Adventures in the Barberini Archives

ISTITUTO ITALIANO PER GLI STUDI FILOSOFICI BIBLIOTHECA HERTZIANA, MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FUR KUNSTGESCHICHTE

SOPRINTENDENZA PER IL POLO MUSEALE ROMANO SOPRINTENDENZA PER I BENI ARCHITETTONICI E PER IL PAESAGGIO DI ROMA

QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY - KINGSTON INSTITUT EUROPÉEN D'HISTOIRE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE DES LETTRES - RESPUBLICA LITERARIA

I BARBERINI E LA CULTURA EUROPEA

DEL SEICENTO

per cura di

Lorenza Mochi Onori Sebastian Schi.itze Francesco Solinas

Adventures in the Barberini Archives

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin

The word "theatrical" is often used to characterize the art of the seventeenth century and of Gian Lorenzo Bernini in par­ticular, and my husband, Irving Lavin, who found this usage anachronistic in the extreme, carne to Italy in 1961 as a Senior Fulbright Scholar to investigate this anomaly. His proposal was to study the character of Baroque theatrical productions with­in their historical context rather than our own. Basing his re­search on the undocumented suggestions of Anthony Blunt about the Barberini theater 1, o ne of his first moves was t o so­licit permission from Prince Urbano Barberini to ascertain the dates of the building by consulting originai family archival ma­teria! housed since the early twentieth century in the Bibliote­ca Apostolica Vaticana. As the archive was not catalogued, no one had ever consulted it in an organized fashion. Don Urbano graciously granted the petition, and armed with an officiallet­ter, Irving applied to the authorities in the Manu-

down the long path, from the Museo to the Manuscript Room of the library. The following day, much to Irving's surprise, be was supplied with a number of manuscripts that fit his de­scription. One of these was a Libro Mastro that contained ref­erences to all the theater documents he was seeking: perform­ances had taken place in Cardinal Francesco's ante-chamber from 1632 on, and the separate structure based on Pietro da Cortona's earlier designs, was complete in 1639 (fig. l) 2 .

However, the Libro Mastro was only one of three books that carne down that morning, the other two being inventories of household belongings. That afternoon Irving carne to me with an offer and a warning. He asked: how would you like to find the documentation for all the works of art commissioned and owned by the Cardinals Barberini? Then he said: "Before you answer, give a thought to the size of the project you would be

script Division of the li­brary to be allowed to make requests of a gener­ic nature . His first solici­tation was for "any man­uscripts that might bear the name of Cardinal Francesco or Cardinal Antonio Barberini and any dates between 1628 and 1644. The response to this rather elastic re­quest was to return the following day when he would receive a report on the status of the search. The search was charac­terized by the library ush­er, Signor Valeri, who went before 8:00 o'clock in the morning, to rum­mage through the armadii in the gallerie of the Museo Vaticano where the hundreds of volumes and loose documents of the archive were housed. He then would bave to carry his finds (if any) Fig. l. Marcello Piacentini, Reconstructio11 o/ the Ex-Theater Barberini, drawing, 1930-31.

Fig. 2. Nicolas Poussin , The Destruction o/ the Tempie in ]erusalem, 1625-26, oil on canvas, 145.8 x 194 cm, Jerusalem, The Israel Museum.

taking up. " Wise words t o an innocent! H e would be doing other things; I would be flying solo.

My field of expertise is Early Renaissance Italian painting, mainly Tuscan. At that time, our two children were one and three years of age, and I could count on two, perhaps three hours of work per day. Although I had published continuous­ly since our marriage, I found it difficult to do what I called "creative scholarship " un der these circumstances. The job of locating, transcribing and organizing documents seemed like something that could be done without much creative thought. I imagined I would finish before the children started school, in two or three years, at which point I could return to my real, more creative, interests. So I began.

