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At the end of the seventeenth century, the aesthetic role of paintings had become preeminent: landscapes, in all their declinations, and still lifes were the main decorative element of many sale, offering neither religious nor moral instruction. The devotional functions of paintings did not disappear, but such pictures were relegated to bedrooms more consistently than in the first half of the century. This chapter investigates the changes in patterns of display during the seventeenth cen-tury in a range of dwellings; it considers houses of the lesser nobility and other people of means but excludes those of both the lowest and highest levels of roman society. Major collec-tions, as well as those of true connoisseurs, such as Cassiano dal Pozzo, which have been well studied elsewhere, are also beyond the scope of this chapter. The observations in these pages derive largely from the examination of approximately one hundred inventories, spanning the whole seventeenth century, especially those of laymen; the inventories chosen are mostly ordered topographically.4 Most were probate invento-ries, but some were dotal and others were taken on occasion of judicial proceedings.

More than palaces, houses give the impression of having been comfortable places to live. Heated by many fireplaces, they were full of furniture, objects, and musical instru-ments — especially harpsichords, but also spinets, guitars (both “in the Spanish fashion” and Italian), and lutes.5 The largest and wealthiest houses were divided into apartments,

In rome at the end of the cinquecento, members of the lower nobility, minor cler-gymen, professionals, artisans, and shop-keepers owned few if any paintings and

certainly did not collect them. As in renaissance Florence and Venice, their houses might contain a single painting: the Madonna and Child, placed by the side of a bed and used as tabernacle (fig. 33).1 To underline its devotional function, it was often covered by a curtain and lit by a lamp. The same sort of image could also be found in taverns and shops, and there, too, it was usually the only painting. If there were other pictures in a house or tavern, they would have been very few in number and most often of religious subjects, in particular saints. But the situation changed rapidly — in the span of a few decades — and by 1630 far more paintings could be found in many modest dwellings.2 Wealthy gentlemen who were not connoisseurs began to decorate their houses with pictures, often cheap ones of poor quality. They initially bought such paintings out of religious devotion, but their motiva-tions soon changed, and even at the very beginning of the seventeenth century on it can be difficult to know why these people displayed images. For example, why did a sol-dier rent a Pietà, a Saint Francis, and a Saint Catherine for the baptism of his son in 1612?3 To secure an extra measure of divine protection for himself? Or to impress his guests for a day?

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Chapter 6

LESSEr NOBILITY AND OTHEr PEOPLE OF MEANS

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stored in disparate locations. A sala might double as kitchen or as guardaroba; it might include letti a scomparsa (literally, “disappearing beds,” meaning that during the day they would look different) for servants — or, perhaps, for overnight guests, as it seems that people might dine at a friend’s house and then decide at the last minute to spend the night.6 Bedrooms con-tained many chairs and therefore must have been used also for the reception of guests. From a trial record of 1629, it can in fact be documented that a silversmith’s guests admired his paintings and discussed their relative merits, both in his sala and in his bedroom.7

The sala, usually the first room described in an inventory, was also the first that a visitor entered, and it was not neces-sarily the preferred location for displaying pictures. If the dis-position of the house allowed it, a seconda sala, less accessible than the main one, was devoted to this purpose, especially in the first decades of the century. Accordingly, the walls of these seconde sale were often left free from leather hangings and fabrics. These spaces were more private than a sala that was used also as an entrance hall; for that reason, the practice of exhibiting secular and religious images together — identi-fied in many treatises as inappropriate — was regarded as less offensive in a seconda sala than in a main one.8 Preferably, a seconda sala would be located on the ground floor and would open onto a garden; occasionally, it was called a galleria (if it contained statues and, presumably, if it was of the right shape) or a loggia.9 Containing fireplaces, chairs, tables, birdcages, and musical instruments, seconde sale give the impression of having been much lived in by the family, in addition to being reception rooms. In a house where a seconda sala existed, the main one might contain no pictures at all, or just a few — for example, family portraits or portraits of popes and cardinals. Where there was only one sala, the characteristics of the two types of rooms merged.

Some of the residences examined here included only a sala and a bedroom, but many of the houses had more than one bedroom, a separate kitchen, and perhaps a guardaroba.

each assigned to a different family member, or to servants. Each apartment usually occupied a whole floor; and some-times the piano nobile was not the second floor but the first or, more rarely, the third. In humbler dwellings, which usually were not divided into apartments, there was often at least a distinction between the spaces for men and those for women. The latter can be recognized by the presence of low chairs, cots for children, silk for embroidering, and other items simply called bagattelle da donne (trivial things for women).

