Antonio Tempesta

Anna Licia Gagliardo affronta con acume nel suo studio l'analisi comparativa tra i differenti modi impiegati da Castello e da Tempesta nel comporre le scene raffiguranti gli episodi del poema; individuando nel primo una generale tendenza a presentarli nel loro svolgimento; nel secondo la propensione verso una migliore vena descrittiva, riguardo in specie alle scene di combattimento, e la maggiore adesione al testo sia nell'ambientazione che nella scelta dei luoghi.

Nel 1655 moriva a Roma il cardinal Francesco Peretti, l’ultimo discendente maschile della famiglia Montalto. In quell’occasione, l’incredibile collezione d’arte messa insieme dalla famiglia tra il 1580 e il 1655, che comprendeva oltre 400 dipinti, altrettante statue antiche e moderne e numerosi disegni, passava per via testamentaria all’abate Paolo Savelli Peretti, figlio della sorella di Francesco. Quest’ultimo, morto nel 1685, trasmise la collezione al fratello, il principe Giulio Savelli, il quale, per gli ingenti debiti accumulati dalla famiglia, fu costretto dalla Congregazione de Baroni a subastare, nel 1696, numerosi beni di provenienza Peretti, tra cui l’immenso complesso della Villa o Vigna Montalto di Termini, purtroppo oggi non più esistente poiché distrutto nel XIX secolo per la realizzazione della stazione ferroviaria centrale di Roma.
Partendo dal 1655, l’autore ripercorre le varie tappe relative alla dispersione della collezione Montalto, giungendo fino al XIX secolo.
Nell’articolo emergono alcune nuove proposte identificative di oggetti d’arte provenienti dall’illustre raccolta, tra cui alcuni dipinti del Cavalier d’Arpino, di Sofonisba Anguissola, di Luca Cambiaso, del Guercino ed un gruppo di sculture in bronzo di Giambologna e di Antonio Susini. L’autore pubblica inoltre l’inedito inventario della subasta del 1696, in cui vengono descritte le opere che all’epoca erano conservate nel complesso della Villa Montalto.


«Pure ed il nome, e le ricchezze, e le grandezze svanirono come il fumo …». The dispersal of the Peretti Montalto Collection: new proposals and an unpublished inventory of 1696

Cardinal Francesco Peretti, last male descendant of the Montalto family, died in Rome in 1655. Thereupon the incredible collection of art assembled by the family between 1580 and 1655, which comprised over 400 paintings, as many ancient and modern statues and a large corpus of drawings, passed by inheritance to the abate Paolo Savelli Peretti, son of Francesco’s sister. He died in turn in 1685, bequeathing the collection to his brother, Prince Giulio Savelli, who, as a result of the huge debts accumulated by the family, was forced by the Congregazione de’ Baroni to auction off numerous properties of Peretti provenance in 1696, including the huge complex of the Villa or Vigna Montalto di Termini, which unfortunately no longer exists, since destroyed in the nineteenth century to make way for Rome’s central railway station (Termini).
The author traces the various stages in the dispersal of the Montalto collection from 1655 to the nineteenth century. He also makes some new proposals for the identification of works of art from the famous collection, including paintings by the Cavalier d’Arpino, Sofonisba Anguissola, Luca Cambiaso, Guercino and a group of bronze sculptures by Giambologna and Antonio Susini. The author also publishes for the first time the inventory of the auction held in 1696, in which the works of art then preserved in the Villa Montalto complex are described.

L’argomento dell’articolo consiste nello studio nato attorno al ritrovamento (nel 2007) di dieci quadri di provenienza Peretti Montalto rintracciati dall’autore nella Collezione Patrizi Montoro. L’identificazione delle opere è partita dal riconoscimento dello stemma di Michele Peretti dipinto sulla ‘Grande Marina’ di Paul Bril. La successiva ricerca d’archivio ha reso possibile il ritrovamento di altri nove quadri provenienti dalla stessa illustre raccolta. Tra i dipinti rintracciati sono emersi capolavori realizzati da Paul Bril, Francesco Albani, Sisto Badalocchio, Antonio Tempesta e Giovan Battista Viola.
Tramite l’analisi dettagliata di uno di questi quadri, la ‘Fuga delle Ninfe’, l’autore propone l’attribuzione di questo significativo paesaggio ideale a Domenico Zampieri, detto il Domenichino.
I dipinti esaminati, di cui fino ad oggi si ignorava totalmente l’effettiva committenza, entrarono nella Collezione Patrizi Montoro solo nel XVIII secolo, più precisamente tramite le opere di provenienza Chigi Montoro. L’articolo in esame fornisce inoltre importanti spunti per la ricostruzione del ruolo di mecenate delle arti rivestito dal principe Michele Peretti e per la storia del collezionismo a Roma durante il primo ventennio del Seicento.