My points of departure were Fraschetti (on Bernini, 1900), Orbaan (on Baroque Rome, 1920), Incisa della Roc­chetta (many arti cles quoting Barberini documents , 1924), Pol­lak (on Urban VIII, 1927-31), Pecchiai (on the Barberini fam ­ily, 1959) , and Prince Urbano himself (several articles on Bar­berini tapestries), all of whom had published "cuttings " from the archive 3 • My first goal was to gain a global view of the holdings , and to follow the scope of family's possessions dur­ing Urbano 's pontificate. In short order, Sig. Valeri began to supply me with manuscripts of various sorts: huge Libri Mas­tri , piles of Mandati, bundles of Ricevuti and loose documents, always in answer to my blind requests for tags naming Francesco, Antonio , Taddeo and the years of Urban's papa­cy. After a while , the structure of the archive became appar ­ent , and I was able to give Valeri specific requests, to predict what was missing, to filllacunae. For nearly two years I tran­scribed by hand, and typed my notes at night . Remember, we were in the years 1961 to 1963 , long before computers came into the picture. When I began to be overwhelmed, I started ordering microfilms. I bought a second-hand microfilm view­er and could type directly from the film , whether in Rome or at home in the United States, for five minutes or five hours , depending on the needs of my household. I remember single­spacing the pages, because I had no concept of anyone else ever seeing my results . Much of the work was drudgery; hours of learning to read various hands, unraveling contractions ; painstaking copying of seriously boring data. But much of what I read was thrilling, with wonderful moments of exciting re­velation. Here are some examples:

- Recognizing long sought works , like Poussin's, "De-

Fig. 3. Carlo Magnone, The Lute Player, 1642, after Caravaggio, oil on canvas, 129.5 x 101.5, New York, Wildenstein and Company (1 960).

struction of the Temple of Jerusalem ", (fig. 2) now in the Is­rael Museum, J erusalem •.

- Learning how much artists got paid: in 1631, 500 scudi to a company of muratore working on the Palazzo alle Quat­tro Fontane; 25 scudi to Francesco Borromini, "aiutante del ar­chiteto della fabrica .. . per haver fatto molti disegni e modelli"; 15 scudi every month to Bernini from 1630-42, for "l'Accade­mia de' Pittori" ' ·

- Learning the monetary value of works of art: the inven­tory made of the Palazzo ai Giubbonari when Card. Antonio

Fig. 4. François Duquesnoy, Nano di Créqui, marble, 48 cm, Rome, Galleria 1 (/À Nazionale Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini. l_p~

di ed in 1671 , gives an originai cost an d a current evaluation of every object, and shows that most of the paintings had gone down in price: A Diana by Titian, carne in at 100 scudi but is now valued at 80; his portrait of "Un noble Venetiano con berretta nera," carne in at 250 scudi and is now valued at 200. At the same time, paintings attributed to Leonardo, Durer and Caravaggio retained their originai, qui te high value 6 •

- Familiar works were dated or redated, as with Pietro da Cortona's now lost, Xenopbon's Sacrzfice to Diana. Traditional­ly, the painting was dated after 1653. In fact it dated before 1631, when Pietro Paolo Giorgetti is p ai d for making its frame 7•

- Famous works were copied: in 1642, for example, Car­lo Magnone was paid 22 scudi for making copies of Caravag­gio's I Bari and "una che sona illeuto" (fig. 3) 8

•

- Other works received new attributions: a miniature bust in the Barberini Collection (jig. 4), in the early twentieth cen­tury, was attributed t o Bernini an d dated about 1625; a later scholar said it was not by Bernini and should be dated about 1680. In fact, the tiny marble was carved by François Duques­noy and represents a lively and intelligent dwarf, who was in the service of Charles Sieur de Créqui, Ambassador Extraor­dinaire de Louis XIV, who carne to Rome in the summer of 1633 , stayed fora year, and captivated the city 9

.

Beyond individuai works, I could see properties bought, rented out, and sold at a profit; artists, musicians, carpenters, stone masons, iron worker receiving salaries and gifts; theatri­cal productions prepared and performed; tapestries manufac­tured and hung; and in terms of valuables: quantities of pearls, diamonds, coins, silk clothes, books, prints, exotic flowers, and carriages, as they w ere createci an d amassed. In short, the archi ve presented a documentary panoply of life so rich, that only a full fledged team of scholars could do the material justice. In fact , atone stage, Irving and I applied to the Vatican authorities, ask­ing to be allowed to form an international team, to work to­gether "horizontally," as it were, recording all kinds of materi­al - artistic, sociological, economie, and historical - in order to bring the archive to full accessibility. It was, however, concep­tually too early for such a proposal, and, since we made the ap­proach with no funding or institutional hacking, the project was still-born, except, that is , for what I could do by myself.

