the development of the collections and museums of 18th century rome

9
The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome Author(s): Anthony M. Clark Source: Art Journal, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Winter, 1966-1967), pp. 136-143 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775037 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 10:41 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Upload: anthony-m-clark

Post on 24-Jan-2017

220 views

Category:

Documents


1 download

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century RomeAuthor(s): Anthony M. ClarkSource: Art Journal, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Winter, 1966-1967), pp. 136-143Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775037 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 10:41

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

Anthony M. Clark

The Development of the Collections and

Museums of 18th Century Rome

In this overpopulated world art museums are not yet plentiful enough, although more and more numerous, ex- pected and used. Our art museums range from the su- perb, if embalmed, private collections of yesterday, through the legendary museums of the largest cities, to art centers which afford a continuous "happening" of today's art. The modern art center without a collection contrasts, as a totally impermanent facility of sensation, with what can be called the traditional purpose of art museums: to have, care for and display collections of fine works of art. This purpose is ancient: birds will, and the caveman once, collected beautiful or interesting objects and artifacts. From the most ancient times art works have been stored and shown in at least a closet version of what we now call art museums. Modern museums (but not all art centers) are the direct descendants of temple storages, treasure rooms, the small picture gallery at the entrance of the Acropolis of ancient Athens, the Roman emperor's bedroom filled with Greek treasures including a bronze by Lysippus for which a record price had been paid, the wonder cabinets of the Renaissance prince, the galleries of 16th and 17th century Europe. Most modern art mu- seums have some or many of the characteristics of these

great grand-parents and parents of theirs, and no matter how much we pride ourselves today on scope of the col- lections, scientific conservation, scholarly knowledge and

(the modern distinguishing clause) availability to the pub- lic, even the leading art museums of Washington, New York, Paris or Leningrad are not really too different from the great galleries of two centuries ago. No matter how much more thoroughly and scientifically their treasures have been selected and with what prince's ransom they have been acquired, all the large and small museums with collections of art today are galleries in an old-fash- ioned sense, which modern development has served to refine and better apply. And what modern art museum is

really larger and richer than Catherine the Great's pri- vate art gallery? None surely has purchase funds quite comparable to hers. Since Napoleon's mighty temple of loot there has been no cosmopolitan art museum; the

great metropolitan museums of today are simply not as well stocked as his, and are inevitably inappropriate to

any of the united parts of a world so much more vast than his. The world museum of a modern Napoleon would have to be the size of a small city to represent as

richly and as well as its predecessor the artistic heritage of man. Techniques of transportation and reproduction and the imminent placement and final exhaustion of

supply will presumably alter the nature of art museums before another Napoleon rationalizes the museum-goers' and museum-professionals' lives, or before the museums can adjust and rationalize themselves, if not before the art centers of the future solve the situation with ideal "Art Banks" and exhibitions of perfect reproductions. Until these changes occur there can be no serious claim of great and crucial development of art museums since the close of the 18th century. Admittedly, in quality and

quantity, the museums have developed: Bode is not Vi- vant Denon, a color print by Skira is not an engraving by Cunego, and the attendance at the Metropolitan Mu- seum on a single Sunday may be the entire attendance of th Musee Napoleon. But may I finally reach my subject by writing that only today is the conclusion of the old development in sight.

In 18th century Europe there were three prototypes of the modern art museum: what may be called scientific collections of art (usually "cabinets" of, for example, me- dals, Etruscan vases, prints and drawings, gathered scien- tifically and with didactic purpose); palatial collections of the ruling class or of the amateurs attached to that class; actual museums of art with a custodial staff. These three types were subsumed in the 18th century into a

greater type, the private collector, whether eccentric abate, powerful aristocrat, or reigning monarch. Obvi-

ously the typical representative was the powerful and

princely collector, the resident of a palace. The palace, whether called palazzo, chateau, hotel,

house, villa or country seat, whether occupied (as in much of Europe in the 18th century) by an aristocrat with feudal rights or by a wealthy bourgeois of position and note, was much the same from Sicily to Sweden, from

Portugal to Scotland. It was a collection of people and a collection of complicated duties, privileges and wealth. All of these people and functions were appropriately or- namented and involved with art in a more simple and direct way than we are today, and more opulently. No

person of position lived privately in our sense, although often informally. A palace was impressive; it was palatial. If old it was usually too big, too palatial for the purposes of the century. But new palaces were only slightly more intimate than the 17th century structures and had the same characteristics. They were highly decorated within with frescoes or rich ornamentation necessary to the main rooms, with statues new and old set about (whether or not there was a sculpture gallery), old and new paintings check by jowl on the walls (whether or not the proprietor

