The search for new patrons and commissions after 1572 would not have been easy. Karel van Mander, who was in the city around 1575, recounted that ‘in Rome the commissions for public places were executed for a crust of bread, while the young painters were attempting to establish their reputation by painting altarpieces’1. The election of Ugo Boncompagni in 1572 (Pope Gregory XIII), who followed the tradition of newly elected pontiffs by employing artists from his native city, failed to increase the opportunities for Domenicos, who clearly did not belong in the pope’s artistic circle. Domenicos’ rival, Vasari, on the other hand, who was called to continue the decoration of the Sala Regia, was now surrounded by a group of Bolognese artists. Lorenzo Sabatini arrived from Bologna together with Denis Calvaert, followed by Baldassare Croce and the Bolognese architect Ottaviano Mascherino, who arrived in Rome in 15742. The reactions of artists already resident in Rome to the pro-Bolognese patronage of Gregory XIII were mixed; some, including Federico Zuccaro, Marco Pino and Livio Agresti, left Rome3, while others stayed and worked for foreign patrons. Girolamo Muziano, for instance, spent this first phase of Boncompagni’s pontificate working on paintings to be sent to other Italian cities4. Domenicos appears to have followed a similar path, working for private patrons, largely outside Rome.
In his Considerazioni sulla pittura, Mancini reports that El Greco ‘gave great satisfaction’ to some private clients, and singles out a work in the possession of the ‘lawyer Lancillotti’, (‘avocato Lancillotti’), without, however, referring to either the type of picture, or to the lawyer’s first name5. This has fuelled a good deal of
1 Van Mander, Le vite degli illustri pittori fiamminghi, olandesi e tedeschi, p. 297, fol. 271v: “…a Roma i lavori destinati ai luoghi pubblici venivano eseguiti in cambio di una crosta di pane, mentre i giovani pittori cercavano di farsi un nome attraverso l’esecuzione delle pale d’altare”.
2 Brown, ‘El Greco and Toledo’, in El Greco of Toledo, pp. 90-91; J. Marciari, ‘Raffaellino da Reggio in the Vatican’, The Burlington Magazine, 148, 2006, pp. 187-191; Raffaellino da Reggio was exceptionally given steady work at the Vatican until his death in 1578 (ibid, p. 187).
3 Acidini Luchinat seems to agree with this view, arguing that the decrease in the number of commissions Federico Zuccaro received played an important role in his decision to leave Rome in June 1573; Acidini Luchinat, Taddeo e Federico Zuccari, vol. ΙΙ, p. 53.
4 Marciari, ‘Raffaellino da Reggio in the Vatican’, p. 189.
5 Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. Ι, pp. 230-231: “Questo, havendo studiato in Venetia et in particolare le cose di Titiano, era venuto a gran segno nella professione e quel modo di operare; onde, venutosene a Roma et in tempo che non v’eran molti huomini e quelli di maniera non così risoluta nè così fresca come pareva la sua, pigliò grand’ ardire, tanto più che in alcune cose private diede gran sodisfattione, delle quali se ne vede hoggi una appresso all’ avocato Lancilotti, quale da alcuni vien stimata di Titiano”.
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speculation as to the owner’s identity. The most likely candidates are either Scipione Lancellotti (1527-1598) or his nephew Orazio Lancellotti (1571-1620)6, since they both started their careers as ‘auditors’ of the Sacra Rota in 1565 and 1589 respectively7, and they both were cardinals (1583 and 1611 respectively) by the time that Mancini was writing his treatise. It is significant to note at this point that no other member of the Lancellotti family seems to have been connected with the ecclesiastical legal system, since Orazio’s father, Paolo, had been conservator at the Capitol, while Orazio’s younger brothers, Giovanni Battista (1575-1656), Tiberio (1577-1629) and Ottavio (1578-1614), were respectively Bishop of Nola, a conservator, and a soldier8.