And what I planned to do now took on more of a defined form: I would cover approximately a hundred years of history, from 1608, when Cardinal Maffeo moved to Rome, to the last inventory ofPrince and then Cardinal Carlo, dated 1692-1704. I would not try to trace individuai works of art, but I would try to give an overall, global view of the holdings, an d stop what I called the "hit and run" method, where a few citations are pulled from a large document and the context is lost. After I had transcribed a certain number of documents and all the in­ventories I could find, I spent a couple of years drawing the material together in what I call the Master Index. I now had been working more than a decade.

Meanwhile, I tried to find a press that would publish such cumbersome material. This task was accomplished with gener­ous help of three institutions; my greatly revered teacher, H. W. Janson found two grants in aid, one from my University (New York University) and the other from The Kress Foundation, while I was awarded one from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. The New York University Press agreed to publish the book ~th the following arrangement: I would receive no royalties except for the $400.00 that the Kress Grant had provided which had to be paid back. And, since most of the "text" was in a "for­eign" language, I would do the proof reading myself. In 1975 , with an introduction by Prince Urbano Barberini, the results

were published in a 741 page volume that is so heavy it breaks itself when you open it. My dear friend, Professar Italo Faldi (jig. 5), who was at that time Director of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, tried to organize a presentation at the Palazzo Barberini, but no convenient time could be found. In response, the American Academy in Rome very graciously arranged a pres­entation at which the then Director, Prof. Henry A. Millon, Pro f. Faldi, and I spoke, and at which the Princepessa Maria Con­cetta Barberini (jig. 6) was present. This lovely, always smiling lady, who allowed me to call her "Bebe," lamented with me that ber husband had not lived (Urbano died in 1973) to see the book to which he had looked forward with great enthusiasm.

There were two ironical results from this publication, one financial and one honorific. I tried to deduct some of my ex­penses - travel, lodging, supplies, editoria! assistance - from my annual income tax. I was called to the Office of Internai Revenue in Trenton, N.J. for an audit [the most dreadful thing that can happen to a United States citizen]. After examining my records and my publication, the federai auditor informed me that my expenses could not be deducted because the book had not produced a profit. My work, therefore, was deemed not "professional" but categorized as a "hobby." The honorif­ic result was, to me, even more surprising. Each year the Col­lege Art Association of America gives what is called the Charles Rufus Morey Award for distinguished scholarship (no money involved) . One day I received a telephone call from the orga­nization's executive secretary who told me I had won this cov­eted honor. My reaction was to ask: "For What?" You see I still thought of archi val work as m ere labor, an d no t as "creative scholarship." However, by now I know, and I am proud to say, that my labor has performed a major service in facilitating many other scholars, on both sides of tbe Atlantic, in tbeir own cre­ative scholarsbip. Severa! years ago, I saw a copy of my book in an antiquarian book sbop in Paris , and it was on sale for more tban five times its originai price. So at last, it m ade a prof­it for someone.

Some of my adventures were not so amusing. It was not very long after we received tbe permission from Prince Urbano that the word got out. Tbere tben began a more or less steady stream of requests for materia! from art bistorians who, quite rigbtly, would bave been bappy to bave tbe same entrée we had, had they thought of requesting it themselves. It was hard for me to say no, and I was severely criticized for doing so. Yet, early in the work wbile tbe structure of tbe archive was still a

Fig. 5. Professar Itala Faldi, Former Director of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, at the American Acad­emy in Rome, 1977. (Photo: J ohannes Felbermeyer).

Fig. 6. Marilyn Aronberg Lavin and Principessa Maria Concetta Barberini, at the American Academy in Rome, 1977. (Photo: Johannes Felbermeyer).

