National Gallery of Art

"Instauratio" and "Pietas": The della Valle Collections of Ancient Sculpture

Author(s): KATHLEEN WREN CHRISTIAN
Source: Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 70, Symposium Papers XLVII: Collecting Sculpture in
Early Modern Europe (2008), pp. 32-65
Published by: National Gallery of Art
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42622672
Accessed: 19-03-2016 16:03 UTC

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 r

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The an ture dellaofimage
an image
brought ancient sculpture to the forefront of
Maerten van Heemskerck,
The Hanging Garden of
Cardinal Andrea della Valle
from the South (detail),
c. 1532-1537, pen and ink
Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris, Ga 80, Folio, fol. 5 3
KATHLEEN WREN CHRISTIAN
University of Pittsburgh
Instauratio and Pietas: The della Valle
Collections of Ancient Sculpture
ture in Rome over generations, broadcasting
in Rome
prosperity and Valle of prosperity
erudition as they
the city's material and intellectual "restau-
ratio." In the 1430s, while Flavio Biondo
mined ancient sources for his Roma instau-
rata , the della Valle were already displaying
antique sculpture at their palaces on the via
Papalis. By 1490, the della Valle opened an
expanded sculpture collection to visitors
and guests, matching Pope Sixtus IV's efforts
to include ancient sculpture in his wider
plans for a restauratio Romae. Just after the
Sack of Rome in 1527, the family's greatest
collector, Cardinal Andrea della Valle,
unveiled his extraordinary "hanging garden"
of ancient sculpture. Delia Valle's garden
displayed antiquities on an unprecedented
scale with a splendor that, for guests, seemed
to herald the restoration of a devastated city.
Cardinal della Valle's spectacular collection
is familiar to art historians, thanks to draw-
ings by Maerten van Heemskerck (fig. 1)
and Francisco de Holanda (fig. 2). Many of the
family's antiquities, all acquired by the
Medici in 1584, are well-known works dis-
played along the corridors of the Uffizi or
immured into the Villa Medici's garden
facade. But despite the familiarity and fame
of the della Valle collection, it has long
been overshadowed by its rival, the papal
Belvedere. The history of the collection, and
especially its formation in the fifteenth cen-
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tury, still requires clarification.1 To this end,
the first three parts of this study examine the
family over generations,
early sculpture displays collected
and Andreaanddella
erudition antique br
Valle's hanging garden in depth, considering
how the family's approach toward excava-
tion, restoration, and display changed over
time. These changes in method are espe-
cially important: although we readily accept
that the Renaissance saw sweeping and pro-
found shifts in the interpretation of ancient
sculpture by artists, changing patterns of
collecting have been a much-neglected sub-
ject. Part of the problem is that the scholar-
ship has focused on the vast sculpture gardens
of mid-sixteenth-century Rome and has not
adequately explored the history of fifteenth-
and early sixteenth-century collecting.
During this critical period, collectors
seized on ancient sculpture's auctoritas (the
political and authoritarian connotations
explored by Salvatore Settis in this volume),
its historical and moral lessons, and also
the new artistic and aesthetic possibilities
increased by artists' more profound engage-
ment with antique sculpture. The reasons for
these shifts are complex, but this study
focuses in particular on how changing meth-
ods of self-formation in fifteenth- and early
sixteenth-century Rome defined the role of
ancient sculpture in the city's cultural life.
Already in the first decades of the Quattro-
cento, humanists at the courts of John XXIII
and Eugenius IV intensified the study of antiq-
uities, especially small objects examined
33
in studiolo settings. But these interests had
shifted by the 1470s and 1480s, when car-
dinals in particular sponsored a new brand
of sculpture collecting. Not only did they
favor large, figurai marbles displayed out-
safeguarding of relics or the restoration of
churches. To explore Cardinal della Valle's
fundamental role in this shift, the fourth
and last section of this essay examines the
rhetoric of eight inscriptions displayed promi-
i . Maerten van Heemskerck,
The Hanging Garden of
Cardinal Andrea della Valle
from the South, c. 1532-1537,
pen and ink
Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris, Ga 80, Folio, fol. 5 3

side over small works displayed in studioli,
but they also began to excavate ancient
sculptures from the ruins, restore them,
provide them with architectural settings,
and bring artists and other visitors into dia-
logue with them. Drawing on a seminal
article by Patricia Falguières,2 I argue that
these innovations, which all added signifi-
cantly to the "art value" of antiquities,
helped especially to accentuate cardinals'
roles as mediators between the public of
Rome and the city's ancient past. In claim-
ing a protectorate over the city's antique
sculpture, and by extension over the city
itself, cardinals underscored their use of
ancient art for moral, edifying purposes,
advertising the idea that their collecting was
as pious and beneficial to Rome as was the
nently in his hanging garden and considers
their import for Roman viewers after the
Sack. Ultimately, the removal of sculpture
from the ruins to a seemingly civic setting
devoted to the "universal" benefits of public
edification and urban restoration concealed
underlying motives of social performance
and self-interest.3
The della Valle Collections in the
Fifteenth Century
The della Valle arrived in Rome from Spain,
perhaps only in the late fourteenth century,
and initially settled near the imperial fora.4
After accumulating large estates outside the
city walls and establishing a lucrative money-
lending business, they were driven by wealth

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2. Francisco de Holanda,
The Hanging Garden of
Cardinal Andrea della Valle:
Elevation of the East Wall ,
c. 1538-1541, pen and
colored wash
Biblioteca Reale, El Escorial, inv. 28-
1-20, fol. 54. Copyright © Patrimonio
Nacional.
3. Anonymous, Map of the
Della Valle Properties,
c. 1586-1600, pen and ink
Archivio di Stato, Rome, Ospedale
del Santissimo Salvatore ad Sancta
Sanctorum, busta 490, no. 40; by
concession oř the Ministero per i
Beni e le Attività Culturali, ASR
24/2003
and ambition to a more socially advanta-
geous spot by Piazza Navona on the via
Papalis, the route of the pope's inaugural
procession and Rome's most illustrious
address (figs. 3 and 4).5 The family built
their palaces at a site that now borders the
Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II across from
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the Palazzo Caffarelli-Vidoni, and from this
new vantage point they advanced rapidly in
Roman society. Although Lello I della Valle
never earned a noble title, his enterprising
son Paolo (d. 1440), doctor to popes Alexan-
der V and Martin V, managed to buy one
from the Holy Roman Emperor (see family
tree, fig. s).6 With remarkable speed and
success, this Paolo and his brother Niccolò
acquired enough property on the via Papalis
to colonize a sizable area.7 At the same time,
the della Valle transferred their patronage
from the nearby Santa Maria in Monterrone
to one of Rome's most venerated and visible
churches, Santa Maria in Aracoeli, estab-
lishing a family chapel there in the early
Quattrocento.8
In the Rome of Eugenius IV (1431-1447),
the della Valle coterie would have included
Cencio de' Rustici, Flavio Biondo, Leon Bat-
tista Alberti, and Poggio Bracciolini, a circle
whose appreciation for classical art and
ancient ruins, as is well known, predated
any widespread admiration of the antique.9
Members of the curia who shared the anti-
quarian interests of this group, like Cardinal
Prospero Colonna, were among the first col-
lectors of ancient sculpture in Rome.10 The
della Valle themselves already possessed an
CHRISTIAN 35
antiquities collection of sorts in the 1420s:
in 1423, they christened one of their houses
the Palazzo di Giove after an imposing
ancient bust of Jupiter posed above its front
portal.1 1 As another sign of their interest in
antique sculpture, in 1440 the family buried
Paolo della Valle in an ancient sarcophagus
"adorned with the figure of a gladiator/'12
In his testament, Paolo had required that
his sons earn degrees in canon and civil law,
thus ensuring that they would become expert
Latinists and pursue curial careers.13 His
sons Filippo, who became papal doctor to Six-
tus IV and Alexander VI, and Lello II, a con-
sistorial lawyer, continued the family's
reliance on antiquarianism and the study of
ancient languages as a method of social
advancement in curial Rome.14 Filippo, Car-
dinal Andrea della Valle's father, collected
ancient inscriptions and imitated them with
impeccable accuracy, memorializing his
deceased daughter Paolina with a funerary
epitaph borrowed from an antique sarcoph-
agus.15 Lello translated Greek poetry, mar-
ried the daughter of Cencio de7 Rustici, and
came to the defense of Giulio Pomponio
Leto's Roman Academy during their trials.
He invited his friends to study in his library,
which was well stocked with classical bined with an intense Roman patriotism 4. Map of the della Valle
properties, based on the
codices, and to examine his own collection fueled the desire to shape all aspects of pub- Catasto Urbano of 1818-1824,
of inscriptions. Lello passed his epigraphic lic and private life on the model of the showing ( i ) Palazzo di
collection and his antiquarian interests on to antique. Scholars increasingly desirous of a Cantone, (2) Palazzo di
Mezzo, (3) Palazzo di Giove,
his sons, the renowned poets and scholars broad knowledge of Roman customs greatly (4) palace of Ottavio della
Bernardino and Niccolò della Valle.16 valued antique objects that shed light on Valle, ( 5 ) storage area and
The first della Valle collections have a carriage house, (6) Palazzo
the history, topography, and daily life of della Valle-Capranica, and
distinctly textual and literary focus that ancient Rome. It is therefore not surprising (7) Teatro Valle
accords with their expertise in ancient lan- that the most esteemed treasures of the della Reproduction of the Catasto Urbano
courtesy of the Archivio di Stato,
guages. The family may have collected Valle collections in the 1470s consisted of an Rome; by concession of the
Ministero per i Beni e le Attività
ancient coins and medals: in mid-Quattro- ancient calendar, the Menologium rusticum Culturali, ASR 24/2003, with
additions by author
cento Rome, writers often scrutinized por- vállense , and a list of Roman holidays, the
trait busts and coins in the candlelit settings Fasti vallenses ,18
of their studioli and libraries. Already in The suppression of Leto's Academy reminds
early Quattrocento Florence, Nicolò Nic- us of that extreme antiquarianism also
coli and Poggio Bracciolini had embraced involved risk, and the accusation of heresy
this type of collection, in which portrait or idolatry was a real danger. But in a time
busts and coins offered tangible, material of intense social competition and remark-
links between men of letters and the classi- able social mobility in Rome, it offered an
cal authors they idolized.17 In Rome, the opportunity for self-invention that few could
study of antique inscriptions (commonly resist. With the tools that antiquarianism
referred to as epigrammata ) also grew in provided, families and individuals could
tandem with literary studies, in particular shape new identities with great subtlety.
with the revival of Latin poetry. As is evident Unlike many other families in fifteenth-
from the activities of Pomponio Leto's Acad- century Rome, the della Valle chose not to
emy, the close study of Latin authors com- follow the bold practice of inventing ancient

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5. Della Valle family tree ancestors. Especially for those families who
Author
had only recently achieved nobility, a new
ancestor, combined with a collection of
inscriptions and well-chosen antiquities,
could "prove" a family's unbroken presence
in the city since ancient times. Many fam-
ilies, especially arrivistes like the Massimi
or Santacroce, who had earned their for-
tunes through mercantile trades, collected
works of art and inscriptions specifically to
forge ties with ancient heroes. In the 1450s
and 1460s, the Santacroce vaunted an ordi-
nary togate statue that they claimed was
an image of their "ancestor" Valerius Pub-
licóla. In the 1470S, the wealthy pharma-
cist Lorenzo Manlio claimed Marcus Manlius
Capitolinus as his ancestor, immuring an
ancient dedication to a "Manlius Homu-
lus" on the facade of his house.19 Although
the della Valle in the fifteenth century were
also part of a "new" Roman nobility, they
did not attempt to mask their Spanish ori-
gins, perhaps in order to reinforce their strong
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alliance with the Imperial party and the
Colonna. Their possession of extramural
estates and their success in curial profes-
sions, rather than mercantile ones, may have
lessened the need to use the bluntly self-
aggrandizing method of the "ancestor cult"
so popular among Rome's new nobility.
By the third quarter of the fifteenth cen-
tury, the della Valle had expanded their
sculpture collections, which they divided
among three palaces sited along the via
Papalis. From a fortified palazzo and tower
at the west, the properties extended in a
row unified by a colonnaded portico that
ran along the street.20 A previously unpub-
lished sixteenth-century map (fig. 3) and the
Catasto Urbano of 1818-1824 (fig. 4) show
these separate but contiguous dwellings,
each constructed to house a different branch
of the family. As was common in fifteenth-
century Rome, each branch also displayed its
own separate collection, which passed down
paternal lines: Stazio della Valle and his
heirs kept one collection in the Palazzo di
Cantone on the west corner, Filippo and his
sons Bartolommeo and Andrea della Valle put
theirs on view at the Palazzo di Mezzo in the
middle, and Lello II della Valle's descen-
dants displayed antiquities in the Palazzo di
Giove to the east (see fig. 4). 21 The della
Valle faced a setback in 1484, when they
joined the Colonna in a bitter feud against
the Orsini and the Santacroce and, Roman
diarists report, Pope Sixtus IV punished them
by ordering the demolition of their houses.
The full extent of the destruction remains
unclear, as the della Valle continued to live
in these palaces and in 1490 were displaying
their sculpture collections there to guests.22
It was in this year that the humanist
Giovanni da Tolentino wrote a description
of the fifteenth-century collections in an
extraordinary letter to the poet Baldassare
Taccone.23 As da Tolentino writes, he was
taking in the sights of the Roman Mirabilia
tourist track, admiring the Quirinal Horse-
tamers, the Spinano, and the bronze Marcus
Aurelius, when a "Roman citizen" stopped
him on his way to ask, "What if you were to
see works in private houses probably not
inferior to those you have seen in public? By
Hercules! I have a few things that we shall
soon see." The pair then went together to
visit the della Valle collections:
CHRISTIAN 37
Entering the house we came across two satyrs
gleaming with gold. Then we saw a great num-
ber of statues of men and women, of which we
recognized Marcus Antonius and Faustina.
There is a calendar on a marble slab; it explains
the movements of the sun. In the middle of a
court [in medio aieae] is Neptune stirring up
the sea with his trident. Opposite him is
Apollo playing a song on the lyre, Arion sitting
on a dolphin, Castor and Pollux, a Bacchanalia,
a gladiatorial game, Nero Ahenobarbus, some
hunting scenes, and various sorts of animals
wandering around the hills.24
The della Valles' life-size Pans, now on
view in the courtyard of the Capitoline
Museums, do not "gleam with gold/' and
when composing his letter ex post facto in
the study, da Tolentino did not hesitate to
add a few rhetorical flourishes.25 Neverthe-
less, the letter remains an important source.
After his depiction of the famous Pans,26
da Tolentino notes a number of portraits
and the della Valle's Menologium, men-
tioned by Fra Giocondo's epigraphic sylloge
around 1490 as being on display at the
Palazzo di Giove.27 In the next part of his
description, da Tolentino names sculptures
he saw "in medio areae," probably a cor-
tile. Here he came across Neptune, Apollo
Citharoedos, "Arion Sitting on a Dolphin"
(actually, a sculpture of a putto riding a
marine monster), and Bacchus.28 In the early
sixteenth century, Andrea della Valle put
all of these pieces on view at the Palazzo di
Mezzo. It therefore appears likely that they
were first acquired for the Palazzo di Mezzo
by Andrea della Valle's father Filippo, head
of the household until his death in 1494,
and displayed in the courtyard there.29
Da Tolentino's letter only vaguely describes
the layout of the collections, but what it
reveals about their contents demonstrates
how the family's tastes had changed over
time. If the della Valle collections were a
small-scale literary curiosity in the 1460s and
1 470s, by 1490 they had added a significant
body of life-size figurai images of Neptune,
putti, and gladiators. The change reflects
wider shifts in Roman collecting, initiated
especially during the time of Sixtus IV's
restauratio Romae .30 Famously, the sym-
bolic heart of Sixtus' program for urban
restoration became the public display of
ancient sculpture he set up on the Capitoline
38 CHRISTIAN
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as soon as he took office in 1471. On the
heels of this seemingly pious transfer of
sculpture to a civic setting, Sixtus' court, and
especially the cardinals closest to him, such
as Giuliano della Rovere, Domenico della
Rovere, and Raffaelle Riario, brought antique
marble sculpture into their own gardens and
courtyards. They picked up on the local
practice of keeping "ancestral" antiquities in
domestic spaces, but, by favoring the exca-
vation and the "dedication" of life-size fig-
urai sculpture in settings where they received
guests, they began to transform the concept
into that of the art collection.
The palace at Santi Apostoli, built around
1484-1489 by Sixtus IV's nephew Cardinal
Giuliano della Rovere (later Pope Julius II),
is one of the first in Rome to accord such a
role to antiquities. Sara Magister has inves-
tigated this collection in depth and has dis-
covered how della Rovere arranged his
sculptures, including the famous Apollo
Belvedere, in a garden used for banquets and
theatrical performances.31 In these contexts,
poets integrated ancient sculptures into pan-
egyric verses recited at ceremonial feasts
and receptions, allowing sculptures to act as
speaking voices in their adulations of patrons.
In the process, patrons could present the
collections in their houses as monuments to
their own virtue: the virtue of having created
these realms of the Muses, places enlivened
by the presence of mythological personae,
and inspirational retreats where the city's
poets and artists could take refuge.
Andrea della Valle's First
Sculpture Collection
The culmination of these ideas and the most
influential and grandiose collection of this
type was the Cortile del Belvedere, assembled
by Giuliano della Rovere after he became
Pope Julius II.32 From 1505/1506, Bramante
constructed the symmetrical court on an
elevated site next to Innocent VIII's Villa
Belvedere. Della Rovere soon began to dis-
play exceptional examples of figurai statuary
there - most famously, the Laocoön and
the Apollo Belvedere, moved to the Vatican
in 1506 and 1508 - mounted on matching
pedestals and ensconced in niches built
into all four walls. The full measure of the
court's innovation is now difficult to recap-

