The Galleria Doria Pamphilj (often Doria Pamphilj Gallery or Doria Pamphili Gallery in English) is a large private art collection housed in the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj in Rome, Italy, between Via del Corso and Via della Gatta. The principal entrance is on the Via del Corso. (Until recently, the entrance to the gallery was from the Piazza del Collegio Romano.) The palace façade on Via del Corso is adjacent to a church, Santa Maria in Via Lata. Like the palace, it is still privately owned by the princely Roman family Doria Pamphili. Tours of the state rooms often culminate in concerts of Baroque and Renaissance music, paying tribute to the setting and the masterpieces it contains.
With some earlier and later exceptions, the bulk of the collection consists of works from the 16th and 17th centuries, a high proportion of them of exceptional quality.
Collection
The courtyard. The first floor shuttered windows correspond to a four-sided gallery, housing the collection's main paintings.Interior
The large collection of paintings, furniture and statuary has been assembled since the 16th century by the Doria, Pamphilj, Landi and Aldobrandini families now united through marriage and descent under the simplified surname Doria Pamphilj. The collection includes paintings and furnishings from Innocent X's Palazzo Pamphilj (in Piazza Navona), who bequeathed them to his nephew Camillo Pamphilj.
The Palazzo has grown over the centuries; it is likely to be the largest in Rome still in private ownership. The main collection is displayed in state rooms, including the chapel, complete with the mummifiedcorpse of the family saint. However, the bulk is displayed in a series of four gilded and painted galleries surrounding a courtyard. An extensive suite of further rooms have now been converted to permanent well-lit galleries, containing the more medieval and Byzantine art in the collection.
Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X (previously Cardinal Giovan Battista Pamphilj, who became Pope in 1644) is considered to be the collection's masterpiece. Velázquez, while not idealizing the Pope's countenance, is not unflattering in the portrait; Innocent X's features were believed by his contemporaries to symbolise a despotic lifestyle and vindictive character. The portrait painted to commemorate the Holy Year was commissioned by his hedonistic sister-in-law Olimpia Maidalchini, who was his close confidante and adviser, and some say mistress. Since 1927, Velázquez's portrait has been placed in a specially designated small room along with a sculptured bust of the same pope by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Olimpia Maidalchini's son Camillo Pamphilj, defying his powerful mother, renounced the cardinalship conferred on him by his uncle the Pope and married the widowed Olimpia Borghese. Born an Aldobrandini, she brought the palazzo known as Palazzo Aldobrandini into the Pamphilj family. Following a period of exile in the country, to avoid confrontation with the Pope and Olimpia Maidalchini, the newly married couple took up permanent residence in the Palazzo Aldobrandini, which from 1654 Camillo began to expand on a large scale; neighbouring houses and a convent were bought and demolished as the palazzo grew, in spite of local opposition from the neighbouring Jesuits at the Collegio Romano. The architect in charge of this lengthy project was Antonio Del Grande. The façade facing the Via del Corso, however, is by Gabriele Valvassori. Following Camillo's death in 1666, building continued under the auspices of his two sons Giovanni Battista (his heir) and Benedetto.
One of Camillo and Olimpia's daughters, Anna Pamphilj, married the Genoese aristocrat Giovanni Andrea III Doria Landi in 1671, and it was their descendants who inherited the Palazzo when the Roman branch of the Pamphilj family ended in 1760. In 1763 Prince Andrea IV combined his Genoese and Roman names to the present Doria-Pamphilj-Landi. In 1767 the ceilings of the state rooms were frescoed by late-Baroque artists such as Crescenzio Onofri, Aureliano Milani, and Stefano Pozzi (Sala degli Specchi).
The collection was first opened to the public by the three-quarters English Princess Orietta Pogson Doria Pamphilj, whose English husband Commander Frank Pogson added her name to his. Her own father, Prince Filippo Andrea VI, was half-English. Princess Orietta and Commander Frank did much to restore the collection and the palazzo; following her death in 2000 the guardianship of the collection was taken over by her adopted, English-born children, Jonathan Doria Pamphilj and Gesine Pogson Doria Pamphilj, who still live in the palazzo. Along with the possessions of the Colonna and Pallavicini-Rospigliosi families, this is one of the largest private art collections in Rome.
Overview
The family chapel was designed by architect Carlo Fontana in the late 17th century, but has since been altered. The ivory crucifix was carved by Ercole Ferrata.
The Saletta Gialla and Saletta Rossa contain Gobelins tapestries, including those depicting the signs of the zodiac by Claude Audran.
