| Casino di Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi | |
|---|---|
 The Casino di Villa Ludovisi (1761) by Giuseppe Vasi, within its extensive grounds | |
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| General information | |
| Location | Rome, Italy |
Casino di Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi is a historical building in Rione Ludovisi, Rome, Italy. The building is located in the former domain Villa Ludovisi.
The building is often referred to as Villa Aurora or Casino dell'Aurora, after the fresco by Guercino in the main reception hall, depicting the eponymous goddess.
The palace represents the only remnant of a much larger suburban retreat established in the 16th century by Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte (1549–1627). The Cardinal was a diplomat, intellectual, art connoisseur, and collector, protector and patron of famous figures such as Galileo Galilei and Caravaggio. One of the smaller rooms of the Casino boasts the only painting ever executed by Caravaggio on a ceiling, Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto (c. 1597), which reflects, in symbolic imagery derived from Classical mythology, another of the cardinal's interests: alchemy.
In 1621, del Monte sold the villa and its extensive grounds to Ludovico Ludovisi, whose uncle Alessandro Ludovisi had assumed the papacy earlier that year as Pope Gregory XV and made his nephew a cardinal the day after his coronation, at the age of 25. The cardinal expanded the property until he had created a 30 hectares (74 acres) park between the Porta Pinciana, the Porta Salaria and the convent of Sant'Isidoro, whose buildings were designed by Domenichino, with gardens (purportedly designed by André Le Nôtre), of which Henry James wrote in Portrait of Places (1883):
"Certainly there is nothing better in Rome, and perhaps nothing so beautiful ... Inside there is everything: dark avenues shaped for centuries with scissors, valleys, clearings, groves ..."
The princes Boncompagni-Ludovisi, heirs to the celebrated property and its vast collections, subdivided and sold the property in 1883. Rome's Ludovisi district was built on the land where the park had been and bears the coat of arms of the family. Of the historic buildings of the villa, only the Casino and the facade and staircase of the former Palazzo Grande remain, the latter now hidden behind what became the 19th-century Palazzo Margherita after it was acquired by the Italian State as a residence for the Queen consort of Italy, Margherita of Savoy. It now houses the U.S. embassy. Meanwhile, the 2,200 square metres (24,000 sq ft) Villa Aurora and a small parcel of land remained in the possession of the Ludovisi family. Apart from the works by Caravaggio and Guercino, it contains important works of art by Pomarancio, Michelangelo, and a collection of Roman and Greek artefacts. [1] Encircled by high walls, it was occasionally opened to the public once a month or upon written request.
A free virtual tour led by Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi was made available in January 2022. [2]
The property was put up for sale in 2021 after the death of its owner, Prince Nicolò Boncompagni Ludovisi, in 2018, followed by an inheritance dispute between his widow, Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, and his three sons. [3]
The villa, which requires an estimated 10 million euros of restoration work, was put up for auction by a notary on 18 January 2022, with bidding to start at €471 million; there were no offers. [4] Ultimately the villa had been offered for sale five times by January 2023 with opening bid ultimately reduced to €145m, but with no bids. A judge ruled that the property was not being properly maintained after the collapse of a wall, and that Princess Rita, who was living in the villa, had organised unauthorised tours—she denied that. He ordered her to vacate the property within 60 days, but she refused. A further auction was scheduled for April 2023. [5] On 20 April 2023, Princess Rita was evicted from the premises. [6]
Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, better known as (il) Guercino, was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The vigorous naturalism of his early manner contrasts with the classical equilibrium of his later works. His many drawings are noted for their luminosity and lively style.
Rita Jenrette is an American actress, television journalist, and real estate executive.
Ludovisi is the 16th rione of Rome, Italy, identified by the initials R. XVI and located within the Municipio I.
Sallustiano is the 17th rione of Rome, Italy, identified by the initials R. XVII. It is located within the Municipio I and the name refers to the ancient Gardens of Sallust, which were located here.
The Ludovisi Ares is an Antonine Roman marble sculpture of Ares, a fine 2nd-century copy of a late 4th-century BCE Greek original, associated with Scopas or Lysippus: thus the Roman god of war receives his Greek name, Ares.
The Lute Player is a composition by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio. It used to exist in two versions, one in the Wildenstein Collection and another in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. A third version, which was kept for 275 years at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, came to light in 2001, and which today is understood to be the original version. The Hermitage and the Badminton House versions were exhibited together in 2020 at the Galleria Borghese.
Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto is a painting by Italian Baroque master Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. It is located in the Villa Aurora, the former hunting lodge of the erstwhile Villa Ludovisi, Rome. It is unusually painted in oils on plaster and hence it is not a fresco, although it is sometimes (incorrectly) referred to as such. Oil painting is normally on canvas or, less frequently, on wood.
The Gardens of Sallust was an ancient Roman estate including a landscaped pleasure garden developed by the historian Sallust in the 1st century BC. It occupied a large area in the northeastern sector of Rome, in what would become Region VI, between the Pincian and Quirinal hills, near the Via Salaria and later Porta Salaria. The modern rione is now known as Sallustiano.