6. Anonymous architect,
Courtyard of Palazzo della
Valle di Mezzo, Rome,
c. 1505-1510
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome
ture because of its profound influence, but
the Belvedere was the first monumental
environment built solely to display ancient
sculpture.
Andrea della Valle (1463-1534) was a
young bishop, apostolic secretary, and, tem-
porarily, vice chancellor during Julius II's
reign.33 He also, it seems, became the first
patron to bring the Belvedere's model into the
realm of domestic architecture. After Andrea
and his brother Bartolommeo inherited the
Palazzo di Mezzo from their father Filippo,
they decided to rebuild the palace with the
conspicuous exhibition of ancient statuary
in mind (fig. 6).34 The beginning of con-
struction is usually dated to 1508, because
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inscriptions above the doors up to the piano
nobile read "ANDREAS DE VALLE EPS.
MILETEN.," and della Valle became bishop
of Mileto in February of that year. But
plans to rebuild may have begun as early as
1497, when Andrea was renting a palace in
the Borgo.35 In 1509 Albertini described it
as a "new" palazzo adorned with "paintings
and statues,"36 and it was certainly near com-
pletion by 1515/1516, when Hans Vischer the
Younger sketched an elevation of the court-
yard with ancient sculpture in place (fig. 7).
Today, a bland nineteenth-century facade
unites the Palazzo di Mezzo with the Palazzo
di Cantone (fig. 8), concealing the Palazzo di
Mezzo's elegant cortile , with its spoliated
ancient columns and colored rotae set in
the spandrels of the arches. Vischer's draw-
ing, along with others by Amico Aspertini
and Francisco de Holanda, give a sense of the
sculpture display once housed here, while
Ulisse Aldrovandi's description of 1 5 50 and
documents from the della Valle archives fur-
ther clarify the original layout.37 Entering the
palace, guests would have passed beneath an
imposing bust of Jupiter set over the inner
side of the main portal, watching over the
household as he did at the Palazzo di Giove
next door.38 Stepping into the courtyard,
they would have passed beneath a porphyry
sculpture of a wolf on the lintel of a win-
dow,39 an echo not only of the Putto Riding
a Marine Monster facing it from across the
courtyard, but also of the Capitoline Wolf
then posed over the central door of the
Palazzo dei Conservatori.40 Life-size figurai
sculpture filled the niches on the piano
nobile; Amico Aspertini (fig. 9) and Fran-
cisco de Holanda drew these figures of Venus,
Ganymede, Daphnis playing the pipes, Her-
cules, Apollo, Mercury, and Bacchus.41 Below
the niches, fragments of ancient reliefs, some
excavated from the Forum of Trajan, were
joined together to create a long frieze running
along the short sides of the cortile.42 The
della Valle also displayed ancient inscrip-
tions in the courtyard, a statue of a kneeling
Niobid at the landing of the main staircase,
and portrait busts in niches above doorways.43
The architect of Andrea and Bartolom-
meo della Valle's palace is still unknown,
despite past attempts to attribute the
design to Andrea Sansovino or Giuliano da
Sangallo.44 Sangallo had already wrapped a
CHRISTIAN 39
classicizing (if not authentically ancient)
frieze around the courtyard of the Palazzo
Scala in Florence and carved out niches -
perhaps for sculpture - on the inner side of
its courtyard piers.45 But it is difficult to
believe that Sangallo's refined Florentine
work has anything to do with the della Valle
courtyard, which is so specifically Roman in
its imitation of the Cancelleria. Whoever
the architect, his adaptation of the Belve-
dere's sculpture niches to palace architecture
seems a novel and influential idea, one that
stands in the same decorative tradition as
Raphael's facade for Palazzo Branconio
dell'Aquila (fig. 10). The use of niches and
friezes formed from ancient reliefs speaks to
the intensified study of ancient ruins in
early Cinquecento Rome in the wake of Bra-
mante's Belvedere. Only the close observa-
tion of the empty niches visible in the
Roman ruins could have revealed how
ancient architects had conspicuously inte-
grated large-scale sculpture into their designs.
The Arch of Constantine, for its part (fig. 1 1 ),
illuminated how spoliated reliefs could be
joined together to embellish architectural
surfaces. Indeed, the triumphal arch is a par-
ticularly significant model for the sculpture
display at the Palazzo di Mezzo, because in
the early sixteenth century private collectors
had began to parade ancient sculptures on
temporary triumphal arches set up outside
their houses, as the della Valle did for the
papal possesso of Leo X.46
After its renovation, the collection at the
Palazzo di Mezzo surpassed the smaller dis-
plays in the other della Valle houses and
became the main attraction for visitors. At
the Palazzo di Giove to the east, the sculp-
ture collection remained relatively modest,
even if the della Valle's Menologium , the
Fasti vallenses, or the Cippus of Amemptus
continued to fascinate antiquarians like
Andreas Coner, Jean-Jacques Boissard, and gia ornamented with antiquities shown in 7. Hans Vischer the Younger,
Courtyard of Palazzo della
Gabriele Simeoni throughout the sixteenth Heemskerck's view.49 Although this loggia Valle di Mezzo, 1515/1516,
century.47 To the west, on the other side of has today been stripped of its sculpture and pen and ink
Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. 19,051,-
the Palazzo di Mezzo, the Palazzo di Cantone walled up, its mirror image, the two-bay Art Resource, New York
boasted a more elaborate and innovative loggia which Giacomo della Porta con-
design, one that figures in a hasty sketch structed much later on the south side of the
made by Heemskerck some time in the courtyard (fig. 13), gives a sense of its origi-
1530S (fig. 12).48 Before his death in 15 10, nal scheme.50 On the whole, Lorenzo Stefano
Stazio della Valle had carried out major ren- conceived of this cortile as a pendant to the
ovations to this palace. Some time before Palazzo di Mezzo court, using ancient tondi
1518, his son Lorenzo Stefano erected the log- to mimic the rotae of the courtyard next

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8. Nineteenth-century facade
uniting the Palazzo di
Cantone and Palazzo di
Mezzo, seen from the Corso
Vittorio Emmanuele
Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la
Documentazione, Rome
9. Amico Aspertini,
Sculptures in the Courtyard
of the Palazzo della Valle di
Mezzo, c. 1531-1535, pen
and ink
British Museum, London, 1898-11-
23-3, fols. 4V.-5; photograph The
Warburg Institute, London
door and installing his own frieze of ancient
reliefs here, shown in abbreviated form in
Heemskerck's sketch. But the display at the
Palazzo di Cantone was also highly imagi-
native in its own right. It exploited the orig-
inal architectonic function of the Pans,
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which, according to the Roman poet Paolo
Spinoso, had been discovered in an archaeo-
logical site "six miles from Rome" some-
time before 1481. 51 The della Valle might
have been the first to use a massive mask (of
a type similar to the Bocca della Verità) as a
drain and courtyard centerpiece, a motif
repeated by the Cesi.52 The della Valle's
enormous mask would have probably been
too heavy to bring in from a distant archaeo-
logical site, and perhaps the nearby ruins of
Pompey's Theater provided them with this
work. Intriguingly, Propertius' description of
the porticoed gardens of the theater includes
a reference to "streams that flow from a
sleeping Silenus [fountain], whose splatter-
ing waters are heard through the whole city,
until suddenly the Triton swallows them
in his mouth."53
Cardinal Andrea della Valle's
Hanging Garden
When Pope Leo X promoted Andrea della
Valle to the cardinalate in 15 17, the reno-
vated Palazzo di Mezzo abruptly became
CHRISTIAN 41

inadequate. But della Valle had to keep his
plans for a new cardinal's palace on hold for
more than a decade. His fortunes certainly
prospered; he was promoted as a candidate
for the papacy during the conclave of 1 523,54
and a medal minted for the jubilee of 1525
(fig. 14), the only known portrait of Andrea
della Valle, commemorated his appointment
as archpresbyter of Santa Maria Maggiore.55
But it was only in the mid- to late 1 520s that
della Valle and his architect, Antonio da
Sangallo the Younger, began construction
on an immense new palace at a site just
north of the Palazzo di Cantone (fig. 15).
The Sack of Rome in 1527 imposed its own
delays, and della Valle would not complete
even the west wing and its hanging garden
of ancient sculpture before his death in
I534-56
The two surviving plans for the palace
illustrate how ideas developed for this mon-
umental sculpture gallery and garden.57 One
(fig. 16) shows a project for the piano nobile
with a relatively small giardino segreto that
seems to have been intended as a sculpture
garden, as niches appear along two walls.
Another plan (fig. 17), which does not mea-
42 CHRISTIAN
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io. Anonymous, Palazzo
Branconio dell'Aquila ,
sixteenth century, pen and
ink
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, inv.
UA 230
sure up with the designs for the piano nobile
in fig. 1 6, shows a ground floor. From this
drawing, we see that a garden was to be built
above the entire length of the stables, which
are labeled ''stalla sotto sopra terra,- al primo
solaro giardino." In the end, Cardinal della
Valle chose this more innovative pian. He
reserved an immense, elevated terrace above
the stables for his oblong sculpture court,
whose shape would set an enduring example
for future sculpture "galleries." In della
Valle's eyes, the sculpture court merited its
own designer and sculpture restorer. For the
task he chose the sculptor and architect
Lorenzo Lotto, known as Lorenzetto (1490-
1 541 ), who could include on his résumé the
restoration of the Tigris Belvedere for Leo
X.58 Lorenzetto's open-air hanging garden
would take up the top two stories and the
entire length of della Valle's palace, an ele-
vated site signposted to passersby by a funer-
ary relief still immured on the palace facade
(fig. 18).
The statue court continued to overwhelm
artists and antiquarians throughout the six-
teenth century, until the Medici bought its
sculpture in 1584. Guests wrote exalted
1 1 . Arch of Constantine,
Rome
Alinari/Art Resource, New York
descriptions, the most detailed by Johannes
Fichard, Aldrovandi, Maximilian van Wael-
scapple, Boissard, and Jodocus Hondius,59
but Heemskerck's extraordinary drawing
(fig. i ), rediscovered by Arnold Nesselrath,60
and Holanda's elevation of the western wall
(fig. 2)61 best illuminate its original splendor.
Visiting artists from near and far - such as
Girolamo da Carpi, the author of the Cam-
bridge Sketchbook, Giovannantonio Dosio,
Pierre Jacques, Maarten de Vos, and Jacopo
Strada - made sketches of individual sculp-
tures,62 while engravings by Marcantonio
Raimondi and Enea Vico circulated images
of della Valle's antiques to an international
audience.63 None of these sources is a
straightforward description: Heemskerck's
drawing, for example, overscales the two
ancient columns in the foreground and places
them too far apart to let us peek into the
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statue court. But together they offer an extra-
ordinary array of documentation for the
court and a wide measure of the artistic
response to it.
Parts of the della Valle sculpture court
have also survived intact, even if scholars had
long imagined its total demise. Two of the
inscriptions and a large stucco mask remain
in situ on the west side (fig. 19), a section of
the original architrave with a decorative pat-
tern inspired by the Temple of Mars Ultor
stands in place on the east side, and the two
ancient columns in the foreground of
Heemskerck's drawing still occupy their
original positions.64 Judging from the sur-
viving remains, it can be estimated that the
statue court measured a full 35 meters in
length and 12.5 meters in width.
Lorenzetto organized this long space with
a stucco architectural skeleton that set up an
CHRISTIAN 43
entirely symmetrical arrangement, pairing
works in opposition: male and female, draped
and nude, god and human. Two nude gods
(Neptune and Marsyas) guarded the entrance
loggia; draped female figures (which were
erroneously called the Sabines) occupied
niches at each end; and captives - three bar-
barian prisoners in porphyry and one in
white marble - stood at the four corners.65
On the long walls, vines on trellises and cit-
rus trees sprouted from planters decorated
with ancient reliefs.66 Statues of gods and
satyrs filled five niches on this lower level.
On the right side of his drawing, Heems-
kerck's drawing shows only the Apollo
Citharoedos in place,67 but by the time
Aldrovandi visited in 1550, the niches also
housed a statue of Zeus with an eagle, a
Neptune, and a "faun" or satyr, visible in
Holanda's drawing.68 On the left side, the
so-called Thusnelda (a female barbarian)
appeared in the first niche and an unidenti-
the via Lata (the modern via del Corso). He 12. Maerten van
fiable female figure in the fifth.69 Aldrovandi Heemskerck, Courtyard of
pillaged from this arch all the spectacular the Palazzo della Valle di
did not describe other statues on this side of
reliefs displayed in the attic zone of the Cantone , c. 1532-1537, pen
the court because the middle two openings and ink
sculpture court (fig. 20). 74 Della Valle may
were not niches but windows. They are dark Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv.
have unearthed several other works, such as 79. D. 2, fol. 2or.; Bildarchiv,
in Heemskerck's drawing and can be iden- Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin
the Dacians and the so-called Sabines, from
tified with the "open windows" through
the Forum of Trajan.75 The della Valle owned
which Waelscapple observed an aviary, filled
a chapel at San Lorenzuolo, a church located
with birds "of every variety."70 On both
within the Forum of Trajan that is known to
sides at the attic level, nude Olympian divini-
have traded in ancient sculptures.76 They 13. Giacomo della Porta,
ties inhabited the center niches, Hercules on
also may have quarried sculpture directly loggia in the courtyard of
the left and Hermes on the right.71 Flanking the Palazzo di Cantone,
from their own property in the imperial fora, Rome, 1570
male figures and draped female statues alter- which included land at the Pantano di San Author photograph
nated with the massive relief panels now
immured on the garden facade of the Villa
Medici (fig. 20). Over these, male and female
all'antica stucco masks peered out amid
inscribed plaques spelling out the dedica-
tions of the entire sculpture court (discussed
below).
To fill this gallery, which Fichard called a
"treasury of all Roman antiquities," della
Valle had collected furiously in the 1520s,
buying sculpture from dealers and other
collectors or quarrying it directly from the
ruins.72 Andrea's brother Bartolommeo, mae-
stro delle strade from 1 5 17 to 1 520, may have
helped pull the necessary strings for della
Valle's excavations, including one he com-
missioned at the nearby Baths of Agrippa.73
In the 1 520s, Andrea also bought up a cache
of sculpture from the Arcus Novus, an
ancient triumphal arch which once spanned