Fig. 7. Ludovico Carracci, T be Body o/ St. Sebastian Thrown into the Cloaca Mag12a, 1612, oil on canvas, 167 x 233, Los Angeles, CA, J. Pau] Getty Museum.

mystery, I felt compelled to get my bearings before I could sim­ply hand over, as was requested, "all the documents concern­ing" the likes of Andrea Sacchi, Alessandro Algardi, and François Duquesnoy. There was even one caro collega, who had absolutely no way of knowing what documents I was studying, who told Signor Valeri he wanted to "see the manuscript that woman over there is looking at!"

Later on, after I had started to apprehend the generai out­lines of the archive, I decided it would be best to make coher­ent blocks of materia! available, before publication, to various scholars an d graduate students. My idea was that not only could their work profit but also they could do justice to the materi-

Fig. 8. Cavaliere Giovanni Battista Muti, St. Urban in tbe Clouds, c. 1630, oil on canvas, 246.4 x 190.5 cm., Rome, Gallery Nazionale d'Arte Antica.

al better than I, a non-specialist. The first to appear was one of Anthony Blunt's doctoral students, who said she would like to reproduce "the odd document she would pick up during a brief stay in Rome for the purpose of following the paintings to their current locations. " Although I found this project rather superficial, I was already following the principle of making in­formation available to graduate students, so I could bave no objection. I did find it oppressive, however, when this student, a rather mature woman, did not finish a dissertation but rather rapidly published two articles that ripped entries on Guercino, Poussin, and Claude from two of the inventories, thus perpet­uating the "hit and run" approach I was trying to change 10

.

When I made my displeasure known to her privately, she pub­lished an apology of sorts , along with a promise to bring out a sequel to my proposed seventeenth-century compendium that would cover Barberini materia! of the eighteenth an d nineteenth centuries [more of these inventories later]. This promise was thereafter withdrawn in a Letter to the Editor in the Art Bul­letin, where she claimed lack of funds had forced her to spend all her time giving guided tours .

Aiding real students to prepare their doctoral dissertations, for the most part, brought me great satisfaction. But in a few cases, the experience was less pleasurable. One day I was turn­ing the pages of The Burlington Magazine when I saw an ad­vertisement for a painting touted as Ludovico Carracci's "St. Sebastian's Body Put in the Cloaca Massima", (fig. 7) and quot­ing unpublished Barberini documents to prove the attribution. I knew this work as having been owned by Cardinal Maffeo and transferred to his brother Carlo in 1623 after Maffeo's elec­tion but before his coronation. In the inventories it was always attributed to Carracci and correctly described 11

• There was on-

Fig. 9. Prospero or Marcantonio Muti, In Praise o/ Peace, c. 1627, oil on canvas, ~{o~ 350 x 254, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica .

Fig. 10. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Putto Marino, 1617, marble, 55.7 cm,]. Pau! Get­ty Museum, Los Angeles, CA. (Photo: Lynton Foersterling).

Fig. 12. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Putto Bitten on the Leg, 1617-18, marble, 44.8 cm, Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

Fig. 11. Detail of Fig. 10. (Photo: Lynton Foersterling).

Fig. 13. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, St. Sebastian, 1617, marble, 98.9 cm, Madrid, Collection Thyssen-Bornemisza. {t)~~

ly one person, besides me, wbo knew tbese documents, an d tbat was a student writing a tbesis on Ludovico wbo carne to my apartment to copy tbem from my typescript . It seems tbe deal­er wbo was now bawking tbe painting got tbe documents from ber who, by tben, bad become, "bis very good friend." 12

Anotber time, I got a call from the Director of tbe Cleve­land Museum, asking about an Adoration o/ the Magi by Gui­do Reni tbey were being offered by a London dealer, an d again quoting an unpublisbed Barberini document. It verified a pay­ment of 34 scudi "per resto et intero pagamento per il prezzo d'un quadro fatto da Guido Rena," and was dateci 1645u. Since Guido died in 1642, the final payment was to his brother Giuseppe. For a moment I truly thought some one else had found the same evidence as I , until I recalled having passed the information to a person who at the time was a student work­ing on Reni, but who had since become a dealer himself and was profiting from the research 14

