Villa Albani

History

Planned in 1743, the building of the villa began in 1747 according to Giuseppe Vasi and was celebrated as complete in 1763. Its purpose was to house Cardinal Albani's evolving and renewed collections of antiquities and ancient Roman sculpture, which soon filled the casino that faced the Villa down a series of formal parterres.

The villa with its collection, fountains, statues, stairways and frescoes, and Italian-style garden, the hemicycle of the Kaffeehaus, constitutes a sublime testimony of that particular antiquarian taste which came to the fore in mid-18th-century, that for which Rome had become a key destination on the Grand Tour.

While the Cardinal was the real director of works, for the layout of the works Albani's lifelong friend Carlo Marchionni was the architect in charge, at the Villa and perhaps also for the two temples in the park, an Ionic temple of Diana and a sham ruin. It is hypothesized that Marchionni took advice from Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who at that time, having been hired as librarian by the Cardinal (1759), was creating a catalogue of the collections of antiquities of his patron, paving the way for the reappraisal of Greek art. Winckelmann was a notable force behind the enlargement of the collection, and as he would write in a letter dated August 1766, in the construction process, Albani always adopted Descartes’s maxim not to leave any space empty. And so, in the Sala di Antinoo, the famous relief of Villa Adriana embellished the fireplace, and this room also hosts the famous fresco of Parnassus (1761), created by Anton Raphael Mengs for the vault of the Galleria, which would go on to become the pictorial manifesto of the nascent neoclassical style. Winckelmann was supported by Albani from the time when the Seven Years' War stranded him in Rome without his pension, and whose own connoisseur ship was sharpened by the connection. The nephew of Pope Clement XI, respectful patron and skilled diplomat, Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692-1779) was in fact one of the greatest collectors of ancient sculptures in 18th-century Rome, and a promoter of that Neo-classical taste that forms the basis of modern archaeological studies. …

Collection

Statues, busts, bas-reliefs, vases, capitals and columns, all carefully selected, decorated the refined interiors, the gardens, the fountains and the various buildings of the villa, which stands as a vast architectural complex of locales and structures (like the Temple of Diana, the Temple of the Caryatids, the coffee-house, the ruined tempietto, the billiards area, etc.), which dialogue with one another with the intention of creating an educational and emotional itinerary, studied down to the last detail, aiming to compete with the villas of Imperial Rome, and leaving its visitors enchanted.

Nicolò Alunno, Madonna with Child enthroned and Sts. John the Baptist, Caterina d'Alessandria, Sebastian, Anthony, Benedict, Peter, Paul and Augustine, tempera on wood, 200 x 251 cm.

Pietro Perugino, "Polittico Albani Torlonia" with nativity of Christ with Sts. Michael, John the Baptist, Jerome and George, 1491, tempera on wood, 174 x 88 cm.

Marco d'Oggiono, Madonna with Child.

Taddeo Zuccari, Christ in pietà mourned by angels, oil on wood, 252 x 194 cm.

Francesco del Cairo, St. Sebastian cared for by the widow Irene, oil on canvas.