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14- Anonymous, Medal of
Andrea della Valle, 1525,
bronze
National Gallery of Art, Washington,
Samuel H. Kress Collection

1 5 . Palazzo della
Valle-Capranica, west wing
(stable block), showing the
site of the hanging garden
Author photograph

Basilio stretching over the fora of Augustus forebears/'81 and Vasari famously claimed
and Caesar.77 that della Valle was the "first" to restore
These archaeological treasure troves, sculpture and that Lorenzetto "had good
which could also have included the family's sculptors redo what was lacking, which was
casali outside the walls or their own houses the reason why other Signori did the same,
between the Theater of Pompey and the . . . like Cardinal Cesi, Ferrara, Farnese, and,
Baths of Agrippa,78 offered up an extraordi- in a word, all of Rome."82 Of course, della
nary number of antiquities. In 1 5 84, when an Valle was not the first to restore antiqui-
inventory of the cardinal's palace was made, ties, and he did not complete repairs to all of
antiquities adorned the hanging garden, the
cortile , the stairway to the hanging garden,
and della Valle's private chambers. The
notary who made the inventory even found
fragments of ancient columns in the chicken
coop.79 Although he did not finish the palace,
della Valle may also have planned the mon-
umental display of antique statesmen and
military heroes installed on the palace facade
some time before 1550. Here, eight life-size
figures in porphyry and white marble, four
below and four above, took their places atop
inscribed ancient bases (fig. 21).80 The
arrangement has received scant attention,
and the sixteenth-century facade has since
been replaced with another. But it was once
a remarkable answer to the frescoed facades
of Polidoro da Caravaggio and an architec-
tonic response to the display of sculpture col-
lections on temporary, street-level arches.
Delia Valle's innovative approach and his
single-minded integration of statuary into the
entire fabric of his new palace profoundly
affected the way that ancient sculptures
came to be exhibited in Rome. Andrea Ful-
vio called him "the only one who now cares
diligently for the ancient monuments of our

CHRISTIAN 45

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 1 6. Antonio da Sangallo the
Younger, Ground Plan for the
Palace of Cardinal Andrea
della Valle, c. 1526-1529,
pen and ink
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence,
UA ç82r

17. Antonio da Sangallo the

Younger, Ground Plan for the
Palace of Cardinal Andrea
della Valle, c. 1526-1529,
pen and ink
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence,
UA 1274*

18. Ancient funerary relief,

Palazzo della Valle-Capranica
Author photograph

46 CHRISTIAN

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iç. East wall of the hanging
garden of Cardinal Andrea
della Valle
Author photograph
20. Ancient relief depicting a
sacrifice, formerly in the
collection of Andrea della
Valle, Villa Medici, Rome
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut,
inst. neg. 77-1739
his sculptures: many unrestored fragments
appear in Heemskerck's view. But Vasari's
point underscores the impact and ambition
of della Valle's partially achieved goal.83
One of its most important innovations was
the conception of an entirely all'antica envi-
ronment where ancient altars and pedestals,
rather than modern bases, propped up stat-
ues. Fichard remarked on this aspect when
he wrote, "There [are] almost no marble
sculptures there which are not displayed
and refitted [repositum adaptatumque]
according to the antique."84 This concept,
one encompassed by the term instaurado,
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echoes through the subsequent history of
antiquities collections. Della Valle set a
standard followed by the Farnese, for example,
who had well-known sculptors restore miss-
ing pieces and commissioned a separate
design for their sculpture display from an
architect and sculptor, Michelangelo.85 The
idea of encrusting all surfaces with antiqui-
ties, in a well-planned and architectonic
design that fits each work fits into a sym-
metrical ensemble, resonates in major exhi-
bitions of statuary that were to come at the
Palazzo Spada, the Villa Medici garden
facade, the courtyard of the Palazzo Mattei,
and, as Kristina Herrmann Fiore argues in
this volume, the garden facade of the Villa
Borghese.
In reinventing a statue court as an ele-
vated viridario, the della Valle statue court
also brought into the palace the Roman plea-
sur t-vigna filled with sculpture and inscrip-
tions, like Cardinal della Valle's own retreat
near the Trevi Fountain.86 The statue court
thus aimed at the opulence of the "suburban
villa," which, as Alberti defined it, com-
bined the grandeur and convenience of the
urban house with the tranquility of the rus-
tic villa.87 At Palazzo della Valle, the viri-
dario took the shape of a hortus pensilis, a
genre whose royal associations had already
been exploited at Pienza and Urbino.88 A
compelling precedent for della Valle's statue-
filled refuge was the hanging garden of
Palazzo Carafa in Naples, which Diomede
Carafa had adorned with ancient statues of
nymphs in the 1470s.89 Carafa had located
his hanging garden above his palace stables,
as is barely visible in a seventeenth-century
print (fig. 22). Nearer at hand, the garden of
Pope Paul II's Palazzo San Marco (Palazzo
Venezia) offered a more immediate example
for della Valle's statue court as a two-storey
hortus pensilis set above stables. But surely
the most vivid model was the papal Belvedere,
a giardino segreto , sculpture court, and hang-
ing garden reached by dramatic ascent up Bra-
mante's spiral staircase.90
The design for della Valle's hanging garden
must owe some of its features to Loren-
zetto's close association with Raphael. In
the della Valle court, Lorenzetto called on the
innovations of Raphael's Villa Madama,
where sculpture-bearing niches adorned
walls stuccoed with classicizing motifs.
CHRISTIAN 47
Raphael had been instrumental in bringing
antiquities collections into the realm of
artistic training and practice, and Loren-
zetto's association with the workshop nat-
urally recommended him as the designer of
della Valle's ambitious display. Indeed,
Raphael's workshop had distinguished itself
internationally for its proximity to the
antique and its intensive knowledge of
Roman sculpture collections. Such exper-
tise had profound implications for artists
and collectors alike. Studying inside sculp-
ture collections probably helped Raphael
reach his famous judgment on the sculp-
48 CHRISTIAN
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tures on the Arch of Constantine (fig. 1 1 );
moreover, his recognition that the sculp-
tures on the arch were really products of dif-
ferent eras and different contexts seems to be
one of the necessary intellectual steps toward
the innovative design of Andrea della Valle's
hanging garden. It was perhaps with the real-
ization that the Arch of Constantine func-
tioned as scaffolding for disparate sculptures
created at various dates that della Valle and
Lorenzetto employed the triumphal arch as
a basic design element for the court's eleva-
tion, consolidating different works of spolia
under the umbrella of inscribed dedications.
2 1 . Giovannantonio Dosio,
Sculptures on Antique Bases
on the Facade of Palazzo
della Valle-C apranica, after
1546-before 1570, pen and ink
Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv.
no. 79. D.i, fol. 63, from Christian
Hülsen, Das Skizzenbuch des
Giovannantonio Dosio im
Staatlichen Kupferstichkabinett zu
Berlin (Berlin, 1933)
22. Anonymous, Courtyard
of Palazzo Car afa in Naples,
1692, engraving
From Pompeo Sarnelli, Guida de'
forestieri curiosi di vedere, e
d'intendere le cose più notabili della
regal città di Napoli, e del suo
ameníssimo distretto (Naples, 1692)
Inscriptions in the Hanging Garden
If its elevation recalls the motif of the tri-
umphal arch, the ground plan of the statue
court evokes literary descriptions of ancient
Rome's vast, open-air statue galleries set in
porticoed gardens and built by emperors for
the enjoyment of Roman citizens.91 The
eight prominent dedicatory inscriptions on
the walls of the statue court bring the par-
allel even further into evidence. As rhetor-
ical statements about the public nature of the
hanging garden, these inscriptions offer a
particularly significant insight into the car-
dinal's aims for self-representation. Delia
Valle, who may have composed the inscrip-
tions himself, placed them in a symmetrical
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array: on the eastern wall (the right side of
Heemskerck's drawing), all the inscriptions
began with the words ad or non ad, declar-
ing the lofty purposes to which the statue
court strove or the vices it avoided. On the
western wall, all inscriptions were in the
dative, each dedicating the statuario to some-
one or to some ideal.92 Two of the inscrip-
tions survive in situ, but for the rest we can
rely on Waelscapple and Fichard's testimony.
From back to front in Heemskerck's draw-
ing (north to south), they read as in the table
on the next page.
By its own definition, the garden was an
enchanting "retreat of grace and elegance,"
an earthly paradise, and a locus amoenus. As
such, it was the complement of two adjacent
rooms to the west, the aviary and a stufetta
(heated bath) decorated with "very elegant
and very lascivious pictures of nude, bathing
girls."93 But the inscriptions also stipulated
that the statue court was "not for idle fancy"
( voluntas ) or luxury. It was not to be a self-
indulgent retreat into erotic pleasures but a
public benefit, accessible to others.
In keeping with Renaissance theories of
magnificenza , vast expenditure on costly
architectural projects such as the statue
court was justifiable only to the degree that
it reflected the nobility of the patron and
could prove beneficial to society.94 But for
cardinals specifically, whose most essential
duty was to act piously in public, the stakes
were higher. If their collections were per-
ceived as pious, their patronage of the arts
would better meet the expectations codi-
fied by treatises such as Paolo Cortesi's De
Cardinalato.95 So that the splendor of della
Valle's hanging garden might be deemed
appropriate for a prince of the church, the
dedicatory inscriptions attempted to stave off
any anxieties about greed, excess, or the
hoarding of Rome's common cultural patri-
mony, the city's ancient remains.96
By the 1520s, especially in the context of
cardinals' collections, this ideal of public
accessibility was a commonplace. Often it
was expressed in the context of a welcoming
inscription set up in a public area and invit-
ing guests to enter. For example, outside the
Cesarini sculpture garden near the present
Largo Argentina, an inscription announced,
"Giuliano Cesarini, Cardinal Deacon of
Sant'Angelo, dedicated this dieta of statues
CHRISTIAN 49
Text of inscriptions in della Valle's hanging garden
West East

North MAIORUM MEMORIAE AD COLLABENTIUM STATUARUM

NEPOTUMQUE IMITATIONI IN STAURATIONEM PENSILIUMQUE
(To the memory of ancestors and for HORTORUM ORNAMENTŮM
emulation by descendants) (For the restoration of collapsing statues and the
decoration of the hanging garden)
HONESTI OTII OBLECTAMENTO AD AMICORUM IUCUNDITATEM CIVIUM
DOMESTICAEQUE COMMODITATI ADVENARUMQUE DELECTATIONEMa
(For the enjoyment of decorous leisure (For the delight of friends and the delectation of
and for domestic use) citizens and strangers)
ANTIQUARUM RERUM VIVARIO NON AD VOLUNTATEM SED AD CENSUS
PICTORUM POETARUMQUE FORTUNARUMQUE FAVOREMc
SUBSIDIO (Not for idle fancy, but to favor wealth and fortune)
(As a vivarium of ancient things and as
an aid to poets and painters )b

South SIBI ET GENIO POSTERORUMQUE AD DELICIUM VITAE ELEGANTIARUM

HILARITATI GRATIARUMQUE SECESSUMd
(For himself and the genius [of the (For the enjoyment of life, as a retreat of grace and
place?], and for the delight of posterity) elegance)

aThis is the version given by Fichard, whereas Waelscapple has only "Ad amicorum iucunditatem advenarumque
delectationem."

bThe Latin vivarium actually refers to an animal enclosure and is a strange choice of words here. It may be a mis-
taken transcription of viridarium or relate to the Italian vivaio.
CA11 Renaissance observers except Holanda transcribed voluntatem as voluptatem, and all past scholarship on the
collection has repeated the incorrect voluptatem (see Christian 2003).
dHolanda drew the inscription "Maiorum memoriae nepotumque imitationi" in this position, but Fichard and
Waelscapple both agree on the placement of this inscription here, and their version is constructed grammatically
like the other inscriptions on the east wall.

to his own studies and to the honorable plea-
sure [honesta voluptas] of his countrymen . . .
in the year 15 00. 7/97 At about the same time,
Cardinal Carafa publicly opened his sculp-
ture collection "to all friends and guests. "98
Cardinal della Valle's inscriptions followed
suit by inviting visitors, poets, artists, citi-
zens, and strangers to enter.
The fact that della Valle located his wel-
coming inscriptions inside the collection
itself, rather than in a public place, already
raises questions about their sincerity, and
we should wonder how common such
impromptu visits were and who would have
made them. In 1490, Giovanni da Tolentino
seems to have visited the della Valle collec-
tions without a formal invitation, and Alber-
tini's guidebook of 15 10 published the
locations of private sculpture collections in
Rome as if they were accessible to his audi-
ence. But visitors such as da Tolentino, and
the readers of Albertini's Latin text, had
more clout than mere strangers. As Patricia
Falguières has shown in her study of cardi-
nals' sculpture collections, the admission
practices seem to have mimicked those of
their private libraries, where elite audiences
of antiquarians and aristocrats, rather than
any "citizens" or pilgrims, came to study.99
Why, then, did collectors go to the trouble
to display these welcoming inscriptions?
We have already considered the example of
ancient Roman galleries, where "poor men"
could enjoy statues "better than those who
are rich, for there is an abundant supply of
them in public places."100 From Pliny, col-
lectors would have learned that the private
hoarding of masterpiece sculptures had
incited great anxiety in ancient Rome. When
Tiberius' excessive love of Lysippos' bronze
Apoxyomenos caused him to transfer it from
Agrippa's public baths to his own private
bedroom, public scandal quickly ensued.101
The inscription "For the enjoyment of
decorous leisure (honesti otii) and for domes-
tic use" reminds us that the question of
accessibility also conjured up Renaissance
anxieties about leisure, or otium. The idea