ART JOURNAL XXVI 2 136

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 3: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

considered himself a collector), etc. There were many rooms and what was suitable to put in them varied as to, for example, the framed paintings found in all of them: a princess' bedroom might be lined with bozzetti of a fa- vored artist; there was usually a room of landscapes; in the family dining room still-lives; in the state dining room, portraits; in the main rooms, the best things. There would also be a chapel with its appropriate fur-

nishings, and religious pictures were appropriate even to cultured Protestants. Incidentally, in a century in which "cultivated" implied collector, a Protestant would ac-

quire "Papist images," if by respectable artists, at the slightest excuse and not much less quickly than the non- religious subjects by the same artists; and the 18th centu- ry British artists' complaints that only portraits and dec- orative pieces (including landscapes and still-lives) would sell, and "subject pictures," the really important things would not, is only exaggerated evidence that British art- ists were facing a sophisticated situation long prevalent in Continental Europe.

The proprietors of palaces in the 18th century were living by a standard and the same one occurred through- out civilized Europe: it can be said that all of Europe was emulating what had been standard and commonplace in Italy for over a century. This emulation occurred in two ways: first through what may be called the filter of Ver- sailles (and French art was not, as art, the nationalist matter its 19th century historians made of it) and second-

ly, as in England, by a more direct experience. It was pos- sible to build a grandchild of Palazzo Barberini (with the

proper rearrangements due to developments in Paris or

elsewhere) whether in St. Petersburg or on the Broads of Norfolk, and to behave within it very much as the Bar- berinis did in Rome. The prestige, if not the power, of

Italy and Italian art, was still in the 18th century ex-

tremely high, and what was seen in the Grand Tour was never forgotten. And one had seen still incomparable col- lections in incomparable number. The Italians sold con-

tinually throughout the century and yet in Rome in 1790 there were over a dozen palaces (not including the papal collections) which together gave a concentration of prime paintings not yet matched in Dresden, Madrid, Paris or St. Petersburg, and of which some were each still superior to the collections of other monarchs and potentates of Eu-

rope outside of Italy. Naturally the contents of these pal- aces, and of many others in Italy, were thought worthy of wholesale and often uncritical emulation. Remember, too, that although the kings of France had purchased an-

tique sculptures for over two centuries, a single princely family like the Borghese had a better and much larger collection; that the great collection of statues of the king of Spain was a private collection made and bought in Rome; that one of the best collections of antiquities in

Germany was bought from a Roman cardinal who simply went on to furnish Villa Albani with a yet greater collec- tion.

In the 18th century there was almost no domestic or learned establishment in Rome which was not in a sense a museum, whether the palaces of the Pope, of the aristo- crats, of the foreign ambassadors, or of the learned and their colleges and academies. Small so-called museums were attached even to some of the minor and a number of the major monastic establishments, or to the larger libraries. It was especially rare for a great noble not to be

particularly wealthy in art, and, although there was a considerable loss by sales from these inherited sources

throughout the century, this fact has been exaggerated through being supported by the more available of the documents, by the sensational nature of the sales, and, perhaps, to soften the blow of the vast losses at the end of the century. The great and minor holdings of art in Rome were well-known through travel and guide books, reputation, and the efforts of the local cicerone; entrance to them was in almost all cases customary and easy, far easier than today.

I would distinguish five kinds of 18th century Roman collections: first, the papal and civic, which I shall treat last; second, the dozen or so vast private col- lections; third, the over two dozen princely collections not vast but truly imposing; fourth, two native collec- tions owned by foreign monarchs, those of the Tuscan

grand dukes and the kings of Naples; and fifth, the nu- merous, more scholarly or special collection belonging to amateurs, archaeologists and artists, and in certain cases called musei.

Of the vast private collections all are now at least

sadly depleted. In modern Roman museums or even in their original homes one can see parts and souvenirs of the Albani, Barberini, Borghese, Buoncompagni, Colon- na, Corsini, Doria-Pamphili and Pallavicini-Rospigliois collections, but nothing or almost nothing of such collec- tions as the Chigi, the Giustiniani and others all of them still in the 18th century among the great wonders of Eu-

rope, and each of them, as the others, comparable to the

great new collections of the German princes at Diissel- dorf, Munich, etc. Although the Doria gallery today is alone much as it was in 1790 there should be present sev- eral hundred pictures more and as many sculptures. The Pallavicini palace now contains less than a third of its

great holdings, once so much more rich in the early Ba-

roque and in the most extensive landscape collection of

Italy. In the 18th century the fabulously wealthy Bor-

ghese family had, in their downtown palace, thousands of pictures, including two rooms of ten Titians each, as well as the rich contents of their villa on the Pincio, where all their great remaining paintings now hang amongst what is left of the sculpture. The family then owned some of the most famous of the ancient marbles now in the Louvre and also the Villa Aldobrandini on the Quirinal with its supreme masterpieces of painting, including Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne and Bellini's Feast of the Gods. The Colonnas, who still occupy their