These residences were overcrowded and therefore rather chaotic, with rooms serving multiple functions and objects

fig. 33. Vittore Carpaccio (Italian, 1455–1525). Ursula and Her Father, detail of The Arrival of the Ambassadors of English Prince Ereo, ca. 1494, oil on canvas, entire artwork: 275 × 589 cm (108 1⁄4 × 231 9⁄10 in.). Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, cat. 572.

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nor fabrics, nor corami.12 In a few salette da pranzo, there was a painting of the Madonna, or a Madonna with saints, which might be kept covered by a curtain, presumably so they would not witness an act as mundane as eating.13 In many other houses, the main sala was used for dining, and where this was the case the table would be removed after meals. In the second half of the century, inventories also listed antechambers; these were situated literally before the bedroom, not before an audi-ence room, as in palaces.14

In the early seicento, the walls of many rooms were covered with expensive corami (fig. 34). These were in bright, almost vio-lent colors, with red and turquoise, or green and yellow, or gold and silver common combinations.15 rooms in a sequence were usually decorated in alternating color schemes. Corami slowly gave way to satin wall hangings — still in bright colors — but

rarely was there a study. An engraved portrait of the Jesuit cardinal roberto Bellarmino, executed in 1594, shows us a scholar’s study: a portrait of Ignatius of Loyola (well before his canonization) is on the wall and a small painting of the Annunciation is on Bellarmino’s desk. Evidently, not all stud-ies belonged to scholars; in the inventories of some, few or no books are listed — and, curiously, in 1696 a fishmonger had a studio with eleven paintings.10 In a few early seicento trials, studi di pittura are mentioned. Apparently spaces where col-lections were assembled, these were perhaps not meant to be permanent, as they belonged to minor professionals active in the art trade.11 Especially in the first half of the century, many dining rooms (salette da pranzo) were described in invento-ries. These were small spaces: they had chairs, a table, and a washstand and were otherwise empty, with neither pictures,

fig. 34. Qui la pietosa madre di nascosto. From La vita del lascivo (Venice, [ca. 1660]). Milan, Civica raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, Castello Sforzesco.

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fresco of Dawn, and an inn painted with friezes by a gilder.17 The latter were perhaps cheap imitations of those painted in the early seicento by gilders in the Quirinal or in the Palazzo della Cancelleria.18 They employ an abundance of gold and consist of putti and grotesques in a spiral-acanthus-leaf motif.

The cheapest furniture in roman houses was made of white poplar (albuccio); walnut was slightly more expensive, but not by much. The truly costly wood was ebony, which was some-times inlaid with ivory. It was often used for studioli, small cabinets usually placed on tables or other furniture that were often of fanciful shapes and whose many drawers served to store everyday objects (see Walker, chapter 3).19 Tables were usually covered by carpets, silk, leather, or cloth, as depicted in many paintings of the time (fig. 35; see also fig. 41). Many pieces of furniture were painted, most often in red, thus con-tributing to the creation of colorful and showy spaces. The seats of chairs might be made of leather or upholstered in red velvet. Chests, some carved or gilded, and cupboards for stor-age could be found in every kind of room.

Sculptures, such as statues, statuettes, and bas-reliefs, were uncommon in roman middle-rank dwellings. While terra-cotta bas-reliefs of the Madonna and Child must have been ubiquitous in houses in renaissance Florence, they were nonexistent in this sort of house in rome, where statues, stat-uettes, and bas-reliefs were uncommon. When present, small-scale sculptures tended to represent mythological or secular rather than religious subjects, because the association of stat-uary with pagan deities and with antiquity in general always remained strong in the city.20 Crucifixes made of metal, or metal and wood, were far more common than painted Cruci-fixions — and were kept in bedrooms, as were prie-dieux. Dec-orative objects included marble balls on pedestals and small obelisks, sometimes topped by religious images — obviously, diminutive versions of those erected by Pope Sixtus V. Silk flowers and fruits made of wax and kept in baskets could be found, making one wonder about the relationship between these objects and the increasing popularity of still life canvases.

by the end of the century, many walls seem to have been left bare of leather or silk. Thus, a strong and costly component of display, one usually worth much more than the paintings, all but disappeared over time. residents showed no qualms about hanging paintings on the leather, a background that was far from neutral. In bedrooms, though rarely in living rooms, paintings also seem to have been hung on silk. Portiere (door hangings), which always matched the fabric or the leather on the walls, were lined with cloth in vivid colors, especially red; they, too, went out of fashion at the end of the century. Beds were often pavilions or poster beds with a walnut frame — that is, enclosed spaces surrounded by expensive fabrics coordinated with the colors of the walls (see fig. 34).16 An image of the Madonna might be embroidered on the headboard. Subtle har-monies of pale colors were definitely not used for beds either; rather, they were decorated using iridescent silk or velvet in strongly contrasting colors such as green and orange.

