Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

You may wish to see a page on the town and the owners of the palace first.

Ceiling of a ground floor hall portraying Virtues (late XVIth century)

Most of the artists working roughly between 1550 and 1590 practised a formalistic, anti-classical, and anti-naturalistic style, a style of stereotyped formulas, for which the Italians coined the word maniera and which we now call Mannerism without attaching a derogatory meaning to the term. Virtuosity of execution and highly decorative surface qualities go with compositional decentralization and spatial and colouristic complexities; in addition, it is not uncommon that deliberate physical and psychic ambiguities puzzle the beholder. Finally, the intricacies of handling are often matched by the intricacies of content. Many pictures and fresco cycles of the period are obscure and esoteric.
Rudolf Wittkower - Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750 Penguin Books 1958
Mannerism was for long looked down upon as a decadent and anarchic style that simply marked a degeneration of High Renaissance artistic production. But in the 20th century the style came to be appreciated anew for its technical bravura, elegance, and polish. Mannerism's spiritual intensity, its complex and intellectual aestheticism, its experimentation in form, and the persistent psychological anxiety manifested in it made the style attractive and interesting to the modern temperament, which saw affinities between it and modern expressionist tendencies in art.
Encyclopaedia Britannica

Coats of arms at the centre of the ceilings of two ground floor halls: (left) Cardinal Marcantonio Colonna (late XVIth century); (right) Rospigliosi-Pallavicini as Dukes of Zagarolo (after 1670)

The Rospigliosi-Pallavicini replaced the coats of arms of the Colonna Dukes of Zagarolo with their own coats of arms, but they left some of those of Cardinal Marcantonio Colonna (1523-1597), a highly esteemed theologian.

(left) Small fresco in Sala della Bibbia Sistina (ground floor): Cardinal Colonna presenting to the Pope the results of the Commission he presided; (right) lengthy 1723 inscription celebrating the activity of the Commission at Zagarolo

At the death of Pope Sixtus V in 1590 Duke Marzio Colonna endeavoured to promote the appointment of his relative, but the choice of the cardinals fell on Pope Urban VII, who died shortly after his election, and Pope Gregory XIV. The latter appointed Cardinal Colonna and Guilelmo Alano i.e. Cardinal William Allen chairmen of a commission aimed at finalizing the text of the Sistine Bible. The outcome of their work is best known as the Clementine Vulgate because it was issued by Pope Clement VIII in 1592. The inscription was placed by Duke Clemente Domenico Rospigliosi, grandnephew of Pope Clement IX.

Magnanimity in the ceiling of another hall of the ground floor

Before the end of the century four principal tendencies may be differentiated in Rome (..). There was first the facile, decorative manner of the arch-Mannerist Federigo Zuccari, who combined in his art elements from the latest Raphael and from Tuscan and Flemish Mannerism with impressions which had come to him from Veronese and the Venetians. He was the truly international artist of the fin de siécle, constantly travelling from court to court, Olympian in demeanour, prone to esoteric intellectual speculations, superficial and quick in his production. Wittkower
The frescoes of most of the ground floor halls are attributed to painters of the Zuccari school. They were retouched to show the coats of arms of the Rospigliosi, but not to delete the two-tailed mermaids, one of the heraldic symbols of the Colonna.

Detail of the grotesque decoration of another ceiling which shows the columns of the Colonna

One is inclined to believe that this art, which not rarely reveals a hardly veiled licentiousness under the guise of prudery, was suitable to please the refined Italian society. Wittkower
The paintings of Domus Aurea which were discovered at the end of the XVth century greatly influenced the decoration of Renaissance and Mannerist palaces e.g. Loggia di Paolo III at Castel Sant'Angelo and the halls of Biblioteca Vaticana.

Small hunting scene

Landscape painting emerged as a specialized branch during the second half of the sixteenth century. Italians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries admitted the "genre" as legitimate, probably not uninfluenced by the prominence Pliny gave to the work of the Roman landscape painter Studius. But (..) Italians, for the time being at any rate, regarded landscape painting as a pleasant recreation from the more serious business of "high art". Wittkower
Hunting scenes were a popular subject for the decoration of palaces. At the Orsini Barberini palace of Monterotondo they were depicted on large surfaces by Paul Bril, a talented Flemish landscape painter, at approximately the same time as the frescoes at Zagarolo.