137 Clark: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 4: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

large palace, still today have many hundreds of paintings (probably twice as many as are on view in their public gallery) and would own as many over again, had they not helped underwrite the Treaty of Tolentino by selling some of the best Baroque paintings ever to come on the market, as well as other spectacular treasures. Villa Al- bani now leans its bedrooms against ugly modern apart- ment buildings, while its main rooms contain what one imagines are Cardinal Albani's antique sculptures. Some of them are, but one must remember that this incredible nephew of the first Pope of the century collected for sev-

enty-five years, that his first collection of antiquities was sold to Augustus the Strong of Saxony, his second to a Pope, and his third collection, (which, on strictest museo- graphic principles and with Winckelmann's advice, Villa Albani was built to house) was in major part seized after his death by the French and sold, on Napoleon's down- fall, to become the nucleus of the Munich Glyptotek.

As a sad prelude to the fate of the century it is worth

recalling the sale, by the Odescalchi princes, of Christina of Sweden's collections, which they purchased from her heirs in 1690 or 1691. This was, of course, one of the

greatest 17th century collections, containing as it did a

large section of Rudolph II's paintings from Prague and the works of Baroque masters and antique sculpture gathered by Christina in Rome. Pierre Crozat tried to

buy the entire collection in 1714 for the Regent of France and succeeded, in 1720, in purchasing the paint- ings, some of which are now among the glories of the Louvre and and others of which were dispersed in the Orleans sale, for example Veronese's Mars and Venus now in the Metropolitan. In gratitude the Regent gave Crozat Christina's drawings, many of which passed to the Louvre and are of first importance. Philip V of Spain bought the antique marbles from the Odescalchi in 1724 and they are still almost the sum and substance of the Prado's important holdings in the field. The famous

gems, cameos, medals and coins remained with the Odes- calchi until 1794 when bought by the Pope, but were soon looted by the French and are now a chief feature of the Cabinet des Medailles at the Bibliotheque Nationale.

An unpublished manuscript in the Odescalchi ar- chives, perhaps by Giuseppe Ghezzi who, with Maratti, appraised Christina's pictures for her heirs, contains a re-

port on art dealing in Rome in the first decade of the 18th century. This part of the manuscript begins by stating that should the Odescalchi think of selling the collection it ought not be sold to fellow Romans because "in Rome is fullness and greatest abundance, as much in

private houses as in the galleries of princes and other ti- tled people"; so much so that when the collection "is sold again" it would be best to sell it entire and find the

proper buyers by speaking "in Piazza di Spagna where, in every hotel room, each day foreign gentlemen congre- gate and can pay very well indeed." With relish the

manuscript continues in a frank account of some of the art dealers and agents who were to be one of the more obvious features of the Roman Settecento and who al-

ready contained among their numbers, as the manuscript shows, such prominent painters as Orizonte the landscap- ist, feathering his nest between the crops of his clients. Then the writer notes that in June 1706 or '07 the Pope's nephew the Abate (afterwards Cardinal Annibale) Albani

abruptly and impolitely visited Palazzo Odescalchi while the prince was in villeggiatura with the implication that the Abate was after the collection, that his brother Prince Carlo Albani would want the statues and his younger brother, the great Alessandro (then only fifteen), would want the medals and cameos. The manuscript ends here, cut short, at a discussion of export. The avaricious Al- banis were obviously and pointedly considered not the best of customers, but instead necessary to handle very carefully indeed because since 1484 the Popes had the

power to forbid exportation. As it happened, only the

pictures were sold in the Albani pope's reign and, per- haps not curiously, after some close diplomatic work be- tween Annibale and the Duke of Orleans. The marbles left Rome the same year and just after Prince Albani's death, and the cameos and medals stayed put during Al- essandro's lifetime. The loss of Christina's statuary (at a moment when Alessandro himself was in want of cash and selling) was to be a partial cause of the stricter obser- vation and pre-emption of exportations in the rest of the