•

Sometimes the activity had the apposite effect. In 1969 Erich Schleier told me of a painting being offered for sale by Colnaghi, then erroneously entitled "Signor Urbano Vestito Pontificalmente che stà in aria .. . " an d attributed t o Simon Vou­et (jig. 8). Erich knew there was such a subject liste d in the in­ventory of Card. Francesco that Orbaan had published long ago 1 ~ . I had further evidence, that tbe work bad entered tbe collection in J uly of 1630, according t o an account of paintings procured for tbe Cardinal and bis brotber by Fausto Poli , lat­er Cardinal, wbo held the position of Coppiere [Privy cbam­berlain of the Pope] at the time. In both lists, the painting is dearly identified as Saint Urbano, and just as dearly not at­tributed to Vouet. The author is named as the Cavaliere Muti, that is Giovanni Battista Muti, the youngest son of an impor­tant Roman aristocratic family, and amateur painter 16

. I wrote to Faldi, alerting him to the fact that with the new attribution, the large, quite beautiful painting should also bave a new, much lower price. Indeed, this notion proved to be true and Faldi was able to redaim the work for the Galleria. Equally impor­tant is the insight these documents provide into the milieu of cultural brilliance among the socially elite of the time. In the same list, but dateci three years earlier, another large, equally handsome painting described as "cinque figure grandi che sono in lode della Pace" (jig. 9) is verified as by "il Fratello di Cav­aliere Muti," (w ho would be either Prospero or Marcantonio Muti). It is possible that both these young, well schooled, and quite talented gentlemen, were coached by Charles Mellin (and perhaps also Vouet before be returned to France in 1627) 17

•

At the same time, there were cases I consider to be quite sad, in whicb scbolars suppressed wbat tbey must bave con­sidered to be embarrassing facts. One sucb instance was wben I made a musicologist aware of tbe very existence of tbe Bar­berini archive and its contents pertaining to bis own non-art bistorical pursuits 18

. Another was wben I informed an art bis­torian that many of tbe paintings in the modern collection he ba d "discovered" were originally among the Barberini posses­sions 19

• In both cases, a simple but specific acknowledgement would bave sufficed.

Perbaps tbe saddest of all was to watcb publisbed docu­ments manipulated or, even worse, ignored wben tbey did not suit the argument. I refer to numerous omissions of documents concerning tbe "Putto qual tiene un Drago", now in tbeJ. Paul Getty Collection (jlg. 10,/lg. Il). The story is a bit tangled, and I will begin at the beginning.

In 1965, I was again paging througb an art journal, this time the Arte Antica e Moderna, actually looking for Charles de Tolnay's fundamental artide on Piero della Francesca. There

I bappened upon a note by Antonia N ava Cellini, in wbicb sbe attributes a small statue in "una Raccolta Privata fiorentina," to Pietro Bernini 20

• It represented a smiling cbild seated in a rocky pool of water, straddling a cbimerical beast witb webbed feet, a winged serpent's body, scorpion-like tails , and a buge moutb, the lower jaw of which tbe boy is breaking with bis right band. The piece is actually a fountain with the spout in tbe drag­on's gagging mouth and the spray directed to lanci on tbe boy's head flattening bis hair. Since in those days, I knew every line of the Barberini Inventories by heart, and witb sucb a striking image of dassiq.l composure, I immediately recalled an inven­tory entry where the statue is firmly identified as by the Cava­liere Bernini. I was quite puzzled, therefore, to see tbat Nava, who was a very astute scholar, had attributed the little statue to Pietro and not to bis son Gian Lorenzo. When I read ber text, however, I saw that sbe was unaware of the documenta­tion. Having no idea of the real significance of the phrase "Rac­colta privata" , Irving asked N ava if she could help us arrange a visi t to the Fiorentine collector to see the piece, an d after some months, we were given an address. Imagine our surprise when we arrived in Florence at No.5, Via dei Seragli and discovered we were entering not a private home, but the gallery of Francesco Romano, one of the biggest dealers in Italy. When the sculpture was sbown to us, we saw that it was tagged with an export license seal, and we realized it was for sale. There then ensued a real ad venture - that of negotiations, during which the issue of attribution was never mentioned. Having come to an agreement, we borrowed enougb money to pay tbe fees and taxes, and then waited many montbs for the object to pass through all the rigors of official inspection, after which we had tbe privilege of owning tbis magnetic piece stone for a brief pe­riod, before we sold it to tbe Getty Museum where it is today.