Green Salon: large mid-15th century Tournai tapestry with the medieval legend of Alexander the Great; bronze of Innocent X by Algardi; Portrait by Lotto; and Filippo Lippi's Annunciation.
Note: The Palazzo housing the Gallery Doria Pamphilj should not be confused with the Palazzo Pamphilj, in Rome's Piazza Navona, now the Brazilian Embassy. Nor should this palace be confused with a second Palazzo Doria-Pamphilj, a summer urban villa, in Valmontone near Rome; this palace, though badly damaged during the Second World War, is renowned for its late Baroque fresco series by Francesco Cozza, Pier Francesco Mola, and Mattia Preti.[1]
Alessandro Algardi was an Italian high-Baroque sculptor active almost exclusively in Rome. In the latter decades of his life, he was, along with Francesco Borromini and Pietro da Cortona, one of the major rivals of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in Rome. He is now most admired for his portrait busts that have great vivacity and dignity.
Pope Innocent X, born Giovanni Battista Pamphilj, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 September 1644 to his death, in January 1655.
Francesco Albani or Albano was an Italian Baroque painter of Albanian origin who was active in Bologna, Rome, Viterbo (1609–1610), Mantua (1621–1622) and Florence (1633).
Palazzo Pamphilj, also spelled Palazzo Pamphili, is a palace facing onto the Piazza Navona in Rome, Italy. It was built between 1644 and 1650.
The House of Aldobrandini is an Italian noble family originally from Florence, where in the Middle Ages they held the most important municipal offices. Now the Aldobrandini are resident in Rome, with close ties to the Vatican.
The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica or National Gallery of Ancient Art is an art museum in Rome, Italy. It is the principal national collection of older paintings in Rome – mostly from before 1800; it does not hold any antiquities. It has two sites: the Palazzo Barberini and the Palazzo Corsini.
The Palazzo Spada is a palace located on Piazza di Capo Ferro #13 in the rione Regola of Rome, Italy. Standing very close to the Palazzo Farnese, it has a garden facing towards the Tiber river.
The House of Pamphili was one of the papal families deeply entrenched in Catholic Church, Roman and Italian politics of the 16th and 17th centuries.
The Villa Doria Pamphili is a seventeenth-century villa with what is today the largest landscaped public park in Rome, Italy. It is located in the quarter of Monteverde, on the Gianicolo, just outside the Porta San Pancrazio in the ancient walls of Rome where the ancient road of the Via Aurelia commences.
Portrait of Pope Paul V is a painting attributed to the Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), now in the Galleria Borghese, Rome.
Portrait of Pope Innocent X is an oil on canvas portrait by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, created during a trip to Italy around 1650. Many artists and art critics consider it the finest portrait ever created. It is housed in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome. A smaller version is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and a study is on display at Apsley House in London. The painting is noted for its realism as an unflinching portrait of a highly intelligent, shrewd, and aging man. He is dressed in linen vestments, and the quality of the work is evident in the rich reds of his upper clothing, head-dress, and the hanging curtains.
Ippolito Aldobrandini was a Catholic Cardinal. Pope Clement VIII, whose birth name was also Ippolito Aldobrandini, was his great-uncle.
Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj, Princess of San Martino, , was the sister-in-law of Pope Innocent X (Pamphili). She was perceived by her contemporaries as having influence regarding papal appointments.
Olimpia Aldobrandini was a member of the Aldobrandini family of Rome, and the sole heiress to the family fortune.
Camillo Francesco Maria Pamphili was an Italian Catholic cardinal and nobleman of the Pamphili family. His name is often spelled with the final long i orthography; Pamphilj.
Camillo Astalli was an Italian Catholic Cardinal and Cardinal-Nephew of Pope Innocent X who served as Cardinal Priest of San Pietro in Montorio (1653–1662), Camerlengo of the Sacred College of Cardinals (1661–1662), and Archbishop of Catania (1661–1663).
Francesco Maidalchini was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
The House of Doria Pamphilj Landi was a princely Roman family of Genoese extraction. Legend has it that the origins of the Doria family date from the early 11th century, but the authentic pedigree is traced to Ansaldo d'Oria, consul of Genoa in the 12th century. The descent of the several Doria family lines in Genoa is well-known and is described in Natale Battilana's 19th-century genealogical study of old Genoese families.
The Galleria Spada is a museum in Rome, which is housed in the Palazzo Spada on Piazza Capo di Ferro. The palazzo is also famous for its façade and for the forced perspective gallery by Francesco Borromini.
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