It is impossible to say how fresco decoration complemented the display in middle-rank residences, as almost nothing is known about it. There are only a few scattered mentions of houses or inns with frescoes; these include a house with a blue ceiling highlighted with gold stars, another with a ceiling

fig. 35. Carlo Francesco Nuvolone (Italian, 1609–62) and Anonymous. Still Life with Ecce Homo by Correggio, ca. 1650, oil on canvas, dimensions unknown. Milan, private collection.

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worth more than many paintings. Glass mirrors were small and round. The landscapes by Goffredo Wals, painted on tiny circular copper plates, were called “mirrors of nature” for this very reason, as they pretended to be merely reflections of real-ity. Figure 35 shows (in the background) the representation of a circular landscape in an interior.

By 1630, there were many people, who can perhaps be defined as “ordinary collectors,” who owned around twenty to thirty paintings; the number of paintings could vary widely among individuals, but rarely exceeded sixty or sev-enty. Dealers might have many more paintings — even several hundred — and as the century progressed there were individ-ual owners and merchants who possessed larger numbers of pictures.27 When valued in these inventories, paintings were worth relatively little, no more than 10 to 15 scudi, and usu-ally much less, with some noticeable exceptions. Their owners seem to have followed patterns of display somewhat differ-ent from those of major collectors: they generally did not purchase multifigure narratives, which were expensive, and focused instead on pictures executed in series, which, because they were rather repetitive, could be produced quickly and cheaply.28 At the beginning of the century, the multifigure compositions that appeared most frequently in these houses (and more often than in major collections) were scenes from the life of Christ, such as the Last Supper, the Nativity, or the Adoration of the Magi.

Paintings in general were seen as capable of stirring pow-erful human emotions, especially lust and piety.29 Therefore, curtains would be placed over devotional or miraculous images to protect their power and over erotic ones to protect viewers. An extraordinary letter by Artemisia Gentileschi testifies to the potency of the latter kind: she exhorts her lover not to masturbate in front of the self-portrait she had sent him.30 Storms could instill fear in the beholder, while peaceful land-scapes or seascapes could soothe.31 Treatises often insisted on the separation between sacred and profane images, as if the represented figures embodied their prototypes. Saints should

In the seicento, the word quadro had a much broader definition than simply “painting,” which is what it means today. In the 1600s, a “painting” could be “di carta,” mean-ing an image painted on paper, or it could be an engraving or a drawing. Drawings were usually framed and hung and were sometimes covered in order to protect them: only major collectors, merchants, and artists owned bound volumes of drawings. In a few instances, it can be hypothesized that a painting and its preparatory drawing were exhibited in the same room, especially in merchants’ houses — for example, the brothers Giacomo and Stefano Petit owned The Mira-cles of Saint Peter, an expensive canvas by Guercino, and a small drawing of the same subject, also by Guercino.21 Archi-tects would frame architectural drawings.22 Quadri di carta, which became much rarer toward the settecento, on occasion could be conspicuous objects: for example, at least three large engravings, composed of multiple sheets and published by Philip Thomassin, were displayed in a black frame on the walls of a French doughnut maker in 1627. Among them was the Fall of the Rebel Angels after Giovanni Battista ricci da Novara, measuring 160 by 115 centimeters.23

Framed embroideries, usually of religious scenes and most often Annunciations or Agnus Dei, were displayed among the paintings. They could also represent flowers or land-scapes, and their equivalence to pictures is well attested by an entry in Cardinal Camillo Massimo’s 1677 inventory: “Four small landscapes, two embroidered, one by Claude, one by Goffredo [Wals].”24 Occasionally, from the 1630s, framed quadri in piatto (occasionally even broken ones) were hung on walls. These were majolica plates decorated with land-scapes or narratives scenes, sometimes derived from compo-sitions of famous painters such as raphael.25 Mirrors, large and small, were extremely common throughout the century. They were meant not to reflect people — they were placed too high for that — but rather to reflect the room’s whole deco-ration, including its lights.26 Whereas paintings could be left unframed, large metal mirrors had imposing frames and were