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of decorous leisure was well suited to sculp-
ture collections, particularly in reference to
what was known as Scipio's paradox. Accord-
ing to this maxim, the Roman hero Scipio
"was never less at leisure than when he was
at leisure, never less alone than when
alone."102 In other words Scipio, the ideal
philosopher and statesman, filled his pri-
vate life not with vacuous pleasures but
with the sort of contemplation needed to
make him selfless in his public life. This
exemplar suited sculpture collectors seeking
to portray their places of "leisure" as noble,
virtuous, and ultimately useful for the city.
For this reason, Alfonso ďEste had balanced
the display of Antonio Lombardo's dazzling
reliefs (carved between 1 507 and 1 5 1 1 ) with
the words "Never less alone than when he
was alone."103 Della Valle probably had the
same paradox in mind when he dedicated his
hanging garden to honesti otii.104
The dedication to "the memory of ances-
tors" and "emulation by their descendants"
further characterizes the piety of the col-
lection by implying that the sculptures were
ancestral images. Della Valle thereby trans-
formed himself into a Roman paterfamilias
and the statue court into a neo-atrium,-
Aldrovandi even identified the six female bar-
barians which surrounded the court as
Sabines, the very first entries on the roster
of commonly invoked Roman ancestors.
Furthermore, in stressing the capacity of
marble sculpture to preserve memory, the
inscriptions recognize sculpture's ability to
withstand the passage of time, reclaiming the
didactic role accorded to sculpture in antiq-
uity as an aid to memory and a record of
"great deeds." This rhetoric gave ancient
statuary as a whole a function commonly
assigned to portraiture: antiquities were
exempla set up in public to inspire the imi-
tation of great men and women. The notion
had become a topos about ancient sculp-
ture. In 1504, for example, Pomponius Gau-
ricus explained the reason the ancients put
up statues: "The desire to conserve the mem-
ory of those who accomplished some great
action, or who invented something useful,
and to incite others to compete with them
in the hope of achieving the honor that
seems greater than all others."105 And in
his On Architecture , Alberti wrote that
sculpture adds magnificence to cities because
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it is "the most excellent means" for "pre-
serving a wondrous memory of men and
actions."106
In the midst of della Valle's statues of gods
and goddesses, the evocation of heroic
"ancestors" would probably not have con-
vinced anyone. But in their attempt to char-
acterize the subject matter of the sculptures
as historical and biographical, rather than
mythological, the inscriptions evoked the
narratives of Plutarch's Lives to avoid the
frivolity of Ovid's Metaphorphoses. They
implicitly compared the collection as a whole
to painted cycles of uomini illustri and Virtù,
those exempla that had long been considered
a "suitable" form of domestic decoration
for Renaissance statesmen.107 The point
becomes evident when we compare the
statue court to a contemporary commission,
the frescoes Andrea della Valle ordered for the
sala grande of the Palazzo di Mezzo (fig.
23). When della Valle commissioned the
sala grande from an unidentified artist -
perhaps Perino del Vaga - in the late 1520s,
the parallel between this room and the statue
court would have been unmistakable.108 At
the lower level of the Salone, barbarians
mimicked the Dacian captives in the corners
of the statue court, while in the Salone's
painted attic uomini illustri ("good" Caesars
in military garb) and Virtù in niches paral-
leled the military heroes and female figures
in the attic niches of the hanging garden. The
visual equation allows the social function of
the painting cycle and the sculpture collec-
tion to overlap: both were models for the
virtues of the ancients, the ideals thought
to educate and to inform the behavior of
public figures. Paolo Cortesi would have
approved, for he had requested that cardinals
shun mythological narratives, paint their
halls with edifying scenes from the Old Tes-
tament, and decorate their bedrooms with
symbols of virtue.109 In recommending
imagery that was unquestionably historical
and exemplary, Cortesi reminded his audi-
ence that "men are fascinated by that type
of painting by which they may benefit from
the lessons of history brought to life. For
[by the sight of these paintings] either the
appetite of the soul is aroused or the capac-
ity for motion . . . may be prompted."110
If it is difficult to imagine how della Valle's
statues would have actually taught such
CHRISTIAN 51
virtuous lessons, another purpose extolled by
the inscriptions was more easily achieved.
While it seems that Lorenzo de' Medici's
late-fifteenth-century sculpture garden at
Piazza S. Marco had been a training ground
where sculptors actually carved,111 della
Valle's garden offered itself as something
more like an open-air sketching studio. With
this role in mind, the inscriptions charac-
terized it "as an aid to poets and painters."112
Within the statue court, artists studied fig-
urai nudes, while Guillaume Philandrier, in
his French edition of Vitruvius, used the
temples visible in della Valle's reliefs (like the
one illustrated in fig. 20) to test Vitruvius'
rules for intercolumnar width.113
If della Valle hoped to create a place where
poets, architects, and painters could profit
from the ongoing legacy of antiquity, it is
52 CHRISTIAN
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especially critical to remember the histori- 23- Unknown artists, sala
grande of the Palazzo della
cal circumstances in which he unveiled his Valle di Mezzo, c. 1526-1534,
statue court. Although the hanging garden fresco
Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la
has never been considered in relation to the Documentazione, Rome
Sack of Rome, it was, in fact, one of the
first significant acts of patronage to follow
and respond to the event.1 14 During the dark
days of the Sack, Cardinal della Valle had
taken a prominent role in Rome. When the
Spanish emperor invaded in 1527, the fam-
ily's longstanding imperial alliances allowed
them to protect the Palazzo di Mezzo with
a high ransom. Andrea della Valle used the
palace to shelter almost four hundred people,
including the artists Rosso Fiorentino and
Jacopo Sansovino.115
Another refugee at the Palazzo di Mezzo
during the Sack was the poet Pietro Corsi.116
In the aftermath of the terrible event, Corsi
wrote two poems about della Valle, the first
alluding to the Cardinal's success in pre-
venting the looting or destruction of his
sculpture collection:117
Among Cardinal della Voile's Statues
Why do you wonder, guest, that in this palace,
So many mute spirits draw breath through
panting stone?
The enemy is here and they justly turn to
stone with fright.
Although Valle may cover the marbles and
make them safe, still they tremble.118
The second extols della Valle as a collector:
Among Cardinal Andrea della Valle' s Statues
and Gardens
Illustrious images of the gods and illustrious
images of the ancient Quirites
Father della Valle ordered them to be discov-
ered and restored
And then he hung his new gardens up high in
his palace
Where you see living marbles stand in perpetu-
ity.
At last the Ruler of Olympus beheld Latium
And so he consoled the saddened breast of
Venus
You cried over her so many times, because she
was hidden for so many centuries.
But under this bishop, our Rome will raise her
head again.119
Thanks to della Valle's efforts, these verses
proclaim, Venus' (and Rome's) obscured
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beauty will once again be seen. Implicit is the
idea that della Valle's new statue court offers
hope for the restoration not only of ancient
Rome, but also of Rome before the calami-
ties of 1527. Della Valle, who made it pos-
sible for Corsi to survive the siege, emerges
as a civic hero who has allowed Rome to rise
from devastation. In this light, the protection
of antiquities could be seen as a counterpart
to the restoration of religious relics dispersed
during the Sack, an activity that della Valle
also sponsored.120 What Corsi praised was a
new approach to recovery and recontextu-
alization which della Valle, in his assumed
role as a protector of Rome, had been instru-
mental in shaping. It involved the purpose-
ful excavation of ancient sculpture out of
ancient ruins and the construction of a mod-
ern setting where it could be preserved, seen
by others, and put to fruitful ends. The words
of the papal camerlengo Agostino Spinola
sum up della Valle's initiative, praising him
for the idea that "in the city of Rome, in need
of adornment and expansion, marble, por-
phyry, and bronze statues long underground
. . . and other sculpted stones bringing to life
the great deeds of the ancestors worthy of
memory, should be excavated, returned to
their ancient splendor, . . . and brought to a
new and modern use, as a diversion for us
and for posterity."121 The unmistakable
piety of these sentiments would mask and
neutralize the social order that collecting
had helped create.
CHRISTIAN 53
NOTES
I am greatly indebted to my dissertation advisers,
John Shearman and Salvatore Settis, and to Fabio
Barry and Caroline Elam for their valuable sugges-
tions. I am also grateful to the Kress Foundation for
funding a survey of Andrea della Valle's hanging gar-
den.
Abbreviations
AdV Archivio della Valle-dei Bufalo
ASR Rome, Archivio di Stato
ASV Archivio Segreto Vaticano
BAV Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
BNR Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale
CIG Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, 4 vols.
(Berlin, 1828-1877)
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, 18 vols.
(Berlin, 1862-1989)
i. The collections were first catalogued in Adolf
Michaelis, "Römische Skizzenbücher Marten van
Heemskercks und anderer nordischer Künstler des
XVI. Jahrhunderts," Jahrbuch des Kaiserlich
Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 6 (1891):
218-238; Rodolfo Lanciani, Storia degli scavi di
Roma, 7 vols. (1902-19 12; rev. ed. Rome,
1989-2002), i: 165-168 (citations are to the revised
edition); and Christian Hülsen and Hermann Egger,
Die römischen Skizzenbücher von Marten van
Heemskerck im königlichen Kupferstichkabinett zu
Berlin, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1913-1916), 2: 56-66. An
inventory made in 1 5 84 was published with minor
differences in Aurelio Gotti, Le gallerie di Firenze
(Florence, 1872), 76, 305-315, and Documenti inediti
per servire alla storia dei Musei d'Italia, 4 vols. (Flo-
rence and Rome, 1878-1880), 4: 377-381. Recent
scholarship has focused on the hanging garden: most
notably, see David Coffin, Gardens and Gardening in
Papal Rome (Princeton, 1991), 20-22, 246, and Patri-
cia Falguières, "La cité fictive: Les collections de car-
dinaux, à Rome, au XVIe siècle," in Les C arrache et
les décors profanes: Actes du colloque, Collection de
l'École Française de Rome, vol. 106, ed. André Chas-
tel (Rome, 1988), 215-333. Further discussion can be
found in Paul Gustav Hübner, Le statue di Roma:
Grundlagen für eine Geschichte der antiken Monu-
mente in der Renaissance, vol. 1, Quellen und
Sammlungen (Leipzig, 1912), 117-120; the review of
Hübner's book by Christian Hülsen in Göttingische
gelehrte Anzeigen 176 ( 1914): 306-309; Claudio Fran-
zoni, "Remembranze d'infinite cose : Le collezioni
rinascimentali di antichità," in Memoria dell'antico
nell'arte italiana, ed. Salvatore Settis, 3 vols. (Turin,
1984-1986), i: 324-326; Henning Wrede, "Römische
Antikenprogramme des 16. Jahrhunderts," in II cor-
tile delle statue: Der Statuenhof des Belvedere im
Vatikan, ed. Matthias Winner, Bernard Andreae, and
Carlo Pietrangeli (Mainz, 1998), 91-94; Sara Magis-
ter, "Censimento delle collezioni di antichità a
Roma: 1471-1503," Xenia antiqua 8 (1999): 164-165;
Sara Magister, "Censimento delle collezioni di anti-
chità a Roma (1 471-15 03): Addenda," Xenia antiqua
10 (2001): 122-124.
54 CHRISTIAN
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2. Falguières 1988.
3. See, by way of comparison, John Brewer, "The
Most Polite Age and the Most Vicious: Attitudes
towards Culture as a Commodity, 1 660-1 800," in
The Consumption of Culture, 1 600-1 800: Image,
Object, Text, ed. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer
(London, 199 1 ), 341-361.
4. As Rinaldo del Bufalo della Valle wrote in the
early nineteenth century, "Le case antique de7 quelli
della Valle . . . sono nel sito dove già fu il foro di
Marte, sotto al Campidoglio . . . nel foro argentario
detto da poi la scesa di Leone Proto." See AdV 99, no.
i, fol. I2V. For the history of the della Valle, see
Ignazio Ciampi, Della vita e delle opere di Pietro
della Valle il Pellegrino (Rome, 1880); Enrico Steven-
son, "Epitaffio preñes tino di Francesca della Valle,"
Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 6
(1883): 541-5 5 o; Anna Khomentovskaia, "La famiglia
Della Valle nella storia dell'epigrafìa umanistica,"
Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria 58
( 1 93 5 ): 99-118; Bruno Gatta, "Il diario di Lelio della
Valle (1581-1586)," Archivio della Società Romana
di Storia Patria 105 (1982): 237-259; Bruno Gatta,
"Dal casale al libro: I Della Valle," in Scrittura, bib-
lioteche, e stampa a Roma nel Quattrocento: Atti
del secondo seminario, ed. Massimo Miglio (Vatican
City, 1983), 629-652. Manuscript sources on the fam-
ily include the della Valle archives at the Vatican
(ASV, AdV) and the Archivio Storico Capitolino (the
Archivio Capranica); Domenico Jacovacci, BAV, Cod.
Ottob. lat. 2554, pt. i, fols. 57-103; Carlo Cartari,
Memorie della famiglia Della Valle, BAV, Vat. lat.
12545; and Memorie intorno la famiglia Della Valle
raccolte dal Marchese Rinaldo del Bufalo della Valle
(ASV, AdV 99, no. 1).
5. Lello della Valle had bought a "palatium" in the
Rione Sant'Eustachio already in 1382. See Christoph
L. Frommel, Der römische Palastbau der Hochre-
naissance, 3 vols. (Tübingen, 1973), 2: 336. For the
della Valle family's first business interests, see Lan-
ciani 1989-2002, 1: 166; Clara Gennaro, "Mercanti e
bovattieri nella Roma della seconda metà del Tre-
cento," Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il
Medio Evo 78 (1967): 180; Gatta 1983, 637; Henri
Broise and Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, "Strutture
famigliari, spazio domestico e architettura civile a
Roma alla fine del Medioevo," in Storia dell'arte ita-
liana, voi. 12 (Turin, 1983), ni; Anna Modigliani, "Li
nobili huomini di Roma: Comportamenti economici
e scelte professionali," and Anna Esposito, "Li nobili
huomini di Roma : Strategie familiari tra città, curia
e municipio," in Roma capitale (1447-1 5 27), ed. Ser-
gio Gensini (San Miniato, 1994), 365-366, 375-376.
6. For Paolo, "Cancellarius Almae Urbis perpetuus,"
who married into the baronial Savelli family, see
Gaetano Marini, Degli archiatri pontifici, 2 vols.
(Rome, 1784), 1: 120-128; Gatta 1983, 637-638.
7 . Pasquale Adinolfì, La via Sacra o del Papa tra '1
cerchio di Alessandro ed il Teatro di Pompeo (Rome,