century. And the loss to Rome of Queen Christina's treasures

is a telling beginning to the century, although the manu-

script was accurate in stating that there was "fullness and

greatest abundance" of art in Rome. My second category, of the about thirty princely collections of first impor- tance yet not vast in content, I shall only touch upon. Here are names such as the Altieri, the Boccapaduli, the Cesi, the Falconieri, the Lancellotti, the Sacchetti-names which are familiar through connection with famous

paintings or sculptures; here also are the great cardinal collectors ranging from Pietro Ottoboni, who specialized in living artists, to Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, whose picture gallery appears in Panini's detailed fantasy at Hartford. Some of these collections were inherited and some were

newly made. The rest of the fashionable names of 18th

century Rome, such as the Braschi, the Gabrielli, the

Rinuccini, the Santacroce, occur here; apparently no

great house was quite "right" unless it had its artistic treasures. Numerically, the collections ran from a handful of prime antique sculptures and/or less than a hundred fine paintings to the 819 paintings of Cardinal Valenti and the as numerous antiquities and paintings (including Van Dyck's equestrian portrait of the Duke of Ossuna which Napoleon seized for the Louvre) of the Braschis. A

very few of the collections were exported or entered the civic and papal collections before the disasters of the cen-

ART JOURNAL XXVI 2 138

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 5: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

Fig. 1. Panini, GALLERY OF CARDINAL SILVIO VALENTI GONZAGA, 1749, Mus6e des Beaux-Arts, Marseilles, France.

tury's end which wiped them almost all out.

Concerning this second group it should be noted that a simple majority of its collections was created in their prime aspect only in the 18th century. This was cer-

tainly not the case with the first group, the vast collec- tions almost all created in the previous century and which remained until the end of the new century mainly static, if one allows loss by sale to balance new purchases. It is typical of the smaller possibilities of the 18th centu-

ry, just as operative in Paris as in Rome, that the new collections were smaller and less wholesale.

In this second group I have not included collections made and mounted in Rome for not much longer than a decade. To have included such great foreign collectors as Cardinal de Polignac, the Bally de Breteuil, Lord Bristol and so forth, would have rounded out the picture and have made it more brilliant. Yet none of their collections was meant to stay in Rome, none of them did, and none of them were particularly easy to see. They are important to mention in passing so as to witness to the fluidity and

rapidity of the scene which, in the traditional interpreta- tion, is taken as evidence of the problems and difficulties of Roman Settecento collecting. Cardinal Alessandro Al- bani had to sell in order to collect; Cardinal Valenti's col- lection was sold in Amsterdam promptly after his death; those who wished to buy very extensively had not the means to do so; most had no desire or intention to buy except modestly; such are the traditional cliches which I

hope I am showing not to be justly poised or perfectly true. That the immediate sale upon death of the collector should not be taken too seriously as an evidence of Rome's supposed poverty and decline may find support in the greater frequency of the phenomenon in 18th century Paris.

My third category contains two great collections both of antique sculpture, both formed in 16th century Rome, and both principal sights of the city through most of the Settecento: those at Villa Medici, belonging to the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, and those at Palazzo Farnese, belonging to the Kings of Naples. Both buildings were at

139 Clark: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 6: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

least in part used as artists' studios and for the exhibi- tions of the works created in them; only the Farnese was commonly in repair and in grand state. What makes them important to my subject is, of course, the presence of the Medicean Venus and the other numerous and fa- mous statues which were in the Pincio Villa until their exportation in the 1780's, and in Palazzo Farnese, the great Hercules and its companions which left for Naples in the same decade. Ironically, the King of Naples' prop- erty descended to him from the 16th century Paul III Farnese, the first Roman pope in over a century. Through these two losses, and that of the Borghese mar- bles now in the Louvre, many of the, as they can only be called, tutelary geniuses of Renaissance and Baroque art left their native soil, never to be potent again, although for a century more they continued to be considered a good part of the world's most admired statuary.

My fourth category is the special and exceptional collections mainly of amateurs. Here, however, may be included some considerable and perhaps forgotten items such as the Calcografia Camerale and the Accademia di San Luca. The first was an engraving works, established when the collection of plates for original and reproduc- tive engravings belonging to the celebrated house of de'Rossi was on the point of sale to England in 1732. Clement XII acquired the plates and with them endowed a papal graphic works and engravers' school which he es- tablished two years later. By the end of the century the

plates numbered about fifteen thousand, and by in-

cluding those of the Caracci, Guido Reni and much of the rest of the great production of the Italian tradition, were the greatest holdings in Europe. At the end of the

century five thousand plates of lesser interest were made into money, about two thousand considered risque were