This said, there is another irony to report: Less than a year later, Signore Romano called and asked us to tea at the Bar Canova on tbe Piazza del Popolo. We arrived to find that he was offering us for sale still another marble putto, dose in size to tbe first one, which he was now attributing to Gian Loren­zo. The composition was as striking as the "Boy with the Drag­on", but the iconography contrasted dramatically (jig. 12). Here was a child seated on dry lanci, leaning back trying with his left band to pry from bis leg the denched jaw of another monstrous creature. This one had the body of a fish, long spi­rai gills, huge sharp teeth , the same scorpion tails, and was slith­ering on the ground between the legs of its screaming victim. Even thought we were very impressed, we were so exbausted by our first encounter with the world of the art market, aside being flat broke, we turned the sculpture down immediately. Thus we never learned how this dealer had come by two such early seventeenth-century, obviously interrelated, pieces. Very soon after our encounter, Signore Romano sold the Bitten Boy to Berlin. I t was only some time later that Irving found the first reference to it in the Ludovisi archive, dateci 1623 and then again in 1633 with another positive attribution to Cavaliere Bernini. This entry refers to the "mappa di fiori, " seen in the sea-anemonies below the putto's foot. And the 1665 and 1705 entries in Ludovisi inventories, published somewhat later, added the important identifying detail tbat the boy was bitten on the leg". Irving has recently written again about these infant sculp­tures, about their complementary metaphorical meaning- one, ugly, sexually aroused, and mercilessly attacked; the other the charming, morally upright, and superior to his attacker, where he points out the evident premonition in their concetto to the 1619 pair representing the "Anime Beata e Dannata" 22

.

In the 1704 inventory of Cardinal Carlo Barberini there is

a marginal note indicating that the "Putto con drago marino" was taken to Naples to be given as a gift to King Philip V of Spain 23

•

Then there are two ce n­turies of silence, after which the sculpture re­turned to view in the Ro­man palace of the Barone Michele Angelo Lazzaroni, who took it in his collec­tion to Paris. From there i t •was sent to a dealer in Nice, and ended up with Romano back in Florence, where Nava Cellini saw it.

inventory of the Cardinal's statues, dateci 1632-1640 27

.

As is well-known, Mengh­ini was himself a sculptor, and during the years cov­ered by his inventory he was working closely with Bernini in St. Peter's. He was thus well acquainted with the Cavaliere and would ha ve been informed of the attributions with first hand information .

In the face of this his ­tory, there are scholars who either deny the pertinence of the documents, as is the case with the Berlin piece, or omit, may I say sup ­press , the documentation, as is the case with the Get­ty piece. Quite recently, there were found new doc­uments that pay Pietro Bernini 20 scudi for the Putto marino, in what is presumably Cardinal Maf­feo's account book dateci 1617 . On this basis, the at-

Fig. 14. Coin Cabinet with Barberini Arms, walnut, Cambridge, MA, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. (Photo: Author).

After 1975 my per­sonal Barberini adven­tures carne to a dose; my children were in school and I returned to my stud­les of Piero della Francesca. I also began my long obsession with com­puters and the history of art, an obsession which carne to a climax on 3 Oc­tober 2004 when the Computer Model of Piero's fresco cycle of the True Cross I conceived and helped to create, was officially inaugurateci and ma de available t o the pub-

tribution of the small mar-ble to the father was perpetuated by both the scholar who found the documents and the colleague to whom they were made avail­able 24

. There is actually a duplicate of the payment of 20 scudi to Pietro for "una statua vendutoli", clearly "sold" and not "made" by him in the same year, published as my Doc. 51'5•

When, however, the new documents go on to pay 50 scudi to Pietro, the father, for the statue of San Sebastiano (jig. 13), uni­versally accepted as a work by Gian Lorenzo, the son, both writ­ers evoked Irving's 1968 argument that guild rules required the father to receive payments on behalf of his underage son. In­deed, the situation is identical to that of the "Putti di Frontispizio" in the Cappella Barberini in Sant' Andrea della Valle, which Irv­ing published long ago. In the same year, 1617, the son di d the carving but the father received the payment. In this case the doc­ument actually says the work will come from the hand of Pietro and that of his son Gian Lorenzo 26

