No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Orsini Sala Theatri at Monte Giordano in Rome
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The designing of permanent indoor theatres did not command the attention of Italian Renaissance architects until the sixteenth century was well under way, temporary structures and portable facilities having previously sufficed for dramatic presentations. Yet already in the second quarter of the quattrocento a chamber in one of the most prominent palaces of fifteenth-century Rome was referred to as the sala theatri.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1973
References
1 A theatre structure existed in Ferrara by the second quarter of the sixteenth century —see d'Ancona, Alessandro, Origini del teatro italiano, 2nd ed. (Turin, 1891), 11, 137Google Scholar; Rava, Arnaldo, I teatri di Roma (Rome, 1953), p. 13 Google Scholar.
2 This reference to a prominent Orsini palace occurs in the copy of a fifteenth-century document that describes figures ‘pictorum in sala theatri reverendissimi domini, domini Iordani episcopi sabinensis dignissimi cardinalis de Ursinis’ (Arezzo, Biblioteca della Fraternità di S. Maria, Cod. 63, fol. 149V). For a discussion that dates the lost original in the fourteen thirties, see W. A. Simpson, ‘Cardinal Giordano Orsini (†1438) as a Prince of the Church and a Patron of the Arts,'Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 29 (1966), 135-159.
3 Pecchiai, Pio, Palazzo Taverna a Monte Giordano (Rome, 1963), p. 9 Google Scholar. A fortress built atop the monte by the Roncioni early in the twelfth century was later converted by the Orsini into a palace complex that has since been owned by the Gabrielli and Taverna families.
4 Ibid., p. 13. Cardinal Giordano di Matteo Rosso, the brother of Pope Nicholas III, was the first Orsini recorded as living on the monte (1286). Contrary to Pecchiai's contention, there is no evidence that securely establishes the name ‘Monte Giordano’ prior to the residence there of the quattrocento cardinal, titular of Sabina.
5 See Erich König, Kardinal Giordano Orsini (†1438), Bin Lebensbild aus der Zeit der Grossen Konzillkn und des Humanismus (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1906). Giordano Orsini was made a cardinal on July 12, 1405 (together with Oddo Colonna, later Pope Martin V), after which he gained distinction at the councils of Pisa and Constance and as the leading papal legate for popes Martin V and Eugenius IV.
6 Sansevino, Francesco, Degli huomini illustri della casa Orsini (Venice, 1565), I, 5 Google Scholar. ‘Ora Giordano favori con gratissima e profusa liberalità gli huomini letterati, e havendo con real spesa adunato una nobilissima copia, per tutte le parti del mondo, di libri eccellenti, gli lasciò finalmente a San Pietro.'
7 Cancellieri, Francesco, De secretariis basilicae Vaticanae veteris ac novae libri (Rome, 1786), II, 906–914 Google Scholar. A brief evaluation of the 244 manuscripts left by Cardinal Orsini appears in Müntz, Eugène and Fabre, Paul, La bibliothèque du Vatican au XVe siecle (Paris, 1887), pp. 7–8 Google Scholar.
8 König, pp. 87-89.
9 Carlo Cecchielli, ‘Roma e il pensiero della Rinascita: II Castello degli Orsini e un dialogo celebre,’ L'Urbe, 6 (February 1941), 2-10.
10 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de'più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. by Gaetano Milanesi (Florence, 1878), 11, 264. In both the 1550 and 1568 editions of the Vite it is noted that Masolino ‘fece la sala di casa Orsina vecchia in Monte Giordano'; but when Vasari added a reference to the program ('uomini famosi’) in the second edition he mistakenly included it in the life of ‘Tommaso detto Giottino’ (1, 626), confusing Tommaso (… Giottmo) with ‘Masolino.'
11 Robert L. Mode, ‘Masolino, Uccello and the Orsini Uomini Famosi,’ The Burlington Magazine, 114 (1972), 369-378. In addition to Masolino, who was in charge of the Orsini enterprise, the young Paolo Uccello apparently participated in the early stages of the project, with lesser assistants helping to complete it under Masolino's direction.
12 Arezzo, Biblioteca della Fraternita di S. Maria, Cod. 63, fol. 152. ‘Finis operis usque 1432.'
13 For the most thorough treatment of the uominifamosi iconography in fourteenthand fifteenth-century Italy, see Theodore Mommsen, ‘Petrarch and the Decoration of the Sala Virorum Illustrium in Padua,’ The Art Bulletin, 34 (1952), 95-116. Individual programs of major thematic importance are discussed by Fortuna, Alberto, Andrea del Castagno (Florence, 1957), pp. 58–56Google Scholar; Rubenstein, Nicolai, ‘Political Ideas in Sicnese Art: The Frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico,’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21 (1958), 179–207 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yuen, Tony, ‘The “Biblioteca Graeca“: Castagno, Alberti, and Ancient Sources,’ The Burlington Magazine, 112 (1970), 725–736 Google Scholar.
14 Platner, Samuel Ball and Ashby, Thomas, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (London, 1929), p. 11.Google Scholar
15 Asso, Francesco, ‘ Sull'origine dell'altura detta prima “Monte di Giovanni Roncioni,” poi “Monte Giordano,” ‘ Quaderni dell'Istituto di Storia delVArchitetiura, 1 (1953), 12–15 Google Scholar. Asso maintains the tradition that the monte ‘copra le rovine dell'Anfiteatro di Statilio Taura,’ in spite of the archaeological reservations first noted by Hülsen-Jordan, , Topographie der Stadt Rom in Altherthum (Berlin, 1907), 1, 3, 595 Google Scholar.
16 Giuseppe Baracconi, I rioni di Roma (Città di Castello, 1889), p. 314.
17 Infessura, Stefano, Diario della citta di Roma, ed. by Tommasini, Oreste (Rome, 1890), pp. 101 and 189Google Scholar. References to the sala theatri cease following the partial destruction of the Monte Giordano palace in attacks by Colonna forces during August 1482 and November 1485.