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The saints most frequently depicted in roman houses were Jerome, Francis, John the Baptist, the Magdalen, the two Catherines (of Alexandria and of Siena), Cecilia, Sebastian (but not roch), and Charles Borromeo — the last two because of their role as protectors against the plague. Peter and Paul, patron saints of rome, were also much in favor. While Saint Charles Borromeo was venerated immediately after his canon-ization in 1610, the saints canonized in 1622 met with less favor, apart from Phillip Neri, the only Italian among them, who became a common presence from the 1640s. Saint Teresa and Saint Isidore were almost never represented, and the other two Spanish saints, Francis Xavier and Ignatius were represented only slightly more often.37 Some collectors owned at least one painting of the patron saint of their profession; in particular, barbers and surgeons might display paintings of Saint Cos-mas and Saint Damian.38 Very few people owned an image of their name saint, unless it happened to be a very popular one. At least until 1650, almost every minor collector had his or her own portrait painted, occasionally along with that of a spouse or other close relatives, indicating that these people not only bought readymade pictures but also commissioned them. Such portraits could be full length and were often prominently displayed in the sala, but family portraits were also placed in a bedroom. The marchese Muzio del Bufalo, who owned only inexpensive paintings, kept just one picture in his sala in 1625: his own youthful portrait.39 In 1631, Anna Paini, a woman for whom the concept of display was expressed mostly via a vast array of expensive dresses, kept in her sala a portrait of herself in the guise of a (possibly naked) standing nymph.40 While it was not the only painting in the space, it overwhelmed all oth-ers in size and cost. Even though there is no way of knowing for certain, it is tempting to speculate that a painting meant to stand out so forcefully would have been placed in the most prominent position in the room, opposite the entrance, in order to immediately capture the attention of a visitor. In the latter half of the century, exhibiting one’s own portrait ceased to be absolutely essential. Still, many people commissioned

not be displayed together with laymen, especially dishonest ones, and they should not be hung where games of cards or dice took place or where blasphemies were uttered.32 Emper-ors and vile people should not be shown together. In practice, though, very little heed was paid to these recommendations.

At the beginning of the seicento, paintings were displayed mostly in bedrooms. Not only religious images but also por-traits, landscapes, and all sorts of subjects could be kept there, while the sala might be bare of paintings. In more than a few bedrooms, and certainly not only those belonging to prosti-tutes, erotic subjects mingled with the devotional, thus reflect-ing the various functions of the room. Only more devout people kept exclusively religious images in the bedroom, and these were rarely the most valuable in a house. When sale started to be decorated with paintings, they often housed a combination of religious and secular images; it was not until the end of the century that they contained mostly secular images, as recommended by the physician and art collector Giulio Mancini.33

Copies of miraculous Madonnas (especially those in Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Maria del Popolo) and other Byz-antine icons (the “Madonna alla greca” and the Volto Santo, or Mandylion — the portrait of Christ believed to have been taken from life and to have a divine origin) were very popular in rome; after 1640, the Madonna of the rosary also appeared frequently. The strong belief in the miracle-working powers of the originals of these images extended to their replicas.34 Pro-portionally, they were more numerous in houses than in pal-aces. representations of the Ecce Homo were widespread, and possibly modeled after Correggio’s famous work (now in the National Gallery, London, acc. no. NG 15), which was copied in at least one shop in rome, that of the painter Domenico Angelini.35 Evidently considered a particularly stirring image, an Ecce Homo is shown covered by a curtain in an interesting still life in a private collection in Milan, which in all likelihood represents a roman interior, as indicated by the Barberini bee on the carpet (see fig. 35).36

fig. 36. Giovanni Orlandi (Italian, act. 1590–1640). Series of sibyls, 1602, etching, 33.5 × 46.5 cm (13 1⁄4 × 18 1⁄4 in.). Milan, Civica raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, Castello Sforzesco.

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fashionable to display together many paintings of flowers of the same format, occasionally identified as “by Mario” (no doubt Mario Nuzzi, called Mario dei Fiori).

Series of apostles were common in the first half of the cen-tury, perhaps even before they started to appear in major col-lections — for example, the merchant Bernandino recanati was selling a whole set before 1611.43 Pictures of the apostles might be completed by an image of the Savior, or, more rarely, by one of the Madonna: like Jusepe de ribera’s series of apos-tles, those in ordinary households were presumably half-fig-ures. Even more popular were series of sibyls; these were usually a group of twelve half-figures derived from engravings. In 1586, Claude Duchet published such a set of sibyls in profile in rome; the set was reissued in 1602 by Giovanni Orlandi (fig. 36).44 Interestingly, series of sibyls could be found in ordinary households earlier than the single figures painted for

portraits, including a Francesco Suprafais, who kept in his sala both a portrait of himself and a large painting of Saint Francis, his name saint, as shown in his inventory of 1693.41