destroyed, and in 1840, the entire works of Piranesi, for which the Calcogrofia is now best known, were acquired. The Accademia de San Luca is the oldest artist's corpora- tion in Europe and had its own collections. Founded first in 1478 but in its present establishment only in 1527, and

greatly empowered by Clement XI, its 18th century quar- ters next to its church at the Forum contained a famous

painting perhaps by Raphael, Raphael's supposed skull, self-portraits of the academics (most earlier than the Set- tecento being copies of those sold to Florence and still a considerable part of the Uffizi self-portrait collection), reception pieces by the academics painted, drawn and

sculpted, and several find bequests of paintings. Much of this remains today, although the academic material, of first importance, is almost entirely unstudied.

Also this category should include the private collec- tions of a number of artists: The famous drawing collec- tions of Luti, P. L. Ghezzi and Maratti for example. Those of Maratti are now divided between Windsor (the principal part, which passed to and was sold by the Al- bani family, and which contained the studio contents of

the Caracci, Domenichino and so forth) and the Academ- ia de San Fernando in Madrid (principally Maratti's own

drawings) and formed the greatest single collection of Italian Baroque drawings. Maratti's collection of engrav- ings also passed to Windsor but apparently has been de- stroyed and dispersed. There were other very important collections of drawings and engravings, for example: Nic- colo Pio's (the drawings bought by Crozat, the prints now in the Farnesina), the popes' (drawn cartoons and

prints mainly, and especially as to the prints, dispersed or destroyed) and Cardinal Neri Corsini's (now in the Farnesina). Other artists, such as Angelica Kauffman, had splendid collections of paintings, or such as the sculptor, restorer and dealer Cavaceppi, had remarkable collec- tions of antiquities and drawings (Cavaceppi's drawings are a glory of the Berlin Print Room). The will of Carlo Marchionni, the architect of Villa Albani and of the New Sacristy of St. Peter's, shows a good-sized house crammed with hundreds of contemporary and slightly older paint- ings and a large number of volumes of drawings. Most prominent artists were inveterate collectors and Raphael Mengs, with his many antiquities and some fine old mas- ters, was unusual only in the largeness and thoroughness of his cast collection, a few of which still exist in Madrid. Some prominent collectors-such as the Spanish minister Azara with his many paintings by Mengs, the Caetani with their Cavalluccis, or Count Soderini with his many Benefials-were able to show the work of the leading con- temporary artists in richness and depth; and it should be remembered that all the great princely collectors had at least some, and often considerable, representation of the masters of the day. Further, there were yearly art exhibi- tions at three Roman churches where the young and es- tablished were hung for public enjoyment, criticism and sale; and these exhibitions contained, or periodically en- tirely consisted of, "old masters" not for sale. Artists of note also exhibited their newest works with great fanfare in their studios (which were in their own large establish- ments or, for very large pictures, in the rented salons of several of the largest, unoccupied palaces) or in the prin- cipal churches of the cardinal or order commissioning the work. All of these exhibitions were very well and

grandly attended, and were of course free.

Many amateurs and most archaeologists had an es- tablished collection, unless they were primarily (and very successfully) dealers such as James Byres or Gavin Hamil- ton. Some of the best agents for antiquities and modern

paintings, such as Thomas Jenkins, for favors given de- sired works of art, old and new, which were kept. Many of this type of collection was set up semi-permanently, either on a private basis within the descendant's resi- dence, or in an academic circumstance. Called musei, these small museums or large cabinets sometimes in- cluded everything, as in the simple-minded form of scien- tific wonder cabinet, or were more modern, something

ART JOURNAL XXVI 2 140

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 7: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

very close indeed to the small provincial museum of sherds, pots and small bronzes familiar in Italian towns of today. Let me mention five of the more obvious in 18th century Rome, all standard visits for the grandest or the simplest tourists; Museo Borioni, of antiquities, cata- logued by the great Venuti; Museo Borgia, especially of Christian, but also pagan and Chinese, antiquities, the creation of a cardinal donated to his nearby birthplace; Museo Kircheriana, which still exists at the Collegio Ro- mano where founded by a 17th century Jesuit scholar and containing Egyptian as well as classical antiquities and important natural history and anthropological col- lections; Museo Rolandi, a wonder cabinet mainly of an-

tiquities but with Persian material and Columbus' dagger; and the Museo Vettori, of cameos, gems and medals.

