This document from the Archivio di Stato di Roma is being displayed in connection with the Italian institution’s collaboration with Patrimonio Nacional, the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando as part of a project that highlights the importance of the documentary heritage in its care by relating it to the collections of these Spanish museums.
It is a contract dated 13 December 1649 – during the painter Diego Velázquez’s second trip to Italy – listing the specifications for bronze casts of three major pieces from Antiquity: the Villa Montalto Germanicus, the Caetani Satyr and the Vitteleschi Discoforus. The casts were made by Giovanni Pietro del Duca and Cesare Sebastiani under the supervision of Juan de Córdoba, Philip IV’s agent in Rome. All three sculptures went from adorning the Octogonal Room in the former Alcázar Palace to decorating the Throne Room and the Hall of Columns in the Royal Palace in Madrid.
This commission was followed by one given to Matteo Bonuccelli for twelve fire-gilded bronze lions to be used as table supports in the same symbolic room in the Alcázar. Another was for two sets of four firedogs representing the Four Elements in the guise of mythological figures of Jupiter, Juno, Neptune and Cybele – the latter pair on display here – designed by Alessandro Algardi and completed after his death by his assistants Domenico Guidi and Ercole Ferrata.
More information
