The Pamphilj and the Arts
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The Pamphilj and the Arts Patronage and Consumption in Baroque Rome aniè C. Leone Contents Preface 7 Acknoweedgments 9 Introduction 11 Stephanie C. Leone The Four Rivers Fountain: Art and Buieding Technoeogy in Pamphiei Rome 23 Maria Grazia D Amelio and Tod A. Marder The Aedobrandini Lunettes: from Earey Baroque Chapee Decoration to Pamphiej Art Treasures 37 Catherine Pnglisi Cannocchiaei Pamphiej per ee steeee, per i quadri e per tutto ie resto 47 Andrea G. De Marchi Committenze artistiche per ie matrimonio di Anna Pamphiej e Giovanni Andrea III Doria Landi (1671) 55 Lanra Stagno Notes on Aeessandro Stradeeea, L’avviso al Terrò giunto 77 Carolyn Giantnrco and Eleanor F. McCrickard L’avviso al Terrò giunto (Onge Tirer had reen apprised) 78 Alessandro Stradella The Jesuit Education of Benedetto Pamphiej at the Coeeegio Romano 85 Pani F. Grendler Too Much a Prince to be but a Cardinae: Benedetto Pamphiej and the Coeeege of Cardinaes in the Age of the Late Baroque 95 James M. Weiss Cardinae Benedetto Pamphiej’s Art Coeeection: Stiee-eife Painting and the Cost of Coeeecting 113 Stephanie C. Leone Cardinae Benedetto Pamphiej and Roman Society: Pestivaes, Peases, and More 139 Daria Borghese Benedetto Pamphiej’s Suneeower Carriage and the Designer Giovanni Paoeo Schor 151 Stefanie Walker Le conversazioni in musica: Cargo Prancesco Cesarini, virtuoso di Sua Ecceeeenza Padrone 161 Alexandra Nigito Pamphiej as Phoenix: Themes of Resurrection in Handee’s Itaeian Works 189 Ellen T. Harris The Power of the Word in Papae Rome: Pasquinades and Other Voices of Dissent 199 Lanrie Shepard “PlORlSCONO Dl SPEENDORE EE DUE COSPICUE LIBRARIE DEE SIGNOR CARDINAEE BENEDETTO PaMEIEIO”: STUDI E RICERCHE SUGEI INVENTARI INEDITI Dl UNA PERDUTA BiBEIOTECA 211 Alessandra Mercantini Appendice. La perduta Bibeioteca dee cardinaee Benedetto Pamphiej: Acquisti, rieegature e restauri 231 Alessandra Mercantini Cardinae Benedetto Pamphiej as Penicio Larisseo and the Arcadian Academy in Rome 303 Vernon Hyde Minor Peates 313 Pamphilj as Phoenix: Themes oe Resurrection in Handel’s Italian Works Ellen T. Harris At the end of 1706, Benedetto Pamphilj had been a cardi- himself “wholly to the Spirit.”^ If so, the arrival of the nal for twenty-five years and was distingnished as one of twenty-one-year-old George Frideric Handel in Rome, Rome’s great patrons of the arts. His art collection, inclnd- seems to have given the cardinal a jolt of yonthfnl energy. ing some works inherited from his father, is still highly At least this is what is implied in the text of a cantata he esteemed today. His important mnsical establishment wrote for Handel to set, Hendel, non può mia musa. is less easy to evalnate, mnsic being more ephemeral by Pamphilj describes Handel’s mnsic in this cantata text natnre than the visnal arts. Records of the mnsicians Pam- as having led to the rebirth of his poetic talents. He states philj employed and the mnsic performed at his palazzo that Orphens conld stop birds in flight and beasts in their appear in his acconnt books and conjnre images of a con- tracks and make trees and rocks move bnt was nnable to stant stream of front-rank mnsicians and compositions.^ make any of these things sing. Pamphilj therefore ranks Pamphilj ’s collection of mnsical scores, to which later gen- Handel higher, saying that the composer had bronght his erations of the Pamphilj family continned to add, is now mnse back to life after it had fallen silent.^ We will need considered “one of the finest private collections of mnsic to come back to this poem and consider more than one in Italy. The pictnre (or sonndscape) wonld, however, be reading of Pamphilj ’s reawakening, bnt the central idea of incomplete withont the awareness of Pamphilj ’s personal rebirth and the possibility of new beginnings is essential participation in the creation of many of these works. Not to all the poetry Pamphilj wrote for Handel and points to jnst a patron, he was an anthor and wrote many orato- the importance this theme had for the cardinal—not, of rio and cantata texts set to mnsic and performed nnder conrse, that any Catholic (or Christian for that matter) his anspices and elsewhere in Italy. Is it possible, given all wonld consider the concept of resnrrection nnimportant this artistic activity, that in 1707 when Pamphilj was fifty- bnt rather that for Pamphilj it appears to have held a spe- three, he had begnn to slow down or to lose some of his cial, and perhaps personal, resonance. earlier passion for or interest in cnltnral endeavors? Connt All members of the literary Arcadian Academy Orazio d’Elci describes the Cardinal in 1700 as having adopted fictional pastoral names. The one Pamphilj chose. given np the “lively Conversations” and “pnblick Actions” Fenicio Farisseo, not only allndes to the phoenix {fenice) to which he had been committed formerly and devoting with its powers of rebirth bnt also specifically to Qneen 189 Ellen T. Elarris 190 Christina of Sweden, in whose honor the Academy had ately recognized when he sat down to play the harpsichord been fonnded, as “the symbolic phoenix nnder whose as either “the famons Saxon [referring to Handel’s birth- inflnence Pamphilj had spent his yonth.”’ Qneen Chris- place in Germanic Saxony] or the Devil. Handel’s first tina was, of conrse, a high-profile Protestant convert to pnblic appearance in Rome was as a performer, and the Catholicism. Pamphilj ’s choice of Arcadian name and its sensation he created snggests that his repntation had pre- relationship to Qneen Christina nnderscore his personal ceded him. Pamphilj seems to have been one of Handel’s identification with the themes of conversion and rebirth. first hosts in Rome, and it may be that Cardinal Erancesco As I have already stated, all of the texts he gave Handel to Maria de’ Medici, a “grande amico” of Cardinal Renedetto set address this theme. Pamphilj, and someone with whom he shared mnsical Handel arrived in Italy sometime between the middle interests, had corresponded abont the yonng German. of 1705 and the end of 1706 at the age of abont twenty. Handel’s earliest pnblic appearance in the Holy He had begnn his professional operatic career a few years City—in Jannary 1707—^was a solo organ recital at Saint earlier, when he moved from Halle (the city of his birth) John Eateran, the ecclesiastical seat of the pope in his role to the cosmopolitan seaport of Hambnrg. There, accord- as Rishop of Rome. Given Handel’s German-Protestant ing eighteenth-centnry reports, he met a Medici prince backgronnd, this was an event that snrely conld not have (not specifically identified, bnt snrely Gian Gastone) who occnrred withont the direct intervention of Pamphilj, who invited him to Italy with the pnrpose of imbibing the mod- had been archpriest of the Eateran since 1699 (a post ern Italian style at its font. Handel declined to travel as he continned to hold nntil his death in 1730). Erancesco part of the prince’s entonrage, however. Using his own Valesio mentions in a diary entry of Jannary 14, 1707, a resonrces he was able to make the jonrney a short time concert at which “nn sassone eccelente sonatore di cem- later “on his own bottom,” as it is phrased by John Main- balo e compositore di mnsica” who had recently arrived waring in a biography of Handel pnblished only a year in Rome and who had that day demonstrated his skill “in after the composer’s death. sonare l’organo nella chiesa di S. Giovanni [Eaterano] con One imagines, given the princely invitation, that stnpore di tntti.”^*^ In an nndated travel memoir (pnblished Handel first went to Elorence, an assnmption now snp- anonymonsly in 1737), Handel is specifically mentioned ported by a letter from one official of the Elorentine conrt by name as having played a recital at Saint John Eat- to another, advising him in October 1707 of Handel’s eran and also, the day before, of playing the clavecin at “retnrning from Rome.”^ As no compositions by Handel a private mnsical gathering with snch astonishing facil- can be placed secnrely in Italy dnring the year and a half ity that some members of the andience thonght he had between mid- 1705 and the beginning of 1707, Handel special magical powers hidden in his hat!^^ This anecdote may have spent this time absorbing the Italian style by adds some weight to an identification of Handel as the stndying, listening, and performing. The operas per- sassone mentioned by Valesio.'^ If so, then his dated diary formed in Elorence in snccessive antnmn seasons dnring entry offers the earliest docnmentary evidence of Handel’s this period certainly comprise many that later served as presence in Rome—some short time before mid-Jannary 1 '^ sonrces for his Eondon operas. It seems as if Handel mnst 1707 . have made a collection of the libretti (little books) that Jnst as Handel’s first pnblic appearance in Saint John were sold at performances and contained the words of Eateran points strongly to the inflnence of Pamphilj, the the operas. His operas Radamisto^ Rodelinda^ Scipione^ first docnmentary evidence of Handel’s mnsical composi- Sosarme^ Ariodante^ and Berenice all derive from texts of tions in Rome can be tied to him as well.'^ An entry in the operas performed in Elorence between 1706 and 1710. cardinal’s acconnt books dated Eebrnary 12, 1707, pro- Handel probably bnilt his repntation in Italy at first vides a detailed bill for copying “di mnsica nella Cantata on virtnoso keyboard playing rather than on his composi- intitolata // delirio amoro^io.