My last category is the most important, that of the

papal and civic collections. These collections do not in- clude the vast and ancient liturgical holdings of the Roman churches-the rich sacristies and treasuries several times looted, perhaps most disastrously at the end of the 18th century-these were in no sense papal property. Col- lecting in the modern sense began in the 15th century and most notably with the great Sixtus IV who, by his death in 1484, not only had reestablished the Vatican Library and forbidden the exports of antiquities from Rome but had opened-in a very primitive form-the Capitoline Museum. Artists now flocked to Rome not primarily because the rich and powerful papal court had become the greatest patron in Europe, but because of the

antiquities that could be seen at the Capitol and, under the tremendous Julius II (whose Superintendent of An-

tiquities was Raphael) at the Belvedere of the Vatican. For two centuries the Capitoline courtyards and the small court next to a papal apartment in a Vatican villa, together the holy of holies of European art, were left much as at their establishment, and both, while not pub- lic museums open to anyone, were freely available to art- ists, scholars and amateurs. The statues at the Capitol, the seat of the Senator and officers of the city of Rome, were the property of the people of Rome through the

papal munificence; those at the Belvedere were the per- sonal property of the papacy. Papal benefaction and col-

lecting continued to observe this distinction and the twin establishments of the 18th century grew logically upon this basis.

The still existing museum at the Capitol can claim to be the first and oldest museum in the world. In the 18th century it became the first public museum, a life- time before the 1793 opening of the French royal collec- tions to the general public as the Mus6um Fran5ais, (that grandparent of the present Musee du Louvre which is usually given this credit) and a good while before the short-lived opening of a few rooms at the Louvre to the

special public. The first pope of the 18th century, Cle- ment XI Albani, developed the papal and the civic col-

lections for the first time on a large, permanent and scientific basis. On the Capitoline there was a consider- able installation of antiquities in the two palaces at each side of the Senatorial Palace, and Clement XI added col- lections of coins and inscriptions as well as pagan, Oriental and Christian antiquities.

The fear of the loss of the Roman artistic patrimony grew with the exportation of thirteen hundred of the Gi- ustiniani marbles to the Earl of Pembroke in 1720, rapid- ly followed by Queen Christina's statutes to Spain, the Chigi's to Dresden, and Alessandro Albani's also to Dres- den. Clement XI gave new importance to the office of Commissioner of Antiquities: The century's distin- guished occupants of the office-Bianchini, Marchese

Capponi, Venuti, XVinckelmann, the two Visconti's-had to pass on each and every proposed artistic export from Rome and to inspect excavations. The power of pre-emp- tion was more and more used, and only over-riding polit- ical need stopped its use in any major case.

To forbid exportation was not enough and the next effective Pope, Clement XII, purchased from Alessandro Albani his collection of busts, added these to the Capito- line collections, and founded in 1734 the Capitoline Mu- seum, with the palace which is still its premises. Mar- chese Capponi was its custode, or director-curator, and it was the first museum of the modern world to be thrown

open to the general public. Clement XII's great successor, the witty and learned Benedict XIV, added many stat- ues, including the Capitoline Venus and works of Egyp- tian art. The proper scholarly support of the collections also began with the famous Monsignor Bottari's three volume Museo Capitolino of 1741-1755, and with the

Pope's foundation in 1740 of a society which could assure learned publications, the Academy of the History of Roman Antiquity. To the palace opposite, Benedict added two large galleries in 1749 as a Pinacoteca, to receive the Sacchetti and Pio pictures, about three hundred old mas- ters of importance and quality which he had purchased, and which he intended for the enjoyment of the public and to be of use to the students of the official Accademia di San Luca. The Academy also received an adjacent con- struction designed by Panini for their nude class. The

paintings are still there, with some additons and subtrac- tions; Panini's construction has been built over. Inciden-

tally, from at least 1740 the papal chamberlain's payroll includes a Custode di Pittura, apparently an overseer and restorer of the collections, or at least those of the three

papal residences. By the mid-century Rome was further advanced in

its museum provision than any other European city: there was to be absolutely nothing comparable to the

Capitoline galleries until the last decade of the century. And in the meantime the papal collections at the Vatican were beginning to change almost as crucially, and were to be changed by virtue of a much larger expenditure.

141 Clark: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 8: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

In the short Roman winter the Pope occupied apart- ments in the Vatican, spending the rest of the year across town in the higher, better air of the Quirinal, excepting two brief villeggiature at Castelgandolfo. Although a

very grand summer palace with great Baroque frescoes, the Quirinal contained the minor branch of the papal collection of paintings, about two or three hundred of them which included such huge masterpieces as Guerci- no's St. Petronilla. Castelgandolfo was a typical, if very grand, Roman country villa, and its fresco decorations and artistic furnishings were accordingly more trivial.