Paintings of the Four Seasons, often used as overdoors, were ubiquitous from the 1610s on, mostly in living rooms. Occa-sionally, they can be identified as landscapes after prototypes by the Bassano family, but in some cases they seem to have been still lifes or perhaps allegorical figures, such as those by Bartolomeo Manfredi.42 By the 1640s, they had almost dis-appeared, largely replaced by landscapes and seascapes with-out any subject or theme. As in major collections, all sorts of landscapes became common, including bambocciate (genre scenes of everyday life), battle scenes, and architectural paint-ings. Paintings of fruits gained wide popularity, and those of flowers were even more popular. Sometimes canvases of fruits and flowers could be pendants, but it became even more

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as Cecilia or the Magdalen. Sometimes Venus was added to this group of women, leaving no doubt that their appeal was at least vaguely erotic. Indeed, the Magdalen, Lucretia, and Susanna were considered dangerous subjects, and a Venus and satyr were positively sinful.47 Many men — and many courte-sans — owned series of these heroines, and they can be found from the very beginning to the very end of the century. The Magdalen, occasionally described as half-naked; Judith, tra-ditionally interpreted as the Victory of Virtue over Vice; and Lucretia, often defined with a touch of civic pride as “romana,” were ever present, in a strange ensemble that combined saints with figures from the Old Testament and from history. Paint-ings of Venus, or Venus and a satyr, could be found both in bedrooms and sale, occasionally covered by a curtain (and in one early instance together with portraits of women).48 In 1663, a large painting of a naked woman seems to have been prominent in the sala of Vincenzo Candido, while rep-resentations of bacchanals, presumably after Titian, were also common. Sometimes a painting of Flora, who in addition to being the goddess of spring was associated with courtesans, was shown among them.49 The Bath of Diana, along with the story of Acteon or the episode of the discovery of Callisto’s pregnancy, was often represented, to the exclusion of nearly all other mythological subjects.

A careful examination of subjects, sizes, and frames in inven-tories reveals that paintings were displayed as pairs or groups more often than generally realized and that some pairings recurred frequently.50 Pairs are often separated by one or more entries in inventories, suggesting that they were not placed next to each other but rather were arranged symmetrically around other pictures. Saint Martha was almost never shown without the Magdalen, and the Magdalen was also often paired with Saint Charles Borromeo, probably because the trait of humil-ity was associated with both of them. Saints Peter and Paul were usually pendants, and Saint John the Baptist was often shown with Judith, presumably because both stories involved a beheading. For the same reason, Judith was sometimes a

famous collectors by Domenichino, Guercino, and Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi could be found in palaces.45 In Tom-maso rusconi’s house in 1693, a series of the twelve apostles and Christ were hung in one room, and a series of twelve sibyls were hung in another.46 The function of these rooms, which contained no other images, is unclear, and they reflected ear-lier fashions, no longer current by the 1690s.

Perhaps sibyls were popular because they provided view-ers an opportunity to gaze at pretty women; certainly, some female saints were painted for that reason. representations of virtuous heroines shown partially nude or in alluring poses, such as Cleopatra, Judith, Lucretia, and Susanna, were wide-spread, and these were often displayed along with saints such

fig. 37. Copy after Orazio Gentileschi (Italian, 1563–1639). David Contemplating the Head of Goliath, ca. 1640?, oil on slate, 32 × 22 cm (12 5⁄8 × 8 5⁄8 in.). Milan, Quadreria Arcivescovile.

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the late seventeenth century, analogous narrative subjects were also paired, even though the relationship between them might have been tenuous: “a judgment of Solomon and the [a?] judg-ment of the two brothers,” “a bath of Diana and another bath with small figures naked,” “Saint John the Baptist preaching in the desert, Saint Anthony preaching to fishes,” “a flight into Egypt . . . Joseph fleeing the queen.”54

The habit of hanging pictures in pairs or groups suggests that in terms of composition and meaning many canvases cannot be fully appreciated when examined individually.55 For instance, an inventory of 1625 emphasizes, certainly not by chance, that in a painting of Cleopatra and another of a nymph and satyr the female figures were both dressed — or rather undressed — in a similar fashion: clothed up to the waist.56 In Bartolomeo Barzi’s rooms in 1645, many pictures were meant to be seen as an ensemble — not only landscapes and still lifes, large and small, but also some figure paintings. For example, two paintings by Angelo Caroselli, measuring 5 by 4 palmi (111.7 by 89.36 centimeters), one representing Italy crowned by Peace and the other representing Queen Esther, were disposed around a Solomon and the Queen of Sheba measuring 9 by 4 palmi (201.06 by 89.36 centimeters) by the same artist.57 Three canvases by Benedetto Fioravanti, each depicting a table on which was displayed a small painting, decorated the same room. In the larger one, measuring 10 by 7 palmi (223.4 by 156.38 centimeters), the painting within the painting was a landscape by Jan Both; in the two slightly smaller canvases (which were of the same size) the fictive paintings depicted Santa Maria Maggiore and the Madonna sewing, the latter perhaps a diminutive copy of Guido reni’s famous altarpiece in the chapel in the Quirinal Palace (for an example of Fioravanti’s work, see fig. 41).58

