Palazzo dei Convertendi

Location

The palace is located in the rione Borgo of Rome along the north side of Via della Conciliazione. The palazzo's principal facade faces south. The east facade faces Via dell'Erba, which separates it from Palazzo Torlonia, another Renaissance building. To the west lies Palazzo Rusticucci-Accoramboni, another Renaissance building demolished and reconstructed in the 1940.

History

Towards the middle of the 15th century, a house named "della stufa" stood at the northwest edge of the little Piazza Scossacavalli in Borgo. A stufa (from the German word stube) was something between a Roman bath and a modern sauna, often attended by artists who could freely sketch nudes there. In 1500 the house was sold to the apostolic protonotary Adriano (or Alessandro) de Caprineis, of the noble Caprini family of Viterbo. During those years, Pope Alexander VI Borgia (r. 1492–1503 ) was pursuing a project to open a new road between Castel Sant'Angelo and the Old St. Peter's Basilica. This road was named Via Alessandrina after the pope and later Borgo Nuovo, and was officially inaugurated in 1500. People willing to erect buildings at least 5 canne (11 m (36 ft) ca.) high along the new road received special privileges, such as tax exemptions. The Caprini fulfilled this obligation by buying a portion of another house near the stufa and erecting there a small palazzo designed by Donato Bramante. It was unfinished on 7 October 1517, when the Caprini sold it for 3,000 ducati to Raphael. The artist completed the construction, spending there the last three years of his life. He painted in those rooms the Transfiguration, and died there on 6 April 1520.

After Raphael's death, the building was sold to the Cardinal of Ancona, Pietro Accolti, who already owned another palazzo on via Alessandrina, separated from the building through a house which the Cardinal bought later. After the death of the Cardinal, the palace was inherited by his nephew Benedetto, Cardinal of Ravenna. Accused of corruption, the Cardinal was imprisoned in Castel Sant'Angelo in 1534 and released after paying a fine of 59,000 scudi to the Apostolic Chamber. The cardinal had to borrow the huge sum from the Florentine bankers Giulio and Lorenzo Strozzi, who later acquired his palace for 6,000 scudi as partial reimbursement of the loan. However, the Cardinal reserved the right to redeem the building after repaying his creditors, and this led to a lawsuit between his heirs and the heirs of the Strozzi. The latter won, but in 1576 they were forced to sell the building, which was crumbling and whose walls had been shored up, to Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Commendone. …

Description

The original building is known only through etchings and drawings by contemporaries. These include an etching by Antoine Lafréry in 1549; drawings by Jean de Cheveniéres and Andrea Palladio (1541 ca.), Domenico Alfani (Christmas 1581), and Ottavio Mascherino; and a fresco in the Logge of Gregory XIII in the Vatican by Antonio Tempesta and Matthijs Bril, representing the translation in St. Peter of the corpse of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. In addition, a detailed survey of the palace executed just before its demolition in 1937 was discovered, yielding precious information about its different construction phases. According to the drawing of Lafréry, the originary edifice had three windows on Piazza Scossacavalli and five on Borgo Nuovo. According to the survey of the 1930s, the main front faced Borgo Nuovo, with three windows along Piazza Scossacavalli and two along the former road. In this case, the drawing of Lafréry could be considered an idealisation of the building, which would be not an isolated case in his works.

The building had two main floors. The lower one was rusticated, with ashlar obtained through a process called "di getto", which involved mixing pozzolana, lime, and other materials in a formwork. The portal and the doors of the shops, surmounted arches which contained the small windows of a mezzanine, were placed in the rustication. The lower floor constituted the podium of the upper floor, which adopted the Doric order. This was marked by columns surmounted by an entablature, with architrave and frieze decorated with triglyphs and metopes. Parapets were inserted in the spans of the upper floor. The building was concluded by a service attic whose windows opened in the Doric frieze of the entablature.

This rustication technique was quickly adopted in Rome, and the building, which had been inspired by Roman architecture, was soon imitated (for example, at Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, erected in 1532 by Baldassare Peruzzi). However, the palace was soon subject to decay. In a 1581 drawing, the rustication coating at the ground floor had disappeared, and after 1585, the two facades assumed a pronounced manierist look. …