However, the use of the word ‘lawyer’ (‘avocato’) instead of the word ‘cardinal’ (‘cardinale’) to identify Scipione or Orazio, has led to the suggestion that there was another lawyer with the same name from Perugia9, a hypothesis that has caused much confusion in an already complex matter. It is important to remember at this juncture that, while Mancini began writing the second part of his Considerazioni around 161710, before his appointment as a doctor at the Papal Court of Urban VIII, he probably based his account of Domenicos’ life on information given to him before 1611. This would have come either from his compatriot Lattanzio Bonastri11, or from a member of the Orsini-Lancellotti circle12, or most probably from both. As the
6 Orazio Lancellotti was the son of Paolo Lancellotti and Giulia Delfini, whose family had a close connection with Fulvio Orsini; P. Cavazzini, ‘Il Palazzo e la famiglia Lancellotti nel primo Seicento’, in Collezzione di Antichità di Palazzo Lancellotti ai Coronari, ed. R. Marcucci, Rome, 2008, pp. 28- 29. It is interesting to note that Scipione Lancellotti started building the family palace at Via dei Coronari, as a sign of his family’s elevated status after having received the red hat; S.C. Leone, ‘Cardinal Pamphilj Builds a Palace: Self-Representation and Familial Ambition in Seventeenth- Century Rome’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 63, 2004, p. 448.
7 P. Cavazzini, Palazzo Lancellotti ai Coronari: Cantiere di Agostino Tassi, Rome, 1998, p. 9.
8 Cavazzini, ‘Il Palazzo e la famiglia Lancellotti nel primo Seicento’, p. 28; Cavazzini, Palazzo
Lancellotti ai Coronari, pp. 10-11.
9 El Greco, [New York/London, 2004], p. 99: “However, Mancini would hardly have referred to this man [Orazio], who was made a cardinal in 1611, as a lawyer. Patrizia Cavazzini kindly informs me [Keith Christiansen] that there was a Lancellotti family of lawyers from Perugia, one of whose members was named Orazio. As though to make matters more complicated, both Orazios studied law at Perugia, so that at more or less the same time there was a famous Perugian lawyer and university professor and a future Roman cardinal with the same name”. Perugia’s faculty of jurists was quite famous as well as the jurist Gianpaolo Lancellotti (c.1510-1591), who had been engaged by Paul IV to draw up an institute of canon law following in the footsteps of Justinian in his institutes of civil law. Coincidentally, his son was named Orazio Lancellotti; G.B. Vermiglioli, Biografia degli scrittori
Perugini e notizie delle opere loro, Perugia, 1829, vol. II, pp. 40-48.
10 For the different stages of Mancini’s treatise, Mancini, Considerazioni sulla pittura, vol. ΙΙ, p. ix. 11 Longhi, ‘Il soggiorno romano del Greco’, p. 302
12 Sometimes, Mancini mentioned some of his sources, such as, for example, the Bolognese Ottaviano Mascherino (vol. I, p. 222, in the Life of Matteo da Lecce) and Cardinal Pietro Campori, (vol. I, p. 203, in the Life of Giuseppe Porta), who were both in contact with the Lancellotti family. Mascherino was
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Sienese doctor was not in the habit of revising or amending his material13, it is highly likely that he simply failed to correct the title of the Lancellotti from ‘lawyer’ to ‘cardinal’, just as he never added Domenicos’ real name in his biography. In any event, whether it was Scipione or Orazio Lancellotti, this figure should not be considered as a formal patron of Domenicos after 1572; instead it makes much more sense for the picture in question to have passed to the Lancellotti family from Fulvio Orsini, possibly before the scholar’s death in 1600. Fulvio, who prized Orazio as a dear friend (‘charissimo’), named him executor of his will and bequeathed him books, manuscripts and two musical instruments decorated by Annibale Carracci14. The possibility that he also gifted a painting by Domenicos suggests that Fulvio may have possessed an even larger number of paintings by the Cretan than those listed in his inventory, which would surely confirm that the relationship between the Greek master and the Roman scholar was particularly close, and continued beyond the brief spell that Domenicos spent in the Farnese household.