The only valuable paintings in the house of the wealthy judiciary official Mattia Spada in 1636 were also meant to be seen together. There were six of them in his bedroom, all with the same frame, and all by Giovanni Baglione. One was a Madonna, three represented a single saint, one showed Saint

pendant of David, the only male figure from the Old Testa-ment to appear frequently in these households, as shown by two small copies on slate after Orazio and Artemisia Gentiles-chi, now in the Quadreria Arcivescovile in Milan (figs. 37, 38).51

Landscapes and still lifes were rarely displayed individually, but Cassiano dal Pozzo’s famous statement that architectural paintings were to be hung among two landscapes cannot be confirmed from these inventories.52 Views of the country-side were juxtaposed with rocky seascapes, and paintings of flowers with others of fruits, as mentioned above. Still lifes of fruit, but not of flowers, might be paired with others showing game, especially birds.53 Oval or octagonal canvases, on which flowers were often represented, were usually part of a set. In

fig. 38. Copy after Artemisia Gentileschi (Italian, 1593–1651/53). Judith Slaying Holophernes, ca. 1640?, oil on slate, 32 × 22 cm (12 5⁄8 × 8 5⁄8 in.). Milan, Quadreria Arcivescovile.

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painter Giovanni Antonio Galli, nicknamed Spadarino, and two silversmiths, Francesco Martinelli and Alessandro Don-zetti.67 Both silversmiths owned paintings and drawings by the Cavaliere d’Arpino (Giuseppe Cesari). Spadarino offered to paint a picture that would compare well and harmonize with those by the Cavaliere owned by Martinelli — therefore he must have been conscious of painting a work in response to existing compositions. The trial confirms Baglione’s statement that the Cavaliere worked for persone mediocri (ordinary peo-ple), and it shows that Spadarino did, too.

In addition to the Cavaliere and Spadarino, a few other painters seem to have been favored by the kind of minor col-lectors examined in this chapter, presumably because they were willing to reproduce their composition endlessly and could therefore sell them more cheaply. In the early decades of the century, the names of Agostino Tassi for landscapes, Manciola (Vincent Adriaenssen) for battles, Tommaso Salini and Mario dei Fiori (Mario Nuzzi) for still lifes, and Ottavio Leoni for portraits recur in inventories that list mostly anonymous pic-tures. Giacinto Brandi, Andrea Camassei, Angelo Caroselli, Michelangelo Cerquozzi, Gaspard Dughet, and Salvator rosa are mentioned, too, but there are also names and nicknames no longer recognizable, such as Cemmi, or il Sardo, who should perhaps be identified with the Flemish painter Michael Sweerts.68 The Gentileschi, father and daughter, are rarely mentioned, even though early in their careers they painted exactly the sorts of subjects popular in these collections, such as female heroines, David, and sibyls. Annibale Carracci and Guido reni were ever popular, and so were Correggio, raphael, and Titian, but because of their high valuations, their works were present mostly as copies (and were not always iden-tified as such). Originals by Pietro da Cortona, as well as copies after him, are nearly absent from these households.

There is almost no evidence that can help us visualize the display of pictures in seventeenth-century rome. Paintings of galleries, both imaginary and realistic, did exist well before Giovanni Paolo Panini created his celebrated views of roman

Phillip Neri and Saint Francis Xavier, and the last depicted Saint Martha and the Magdalen.59 The canvas with the two male saints was an overdoor; it would be interesting to know if the painting of Saint Martha and the Magdalen was placed in a corresponding position.