•

The scholarly omission in the case of the "Putto Marino" was two fold. First no mention is made of the further Barberini documents, published in my book naming Cavaliere Gian Loren­zo Bernini as the author of the piece, along with the "St. Sebas­tian". And second and equally important, is the fact that the at­tributions to the Cavaliere are made by none other than Cardi­nal Francesco's curator of sculpture, Niccolò Menghini, in his

lic in the church of San Francesco, in Arezzo. As

far as I know, it is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. Even now, however, I have lingering thoughts concerning

the Barberini Archive. In my adventurous travels through the seventeenth-century documents, I concentrateci on the works of art. In my peripheral vision, I saw many other kinds of doc­uments which, per force, I had to pass by. One area in partic­ular has always concerned me: that of the so-called decorative arts (jig. 14 ). For example, one among many references that pepper the documents, is a full inventory of nothing but dec­orative art belonging to Cardinal Antonio, dateci 1636-1640. I could only include a list of the categories of this inventory, al­though there is a world of materiallying there awaiting analy­sis. Now, some thirty years later, research centers for the dec­orative arts are beginning to appear, and soon perhaps atten­tion will be focused on this vast amount of material.

And beyond this subject, there are also all the many eigh­teenth and nineteenth-century inventories previously left un­touched and about which I have felt regret. So that this regret may be transformed into art historical hope, I present to the Galleria N azionale d'Arte Antica the microfilms of ali these doc­uments that I (and Mrs. Francis Vivian) had made long ago, ir. the hope that someone will be willing to transform this hope into printed form.

' Anthony Blunt, The Palazzo Barberini: Contributions o/ Maderno, Berninz; and Pietro da Cortona, in: "Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes", XXI, 1958, pp. 256-87. ' lrving Lavin, review, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Fontana di Trevi. Commedia inedi­ta, ed. a cura di C. D'Onofrio, Rome 1963, in: "Art Bulletin", XLVI, 1964, pp. 568-73; republished with revisions as Bernini and the Theater, in: Berni­ni and the Unity o/ the Visual Arts (The Pierpont Morgan Library), 2 voll., New York/London 1980, pp. 146-58; Italian translation: Bernini e l'unità delle arti visive, Rome 1980. See also Patricia Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, Cambridge, MA. 1990, pp. 246-47. ' Stanislao Fraschetti, Il Berninz; la sua vita, la sua opera, il suo tempo, Milan 1900; Johannes A. F. Orbaan, Documenti sul barocco in Roma, Rome 1920, pp. 495-513; Oskar Pollak, Dze Kunsttàtigkeit unter Urban VIII, Vienna 1928. Pio Pecchiai, I Barberini, "Archivi d'Italia e rassegna internazionale degli archivi". Quaderno; n. 5, Rome, 1959. 'Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Seventeenth-Century Barberini Documents and In­ventories o/ Art, New York 1975, Doc. 237 and p. 507; Denis Mahon, Nico­las Poussin: Work /rom his First Years in Rome, Jerusalem 1999, pp. 62-75. 'M. A. Lavin 1975, p. 7, Doc. 55; p. 5, Doc. 35. 6 M. A. Lavin 1975, pp. 291-336. 7 Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Archttecture o/ Italy, London 1958, p. 168, Fig. 88(b); M. A. Lavin 1975, Doc. 96, p. 12. 'M. A. Lavin 1975, re/erences to Magnone copies, p. 496; Alfred Moir, Caravag­gio and his Copyists, New York 1976, p. 85, no. 8f. ' Irving Lavin, [with the collaboration of Marilyn Aronberg Lavin] Duques­noy's Nano di Créqui and Two Busts by Francesco Mochi, "Art Bulletin", LII, 1970, pp. 132-49); (excerpt published in Italian in commemorative volume, Francesco Mochi, 1580-1654, Florence 1981, pp. 17-8). "Francis Vivian. Poussin and Claude Seen /rom the Archivio Barberini, "The Burlington Magazine", CXI, 1969, pp. 718-26; Gueràno Seen/rom the Archivio Barberzni, "The Burlington Magazine", CXIII, 1971, pp. 22-29. "M. A. Lavin 1975, p. 476. " The story is told in detail, quite correctly, by Gai! Feigenbaum in Ludovico Carracci, catalogue of the exhibition, ed. a cura di Andrea Emiliani, essay and catalogue by Gai! Feigenbaum, Milan/New York 1994, no. 70, pp. 152-54, n.b . note 3. "M. A. Lavin 1975, Doc. 270 and p. 511. " The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogues this remarkable painting as fol­lows: Guido Reni (Italian , 1575-1642), "Adoration of the Magi", 1642, oil o n canvas, Framed: 378.cm x 280.5cm x 10.5cm, Unframed: 367.3cm x 268.6cm 1969.132 l L~onard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund. Provenance: Sold in 1645 to Cardi­nal FrancescÒ Barberini, Palazzo Barberini, Rome (in family unti! after 1880);