1865), 137-145; Frommel 1973, 2: 336; Paola Brunori
and Alessandro Grassia, "I palazzi dell'Isola della
Valle in Roma," Architettura storia e documenti 1
(1989): 64-83; Broise and Maire Vigueur 1983, 129.
8. P. F. Casimiro, Memorie istoriche della chiesa e
convento di S. Maria in Aracoeli di Roma (Rome,
1736), 203-2 io,- Johanna E. L. Heideman, "The Cap-
pella di S. Paolo (or della Valle Chapel) in S. Maria in
Aracoeli in Rome," Antologia di belle arti 5, nos.
19/20(1981): 143-168.
9. For the della Valle and Poggio Bracciolini, see
Francesca Niutta, "Temi e personaggi nell'epigrafìa
sistina," in Un pontificato ed una città : Sisto IV
(1471-84), ed. Massimo Miglio, Francesca Niutta,
Diego Quaglioni, and Concetta Ranieri (Vatican City,
1986), 403. Biondo alludes to his friendship with
Lello della Valle in his Roma instaurata (3.76).
10. Ciriaco of Ancona's epigraphic sylloge (of which
the Roman part was compiled between 1432 and
1434) makes note of the Torso Belvedere when it was
in the collection of Cardinal Colonna (Copyist A of
Ciriaco d'Ancona, Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana
Ms. A.79.I, fol. 7V.1.
ii. In 1423, Niccolò della Valle gave his brother
Paolo a "palatium in Regione S. Eustachii domům
Jovis vulgariter appellatum"; see Adinolfì 1865, 149.
This bust may be one in the Capitoline. See Henry
Stuart Jones, Catalogue of the Ancient Sculptures
Preserved in the Municipal Collections of Rome,
Part I: The Sculptures of the Museo Capitolino
(Oxford, 19 12), 120, Galleria 47; Giuseppe Vasi, Delle
magnificenze di Roma antica e moderna, book 4
(Rome, 1754), 41: "Quello [palazzo] della famiglia
della Valle, sopra il cui portone era colocato un busto
antico di Giove, che ora è in Campidoglio, ed è
intagliato nel Frontispizio del primo Tomo del
Museo Capitolino."
12. Casimiro 1736, 199, no. 196; Giovanni
Marangoni, Delle cose gentilesche profane
trasportate ad uso e adornamento delle chiese
(Rome, 1744), 299-300.
13. Esposito 1994, 376.
14. For Lello II, see Bruno Gatta, "Della Valle, Lelio
(Lello)," in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, voi.
37 (Rome, 1989), 757-758. For Filippo, see Marini
1784, 1: 236-243; Massimo Miglio, ed. Li nuptiali di
Marco Antonio Altieri pubblicati da Enrico Nar-
ducci (Rome, 1995), 129-130. Although it has gone
unnoticed in the art-historical literature, Lello also
commissioned frescoes for the family chapel at the
Aracoeli from the Marchigian artist Giovanni da
Camerino (Gatta 1983, 635).
1 5 . " PAULIN AE VALLEIAE FILIOLAE
DULCISSļIMAE] PARENTES MOESTISSIMI. DECI-
PIMUR VOTIS ET TEMPORE FALLIMUR ET MORS
DERIDET CURAS; ANXIA VITA NIHIL. VIX. ANN.
VI" (Pietro Sabino, BAV, Chigi I.V. 168, fol. 117V.;
Jacopo Giglio, BAV, Vat. lat. 5238, fol. 48; Battista
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Zenobi Brunelleschi, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS
Lat. fol. 6 1 ad, fol. 2v.). The antique inscription that
was its model was included in Ciriaco d'Ancona's
notebooks (Remigio Sabbadini, "Ciriaco d'Ancona e
la sua descrizione autografa del Pelopenneso
trasmessa da Leonardo Botta," in Miscellanea Ceria-
ni [Milan, 1 9 10], 199).
16. For inscriptions in Filippo's collection, see CIL 6:
999; 6: 14,025; 6: 17,673; 6: 21,236; 6: 22,219. For
Bernardino della Valle, see Mauro de Nichilo, "Della
Valle, Bernardino," in Dizionario biografico degli
Italiani, voi. 37 (Rome, 1989), 729-731. Sweynheym
and Pannartz published Niccolò's translation of He-
siod's Operae et dies in 1471; his early death inter-
rupted a translation of the Iliad. See Renata Fabbri,
"Nota biografica sull'umanista Niccolò della Valle,"
Lettere italiane 28 (1976): 48-66; Gatta 1983,
630-631, 635; Silvia Danesi Squarzina, "Francesco
Colonna, principe, letterato, e la sua cerchia," Storia
dell'arte 10 (1987): 147-150; Mauro De Nichilo,
"Della Valle, Niccolò," in Dizionario biografico degli
Italiani, voi. 37 (Rome, 1989), 759-762. Francesco
della Valle, another of Lello's sons, is known mostly
for his violent vendettas against the Santacroce. See
Paolo Cherubini, "Della Valle, Francesco," in
Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol. 37 (Rome,
1989), 747-748.
17. Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study:
Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy
(New Haven, 1997).
18. For the Menologium, mentioned in Michele Fer-
rarino's Paris sylloge (datable to the late 1470s), see
CIL 6: 2,306. According to an epigraphic sylloge, the
Menologium was "found in a certain semiruined
church apud Augustam" [near the Mausoleum of
Augustus?] (Siena, Biblioteca Comunale K X 35, fols.
146V.-148); for the Fasti vallenses, noted in the syl-
loge of the Anonimo Reddiano dated c. 1474, see CIL
6: 2,298 and Giuseppe Fiorelli, Catalogo del Museo
Nazionale di Napoli : Raccolta epigrafica I-, Iscrizioni
greche ed italiche (Naples, 1867-1868), 17, no. 76.
19. For ancestor collections, see Massimo Miglio,
"Roma dopo Avignone: La rinascita politica
dell'antico," in Settis 1984-1986, 1: 73-1 ii; Salva-
tore Settis, "Sopra vivenza dell'antichità: L'arte
antica nel contesto medioevale e l'origine delle
collezioni," Trentapagine : Quaderni del Diparti-
mento di Scienze dell'Antichità, Università di
Padova 5 (2001): 1-47; Kathleen W. Christian,
"From Ancestral Cults to Art: The Santacroce Col-
lection of Antiquities," in Senso delle rovine e riusi
dell'Antico, Quaderno della Classe di Lettere e
Filosofia della Scuola Normale, ed. Salvatore Settis,
Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa : Serie
IV, Quaderni 14, Classe di Lettere e Filosofia (Pisa,
2002): 255-272; Kathleen W. Christian, "The de'
Rossi Collection of Ancient Sculptures, Leo X, and
Raphael," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 65 (2002): 132-200.
CHRISTIAN 55
20. Adinolfì 1865, 137-145. Part of the portico at the
Palazzo di Mezzo has been uncovered and is visible
from the Corso Vittorio.
21. Niccolò della Valle bought the Palazzo di Can-
tone (Adinolfì 1865, 137-145) and then Jacopo,
Stazio, Lorenzo Stefano, and Valerio della Valle
inherited it; Paolo, Filippo, Andrea, and Bartolomeo
della Valle, and then Quinzio de7 Rustici owned the
Palazzo di Mezzo. The descendants of Lello II della
Valle lived in the Palazzo di Giove and passed down
their collection of ancient inscriptions, and a clear
line of inheritance from Bernardino and Francesco to
Lello III and to Bruto della Valle can be determined
from epigraphic sylloges (see CIL 6: 2,306; 6: 8,525; 6:
9,i2i; 6: 11,541; 6: 15,23i; 6: 15,900; 6: 24,043). A
fourth house to the east of the Palazzo di Giove
(shown in fig. 4) is the Palazzo Pescatori- Serventi,
sold to Francesco Caffarelli in 1568 and then to
Leone Strozzi in 1586 (Brunori and Grassia 1989, 73
n. 2). In the Roman catasto of 1526/1527, the four
houses from west to east along the via Papalis (as
shown in fig. 4) were owned by Lorenzo Stefano,
Andrea, Lello III, and "the heirs of Bartolomeo" [that
is, Ottaviano]. See Domenico Gnoli, "Descriptio
Urbis o censimento della popolazione di Roma avanti
il sacco borbonico," Archivio della Reale Società
Romana di Storia Patria 17 (1894): 481, 486. In 1535,
the same houses belonged to Lorenzo Stefano,
Andrea, Bruto, and Ottaviano (ASR, Presidenza delle
strade, vol. 445, fol. 137, cited in Frommel 1973, 2:
338).
22. "Mur curii die iunii II demoliri sunt cep te Vallen-
sium aedes, via Pontifìcia magnifice satis constructae
. . . demolitionis causam dicebant, quod ea familia
obstinate nimium et contumaciter Columnensium
partes contra pontificem sectabatur." Enrico Carusi,
ed., Il diario romano di Jacopo Gherardi da Volterra,
dal vii settembre MCCCCLXXIX al xii agosto
MCCCCLXXXIV, Rerum italicarum scriptores voi.
23, pt. 3 (Città di Castello, 1904), 133. Stefano Infes-
sura and Sigismondo dei Conti varied in their assess-
ment of damage done by the pope. See Diario della
città di Roma di Stefano Infessura scribasenato,
ed. Oreste Tommasini, vol. 5 of Fonti per la storia
d'Italia (Rome, 1890), 118: "Lo lunedì furono buttate
in terra le case di missere Liello et de Iacovo della
Valle tutte, eccetto quelle di mastro Philippo, le quali
lo dì seguente foro iettate"; Sigismondo dei Conti, Le
storie de' suoi tempi dal 1475 al 15 10, 2 vols. (Rome,
1883), 1: 134: "Tecto et ea tantum pariete quae ad
tectum per tine t, deiectis, contentus fuit."
23. Richard Schofìeld, "Giovanni da Tolentino Goes
to Rome: A Description of the Antiquities of Rome
in 1490," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes 43 (1980): 246-256.
24. "Tum civis quidam Romanus: 'Quid si in priva-
torum quoque aedibus non inferiora fortasse his quae
publice vidisti offenderes? Ego Hercle pauca habeo
quae iam videbimus/ Domům igitur intrantes satiris
duobus auro coruscantibus occurrimus. Plurimas
deinceps virorum et mulierum statuas sumus con-
spicati; inter quas Marcum Antoniům et Faustinam
56 CHRISTIAN
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cognovimus. In tabula marmorea calendarium; cur-
susque solaris ratio continetur. In medio areae Nep-
tunus extat, tridente aequora quassans; contra quem
Appollo cythara modulans carmen; Arion delphino
sedens; Castor Poluxque, Baccanalia, munus gladia-
torium. Nero Aenobarbus, venationesque nonnullae,
variaeque animalium species in collibus errantium"
(Schofìeld 1980, 254-255). Schofielďs translation is
modified slightly here.
25. For the Pans, the only della Valle sculptures
singled out for description by the "Prospettivo
Milanese" (c. 1500), see Stuart Jones 1912, 25, no. 23;
Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the
Antique (New Haven and London, 1981), 301-302,
no. 75; Phyllis P. Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renais-
sance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of
Sources (London and Oxford, 1986), 109-111, no. 75;
Giovanni Agosti and Dante Isella, Antiquarie
prospetiche romane (Parma, 2004), 51-52.
26. The anonymous author of an album in Holkham
Hall (c. 1500) located these in the house of "Lello"
della Valle (Holkham Hall MS 701, fol. 34): "In chasa
meser Lello dalla valle due Fauni [?] braccia luno,
interi, e saldi Fantaciatissimi, anno un ciestone di
Frutta per uno in chapo." Hülsen argued that this
caption must be incorrect, as both Lello II and Lello
III lived at the Palazzo di Giove (see n. 21 above), but
it is known that the Pans were displayed at the
Palazzo di Cantone in the 1530s, where Heemskerck
sketched them (see Hülsen 1 9 14, 308 n. 2).
27. Fra Giocondo, Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS
270, fols. 1-3 v.: "Romae in domo D[omi]ni Bernar-
dini de la Valle."
28. For the identification of these statues, see Phyllis
P. Bober, Drawings after the Antique by Amico
Aspertini: Sketchbooks in the British Museum (Lon-
don, 1957), 47-53; for the Neptune, see also Gabriella
Capecchi, "Per ritrovare il 'Nettuno Valle': Una sosta
fiorentina, una parentesi livornese, un rifugio
pisano," Artista: Critica dell'arte in Toscana (1990):
20-31.
29. Andrea inherited Filippo's ancient inscriptions
(CIL 6: 999; 6: 14,025; 6: 17,673; 6: 21,326; 6: 22,219)
and presumably also sculpture along with them.
30. Fabio Benzi, Sisto IV renovator urbis : Architet-
tura a Roma, 1471-1484 (Rome, 1990).
3 1 . Sara Magister, "Arte e politica: La collezione di
antichità del Cardinale Giuliano della Rovere nei
palazzi ai Santi Apostoli," Atti della Accademia
Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali,
storiche e filologiche : Memorie, 9th ser., 14, fase. 4
(2002): 385-631.
32. Hans Henrik Brummer, The Statue Court in the
Vatican Belvedere, Stockholm Studies in History of
Art, vol. 20 (Stockholm, 1970); Il cortile delle statue:
Der Statuenhof des Belvedere im Vatikan, eds.
Matthias Winner, Bernard Andreae, and Carlo
Pietrangeli (Mainz am Rhein, 1998), with previous
bibliography.
3 3 • Della Valle substituted for Ascanio Sforza as vice
chancellor in 1503 and replaced Sforza temporarily
after his death in 1505, becoming an apostolic secre-
tary in January 1506. See Alfonse Chacón, Vitae, et
íes gestae Pontificum Romanorum et S.R.E. Cardi-
nalium, ab initio nascentis Ecclesiae usque ad
dementem IX P.O. M., 4 vols. (Rome, 1677), 3: cols.
350-35 1; Gaetano Moroni, ed., Dizionario di
erudizione storico-ecclesiastica da S. Pietro sino ai
nostri giorni, 104 vols. (Venice, 1840-1861), 88: 50;
Konrad Eubel, Hierarchia catholica medii aevi, 8
vols. (Monsterii, 1898-1903), 3: 16; Walther von Hof-
mann, Forschungen zur Geschichte der kurialen
Behörden, 2 vols. (Rome, 1914), 2: 74-75; Frommel
1973, 2: 345-348; Christina Riebesell, "Della Valle,
Andrea/7 in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, vol.
37 (Rome, 1989), 720-723. Unfortunately, there are
almost no documents about Cardinal della Valle pre-
served in the family archives.
34. For Bartolommeo, a banker who served as mae-
stro delle strade, see Riebesell 1989, 72 1; Melissa M.
Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici : Favor and
Finance in Sixteenth- Century Florence and Rome
(Cambridge, 1980), 117; Orietta Verdi, Maestri di edi-
fici e di strade a Roma nel secolo XV: Fonti e prob-
lemi (Rome, 1997), 163-167.
35. BAV, Arch. Cap. S. Petri in Vat., Consuali 16
(1497-1500), fol. i6v., rental contract for a house for-
merly owned by the Queen of Cyprus, cited in From-
mel 1973, 2: 345.
36. "Domus de Valle et Saxolis atque Butii et
Mapheis novae sunt, variis picturis et statuis ador-
natae," Francesco Albertini, Opusculum de
mirabilibus novae et ueteris Urbis Romae (Rome,
15 10), reprinted in Peter Murray, Five Early Guides
to Rome and Florence (Westmead, 1972), Y iv (verso).
37. Bober 1957, 47-53; Elias Tormo, Os Desenhos
das antigualhas que vio Francisco d'Ollanda pintor
portugués (. . . 1539-1540 . . .) (Madrid, 1940), fol.
28v. Ulisse Aldrovandi, Delle statue antiche, che per
tutta Roma, in diversi luoghi, e case si veggono,
compiled 1550, published in Lucio Mauro, Le anti-
chità della città di Roma (Venice, 1556), 212-216;
AdV 80, no. 32 (1585), description of the statues fixed
to the walls of the palazzo Della Valle di Mezzo.
38. The bust of Jupiter may be one at the Villa
Medici or one in the Uffìzi. See Michaelis 1891, 228,
no. 12; Guido A. Mansuelli, Galleria degli Uffizi: Le
sculture, 2 vols. (Rome, 1958-1961), 1: 63-64, no. 41;
Michelangelo Cagiano de Azevedo, Le antichità di
Villa Medici (Rome, 195 1), 37, no. 1. The position of
the Jove was "sopra la cornice della porta grande della
strada" (AdV 80, no. 32). Maerten van Heemskerck's
drawing of the sculpture collection of the Sassi illus-
trates a similarly positioned bust of Jove (Berlin,
Kupferstichkabinett, inv. Kdz 2783, 153 2- 1537).
39. Richard Delbrück, Antike Porphyrwerke (Berlin
and Leipzig, 1932), 58-60; Mansuelli 1958-1961, 1:
173-174, no. 154. AdV 80, no. 32: "La lupa sopra il
cortile è impiombata in tutte quattro le gambe nella
cornice della finestra."
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40. "Il mostro marino rincontro alla detta lupa sopra
la finestra" (AdV 80, no. 32), drawn in this position
by Holanda on the sheet mentioned above.
Heemskerck (Album II, fol. 72) shows the display of
the Capitoline Wolf.
41. Bober 1957, 47-53; Tormo 1940, fol. 28V. For the