Ten paintings of Peretti Montalto provenance found in the Patrizi Montoro Collection. Masterworks of the early seventeeth–century with an hypotetical attribution to Domenichino for the ‘Fuga delle Ninfe’

The subject of this essay arises from the author’s identification (in 2007) of ten important early seventeenth-century’s paintings from the Peretti Montalto collection. The discovery took place by recognizing the Prince Michele Peretti’s coat of arms in one of these paintings, followed by the archive research that made it possible to find another part of the masterpieces from the same important collection. Among these paintings, there are extraordinary works of art by Paul Bril, Francesco Albani, Sisto Badalocchio and Antonio Tempesta.
Following a thorough analysis of one of these paintings, ‘Fuga delle Ninfe’ (‘Flight of the Nymphs’), the author proposes the attribution of this significant ideal landscape to Domenico Zampieri, also called Domenichino. Those pictures ended up in the Patrizi Montoro collection only in the eigtheenth-century and all of them, until now, were erroneously believed to have been part of the seventeenth-century Patrizi collection. This paper gives also important information about the role of Prince Michele Peretti as a patron of the arts and about the collection of paintings in Rome during the early seventeenth-century.

Arriving in Rome from Florence during the pontificate of Gregory XIII, Antonio Tempesta painted numerous frescoes in the Vatican papal palace and on commission from illustrious prelates. Towards the end of the Sixteenth Century, the artist became famous for his strong inventive skills in the production of prints depicting scenes of hunts and battles. At the same time the Florentine began to be assiduously employed by refined collectors for the execution of precious stone paintings. Although these aspects of Tempesta's activity have already been extensively investigated, this study intends to shed light on the painter's little-known production of easel paintings. In particular, some unpublished monochrome paintings by Tempesta executed between 1595 and 1630 are presented. Retracing the stylistic progress of the artist, the author investigate his relationships with the most illustrious clients of the time and the presence of his grisailles in the most important Roman noble collections, including the Giustiniani, the Colonna and the Peretti Montalto.

Abstract
The martyr has always been and remains an ambivalent figure, and this quality is
even more pronounced in the case of female martyrs. In periods of political and social
upheaval, the female martyr became a stylized, heroic figure transgressing the
border between female and male behaviour. In late sixteenth-century Rome, the
Catholic Church cultivated the veneration and the representation of virgin martyrs,
the sante vergini romane, as the spearhead of the Counter Reformation and,
as is generally assumed, in marked contrast to the Lutheran Church, which is well
known for its depreciation of both virginity and sanctity. This essay argues, however,
that it was Luther himself who attached great value to the virgin martyrs in his
doctrine. A careful analysis of the earliest and relatively unknown German Protestant
book of martyrs, the Historien der Heiligen Ausserwoelten, Gottes Zeugen/Bekennern
und Mertyrern, published by Ludwig Rabus in 1552, reveals its influence on
the typology of these female role models. This work also impacted upon the representations
of the sante vergini romane in Rome, e. g. in the frescos of female martyrs
in Santo Stefano Rotondo and the illustrations in Antonio Gallonio’s book on the
Sante Vergini Romane of 1591

During a procession in 1580, the relics of St. Gregory of Nazianzius were transferred from their place in Santa Maria in Campo Marzio to the newly erected Cappella Gregoriana in St Peters. Shortly afterwards, the Tuscan painter Antonio Tempesta, with the assistance of Matthijs Brill, decorated the third floor of the Vatican Loggias with scenes after this same procession. SInce Jacob Hess' essay from 1923, this fresco cycle has only been scarcely regarded by scholarship. The following paper thus aims at locating this particular iconographic program in post-Tridentine Rome within a specific liturgical space that was administered by the Roman Curia. It further pursues to clarify this program influenced the later elect cardinal Cesare Baronio in re- spect to his own contributions to post-Tridentine liturgy.