Major collectors were also interested in displaying paintings in pairs or sets, as could be shown by numerous examples. Antiveduto Gramatica painted two pairs of the same sub-jects, one for Cardinal Alessandro Montalto and one for the physician Michele Mercati, each composed of a Europa and a Hercules spinning thread.60 The canvases, which were not closely related in terms of their iconography, must have com-plemented each other in terms of their composition. Cardinal Federico Borromeo intended Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit to be displayed against another basket by a different artist, but he gave up on the idea because “none could match its beauty and incomparable excellence”61; Scipione Borghese set his paint-ing of Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder against another Eve with a similar format by Andrea del Brescianino.62 Ludovico Cigoli was commissioned to paint the Ecce Homo (now in the Galleria Palatina in Florence) as a pendant “a posteriori” of a Caravaggio already belonging to Cardinal Massimo Mas-simi.63 In 1627, the nobleman Gianluigi Bolognetti juxtaposed two sibyls, one by Orazio and one by Artemisia Gentileschi.64 As is well known, most of Claude Lorrain’s landscapes were conceived as pendants.65 When the pictures in a pair were by different artists, comparisons must have been inevitable, sug-gesting that there was a significant degree of sophistication on the owner’s’ part. Since most of the inventories examined here carry few if any attributions, it is difficult to assess how often paintings by different artists were paired in ordinary collectors’ houses. Occasionally, as in Bartolomeo Barzi’s rooms, one can see associations between painters such as Lorrain, Agostino Tassi, and Paul Bril, which possibly implied that there was a competition between pupil and master.66 An interesting tes-timony about this concept of comparison and rivalry emerges from the trial of 1629, already mentioned, which involved the

fig. 39. Federico Agnelli (Italian, 1626–1702), after Curzio Castagna (Italian). A Venetian courtesan having her portrait painted in the guise of an Amazon. From La vita e miseranda fine della puttana (Milan, [after 1650]), 6. Milan, Civica raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, Castello Sforzesco.

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galleries, but they have largely disappeared (see fig. 42 for one such painting by Tassi).69 A few spaces belonging to major col-lectors, such as the galleria of Asdrubale Mattei, can be recon-structed to a certain extent, but it is impossible to reconstruct the displays in the kind of dwellings examined here.70 In some spaces, paintings seem to have been hung in a rather haphaz-ard fashion, as in the sala of the baker Joannes Smit, who must have been a rather pious man as he displayed only religious images. Before 1626, the most popular subjects at the time (a Madonna of Santa Maria Maggiore, another Madonna, an Ecce Homo, Saint Sebastian, Saint Cecilia, Saint Martha, the Magdalen, and five sibyls), were displayed in Smit’s sala, apparently without a carefully thought out visual relation among them. Instead, other arrangements seem to have been deliberately created for maximum visual impact. A sala might display a lone portrait of the owner or a single representation of a gypsy.71 It might be dominated by a set of the twelve

apostles or the twelve sibyls — two subjects that were usually placed in living rooms. For example, the sala of Paolo Varo, a wealthy roman nobleman with a very limited appreciation of painting was, in 1635, decorated with only his portrait and twelve sibyls, hung on corami of silver and gold.72 Giacomo Orsi, the painter Prospero Orsi’s brother, kept only a set of the Four Seasons in his living room in 1625.73

In the sala of the silk merchant Camillo Curti, two separate series — one of the apostles and Christ, and one of the sea-sons74 — presumably occupied different positions on the walls in 1629, with the seasons placed over the doors. In an engrav-ing that shows the Venetian house of a courtesan, a series of military commanders is displayed over the doors (portraits are never seen in rome in this position), while a painting of a nymph and satyr is prominently displayed in the center of the wall (fig. 39).75 Confirming the obsession with portraiture revealed by roman inventories, the courtesan is having her

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portrait painted in the guise of an Amazon: this was there-fore a public portrait, destined for her sala.76 Furniture placed against the walls could be pulled toward the center of the room when needed; therefore, each painting had to have a well-defined position above a chair or table: neither could be easily rearranged, because the relative heights of painting and furniture would no longer match (see fig. 40, which also shows a Venetian interior). Though scant, there is some evidence in

inventories to indicate that paintings were placed above fur-niture in rome as well, and this is confirmed in a drawing by Agostino Tassi where a landscape is hung over a table in a very modest household, perhaps his own.77 Paintings sometimes were hung on mantelpieces (or perhaps simply above fire-places).78 Small paintings — of religious subjects, or portraits, or small landscapes — were also displayed on tables or other pieces of furniture. 79

fig. 40. Dalla tavola al gioco il. From La vita del lascivo (Venice, [ca. 1660]), 9. Milan, Civica raccolta delle Stampe Achille Bertarelli, Castello Sforzesco.

