Palazzo Spada

History

In 1540, the palace was commissioned by Cardinal Girolamo Capodiferro, and utilized as an architect Bartolomeo Baronino of Casale Monferrato, while Giulio Mazzoni and a team provided lavish external and internal stucco-work.

The palace was briefly owned by the Mignanelli family, until in 1632, the palace was purchased by Cardinal Spada, who commissioned modifications from Francesco Borromini. The Baroque architect Borromini who created a masterpiece of forced perspective optical illusion in the arcaded courtyard, in which diminishing rows of columns and a rising floor create the visual illusion of a gallery 37 meters long (it is 8 meters) with a life-size sculpture at the end of the vista, in daylight beyond: the sculpture is 60 cm high. Borromini was aided in his perspective trick by a mathematician.

The Mannerist stucco sculptural decor of the palazzo's front and its courtyard façades feature sculptures crowded into niches and fruit and flower swags, grotesques and vignettes of symbolic devices (impresi) in bas-relief among the small framed windows of a mezzanine, the richest Cinquecento façades in Rome.

The colossal sculpture of Pompey the Great, erroneously believed to be the very one at whose feet Julius Caesar fell, was discovered under the party wall of two Roman houses in 1552: it was to be decapitated to satisfy the claims of both parties, which appalled Cardinal Capodiferro so, that he interceded on the sculpture's behalf with Pope Julius III, who purchased it and then gave it to the Cardinal.