Da Rodolfo Pio ai Farnese

It remains strange to modern eyes that the most thoroughly documented antiquities in early modern Italian collections – and probably the most thoroughly documented objects of any type – are classical inscriptions. In corners of museums today, Roman gravestones and dedications can seem unprepossessing and without obvious aesthetic value. To a select group of Renaissance humanists however, they were a source of fascination. These scholars eagerly copied the texts they saw, which they recognized as documentary relics from the ancient world, and alongside those texts they often recorded details of where the objects had been found, who owned them, and where they were displayed. A stream of erudite visitors to Rome, in particular, made detailed records of what they encountered. Together, these compilations allow us to construct object biographies of individual inscriptions that are often overlooked in the travel accounts, wills and inventories more familiar to historians of collecting. Heikki Solin’s new book demonstrates just how much we can learn from sources of this sort about the inscriptions in two contrasting Roman collections. One was compiled by Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi for his palace and vigna from the 1540s until his death in 1564, when it was quickly dispersed. The other was assembled by various members of the Farnese family, from the period of Paul III’s papacy into the seventeenth century, and it absorbed most of the collection of the humanist Fulvio Orsini, who was a member of the Farnese court from 1553 until his death in 1600. This collection remained more or less intact, and was taken to Naples, where it now lies at the heart of the Museo Archeologico, although it is presented there among finds from elsewhere. Pio’s collection included over 400 inscriptions but was relatively humble, made up of examples from Rome, some of which might otherwise have been destroyed; the Farnese inscriptions appeared alongside famous statues and paintings, and represented some of the most distinctive examples found in the sixteenth century. Crucially, both seem to have been open to erudite visitors, who recorded what they saw, and both became sites for admiration, discussion, and investigation.

Art · Art history · Humanism · Humanities · Object (grammar) · Period (music) · The Renaissance · Theology · Classics · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Philosophy · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies · Renaissance Literature and Culture