Corsini Col!., Florence; (Colnaghi, London). Note the purchase date of 1969; see M. A. Lavin 1975, p. 511. "Orbaan 1920, p. 508. 16 M. A. Lavin 1975, p. 99, no. 4, and p. 501; Erich Schleier, Charles Mellin an d the Marchesi Muti, "The Burlington Magazine", 118, 1976, pp. 836-845; Jacques Thuillier, with Barbara Brejon de Lavergnée and Denis Lavalle, Vouet: Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 6 novembre 1990-11 février 1991, Paris 1990, pp. 31-33. "Lavin 1975, p. 100, n. 26 and p. 501; Schleier 1976, 841-42 . " These pursuits included Girolamo Frescobaldi's musical activities for the Barberini. " This instance concerned Sciarra paintings currently in the Almagià collec­tion. 20 Antonia N ava Cellini, Un opera di Pietro Bernini, "Arte antica e moderna", 1961, pp. 288-92. 21 Jennifer Montagu, Alessandro Algardi, 2 voll. , New Haven 1985, p. 419. 22 I rving Lavin, Bernini Giovane, in: Bernini dai Borghese ai Barberini: la cul­tura a Roma intorno agli anni venti, Atti del convegno (Rome, February 17-19, 1999), eds. Olivier Bonfait and Anna Coliva, Rome 2004, pp. 134-40. In English: Irving Lavin, The Young Bernini, in: Studi sul Barocco romano. Scrit­ti in onore di Maurizio Fagiolo dell'Arco, Milan 2004, pp . 39-56. "M. A. Lavin 1975, p. 445: "Donato à Filippo V, Re di Spagna da S. E., in occa'ne della Leg.ne di Napoli". " See Bernini Scultore: La nascita del Barocco in Casa Borghese, May-Sep­tember, 1998, eds. Anna Coliva and Sebastian Schiitze, Rome 1998; entry on "St. Sebastian" by Sebastian Schiitze, pp. 78-95 [see in particular note 14]; entry on "Boy Bitten on the Leg" by Ursula Schlegel, pp. 96-101. Here Schlegel unaccountably gives dramatically incorrect dimensions for the Get­ty p ieee, an d no t far the first time. She has consistently misreported the size, giving 58 cm in her originai publication (Zum Oeuvre des Jungen Gian Loren­zo Bernini, in: "Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen", LXX, 1965, pp. 274-94, esp. 274), overestimating the height by almost 3 cm. Her argument was to disassociate it from what she insists upon calling the Putto wtth a Dolphin (it is a marine creature but certainly not a dolphin) in Berlin, which she measures at 44.8 cm. In this publication, her latest, she claims that the Get­ty boy is 68 cm high. The true size of the Putto Marino is precisely 55.7 cm. In the various inventories, both pieces are listed as 2 1/2 palmi in height. "M. A. Lavin 1975, p. 7, Doc. 51: "E a di 9 detto (xmre) se. 20 m.ta a Pietro Bernina scultore p(er) una statua vendotoli". 26 Irving Lavin, Five Youth/ul Sculptures by Gian lorenzo Bernini and a Revised Chronology o/ his Early Works, in: "Art Bulletin", L, 1968, pp. 223-48. 27 M. A. Lavin 1975, pp. 128-47.