Occupied for the shortest time of all, the piled and ram-

bling Vatican was traditionally the chief custodian of

papal property, and especially the artistic wealth.

Throughout the century it was considered more and more as a museum, not only by virtue of the presence of the Laocoon, the so called Cleopatra and the Apollo and Torso Belvedere, but because the Raphael stanze and

loggie and many other treasures were there. The Ra-

phaels, carefully restored by the great Maratti in 1702 and 1703, were the school of painting for Europe, and were set aside for the artist and the tourist. It will occur to you that the Biblioteca Vaticana was also a museum of

great importance: as well as the manuscript treasures there were great gems, cameos, coins and medals and other larger, precious objects, an important collection of Etruscan vases, and so forth. But I believe no modern

publication describes the two cameroni (big galleries) near the Belvedere which contained what one still may see thereabouts in the modern Vatican Pinacoteca, ex-

cepting such masterpieces as Raphael's Transfiguration, which were, until their trip to Paris, in the churches for which they were painted, and adding several hundreds of Renaissance, Baroque and contemporary paintings since transferred, lost or looted. Also one may not know that Clement XI and his immediate successors fitted out many rooms of the palace with the pictorial models of some of the greatest decorations of St. Peters, to climax in the Ca- sino of Pius VI, made a veritable museum of the Basilica, with the models in wood, gesso and clay, including Mi-

chelangelo's for the dome, Bernini's for his sculptures and for the portico, Juvara's for the New Sacristy, etc.

Because of excavations, pre-emptions, purchases and

gifts, the papal collections hugely increased from the time of Clement XI, especially those of antiquities. Tak-

ing the last available space, Benedict XIV created next to the halls of the library a Museum of Christian Antiq- uities, planned with the advice of Monsignor Bottari and at the suggestion of Scipione Maffei, the scholar, poet and founder of the Museum Veronese. Clement XIV

sought to conclude the modern decoration of the palaces and began the construction of a new wing to serve the collections; this was completed by his treasurer and suc- cessor, one of the greatest of all papal collectors, Pius VI Braschi.

The Museo Pio-Clementino is their monument (and one whose architectural importance and quality is not

fully appreciated); with its completion or perfection under Pius VII the serious history of papal collecting and munificence all but ends. And with its completion the first very large archaeological museum was created, al- most as big and tiring as it is today, and looking very much as it does today. It need not be described except to notice the involvement of the best architects, decorators and scholars, and that, from the Papyrus Room with its

ceiling by Mengs to the superb installation and bronze tables for the cameo collection by Valadier, and from the

superb room with Etruscan vases and Pius' print collec- tion to the transformation of the Belvedere cortile into what is happily called a villa in museo (which has still not had its deserved architectural influence) no expense was spared. If the large and handsome new buildings at the Belvedere destroyed a frescoed room by Mantegna, careful copies and tracings were made in the new spirit of

thorough art historical scholarship. Until Napoleon's fall the Vatican museums, unlike the Capitoline, were not

always or fully public, although sensibly and easily acces- sible. Colbert had conceived of the Louvre as an ultimate museum for the delectation of the Academy and the in- struction of young artists. The papal palaces had been this before Colbert and the Vatican now became the most extensive and opulent of European palaces devoted to Christian and pagan antiquity. Thus it was the most up to date of all: ironically, the papal residence had become the best spiritual home of those admirers of ancient vir- tues who soon, as revolutionaries, were to destroy papal power.

The blow that befell Rome and the papacy in the French Revolution and the First Empire was more heavy artistically than even politically, and was also heavier than the more famous sack of Rome in the 16th century. By the Treaty of Tolentino of February, 1797, France re- ceived a hundred of the best works of art in Rome (natu- rally including the Capitoline statues of those Republi- can worthies, Junius and Marcus Brutus) with five hundred of the best manuscripts. Not only was the city stripped by legalized looting and necessary sale, to a de-

gree and in a manner that restoration was impossible, but the history of extensive collecting in Rome stopped, perhaps permanently. After the unbelievable Musee

Napoleon closed in 1814, only about one hundred and

fifty objects, including one Etruscan vase (of hundreds), returned officially to Rome. With few exceptions every type of collector had been destroyed, and if the great Ra-

phaels and the most famous Roman statues returned, the wealth of the princes, of the amateurs and of the pope could not return, nor the works of art only to be listed in the hundreds of thousands. When one recalls what still

might be merely in Roman churches from the hand of the gold-and silversmiths of the greatest modern centu-