Mercury, which inspired Raphael in the Sala di Psy-
che, see also Phyllis Williams Lehmann and Karl
Lehmann, Samothracian Reflections : Aspects of the
Revival of the Antique (Princeton, 1973), 120. For
the Hercules, see also Anna Maria Riccomini, "Scul-
ture antiche delle raccolte Sassi e Valle-Medici in due
disegni inediti di scuola fiamminga," Bollettino
d'arte 77 (1993): 41-48; for the Venus, see Mansuelli
1958-1961, 1: 69-74, no. 45). The figure of Apollo
has not been identified. Oddly, Hülsen (19 14, 309)
cast doubt on the idea that these sculptures were
actually displayed in the niches, claiming that the
niches were not large enough, and Bober (1957, 48)
misinterpreted this to mean that there were no
niches at all in the court.
42. According to Aldrovandi: "Ne7 cornicioni del
frontispitio si veggono molte belle scolture antiche,
con molti Grifi" (1556, 215); Boissard: "In cornicibus
aedificii, quae circuitum areae cingunt, variae sunt
figurae puerorum, Grif forum, & aliorum animalium:
antiqua omnia" (Jean-Jacques Boissard, I-VI pars
Romanae urbis topographiae é) antiquitatum, 3
vols. [Frankfurt, 1597, compiled c. 1556], 1: 43);
Heemskerck and the author of the Cambridge
Sketchbook sketched one of these friezes, a Victory
Sacrificing a Bull stripped from the Basilica Ulpia.
See Hülsen and Egger 1913-1916, 1: 23-24, and
Eliana Filieri, "Giovanni Bologna e il taccuino di
Cambridge," Xenia 10 (1985): 49, no. 66, now in
Munich, Glyptothek W 348. Another frieze with a
griffin motif, shown on the same sheet in the Cam-
bridge Sketchbook (Filieri 1985, 49, no. 66), was also
taken from the Forum of Trajan: see Frederich Wil-
helm Goethert, "Trajanische Friese," Jahrbuch des
Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 51 (1936):
72-81; Bober and Rubinstein 1986, 202, no. 171;
James E. Packer, The Forum of Trajan in Rome: A
Study of the Monuments, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1997), 1:
335-338/ cat. nos. 107, 108, 109.
Among other reliefs immured in the frieze,
Aldrovandi also saw "scolture anche di animali, e di
putti, che pare, che vi giuochino" (1556, 215). One of
these ancient reliefs remained in the courtyard until
1 8 10, when it was sold as a depiction of the "rape of
Europa": "Marchese Rinaldo del Bufalo della Valle
. . . , e li Signori Marchesi Paolo, Innocenzo, e Gia-
cinto del Bufalo . . . vendono a favore del Signore
Pietro Maria Vitale ... li due bassirilievi, che sono
nel freggio dell'ordine d'architettura esisteni nel cor-
tile del loro palazzo posto come sopra a S. Andrea
della Valle rappresentanti uno il Ratto d'Europa, e
l'altro l'Ipogrifi, ornato d'architettura e l'arma gen-
tilizia della casa della Valle, nel modo, e forma che si
trovano in detto freggio" (ASC, Archivio Del Bufalo,
categoria 3, sezione 2, tomo 7, fase. 4, 26 July 18 10,
reference cited in Brunori and Grassia 1989, 71).
CHRISTIAN 57
43- The Epigrammata antiquae urbis (Rome, 1521),
lists inscriptions "in atrio domus Reverendi Domini
Andreae episcopi Vallensis" (118). The position of
other sculptures is described in AdV 8o, no. 32: "La
statua ginocchione con un ginocchio [è] nella nicchia
nel pianerotto della scala"; "Le dieci Teste sopra le
porte tanto da basso, come nel pianerotto della scala,
in sala, et una in camera, sono tutte posate sopra le
cornice delle porte, e nicchi, salvo dua nel detto
pianerotto, che hanno impernato una catenella nelle
spalle, che entrano in un cancano nel muro." For the
Kneeling Niobid, see Mansuelli 1958-1961, 1:
101-110, 117-118, cat. nos. 77, 78; Bober and Rubin-
stein 1986, 140, no. 108
44. The attribution to Sanso vino is made in Gustavo
Giovannoni, Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane (Rome,
1 95 9)/ 3^8, and Paolo Portoghesi, Architettura del
Rinascimento a Roma (Milan, 1979), 78, 96. From-
mel proposed that Giuliano da Sangallo made the
plans and a shop member, such as Antonio or Gio-
vanfrancesco da Sangallo, executed them (Frommel
1973, 1: 100).
45. Linda Pellecchia, "The Patron's Role in the Pro-
duction of Architecture: Bartolomeo Scala and the
Scala Palace," Renaissance Quarterly 42, no. 2
(1989): 258-291.
46. For Leo X's possesso in 15 13, the della Valle emp-
tied their sculpture collection onto a triumphal arch
on the via Papalis, adorned with four Pans balancing
baskets of fruit on their heads (perhaps the two
ancient Pans and two copies of them). Below the arch
were statues of Apollo, Ganymede, Venus, Mercury,
Hercules, and Bacchus. See description in Giovanni
Giacomo Penni, Cronicha delle magnifiche é) hono-
ráte pompe fatte in Roma per la Creatione é) Incoro-
natone di Papa Leone X Pont. Max. (Rome, 15 13),
transcribed in Bober 1957, 48. Another, overlooked
description of the arch is found in a letter by Vetor
Lipomano of 12 April 15 13 to Sanuto: "Avanti la casa
del vescovo de la Valle, era uno archo facto suso 4
satyri de7 marmoro vetustissimi, quali erano messi
per coione, et sotto dieto archo erano più figure de
marmoro antique, belissime, et era coperta la strada
per bon spazio," I diarii di Marino Sanuto , 58 vols.
(Venice, 1879-1903, rept. Bologna, 1969-1970), 16:
col. 164.
47. See Thomas Ashby, "Sixteenth-Century Draw-
ings of Roman Buildings Attributed to Andreas
Coner," Papers of the British School at Rome 2
(1904): 32-34, nos. 47-48, and Ruth Rubinstein,
" Tempus edax rerum: A Newly Discovered Painting
by Hermannus Posthumus," Burlington Magazine
127 (1985): 425-433. At the Palazzo di Giove, Bois-
sard admired "multae inscriptiones antiquae, signa,
& statuae multa venustate & artificio laudandae";
see Boissard 1597, 1: 43. Simeoni saw the
Menologium, a coin of Pompey, and a representation
of a triclinium (probably the relief labeled "D. Val-
lensi supra ostium" illustrated in Vat. lat. 3439, f.
104): "ainsi fouillant par tout avec le congé du
mais tre, j'apperceu au dessus de la porte d'une cham-
bre basse un autre petit marbre faict en forme de tri-
58 CHRISTIAN
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angle, 8k rempli de quelques figures: 8k combien que
la chambre fust grandement obscure, & la pierre
assez haul te, j'enuoyay incontinent quérir une torche
8k un peintre, qui monté lá sus, me rapporta la forme
du tricline. . . . Voyant à la fin le seigneur dudit logis,
que j'estois si curieux des choses antiques, me donna
une médaillé d'argent de Pompee"; see Gabriele
Simeoni, Les illustres observations antiques (Lyon,
1 558), 43-50. For the Cippus of Amemptus (now in
the Louvre, inv. MA 488), very frequently illustrated
in sketchbooks beginning with the Codex Escuria-
lensis, see CIL 6: 11,541 and Bober and Rubinstein
1986, 119, no. 84. Tom Cohen discovered two
sixteenth-century inventories of the house, which
make no mention of antiquities (ASR, Coll. Not.
Cap. 1 3 17, 20 October 1535, fols. 90-9 5 v. and ASR
Coll. Not. Cap. 137, 31 July 1536, fols. 124-135; my
thanks to him for this unpublished reference). A later
inventory of the house in August 1652, when Pietro
della Valle il Pellegrino was living there, lists sculp-
ture seemingly in the courtyard:
Una tavola quadra di albuccio con una fontana nel
mezo co'l suo vaso di rame. Due Buffetti di noce.
Due vasi da fontana di marmi intagliati ed figurine
di basso rilevo. Una Colonna di marmo. Un'altro
Vaso da fontana pure di marmo con figure di basso
rilevo, rotto nel mezo. Una statua di porfido rotta
in più pezzi. Due piedi tallucci di marmo. Una
tavoluccia di marmo con due figurine dentro.
Un'altra tavoluccia ed due altre figurine. Un
piedestallo di marmo. Una meza colonna di
marmo. Una statuetta senza testa. Due piedistalli
tondi, e se anellati. Diversi fragmenti di diverse
statue, et di altri marmi. (ASV, AdV 63 n. 42)
48. Album II, fol. 20; Michaelis 1891, 157-158, no.
20; Hülsen and Egger 1913-1916, 2: 15-16.
49. Brunori and Grassia discovered Valerio della
Valle's own description of how his grandfather Stazio
della Valle had reconstructed "tutto l'edificio, non
compresa la torre edifitio antiquo" and how his
father, Lorenzo Stefano, had built the northern log-
gia: "La b[u]o[na] meļmoria] di mio Padre fece . . .
edifìcio dal muro del pozzo tutta quella parte de dietro
verso la fabrica del Card. le della Valle, hoggi de
s[igno]ri Capranici con la loggia di tevertini con li
doi satiri," Brunori and Grassia 1989, 79-81, doc. 6.
Valerio went on to describe how Andrea della Valle
expanded the Palazzo di Mezzo in 1518, appropriat-
ing the upper rooms on the south side of the Palazzo
di Cantone (Frommel 1973, 2: 336-337, where, how-
ever, the word elevata is incorrectly transcribed as
devata). The sequence of Valerio's text that implies
the loggia with the Pans was built before 1518.
50. Payments to della Porta for the construction
were discovered by Brunori and Grassia. See Brunori
and Grassia 1989, 69, 79, doc. 5.
51. Rosella Bianchi, Paolo Spinoso e l'umanesimo
romano nel secondo Quattrocento (Rome, 2004),
137-140. Previously it was thought that the Pans had
come from the Theater of Pompey (Hülsen and Egger
1913-1916, 2: 16).
52. Aldrovandi does not describe the mask at the
Palazzo di Cantone courtyard, and it may have been
removed by that date. According to his description of
the Palazzo Cesi, "Nel mezzo del cortiglio è giù in
terra una maschera grande antica di profido bellis-
sima, per ricevere l'acque, che ivi piovono."
Aldrovandi 1556, 122.
53. "Platanis creber pariter surgentibus ordo, / ilu-
mina sopito quaeque Marone cadunt, / et sonitus
lymphis toto crepitantibus orbe, / cum subito Triton
ore refundit aquam"; Propertius Elegiae, 2.32.1 3-1 6.
I am grateful to Robert Coates Stephens and Fabio
Barry for bringing this reference to my attention.
54. Ludwig von Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste seit
dem Ausgang des Mittelalters (Freiburg, 1886-1933),
4.2: 17. In a letter to Paolo Maffei of i October, 1523,
Mario Maffei described the state of affairs in the con-
clave, writing "dicesi molto di Farnese et della
Valle"; see BNR, Autografi A. 9 5.1 4.1.
5 5 . George Francis Hill, The Gustave Dreyfus Col-
lection: Renaissance Medals (Oxford, 1931), 230, no.
507.
56. The first secure date for construction is 26 May
1530, when the papal camerlengo Agostino Spinola
granted della Valle permission to use a piece of pub-
lic land for his own use (ASV, Camera Apostolica,
Divers. Cam., vol. 79, fols. 76V.-77V., first cited in
Frommel 1973, 2: 337). For the history of this palace,
see Alfredo Proia and Pietro Romano, Roma nel
Cinquecento: Il Rione S. Eustachio (Rome, 1937),
37-41; Frommel 1973, 2: 336-354 (who dates the
beginning of construction to just before the Sack);
Sergio Rotondi, Il Teatro Valle : Storia , progetti ,
architettura (Rome, 1992).
57. First published in Frommel 1973, 2: 343-344. Ali
studies before Frommers located the hanging garden
in the Palazzo della Valle-de' Rustici, and some
more-recent studies have continued to make the mis-
take: see, for example, Lucia Pirzio Biroli Stefanelli,
Palazzo della Valle : La collezione di antichità ed il
Menologium rusticum vállense (Rome, 1976); Cecilia
Pericoli Ridolfìni, Guide rionali di Roma: Rione
Vili: S. Eustachio, part 2 (Rome, 1993), 20-26.
58. "E nella Valle [fece il Lorenzo] la facciata di den-
tro; e così il disegno delle stalle ed il giardino di sopra
per Andrea Cardinale della Valle." Giorgio Vasari, Le
opere di Giorgio Vasari , ed. Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols.
(Florence, 1878-1885), 4: 579. For Lorenzetto, see
"Lotti, Lorenzo," in Allgemeines Lexikon der bilden-
den Künstler, ed. Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, 37
vols. (Leipzig, 1907-1950), 23: 410; Tilmann Budden-
sieg, "Raffaels Grab," in Munuscula Discipulorum:
Kunsthistorische Studien Hans Kauffmann zum 70.
Geburtstag, ed. Tilmann Buddensieg and Matthias
Winner (Berlin, 1968), 45-70; Norbert Walther Nobis,
Lorenzetto als Bildhauer (Bonn, 1979); Cecilia Mag-
nusson, "Lorenzetto's Statue of Jonah and the Chigi
Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo," Konsthistorisk Tid-
skrift 56 (1987): 19-26.
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59. Johannes Fichard, Italia (1536), published in
Frankfurtisches Archiv für ältere deutsche Literatur
und Geschichte 1-3 (181 1-1815), 3: 68-70;
Aldrovandi 1556, 212-221; Maximilian van
Waelscapple, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS Lat. fol.
6 is (c. 1554), fols. 63-64, published in Hülsen and
Egger 1913-1916, 2: 66; Boissard 1597, 1: 40-43;
Jodocus Hondius, Nova et accurata Italiae hodiernae
descriptio (Elsevir, 1627), 150.
60. Previously, the drawing had been known only
through a print issued by Hieronymous Cock in
1553. See Arnold Nesselrath, "Drei Zeichnungen von
Marten van Heemskerck," in Ars Naturam Adiu-
vans : Festschrift für Matthias Winner, ed. Victoria
von Flemming and Sebastian Schütze (Mainz am
Rhein, 1996), 2 5 2-27 1; Cécile Scailliérez, "Les col-
lections d'antiques," in D'après l'antique [exh. cat.,
Musée du Louvre] (Paris, 2000), 361-363.
61. Tormo 1940, 237-239.
62. There are far too many sketches to cite them
completely,- an abbreviated list is found in Inga
Gesche, "Neuaufstellungen antiker Statuen und ihr
Einfluß auf die römische Renaissancearchitektur"
(Ph.D. diss., Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität,
1971), 118-119. For reuse of della Valle antiquities by
Raphael's school, see Nicole Dacos, Le logge di Raf-
faello: Maestro e bottega di fronte all'antico, 2nd ed.
(Rome, 1989) and Nesselrath 1993; for other artists,
see Norman W. Canedy, The Roman Sketchbook of
Girolamo da Carpi (London, 1976); Filieri 1985;
Christian Hülsen, Das Skizzenbuch des Giovannan-
tonio Dosio im Staatlichen Kupferstichkabinett zu
Berlin (Berlin, 1933) and Emanuele Casamassima and
Ruth Rubinstein, Antiquarian Drawings from
Dosio's Roman Workshop: Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale di Firenze, N.A. 11 $9 (Milan, 1993);
Salomon Reinach, L'album de Pierre Jacques, sculp-
teur de Reims, dessiné à Rome de 1572 à i$jj (Paris,
1902); M. M. L. Netto-Boi, The So-Called Maarten de
Vos Sketchbook of Drawings after the Antique (The
Hague, 1976); Jacopo Strada, Codex Miniatus 21, 2,
Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek; Otto
Jahn, "Über die Zeichnungen antiker Monumente im
Codex Pighianus," Berichte der Kgl. Sächsischen
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig 20
(1868): 161-235; Friedrich Matz, "Über eine dem
Herzog von Coburg-Gotha gehörige Sammlung alter
Handzeichnungen nach Antiken," Monatsbericht der
Kgl. Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
Berlin (September-October 1871): 445-499. Veronika
Wiegartz published an album with many drawings
after the della Valle antiquities: see "Ein unveröf-
fentlichtes Konvolut von Antikennachzeichnungen
aus der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts nach
Sarkophagen der Sammlung della Valle-Capranica,"
Atlas: Bonner Beiträge zur Renaissanceforschung 1
(1996): 169-212, sold at Sotheby's London on 9 July
2003 (kind reference of Arnold Nesselrath).
christian 59
63. Raimondi: The Illustrated Bartsch, ed. Walter L.
Strauss (New York, 1978), 26: 262, no. 274, 294, no.
299, 306-308, nos. 307, 308, 309; Vico: The Illus-
trated Bartsch 30: 59, no. 42; 60, no. 43; 61, no. 44;
