Rediscovering a Baroque Villa in Rome

Rediscovering a Baroque Villa in Rome: Cardinal Patrizi and the Villa Patrizi 1715-1909 draws on a large body of archival material to reconstruct in detail the creation of the Villa Patrizi outside Porta Pia from 1715 to 1727 and its afterlife. This material includes building documentation, inventories, and above all the letters written by Cardinal Giovanni Batista Patrizi, papal legate in Ferrara, to his brothers in Rome, both dilettante artist-architects. These letters provide a unique insight into the decision-making processes involved in such a large-scale enterprise, in particular the hiring of artists and the decoration of individual rooms. These rooms included a Gallery inspired by the Galleria Colonna, a romitorio, or fictive hermitage, a Mirror Room anticipating those created later in the century, and one of the first Chinoiserie interiors in Rome. The Villa Patrizi emerges as perhaps the most important secular project in the barocchetto manner, a distinct design sensibility prevalent in the early decades of the eighteenth century that was oriented towards modern taste (to be found in Northern Italy and France), as opposed to the antiquarianism of Cardinal Albani, whose Villa Albani it faced across the valley. The book demonstrates the crucial role played by Giovanni Paolo Panini, later famous as a painter of capricci and Roman views, not only as a painter of the frescoes that decorated many of the rooms, but also as co-ordinator of the design of the more adventurous interiors, and his progress from employee to friend and collaborator of the family. We follow the fluctuating fortunes of the main building (the Casino) and its surroundings: from the terraces, gardens, and vigna of the original villa, through the acquisition of the Villa Bolognetti next door and the creation of one of the finest English-style gardens of nineteenth-century Rome, the almost complete destruction of the villa and grounds in 1849, its subsequent rebuilding to the same design, the subdivision of the garden in the building frenzy following unification in 1870, through to the demolition of the Casino in 1909 and the levelling of the site. Embedded in the dominant narrative of the construction and destruction of the villa are the lives of the individual members of the Patrizi family (including the women): their marriages, alliances, and their preoccupation with succession and inheritance. We learn how a Roman family organised itself between its principal residences: the Villa Patrizi outside Porta Pia, the Palazzo Patrizi palace opposite the church of S. Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, and the palace at Castel Giuliano. The wealth of evidence that is drawn upon provides a unique insight into the motivations of Cardinal Patrizi and his brothers, who was preoccupied with the signs of status appropriate to a cardinal, the constraints of etiquette, and above all his desire to leave a building that would enhance the status of his family, and would be a blessing and not a burden on those who come after me'.