Wall fresco depicting Palazzo Rospigliosi Colonna (and an item of a temporary exhibition)

Illusionist architectural painting (quadratura), aimed at extending real architecture into an imaginary space, had existed ever since Peruzzi had "opened up" the Sala delle Colonne in the Villa Farnesina about 1516, but it was not until the second half of the sixteenth century that quadratura really came into its own. Wittkower
A finer illusionist architecture was created some fifty years later at the Doria Pamphilj palace of nearby Valmontone by Gaspard Dughet, a French landscape painter. You may wish to compare the airy ceilings of that building with those at Zagarolo.

Fountain in a small internal courtyard and details of its decoration which is based on the Colonna mermaids

The design by Pirro Ligorio of the gardens of Villa d'Este and in particular of its artificial grottoes was a model which was followed at Zagarolo for a small but very elegant fountain. Similar small fountains can be seen at Palazzo Altemps which was built at the same time as that of Zagarolo. Ligorio based his design on the ideal reconstruction of the monuments of Ancient Rome. In the XVIIIth century similar small fountains were discovered at Herculaneum and Pompeii.

(above) Inscription celebrating Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi on one of the entrance doors when he was vice-chancellor of Sacrae Romanae Ecclesiae in 1625-1632; (below) ceiling of a chapel with the Cardinal's coat of arms in the upper floor

The revenues of the Duchy of Zagarolo and of the other fiefdoms of Marzio Colonna which included Montefortino and Olevano were not high enough to match the expenses he made to embellish the town and the palace. Pierfrancesco, his successor in 1607, inherited many debts and in addition he was a passionate gambler; in 1622 he was forced to sell Zagarolo and Colonna to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Pope Gregory XV who enriched the palace with a gallery for some of his ancient statues. His heirs faced financial difficulties and the Dukedom of Zagarolo was acquired by Giovan Battista Rospigliosi in 1668.

Museo di Roma at Palazzo Braschi: Johan Reder - Rospigliosi Horses and View of Zagarolo (ca 1750) (see some other horses which won races outside Porta Angelica and along Via del Corso)

The cathedral (church) dedicated to Saint Peter is a small circular building of elegant proportion.
Ellis Cornelia Knight - Description of Latium: or, La Campagna di Roma - 1805
Camillo Rospigliosi, grandchild of Giovanni Battista, spent most of his life at Zagarolo and he left the management of the family affairs to his brother. He never married and he devoted himself to horse breeding (see a mane which was born at the Rospigliosi estate of Maccarese). The horses he was most proud of were portrayed in a painting having as background a very fine view of Zagarolo showing the large church of S. Pietro which the Rospigliosi built in 1717-1725. They maybe hoped that the town would become a bishopric see, but this did not happen and Zagarolo continued to be part of the Diocese of Palestrina.

Pensive garden

Palazzo Colonna Rospigliosi was damaged during WWII when it was turned into a military hospital by the Germans and after the war when it provided temporary accommodation to many inhabitants who had lost their homes. In 1979 the building was bought by the City of Zagarolo and a very lengthy process of restoration began.

Main hall of the upper floor

The road passes through the palace of the prince, a very large building with a long suite of apartments. The great hall is worthy attention, on account of its immense size. Over the door is the following inscription, in honour of the grandfather of the present prince: "Quanta sit aula vides; spatium licet occupat ingens, Attamen est animo principis aula minor." (However great this spacious hall we find. Far greater is the noble master's mind). In this palace are several paintings, and, in the billiard-room, portraits of a great number of popes and cardinals. The prince, who used to come hither on hunting-parties while his father lived, inhabited the attics, fitted up with great neatness and simplicity. Knight
The decoration of the upper floor is almost entirely lost. Today it houses a toy museum with some exhibits which are familiar to me.
The image used as background for this page shows the coat of arms of a Rospigliosi cardinal at S. Maria.

Museo del Giocattolo (Toy Museum): a circus toy set

Return to page one.

Introductory page on Ferdinand Gregorovius
Next pages in this walk: Palestrina, Cave, Genazzano, Olevano, Paliano and Anagni
Other walks:
The Ernici Mountains: Ferentino; Frosinone; Alatri; Fiuggi (Anticoli di Campagna); Piglio and Acuto
The Volsci Mountains: Valmontone; Segni; Norma; Cori
On the Latin shores: Anzio; Nettuno and Torre Astura
plus An Excursion to Ardea and An Excursion to Lavinium (Pratica di Mare)
Circe's Cape: Terracina; San Felice
The Orsini Castle in Bracciano
Subiaco, the oldest Benedictine monastery
Small towns near Subiaco: Cervara and Rocca Canterano; Trevi and Filettino.