207, no. 320. Further prints were published in Bois-
sard 1597, 3: 134-150.
64. For further description of the surviving remains
and of the remodeling of the statue court after della
Valle's death, see Kathleen Christian, "The Delia
Valle Sculpture Court Rediscovered/' Burlington
Magazine 145 (2003): 847-850.
65. For the Marsyas, see Mansuelli 1958-1961, 1:
87-88, no. 56; Haskell and Penny 1981, 262-263, no.
59; Bober and Rubinstein 1986, 75, no. 32; Francesco
Caglio ti, "Due 'restauratori7 per le antichità dei
primi Medici: Mino da Fiesole, Andrea del Verroc-
chio e il 'Marsia rosso' degli Uffìzi," Prospettiva
72-73 ( 1993- 1994): 17-42, 74-96. For the so-called
Sabines, see Gabriela Capecchi, "Le statue antiche
della Loggia dei Lanzi," Bollettino d'arte 60 (1975):
169-178; Carlo Gasparri, "Die Gruppe der Sabinerin-
nen in der Loggia dei Lanzi in Florenz," Archäologi-
scher Anzeiger 4 (1979): 524-543; Bober and
Rubinstein 1986, 198-199, no. 166. For the Dacians,
see Delbrück 1932, 46-49; Lucilla de Lachenal, For-
tuna dei prigionieri Daci a Roma : Documentazione
per la storia del tipo dal XVI al XIX secolo , Xenia
Quaderni 8 (Rome, 1987): 34-41; Lucilla de Lachenal,
"I prigionieri Daci dalla collezione Medici-Delia
Valle: Nuove considerazioni archeologico-antiquarie
sulle loro vicende tra Roma e Firenze," in Boboli 90,
ed. Cristina Acidini Luchinat and Elvira Garberò
Zorzi, 2 vols. (Florence, 1991 ), 2: 609-621.
66. Boissard described the trees and the beds when
he visited in the mid-sixteenth century: "In area hor-
tuli (ubi mali Medicae, Punicae & Cedri, aliaeque
arbores peregrinae confertae sunt) tabulae sunt mar-
moreae, in quibus Corybantum cum tympanis &
tintinabulis incessus, Naiadum chori, & Meleagri
venatio incissa est, quae si bene notavi, proxime
accedunt ad numerum sexaginta" (Boissard 1597, 1:
42).
67. For the Apollo, see Gabriella Capecchi, Lucia
Lepore, and Vincenzo Saladino, Collezioni fiorentine
di antichità , I: La Villa del Poggio Imperiale (Rome,
1 979), 44-46, no. 2, and Bober and Rubinstein 1986,
76-77, no. 35.
68. Aldrovandi 1556, 218-219: "Da man dritta
dunque si trova prima quella [statua] di Apollo
ignudo ... la seconda, che si truova appresso,
vogliono che sia di Giove ... la terza è un Nettuno
... la quarta dicono, che sia un Fauno." For the Zeus,
see Michaelis 1891, 229, no. 45; Hülsen and Egger
1913-1916, 2: 61, no. 43. For the Neptune, see n. 28
above. For the Satyr, see Michaelis 1891, 230, no. 6o;
Hülsen and Egger 1913-1916, 2: 62, no. 56.
69. Gasparri 1979, 524-543, with previous bibliogra-
phy.
60 CHRISTIAN
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70. In describing the west wall, after noting the
inscription "SIBI ET GENIO POSTORUMQ. HILA-
RITATI," Waelscapple wrote, "In hac parte horti est
aviarium, ubi volatilia omnis generis, quae per aper-
tas fenestras visuntur" (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, MS
Lat. fols. 6 1 s., 63 V.). Della Valle may have known
that an aviary had also formed part of Pomponio
Leto's archaeological garden on the Quirinal:
Vladimir Zabughin, Giulio Pomponio Leto : Saggio
critico (Rome, 1909-19 12), 200.
71. See n. 41 above.
72. Della Valle bought antiques from the dealer Gio-
vanni Ciampolini and also from the De' Rossi. See
Laurie Fusco and Gino Corti, "Giovanni Ciampolini
(d. 1505): A Renaissance Dealer in Rome and His
Collection of Antiquities," Xenia 21 (1991): 21;
Christian 2002, 1 90-1 91, 194-196. He also acquired
extraordinary acanthus pilasters, now at the Villa
Medici, which are associated by some with the Ara
Pacis. See Carlo Gasparri, "Sulle lesene con tralci di
acanto Valle-Medici," in Antikenzeichnung und
Antikenstudium in Renaissance und Frühbarock, ed.
Richard Harprath and Henning Wrede (Mainz am
Rhein, 1989), 111-125. In the late 1520s, della Valle
may have also obtained two bronze tablets found
near the Tarpeian Rock. According to Ligorio, Cardi-
nal Ippolito de' Medici gave these to Cardinal della
Valle in 1528; in Metellus's account, they were exca-
vated during the reign of Leo X, taken by the Medici,
and then bought by Camillo Capranica. See Jean-
Louis Ferrary, "La Lex Antonia de Termessibus,"
Athenaeum 73 (1985): 419-457; my thanks to
Michael Crawford for this reference.
73. Flaminio Vacca thought that the Arco della
Ciambella was named after a find there by della
Valle: Memorie di varie antichità trovate in diversi
luoghi della città di Roma (1594), published in Fa-
miano Nardini, Roma antica (Rome, 1704), 22.
74. Innocent VIII began to demolish this arch when
he restored the adjacent Santa Maria in via Lata.
In 1523, freelance excavators sold some of the
remaining sculpture from the arch (Lanciani
1989-2002, 273-274). Fulvio wrote: "[Arcus] iuxta S.
Mariam in via lata ab Innocentio viii. in renovatione
proximi templi dirutus, cuius ornamenta marmorea
erui nuper vidimus cum trophaeis barbaríeis haud
dubie posteriorum esse Imperatorum exornatu
apparet." Andrea Fulvio, Antiquitates Urbis (Rome,
1527), book 4, fol. 50V.; see also Bartolomeo Marliani,
Urbis Romae Topographia (Lyon, 1534), 136. "Presso
[S. Maria in via Lata] si sono pochi anni à dietro
cavati alcuni vestigi d'uno arco antico, ne' cui fram-
menti si vedevano le imagini delle vittorie, e de' Tro-
fei, ma non si poteva altro leggere del titolo, che vi
era, se non queste poche parole sole. Votis x et xx. E
vogliono alcuni, che Papa Innocentio ottavo spi-
anasse questo arco quando rinovò questa chiesa."
Lucio Fauno, Delle antichità della città di Roma
(Venice, 1548), 130. For the reliefs, which used to be
associated with the Ara Pietatis, see Lanfranco
Cordischi, "Sul problema dell'Ara Pietatis Augustae
e dei rilievi ad essa attribuiti," Archeologia classica
37 (1985)' 238-265; Fritz-Eugen Keller, "Les reliefs de
la façade sur jardin/7 in La Villa Médicis, ed. André
Chastel, 3 vols. (Rome, 1989-1991), 2: 412-442. For
the pedestals placed under the Dacian prisoners in
della Valle's court, which may have been part of the
arch as well, see Richard Brilliant, "I piedistalli del
giardino di Boboli: Spolia in se, spolia in re," Prospet-
tiva 31 (1982): 2-17; Bober and Rubinstein 1986, 197,
no. 164; Sandro de Maria, Gli archi onorari di Roma
e dell'Italia romana (Rome, 1988), 312-314.
notes della Valle's collection of ancient coins in this
75. Delbrück 1932, 49,- Gasparri 1979, 524-543,-
Carlo Gasparri, "I marmi antichi degli Uffizi:
Collezionismo mediceo e mercato antiquario romano
tra il XVI e il XVIII secolo," in Gli Uffizi: Quattro
secoli di una galleria , ed. Paola Barocchi and Gio-
vanna Ragionieri, 2 vols. (Florence, 1983), 1: 23 1;
Marc Waelkens, "From a Phrygian Quarry: The
Provenance of the Statues of the Dacian Prisoners in
Trajan's Forum at Rome," American Journal of
Archaeology 89 (1985): 641-653. Andrea della Valle '
had displayed reliefs excavated from the Forum in
the first cortile he built (see n. 42). According to Li-
gorio, a marble base in the della Valle collection (CIL
6: 1,731) was found "sub auro in Foro divi Traiani"
(Gasparri 1979, 534).
76. A notice of a della Valle chapel here is found in
Vincenzo Forcella, Iscrizione delle chiese e d'altri
edificii di Roma dal secolo XI fino ai giorni nostri , 14
vols. (Rome, 1869-1884), 5: 154, no. 437,- for the
church's dealings in antiquities, see Christian 2002,
141-142.
77. For the family's vast land holdings in the fora,
see Adinolfi 1865, 75; Rodolfo Lanciani, "Le esca-
vazioni del Foro," Bullettino della Commissione
Archeologica Comunale di Roma 29, no. 1 (1901):
20-5 1; Susanna Passigli, "Urbanizzazione e
topografìa a Roma nell'area dei Fori imperiali tra XIV
e XVI secolo," Mélanges de l'École Française de
Rome , moyen âge ioi, no. 1 (1989): 282, 290-291.
The discovery of the temple of Venus Genetrix was
made when Bruto della Valle laid the foundations for
a new house on the site around 1550. See Antonio
Labacco, Libro d'Antonio Lahacco appartenente a
l'architettura nel qual si figurano alcune notabili
antiquita di Roma (Rome, 1552), piate 32; Andrea
Palladio, Dell'architettura (Venice, 1570), book 4,
126-1 3 1; Emilia Talamo, "Su alcuni frammenti di
lesene della collezione della Valle-Medici," Xenia 5
(1983): 15-46. Bruto della Valle's son Lello commis-
sioned an excavation here from "Michele muratore"
in 1576, documented in ASV, AdV 93, no. 10.
78. Flaminio Vacca recalled the discovery of marble
antiquities under one of della Valle's palaces during
the time of Pius IV: "Mi ricordo che al tempo di Pio
IV sotto il palazzo già del Cardinal della Valle furono
trovati molti pezzi di cornicioni e rocchi di colonne,
e capitelli corintii" (Vacca 1704, 60).
79. The inventory of 1584 lists "una femina a canto
al cancello, con papaveri in mano, grande quanto al
naturale," a restored statue of Ceres at the "piè della
scala" ("una Cerere vestita, alta pai. 10, con le brac-
cia di stuccho"), four busts "a mezza scala," and
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"dove stanno le galline un torzo d'africano di pai. 5,
un capitello di Corinto di pai. 3," Documenti inediti
1878-1880, 4: 377-380. Visiting artists made draw-
ings of architectural fragments and antique vases in
della Valle's collection. See Alfonso Bartoli, I monu-
menti antichi di Roma nei disegni degli Uffizi di
Firenze, 6 vols. (Rome, 19 14-1922), 1: piate 37, fig.
64 (Fra Giocondo); 2: piate 200, fig. 340 (Peruzzi),
piate 174, fig. 309 (Peruzzi); Ashby 1904, nos. 105b,
108, i2oa (Bernardo della Volpaia). Andrea Fulvio
palace: "Plurimaque per totam urbem marmorea
signa in diversas rerum formas effigiata . . . sed nec
silentio praeteribo marmóreas statuas aurea argentea,
aereaque nomismata quae hodie sunt apud R. D.
Andreám Card, de Valle, qui non parcit precio"; see
Fulvio 1527, book 5, fol. 99. A bronze horse's head in
the Palazzo della Valle is mentioned in Samuel
Zwicker, De Arte Peregrinandi Libri II (Nürnberg
1 5 91), II, fol. i04r.: "Mirum vero quanta copia
antiquissimarum statuarum conspicitur in urbe
Neapolitana, etiam in privatis aedibus, . . . maximum
equi caput aeneum, magna arte conflatum, cui simile
videtur Romae in palatio Cardinalis de Valle."
80. "Prima che si monti su, si veggono nel muro del
palagio locate molte statue antiche: Nel'ordine di
basso sono quattro statue senza testa: la prima è
armata à l'antica: la seconda è di porfido togata: la
terza è pur togata di marmo bianco; la quarta è
armata: e sono poste tutte sopra alte basi antiche, che
hanno inscrittioni latine,- una sola l'ha greca. Ne
l'ordine superiore si veggono quattro altre statue erte
intiere, ma senza braccia,- la prima è togata, la se-
conda ignuda, con la veste avolta nel braccio manco
tronco: la terza è ignuda, et è di donna" (Aldrovandi
1556, 217). "In prima enim fronte plurimae sunt sta-
tuae Consulum & Imperatorum: ex quibus una
demonstratur Hortensij; altera Pisonis, qui frugi die-
tus est: alia Cetegi; Inferius multae leguntur inscrip-
tiones, tam Graecae quam Latinae" (Boissard 1597, 1:
40-41). These statues correspond with those located
on "la facciata di tutto il palazzo" in the inventory of
1584 [Documenti inediti 1878-1880, 379). One can
be identified as the heavily damaged porphyry statue
now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Flo-
rence, inv. 90307 (Delbrück 1932, 45, 54-55).
Heemskerck, Dosio, and Pierre Jacques illustrated
some of these figures on their ancient bases,- see
Heemskerck, Album I, fol. 35V.; Hülsen and Egger
1913-1916, 1: 20; Codex Ber olinensis, fols. 62, 63
(fig. 21); Hülsen 1933, 30, nos. i48a-c; Reinach 1902,
i2bis. For the bases, see CIL 6: 730, 731, 1,721, and
CIG 5,885; Michaelis 1891, 228, no. 5,- Boissard 1597,
3: 136, 139, 138, 146. CIL 6: 1,730 was only discov-
ered in 1539 and is still extant inside the Palazzo
della Valle-Capranica, immured in a corner of the
courtyard.
8 1 . "Is unicus est nunc qui maiorum vetera moni-
menta diligenter curat," Fulvio 1527, book 5, fol. 99.
CHRISTIAN 61
82. "Quel cardinale della Valle, che fece in Roma
quello antiquario, e che fu il primo che mettessi
insieme le cose antiche, e le faceva restaurare." Gior-
gio Vasari, I ragionamenti, in Le vite de' più eccel-
lenti pittori, scultori ed architettori da Giorgio
Vasari, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, 8 vols. (Florence,
1878-1885), 8: 158.
Accomodò [Lorenzetto] nel partimento di
quell'opera colonne, base e capitelli antichi, e
spartì attorno, per basamento di tutta quell'opera,
pili antichi pieni di storie,- e più alto fece sotto
certe nicchione un altro fregio di rottami di cose
antiche, e di sopra nelle dette nicchie pose alcune
statue pur antiche e di marmo; le quali sebbene
non erano intere per essere quale senza testa, quale
senza braccia, ed alcuna senza gambe ed insomma
ciascuna con qualche cosa meno; raccomodò
nondimeno benissimo, avendo fatto rifare a buoni
scultori tutto quello che mancava: la quale cosa fu
cagione che altri Signori hanno poi fatto il medes-
imo, e restaurato molte cose antiche come il Car-
dinale Cesis, Ferrara, Farnese, e per dirlo in una
parola, tutta Roma. (Vasari 1878-1885, 4: 579)
The sculptor Guglielmo della Porta, describing the
illustrated guide to Rome he planned to create,
echoed the opinion that the della Valle would come
first in the history of Roman sculpture collections:
"Si vedrà de Palazzi, Giardini et Fontane, Pittura
Scoltura et getti di bronzo ... et anco vi sara notato i
nomi di coloro che si son delettati de antichità, de
marmi, e metalli, medaglie, Carnei et altri intagli,
comminciando dal Cardinale de la Valle, et venendo
à gli ill[ustrissi]mi [Cesis], Farnese, [Ferrara] et Mon-
tep[ulcia]no al vescovo Colotio, à quel di Viterbo à
Mons[igno]re Garimberto, et a i tre concorrenti, che
sono hoggi in Roma." Letter to Bartolomeo Amma-
nati, dated by Gramberg to 1569. See Werner Gram-
berg, Die Düsseldorfer Skizzenbücher des Guglielmo
della Porta (Berlin, 1964), 126.
83. The porphyry Dacians, for example, received
their white marble heads before Heemskerck made
his drawing of the collection. For other examples of
restorations carried out under della Valle, see Keller
1989-1991.
84. "Lectissimae autem in horto pensili . . . qui ele-
gantissime exstructus ita insuper istis monumentis
ornatus est, ut nihil sit istic sculpti marmoris fere,
quod non ex antiquitate repositum adaptatumque
sit." Fichard 1815, 68.
85. On the Farnese antiquities, see Raymond Vin-
cent, "Les antiques," in Le Palais F arnése: École
Française de Rome, 3 vols. (Rome 1980-1981), 1.2:
33 1-35 1; Christina Riebesell, "Die Antikensamm-
lung Farnese zur Carracci-Zeit," in Chastel 1988,
373-417; Eugenio La Rocca, "Le sculture antiche
della collezione Farnese," in Le collezioni del Museo
Nazionale di Napoli (Rome, 1989), 43-65.
62 CHRISTIAN
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86. See Pietro Sabino's sylloge, compiled c.
1488-1498, with five inscriptions located "prope
Trivium in domo domini Andreae Vallensis" and the
Epigrammata Antiquae Urbis of 1 521, with eight
inscriptions "in viridario R. Andreae Ep.i Vallensis,
apud aquaeductum virginis," Pietro Sabino, Venice,
Biblioteca Marciana, MS Lat. X 195 (3453), fols.
1 72-1 72V.; Mazzocchi 1521, 66-66v. A later sylloge
located these inscriptions "nel giardino di Rustici a
piè di monte cavallo appresso l'olmo," see CIL 6: 2,489,
Achilles Statius, Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana
B 102, fol. 76V. Alfonso Paolucci probably referred
to this garden in a letter to the Duke of Ferrara in
1 5 19: "Andando verso S. Maria Maggiore trovai
Monsignore] R[everendissi]mo Della Valle, il quale
volse che io andassi con lui al giardino suo, dove
sono molti belli aranci, et gran fontane de una bellis-
sima e freschissima acqua, vi stemmo in gran
piacere, poi scavalcammo al perdono in S. Maria
Maggiore"; see Emmanuel Rodocanachi, La première
renaissance : Rome au temps de Jules II et de Léon X
(Paris, 19 12), 35 n. 2. This vigna and others may have
been sources for sculpture: see Lanciani 1989-2002,
3: 90-91 for a vigna near Saint John Lateran which
the family used for excavation.
87. According to Alberti, the suburban villa should
be placed "in an elevated and isolated position":
Leon Battista Alberti, De Re Aedificatoria, 9.2.
88. Ancient sources do not describe the type in
detail, even if the term hortus pensilis was used by
Quintus Curtius Rufus (5.1.32) and Pliny in his Nat-
ural History (29. 23, 36. 20). Some have hypothesized
that, like his famous relative Pietro della Valle "Il
Pellegrino," Andrea della Valle traveled to Persia (see
Moroni 1840-1861, 88: 50; Frommel 1973, 2: 345),
but there is no evidence for his having taken such a
trip or for any Eastern inspiration for his hanging gar-
den. See Riebesell 1989, 720.
89. At the Palazzo Carafa, a welcoming inscription
opened the palace to the "guests of Venus" who
would climb up to the hanging garden, identified as
the "Realm of the Nymphs." See Andreas Beyer,
Parthenope : Neapel und der Süden der Renaissance
(Munich, 2000), 84-135.
90. Fichard described the experience of climbing the
spiral staircase to reach the Belvedere statue court:
"Habet cochleam, per quam ascendi tur ad summum
usque, unde potissimum patet loci amoenitas et
prospectus, qualem nusquam esse, puto amoe-
niorem." Fichard 1815, 48-49.
91. The Scriptores historiae Augustae describes, for
example, Gordian's project for parallel, thousand-
foot-long porticoes decorated with statuary and open
to the public. Gardens and trees would be set in
between and a bath built on one end ( Gordianus ,
32.5-8). In his Natural History (36.35), Pliny men-
tioned the sculptures visible in the Porticus
Octaviae. For the display of sculpture in ancient
Rome, see Magrit Pape, "Griechische Kunstwerke
aus Kriegsbeute und ihre öffentliche Aufstellung in
Rom" (Ph.D. diss., University of Hamburg, 1975),
which includes a list of public places where sculp-
ture was displayed; Jacob Isager, Pliny on Art and
Society : The Elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of
Art (London and New York, 1991), 157-168; Antonio
Corso, "Il collezionismo di scultura nell'antichità,"
in I Giustiniani e l'antico, ed. Giulia Fusconi [exh.
cat., Palazzo Fontana di Trevi] (Rome, 2001),
101-129.
92. My thanks to Caroline Elam for pointing out this
aspect of the Latin constructions to me.
93. "Ad dextrum latus [the west side, or the left side
of Heemskerck's drawing] descendebatur in conclave
quoddam, cui erat adiunctum balneolum elegantis-
simis lascivissimisque nudarum puellarum lavan-
tium etc. picturis ornatissimum, Pontificis in Burgo
Angeli et amplius et sumptuosius, more Romano
extructum." Fichard 1815, 69.
94. For the concept of magnificenza see, for example,
David Thomson, Renaissance Architecture: Critics,
Patrons, Luxury (Manchester, 1993); Richard Golth-
waite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy,
1300-1600 (Baltimore and London, 1993), 247-250;
Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue :
Art in Renaissance Italy (London, 2001), 12-36, with
further bibliography.
95. Kathleen Weil Garris and John D'Amico, "The
Renaissance Cardinal's Ideal Palace: A Chapter from
Cortesi's De Cardinalatu," in Studies in Italian Art
and Architecture, isth through 18th Centuries :
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 35, ed.
Henry A. Milion (Rome, 1980), 45-123; Emmanuel
Rodocanchi, "Le luxe des cardinaux romains de la
Renaissance," Revue des questions historiques 89
(191 1): 414-432; John O'Malley, Praise and Blame in
Renaissance Rome (Durham, 1979), 165-194; David
S. Chambers, "The Economic Predicament of Renais-
sance Cardinals," Studies in Medieval and Renais-
sance History 3 (1966): 289-313.
96. For the use of "justifying" inscriptions in Italian
Renaissance architecture, see John Onians, "The Last
Judgement of Renaissance Architecture," Journal of
the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts,
Manufactures, and Commerce 128, no. 5,291 (Octo-
ber 1980): 701-720.
97. Coffin 1 99 1, 268: "Julij S. Ang. Diac. Car. Caes.
Dietam hanc statuarium studiis suis et gentil, suor,
volup. honestas dicavit suo natali die XXXIIII, XIII
kal. Junij, Alex. VI Pont. Max. An. VII, Sal. MD. ab V.
C. MMCCXXXIII. "
98. "Viliam perpetuae salubri tatis / Suburbi modo
Montis Esquilini / Oliverius ille Cardinalis / Doctae
clara Neapolis propago / Hanc Caraffa pius suis ami-
cis / dicat omnibus, hospites venite." See Coffin
1991, 268.
99. On access to sculpture collections, see David R.
Coffin, "The Lex Hortorum and Access to Gardens of
Latium during the Renaissance," Journal of Garden
History 2 (1982): 201-232; Coffin 1991, 244-257.
Jean-Jacques Boissard seems to equate the audience
of the sculpture collection with that of the library:
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I am leaving out those cardinals, archbishops, and -
illustrious priests who, because of their elevated
dignity, cannot always interact with laymen and
pilgrims. Nevertheless, so that no one suffers from
being shut off from their houses, they can order
their servants firmly to greet obligingly and in a
friendly manner all applicants and admit them to
dining halls, gardens, and their more secret quar-
ters, especially those who are scholarly in letters,
so that they might contemplate, admire, and make
note of what is worth observing, poring over not
only exquisite and precious marbles, vases, stat-
ues, tables, coins, and carved gems, but also
libraries, opening up books made out of ancient
papyrus, parchment, and vellum, so that, if it is
possible to be done, they fill and satisfy them-
selves in the contemplation of such excellent
things. (Boissard 1597, Epistola dedicatoria, 2v.,
my translation.)
100. "Signis, credo, tabulis studes: si quis est qui his
delectetur, nonne mulius tenues homines fruuntur
quam illi, qui iis abundant? Est enim earum rerum
omnium in nostra urbe summa in publico copia."
Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 5. 102.
101. The incident is spelled out in Pliny, Natural
History, 35.70, 131.
102. Cicero, De officiis 3. 1.
103. Wendy Stedman Sheard, "Antonio Lombardo 's
Reliefs for Alfonso d'Este's Studio di Marmi: Their
Significance and Impact on Titian," in Titian 500, ed.
Joseph Manca, National Gallery of Art, Studies in the
History of Art, vol. 45 (Washington, 1993), 326.
104. For the related concept of honesta voluptas, see
Wolfgang Liebenwein, "Honesta Voluptas: Zur
Archäologie des Genießens," in Hülle und Fülle:
Festschrift für Tilmann Buddensieg, ed. Andreas
Beyer, Vittorio M. Lampugnani, and Gunter
Schweikhart (Alfter, 1993), 337-357.
105. "The writings of the Greeks and also the Bar-
barians testify to the use of statues in earlier eras.
They often explained their execution by stating that
they preserved the memory of those who had accom-
plished some great deed or who had invented some-
thing useful, in order to incite others to emulate
them, driven by the hope of achieving that honor
that seemed greater than all others." Pomponius
Gauricus, De Sculptura (1504), ed. André Chastel
and Robert Klein (Geneva, 1969), 50-51. As Pliny
had written, "If we seek consolation in sorrow in
the busts of our dead we set up in our homes, still
more then should we find it in the statues standing
in public places, for these can recall men's fame
and distinction as well as their forms and faces."
Epistulae 2. 7
CHRISTIAN 63
io 6. In De Architettura, 7.16, Alberti discusses the
merits of different commemorative monuments and
writes: "Unless I am mistaken, the greatest [monu-
ment] of all is the statue. It may serve as an orna-
ment of sacred and profane buildings, public or
private, and it makes a wonderful memorial to man
or deed/' Translation based on Leon Battista Alberti,
On the Art of Building in Ten Books , trans. Joseph
Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1988), 240. See Jonathan B. Riess, "The
Civic View of Sculpture in Alberti's De Re Aedifica-
toria," Renaissance Quarterly 32, no. 1 (1979): 1-17.
107. Maria Monica Donato, "Gli eroi romani tra sto-
ria ed 'exemplum': I primi cicli umanistici di Uomini
Famosi," in Settis 1984-1986, 2: 97-152.
108. The cycle has been variously attributed to
Salviati, the "school of" Giulio Romano, and Raf-
faellino del Colle. See Alessandra Uguccioni, "Deco-
razione e collezionismo antiquario nella sala grande
di palazzo Della Valle," in Roma centro ideale della
cultura dell'antico nei secoli XV e XVI, ed. Silvia
Danesi Squarzina (Milan, 1989), 356-364. Most
recently, Nicole Dacos has attributed the design to
Perino del Vaga and the execution to three Belgian
painters working in Rome after the Sack, in "Perin
del Vaga et trois peintres de Bruxelles au palais della
Valle," Prospettiva 91-92 (1998): 59-170. In 1569,
the painter Girolamo da Sermoneta estimated that
della Valle had spent 200 scudi on the frescoes. See
AdV, vol. 81, no. 5.
109. "In peristyliis autem et ambulationibus ea
exprimi pingendo possunt quae vatum nostrorum
consignata traditione constant, non quae priscarum
fabellarum narratione pingi fìngendo soient." See
Weil Garris and D'Amico 1980, 90-91. Cortesi also
has recommendations for "dormitorii cubiculi," "in
quo ea maxime esse debent virtutum expressa signa,
quibus animi ad similitudinem factorum matutina
commoni tione excitentur." See Weil Garris and
D'Amico 1980, 94-95.
no. "Interiorum autem ornamen torum genus
multiplex adhiberi solet, siquidem multi plastices
ratione, nonnulli statuaria, quidam etiam gypseo uti
ornamento malunt. Nobis vero frugalius et utilius id
genus videri in senatoria domo ornanda debet quod
pingendi ratione constat; nec enim dubium esse
potest, cum homines aliquo picturae genere tenean-
tur quo possint tamquam praesenti historiae erudi-
tione frui, quin in his ex vehementi imaginum
similitudine aut animi appetitio praeparetur aut
motrix evocetur virtus, quandoquidem Aristotele
auctore imaginatione et intelligentia rerum dicatur
contineri vis." Translation from Weil Garris and
D'Amico 1980, 91. Cortesi did not recommend sculp-
ture collections, but instead thought that cardinals
should have a dactylotheca, or gem room,- see Weil
Garris and D'Amico 1980, 85.
64 CHRISTIAN
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iii. Caroline Elam, "Lorenzo de' Medici's Sculpture
Garden," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Insti-
tutes in Florenz 36 (1992): 41-83,- Il giardino di San
Marco : Maestri e compagni del giovane Michelan-
gelo, ed. Paola Barocchi [exh. cat., Casa Buonarroti]
(Cinisello Balsamo [Milan], 1992).
112. Della Valle hosted at least one artist, Michel
Coxeie, as a familiare in his palace. Karl Johns,
"Coxeie in Brussels," in Michel Coxeie, Pictor Regis
(1499-1592) (Mechelen, 1993), 251. Earlier, in 1517,
the sculptor Cristoforo Solari had lived "under the
protection of" Lello della Valle: see Giovanni Agosti,
"La fama di Cristoforo Solari," Prospettiva 46 (1986):
62.
113. Guilaume Philandrier, In M. Vitruvium De
Architectura Annotationes Guilielmi Philandri
(Venice, 1557), 67-68.
114. Echoes of della Valle's inscriptions are found in
the one Bishop Mario Maffei put outside his palace,
which he finished constructing in 1527: MARIUS
MAFFEUS EPISCOPUS CAVALLICENSIS AC ALUS
SACERDOTIIS FORTUNAEQUE MUNERIBUS UT
EST CAPTUS VOLATERRANORUM SATIS ADOR-
NATUS HAS AEDES A.D. PATRIAE DECOREM AC
SUORUM MAFFEORUM USUM FECIT A.D.
MDXXVII QUO ROMA EVERSA EST UNA CUM
PATRIBUS POPULO PENATISQUE SUIS." See Luigi
Pescetti, "Mario Maffei (1463-1537)," Rassegna
Volterrana 6, fase. 2 (1932): 83.
115. In the end, the invading armies broke the con-
tract and raided the palace; see Alessandro Corvisieri,
Documenti inediti sul sacco di Roma nel MDXXVII
(Rome, 1873).
116. Franca Petrucci, "Corsi, Pietro," in Dizionario
biografico degli Italiani, voi. 29 (Rome, 1983),
579-581. For Corsi's poem on the Sack of Rome, see
Léon Dorez, "Le poème de Pietro Corsi sur le sac de
Rome," Mélanges d'archéologie et d'historié de
l'École Française de Rome 16 (1896): 420-436; Ken-
neth Gouwans, Remembering the Renaissance:
Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome (Leiden,
1998), 73-102.
117. As Guicciardini wrote, during the Sack, "many
unflawed ancient sculptures in marble and bronze,
and medals of popes and prelates cast in various met-
als, which had been greatly prized for their work-
manship and collected over long periods of time, fell
into the hands of men who considered them worth-
less," even if the troops "set the highest value on
beautiful jewels and pure gold, because they occupied
little space and were easily recognized." See Luigi
Guicciardini, The Sack of Rome, ed. and trans. James
H. McGregor (New York, 1993), 112. See also André
Chastel, The Sack of Rome, 1527, A. W. Mellon Lec-
tures in the Fine Arts, 1977 (Princeton, 1983),
97-100.
1 1 8. "Quid mirare, hospes, tot numina muta et an-
helo / Sedibus his animam ducere sub lapide / Hostis
adest; vertere metu se in saxa licetque / Tuta tegat
Vallis marmora, adhuc trepidant/' BAV, Vat. lat.
7182, fol. 105, in Brummer 1970, 119 n. 76, and
Chastel 1983, 100.
119. "Clara deum clara et veterum dum signa Quiri-
tum, / Valla pater retegi restituique iubet, / Dumque
novos altis suspendit in aedibus hortos, / Surgere ubi
assidue marmora viva vides: / Aspexit tandem
Latium moderator Olympi: / Moestaque solatus pec-
tora sic Veneris, / Quam toties flesti, quod tot latet
obruta s[a]ec[u]lis: / Nostra iterum hoc tollit
pr[a]esule Roma caput," BAV, Vat. lat. 7182, fol.
117V., in Brummer 1970, 220 n. 20.
120. "In Basilicae Vaticanae monumenits haec de
Cardinali de Valle memoria. Anno 1527. de commis-
sione Reverendissimi Domini Card, de Valle ego
Iulius Cervinus Canonicus S. Petri solvi ducatos cen-
tum auri militibus Germanis, qui restituerunt aliqua
fragmenta argenti simul cum tabernáculo argenteo
cum gutture S. Blasi j, & Calice magno argenteo, &
Cruce Constantini," Chacón 1677, 3: col. 351. For
the retrieval of relics after the Sack, see Chastel
1983, 100-108.

121. "Laudabile tue . . . domini propositum quod in

exornanda amplificandaque urbe roma, unde oriunda
est plurimum usatur marmóreas, prophires, easque
longeni temporis subterráneas statuas et alios lapides
dignorum artifìcum manibus elaboratos historiis,
memoratu digna sculptos clara mairoum gesta vivifi-
cantes, ad lucem restituendo priscam edifitia vetus-
tate colapsa imitando eaque in novum et modernum
posteriumque nostrorum usum et delectamentum
reparando." See letter cited above at n. 56.

CHRISTIAN 65

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