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As noted above, a large standing portrait of the owner was often a feature of roman sale, and it was sometimes paired with a portrait of an illustrious personage such as the pope. The police captain Giovanni Manciati paired his own por-trait with that of Urban VIII as a declaration of allegiance to the pope under whom he was serving. One or two large vertical portraits could be placed in somewhat incongruous company — for instance, among still lifes or battles (and these were the categories that Giulio Mancini thought appropri-ate for public rooms).80 In Bartolomeo Barzi’s sala, a huge seated portrait of Urban VIII, painted by Benedetto Fioravanti

and Andrea Camassei and measuring almost 3 by 2 meters, hung together with landscapes and still lifes, some of which were also very large.81 In the early decades of the century, the arrangement of two vertical paintings dominating a space decorated with many pictures seems to have been relatively common. In 1612, Cosimo Quorli, who was guaradrobiere of the papal palace, had in his gallery pictures of Saint Cecilia and Saint Susanna that may have faced each other on the short walls; both paintings were framed in gold and were of the same size (over 2 meters high).82 In 1617, Antonio Maria Bertucci displayed in his living room two paintings that were

fig. 41. Benedetto Fioravanti (Italian, act. ca. 1650–1700). Still-life, before 1654, oil on canvas, 50.5 × 66 cm (19 4⁄5 × 26 in.). rome, Collezione Principi Colonna.

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larger than the others: a David slaying Goliath, and an Ecce Homo with a cane.83 These might have been vertical canvases, as both subjects were often represented in this format. Ber-tucci, a pigment seller, was a friend of Orazio Gentileschi, and there is at least a possibility that his David was conceived along the lines of the early painting by Orazio of David and Goli-ath.84 In 1643, Domenico Laisati hung in his sala, where he kept his most valuable pictures, a music-making Saint Cecilia and a Magdalen, each worth 10 scudi and of the same vertical format (3 by 1.4 meters).

Much emphasis was placed on overdoors, which could be framed or unframed. When an inventory describes only a few pictures in a room, they were often overdoors; in the gen-tleman Marcantonio Toscanella’s guardaroba, paintings over the doors depicted the Magdalen and Saint Catherine, and in Giovanni Manciati’s sala they depicted Saint Charles and the Magdalen.85 Sometimes an overdoor would suggest the function of the adjacent room, as in Giulio Donati’s house in 1644, where a “painting of night with seven figures” led to a bedroom. A matching painting of the same subject was placed over a door leading to the courtyard, in order to create a symmetrical arrangement.86 In the second half of the cen-tury, similar overdoors were placed in different rooms, thus creating a recurring motif that implied movement through space. In the glassmaker Filippo Cangiani’s house, according to a 1667 inventory, two doors in two separate rooms were decorated with battles of the same size;87 in that of Giuseppe Capocaccia in 1694, all the overdoors were landscapes by Jan de Momper from Antwerp, who painted many other pictures in the house.88 No subject is mentioned, but one can imagine that these works were similar to those by the same artist in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj that cost less than a scudo each.89 In Bartolomeo Barzi’s sala and adjoining room were two match-ing paintings, whose unusual size, 8 by 2 palmi (208 by 52 centimeters), suggests they were also overdoors. One repre-sented a “cage with chickens, dogs, and ducks” and the other “hanging hares, rooster and hens.”90 Their association could be

appreciated only when walking through the house, a concept that seems to have been completely absent from the arrange-ments fashionable at the beginning of the century.

Thus, in a hundred years, the display in the sort of house-holds examined here changed considerably: walls were no longer hung with expensive fabric or leather in bright colors, the number of paintings increased, and pictures became more decorative. Landscapes and still lifes became predominant, and even a portrait of the owner was no longer seen as an absolute necessity. Prints and paintings on paper were rarer around 1700 then at the beginning of the 1600s, while works of sculpture, in any size or medium, were always scarce.

Even before major collectors did so, minor ones showed a preference for paintings without a subject and for paintings that could be appreciated simply for the aesthetic value of what they depicted. representations of feminine beauties, in particu-lar, even if disguised as the Magdalen, were especially popular.

In part because of cost, in these households paintings with a single figure were preferred to multifigure ones. Series of paint-ings — of not only sibyls, apostles, and heroines but also land-scapes, still lifes, and seasons — were more frequent in houses than in palaces: therefore, there was often less variety on the wall of a house. From the inventories examined in this study, it is evident that, in many instances, paintings were arranged in order to echo one another. They could be displayed symmet-rically on a wall, arranged around another picture, or placed on opposite walls. The focus of a whole room could be on a single painting, such as a full-scale portrait of the owner. In palaces, too, carefully thought out patterns of display can be detected, but these schemes are often more clearly recogniz-able in smaller dwellings. In any case, minor collectors did not always follow the trends set by major ones: taste, cost, and availability on the market could dictate different choices.

lesser nobility and other people of means

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