ART JOURNAL XXVI 2 142

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 9: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

Fig. 2. B6nigne Gagneraux. PIUS VI SHOWING GUSTAV III OF SWEDEN THE VATICAN COLLECTIONS, 1785, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Fig. 2. B6nigne Gagneraux. PIUS VI SHOWING GUSTAV III OF SWEDEN THE VATICAN COLLECTIONS, 1785, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.

ries of their craft, almost entirely destroyed as plunder or to raise cash, one can see beyond the token completeness of the sole restoration, that of the most celebrated sculp- tures and paintings of the Capitoline and Vatican mu- seums. One does not then in any way regret the violation of the Treaty of Tolentino by the 1814 Allies, of which President de Gaulle may not as yet have heard.

THE BLOT AND THE DIAGRAM'

(Continued from page 135) office chair; its evolution can be traced through technol-

ogy, and it exploits certain possibilities of metal tubing of which Breuer was aware, ideologically as it were. But, likewise, it represents as a physical fact an extremely ele-

gant diagram of support, the lines of the chair follow the lines of the body supported, and there is a base, but those

quadrupedal back legs have been done away with. A complete analysis of Clark's notion of the diagram

would set a very large task indeed, but one can give it useful content by assembling instances; we have offered one.

"Functionalistic" or not, this remains essentially a

secondary matter, diagrammatic architecture is not the

ries of their craft, almost entirely destroyed as plunder or to raise cash, one can see beyond the token completeness of the sole restoration, that of the most celebrated sculp- tures and paintings of the Capitoline and Vatican mu- seums. One does not then in any way regret the violation of the Treaty of Tolentino by the 1814 Allies, of which President de Gaulle may not as yet have heard.

THE BLOT AND THE DIAGRAM'

(Continued from page 135) office chair; its evolution can be traced through technol-

ogy, and it exploits certain possibilities of metal tubing of which Breuer was aware, ideologically as it were. But, likewise, it represents as a physical fact an extremely ele-

gant diagram of support, the lines of the chair follow the lines of the body supported, and there is a base, but those

quadrupedal back legs have been done away with. A complete analysis of Clark's notion of the diagram

would set a very large task indeed, but one can give it useful content by assembling instances; we have offered one.

"Functionalistic" or not, this remains essentially a

secondary matter, diagrammatic architecture is not the

MR. ANTHONY M. CLARK has been the Director of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts from 1963. He was the Secretary of the Museum and Editor of Museum

Notes, Rhode Island School of Design, from 1955-1959;

from 1959-1961 David E. Finley Fellow at the National

Gallery of Art, and from 1961-1963 Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at Minneapolis. He is preparing a biog- raphy and catalogue raisonne of Pompeo Batoni as well as a text of Roman 18th century painting. E

only aesthetically valid kind, but it has its evident merits: and its merits lie in its evidence. To point out the anal-

ogy between diagrammatic architecture and diagrams, and to point out the resemblance between modern build-

ings and diagrams of themselves, is to make a little plainer, reflexively, the values implicit in this kind of architecture. At the level of pure aesthetic apprehension they are clear, but the model helps us to see clearly at another remove, at the level of criticism or of philosophical aesthetics, why they should indeed be so. And the lucidity of these values

is, at all levels, their virtue.

The author is in the Department of Philosophy at the

University of Western Australia, Crawzley, Western Aus- tralia. a

MR. ANTHONY M. CLARK has been the Director of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts from 1963. He was the Secretary of the Museum and Editor of Museum

Notes, Rhode Island School of Design, from 1955-1959;

from 1959-1961 David E. Finley Fellow at the National

Gallery of Art, and from 1961-1963 Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at Minneapolis. He is preparing a biog- raphy and catalogue raisonne of Pompeo Batoni as well as a text of Roman 18th century painting. E

only aesthetically valid kind, but it has its evident merits: and its merits lie in its evidence. To point out the anal-

ogy between diagrammatic architecture and diagrams, and to point out the resemblance between modern build-

ings and diagrams of themselves, is to make a little plainer, reflexively, the values implicit in this kind of architecture. At the level of pure aesthetic apprehension they are clear, but the model helps us to see clearly at another remove, at the level of criticism or of philosophical aesthetics, why they should indeed be so. And the lucidity of these values

is, at all levels, their virtue.

The author is in the Department of Philosophy at the

University of Western Australia, Crawzley, Western Aus- tralia. a

143 Clark: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome 143 Clark: The Development of the Collections and Museums of 18th Century Rome

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:41:49 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions