci (1560/1609)
“Allegory of the
Massacre of the Innocents” about 1639 and “Sacrifice of
Iphigenia”
1640 by Pietro Testa (1612/50) Lucca engraver
who committed suicide in the Tiber for disappointments in his painting career
“Astronomers” about 1645 and “Cain and Abel” by Niccolò
Tornioli (1598/1651)
The
Astronomers exalts the new astronomical discoveries and in particular the
telescope of 1609 by Galileo Galilei
At the
center of the picture is Nicolaus Copernicus showing the phases of the moon, to
the left Ptolemy and Aristotle, and on the right the woman with the turban is
Astronomy itself. Galileo Galilei (1564/1642) had recently died and this
painting was a burning issue at the time
Some
scholars saw a quote of the Narcissus attributed to Caravaggio in the man on
the right looking into the telescope, as well as one of the reasons they would
ascribe with certainty the Narcissus to Caravaggio
“The Vestal Virgins” about 1670 by Ciro Ferri (1634/89)
“Landscape” about 1555 by the visionary Niccolò dell'Abate (about 1510/71)
“There are
two scenes socially opposite: the aristocratic wild boar hunting with knights
and ladies in the foreground, and the popular procession with the greasy pole
in the distance. The fantasy architecture that gives the entire composition a
fairytale feel, refers to the Flemish landscapes and to those of Dosso Dossi”
(Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
“Feast of Mark
Anthony and Cleopatra” about 1701 by Francesco Trevisani
(1656/1746) from Istria, with Cleopatra dissolving a pearl in wine to show her
indifference to wealth
“In the
episode, described with theatrical taste, are placed precious details that
combine features of sixteenth-century Venetian tradition with those of Roman
classicism” (Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
“Allegory of Music
and Poetry”
and “Allegory of Painting
and Sculpture”
by Sebastiano Conca (1680/1764)
“Summer and
Autumn” and “Spring and Winter” by Luigi Garzi
(1638/1721)
“The Abduction of
Aeneas” copy
of Giacinto Campana (1600/about 1650) from the
original by Guido Reni now in the Louvre. Reni himself revised this copy
“The Death of Dido” about 1631 by Giovanni Francesco
Barbieri aka Guercino (1591/1666) composed
almost like a scene out of the newly born Italian musical theater, also known
as opera, the most comprehensive art form that would eventually spread
throughout the world
“The work is
remarkable for the scenographic vision and the richness of the costumes is made
with plastic and coloristic sense, characteristics of the artist's work,
learned from experiences in Veneto, Bologna and Ferrara” (Maria Lucrezia
Vicini)
Two paintings
of the same subject “Boreas Abducting Orythia” one by Francesco
Solimena (1657/1747) and one by Giovanni
Francesco Romanelli (1610/62) from Viterbo, a pupil of Pietro da Cortona
“Bacchus”
by Pier Francesco Mola (1612/66)
“Spring or Flora” about 1680 by Carlo Cignani (1628/1719)
“Looting of a village” by Peter
Snayers (1592/1666)
Very
realistic “Portrait of young
man” by a follower of Annibale Carracci
“View of a
beach by moonlight” by Egbert van der Poel
(1621/64)
“Death of
Cleopatra” 1706 and “Death of Marcantonio” 1702 by Domenico
Maria Muratori (1661/1742) for Cardinal Fabrizio Spada
“Christ and the
Samaritan”
about 1677 and the sketch of “Triumph in the name
of Jesus”
for the vault of the Chiesa del Gesù
(Church of Jesus) by G.B. Gaulli aka Baciccio
(1639/1709)
“S. Lucia's shoulders” about 1632 by Francesco Furini (1603/46)
In this
very original painting S. Lucia holds a plate with her eyes which had been
removed by the torturers. An opportunity for the Florentine Francesco Furini to
show off his specialty: painting beautiful bare backs of women
“He
preferred the female figure and created a kind of refined painting genre whose
subject, inspired by the poems of chivalry, the biblical tradition and
mythology, were appreciated by scholarly collectors. Deeply stimulated by the
trip to Venice and the painting by Pietro da Cortona (working in Florence in
1637), Furini became in his maturity a painter increasingly fluid and soft”
(Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
“Portrait of Angela
Mignanelli”
about 1730 by Marco Benefial (1684/1764)
“The smug
expression of the face, not rigid, but natural and of remarkable psychological
intensity is enhanced by using soft and pasty brush strokes which give
brightness to the eyes, sweet and mysterious at the same time. (...) The artist
seems to overcome the ways of Roman portraiture of the seventeenth-eighteenth
century and get closer to the French one, anticipating more casual formal
solutions that will be in vogue especially in the second half of 1700s at the
hands of Mengs, Goya, and Pier Leone Ghezzi” (Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
“Landscape with
windmills”
1607 by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568/1625)
At the
center of the room two globes 1616/22 by the Dutch cartographer William Bleau
“Statue of a
philosopher sitting” of the beginning of the first century AD
Room
IV
“David with the Head
of Goliath”
about 1610 by Orazio Lomi aka Orazio Gentileschi
(1563/1639) from Pisa
About 50 cm
(20 inches) of the painting in the lower part have been lost, where the body of
Goliath was
“The
painting, in which the hand of Agostino Tassi has been identified in the
landscape, reflects the classicist ideals of Carracci's style, and the
realistic ones that enrich the scene into several parts, as one can see in the
rendering of the coat. A terse light affects the body of David, enhancing the
volumetric characteristics, in memory of the original Tuscan Mannerist training
of the painter” (Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
“Christ and the
adulteress”
and “Christ tempted by the devil” by Mattia Preti
(1613/99)
Christ and
the adulteress is a work of extraordinary visual impact and powerful religious
significance. The dizzying cleavage of the adulterous woman stuns and draws the
eye inexorably as Christ indicates it and watches us expliciting in the act the
message of salvation by grace that disregards human works
The message
is clear: God's mercy can save us from the sins of the flesh, even from such
white and unavoidably erotic flesh
Isn't this
cleavage after all so dazzling illuminated by the same light that comes from
the right and that shines on Christ's face and also on the beautiful gesture of
forgiveness of His left hand?
“La Pietà” by Orazio Borgianni
(1578/1616)
“Allegory of
Astronomy”
by G.B. Magni aka Modenino (about 1592/1674)
Five
paintings of the so-called Bamboccio Pieter Van Laer
(about 1595/1642)
“The value
of detectable anti-rhetorical realism in his paintings reveals a fundamental
part of the culture of the Dutch painter in addition to his mastery in the use
of light and shadow. His painting and that of his many followers - the Bamboccianti
such as Jan Miel, Michiels Sweerts - proposed the discovery of a papal city not
monumental, of a Rome that invited reflection on social policies” (Carlo
Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)
Three
paintings in the so-called bambocciante style including “Death of the donkey” and the historical view “Revolt of Masaniello” by Michelangelo
Cerquozzi (1602/60)
“Accents
more distinctly typical of everyday life than the ones of Pieter Van Laer are
detectable in the lively folklore scenes of Cerquozzi, also a follower of Laer,
even if he developed an independent style facing also sacred subjects of large
format, battles and still lifes” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio
Giuliano)
“The Holy Family with
St. John the Baptist” and “Herodias with the head of St. John the Baptist” by Jean Valentin
aka Valentin de Boulogne (about 1591/1632)
“St. John the
Evangelist”
by the Frenchman Nicolas Tournier (1590/post
1657)
“Market”
about 1650 by Willem Reuter (1642/1681),
influenced by Michiel Sweerts
“Allegory
of Vanity” by Andrea Podestà (about 1608/before
1674)
“Capture of
Christ” by a follower of Gherardo delle Notti, maybe Trophime
Bigot (about 1579/1649)
“S. Cecilia” and “Madonna nursing the Child” by Artemisia
Gentileschi (1593/about 1652)
“Worthy
disciple of her father Orazio and highly regarded since 1614 in the Florentine
art scene, she lived for a long time in Naples, where the local painting
environment represented by artists like Cavallino and Caracciolo was deeply
influenced by the Caravaggio's knowledge of Artemisia. She inherited from her
father the taste for precious fabrics and a preference for the rendering of
golden and firm flesh through a naturalistic study of shadows and lights
rousing stunningly beautiful effects” (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti,
Antonio Giuliano)
“Both works
have been painted in her youth and are characterized by the delicate and
refined drawing of colors, for the firmness and for the expressive intensity of
the two female figures, the result of the artistic experiences of his father”
(Maria Lucrezia Vicini)
Plaster
cast “Divine love defeats profane love” about 1630 maybe a model of the
bas-relief at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj by the Flemish artist François Duquesnoy (1597/1643)