Ludovisi can refer to:
Ludovico Ludovisi was an Italian cardinal and statesman of the Roman Catholic Church. He was an art connoisseur who formed a famous collection of antiquities, housed at the Villa Ludovisi in Rome.
The Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi is a palace in Rome, Italy. It was built by the Borghese family on the Quirinal Hill; its footprint occupies the site where the ruins of the baths of Constantine stood, whose remains still are part of the basement of the main building, the Casino dell'Aurora. Its first inhabitant was the famed art collector Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V, who wanted to be housed near the large papal Palazzo Quirinale. The palace and garden of the Pallavicini-Rospigliosi were the product of the accumulated sites and were designed by Giovanni Vasanzio and Carlo Maderno in 1611–16. Scipione owned this site for less than a decade, 1610–16, and commissioned the construction and decoration of the casino and pergolata, facing the garden of Montecavallo. The Roman palace of this name should not be mistaken for the panoramic Villa Pallavicino on the shores of Lake Como in Lombardy. The Palace has also been the scene of important cultural and religious events. On June 6, 1977 Princess Elvina Pallavicini invited in Palazzo Pallavicini Rospigliosi the archbishop monsignor Marcel Lefebvre for a conference on the Second Vatican Council and for the celebration of a Traditiona Mass, under the careful direction of the marquis Roberto Malvezzi, and Frigate Captain marquis Luigi Coda Nunziante di San Ferdinando. Many members of Alleanza Cattolica, the baron Roberto de Mattei, the pharmacologist Giulio Soldani, the sociologist Massimo Introvigne, the psychiatrist Mario Di Fiorino and Attilio Tamburrini and his brother Renato Tamburrini took part to the event.
The National Roman Museum is a museum, with several branches in separate buildings throughout the city of Rome, Italy. It shows exhibits from the pre- and early history of Rome, with a focus on archaeological findings from the period of Ancient Rome.
The Villa Ludovisi was a suburban villa in Rome, built in the 17th century on the area once occupied by the Gardens of Sallust near the Porta Salaria. On an assemblage of vineyards purchased from Giovanni Antonio Orsini, Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte and others, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi erected in the 1620s the main villa building to designs by Domenichino; it was completed within thirty months, in part to house his collection of Roman antiquities, additions to which were unearthed during construction at the site, which had figured among the great patrician pleasure grounds of Roman times. Modern works, most famously Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Pluto and Persephone, were also represented. The engraving of the grounds by Giovanni Battista Falda (1683) shows a short access avenue from a tree-lined exedra in via di Porta Pinciana and cypress-lined avenues centered on each of the facades of the main villa, laid out through open fields, the main approaches to both the villa and the Casino dell'Aurora converging on gates in the Aurelian Walls, which formed the northern bounds of the park; symmetrical parterres of conventional form including bosquets peopled with statuary flanked the main avenue of the Casina, and there was an isolated sunken parterre, though these features were not integrated in a unified overall plan. The overgrown avenues contrasting with the dramatic Roman walls inspired Stendhal to declare in 1828 that the Villa Ludovisi's gardens were among the most beautiful in the world.
The House of Boncompagni is a princely family of the Italian nobility which settled in Bologna in around the 14th century, but was probably originally from Umbria.
Via Vittorio Veneto, colloquially called Via Veneto, is one of the most famous, elegant, and expensive streets of Rome, Italy. The street is named after the Battle of Vittorio Veneto (1918), a decisive Italian victory of World War I. Federico Fellini's classic 1960 film La Dolce Vita was mostly centered on the Via Veneto area.
The over-lifesize marble Dionysus with Panther and Satyr in the Palazzo Altemps, Rome, is a Roman work of the 2nd century AD, found in the 16th century on the Quirinal Hill at the time foundations were being dug for Palazzo Mattei at Quattro Fontane. The statue was purchased for the Ludovisi collection, where it was first displayed in front of the Palazzo Grande, the main structure of the Villa Ludovisi, and by 1641 in the gallery of sculptures in the Casino Capponi erected for Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi in the villa's extensive grounds. By 1885, it had been removed to the new Palazzo del Principe di Piombino, nearby in via Veneto. With the rest of the Boncompagni-Ludovisi collection, which was open to the public on Sundays and covered in the guidebooks, and where it had become famous, it was purchased in 1901 for the City of Rome, as the Ludovisi collection was dispersed and the Villa's ground built over at the end of the 19th century.
Palazzo Margherita, formerly Palazzo Piombino, is a palazzo on Via Veneto in Rome. The usual name references Queen Margherita of Savoy, who lived there from 1900 to 1926.
Boncompagni is a noble Italian family.
Pinciano is the 3rd quartiere of Rome (Italy), identified by the initials Q. III. The name derives from the Pincian Hill. It belongs to the Municipio II.