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Connecting people, connecting places: antiquarians as mediators in sixteenth-century Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2010

BARBARA FURLOTTI
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Abstract:

During the sixteenth century, antiquarians increasingly developed a self-conscious identity as a professional group with specific social, intellectual and artisan skills. Their activity was not linked to a particular place though: antiquities surfaced from the earth both inside and outside the city walls and were traded in streets, squares, private houses and gardens. Using the Stampa brothers as a case-study, this article investigates the role and commercial strategies of antiquarians and their ability to cross the boundaries of social groups, since they had to deal with artisans, peasants and artists on one side, and cardinals and gentlemen on the other.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 37 , Special Issue 3: Locating communities in the early modern Italian city , December 2010 , pp. 386 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

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15 Cesare Targone, and Domenico and Cesare dei Cammei were well acquainted with Fulvio Orsini. They are mentioned as providers of antique gems in his inventory (Nolhac, ‘Les collections d'antiquités’, 153–72) and as agents in the acquisition of part of Lunardo Mocenigo's collection, completed by Orsini in 1578 on behalf of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Brown, C.M., ‘The “studio del clarissimo cavalier Mozzanico in Venezia”. Documents for the antiquarian ambitions of Francesco I de’ Medici, Mario Bevilacqua, Alessandro Farnese and Fulvio Orsini’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 41 (1999), 55–76)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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25 I am currently preparing a separate publication about the Stampa brothers and the market for antiquities in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century. I have reconstructed the relationship between the Stampa and Paolo Giordano I Orsini, duke of Bracciano, in Furlotti, B., A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions. Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541–85) (Turnhout, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

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29 ASRm, TCG, Processi, vol. 19, fasc. 39, no foliation, interrogation of Domenico Scaiola da Reggio (‘vedendo io che donava tutto el giorno qualche antiquità a questo et a quello et havendolo io per homo da bene et ben nato, gli facevo accoglienze et alle volte veniva a desinar meco’). Documents about this trial were partially published by Bertolotti, A., Bartolomeo Baronino da Casalmonferrato architetto in Roma nel secolo XVI (Casale Monferrato, 1875)Google Scholar.

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37 ASRm, TCG, Investigazioni, vol. 99, fol. 55r.

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