If this is true, Fulvio could well have acted as a go-between in bringing Domenicos into contact with a network of potential patrons beyond Rome. Evidence for this hypothesis is supplied by a curious reference in the inventory of the D’ Este family of 1592, which has escaped notice until now. In the inventory of Lucrezia D’ Este (d.1598), the daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso II (1533-1597), there is a record of a picture by Domenicos representing a Circumcision of Christ: ‘uno [quadro] della Circoncisione di mano del Greco’15. Although no extant painting by Domenicos can be identified with this picture, it is possible to conjecture how it came into the D’ Este collection. Alessandro de’ Grandi, who acted as agent to the Duke of the architect of the church of S. Salvatore in Lauro, whose cardinal-protector was Scipione Lancellotti, and Cardinal Campori received the red hat under Paul V (Camillo Borghese, 1605-1621), as Orazio did. Thus, we cannot exclude the possibility that either Mascherino or Campori gave Mancini some information about Orazio Lancellotti.
13 Mahon, ‘Notes on the Manuscripts of Mancini’s Trattato’, in Studies in Seicento Art and Theory, p. 328: “He is quite unmethodical when making additions to his work…He does not appear to have read through his text systematically with a view to reconciling it with his written sources and eliminating the inconsistencies within his own work”; Hess, ‘Note Manciniane’, p. 107: “peggio ancora, il Mancini non sempre aveva la pazienza di correggere il manoscritto che gli veniva consegnato, o di riempire i molti luoghi lasciati in bianco, non inserendovi i nomi propri che non aveva presenti al momento della dettatura”; L. Salerno, ‘Sul trattato di Giulio Mancini’, Commentari, ii, 1951, pp. 26-39, where Mancini is described as ‘an amateur and a dilettante’ (‘un amatore, un dilettante’).
14 Orazio, who was Properzia Delfini’s nephew, was named executor of Fulvio’s will together with Flaminio Delfini; De Nolhac, La Bibliothèque de Fulvio Orsini, pp. 25-26; Cavazzini, ‘Il Palazzo e la famiglia Lancellotti nel primo Seicento’, p. 28.
15 P. Della Pergola, ‘L’ inventario del 1592 di Lucrezia d’ Este’, Arte antica e moderna, 7, 1959, p. 349, no 19.
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Ferrara, came to Rome in 1570 with instructions to purchase antiquities for the Duke, as well as eighteen busts for the decoration of the ducal library16. According to a letter that Fulvio Orsini wrote to Cardinal Farnese on September 11 1571, De’ Grandi had asked his advice about the purchase of some ancient busts17. He added that ‘the duke of Ferrara, after the design of Pirro, is putting together his library of manuscripts, consisting of books by Manutius, Statius, and others; and above the pilasters which separate the bookcases he puts the ancient heads of philosophers and literary men’18. The Duke was also keen to collect works of art19 as well as coins and medallions from already dispersed collections, such as those of the King of Hungary Matthias Corvinus (1443-1490), and the Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi (1500-1564)20. He was also intent on acquiring books and manuscripts, particularly Greek, from Venice21. The efforts of Alfonso II, who was attempting to promote Ferrara as a centre of learning, intensified after the disastrous earthquake of November 16 1570, that had shattered the intellectual and economic life of the city.
Not only was the ducal agent in Rome at the same time as Domenicos22, but he was in close contact with Fulvio, as mentioned above. It is entirely possible, therefore, that the Roman scholar introduced Domenicos to Alessandro de’ Grandi, and consequently to Alfonso II D’Este23, as a learned Greek artist who could respond to
16 Ligorio aspired to organise the ducal library together with a museum of antiquities on the second
floor of the east wing of the D’ Este palace; Coffin, Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect,
and Antiquarian, pp. 111-112. By using ancient sculpture to decorate the ducal library, Ligorio was
emulating the Romans Gaius Asinius Pollio, Atticus and Marcus Varro (Pliny, Natural History, Book XXXV, ii, 10-11, pp. 266-267). It is not a coincidence that Cardinal Farnese, who used to place the collected items in the stanze dei Quadri, on the second floor of Palazzo Farnese, ordered twelve marble busts of Roman emperors from Tommaso della Porta in 1562; Riebesell, Die Sammlung des Kardinal
Alessandro Farnese, pp. 28-30.
17 Ronchini & Poggi, ‘Lettere di Fulvio Orsini ai Farnese’, p. 50, letter iii.
18 Ibid, p. 50, letter iii, which also mentions the forthcoming purchase of the bust of Lysias; for the Engl. transl. see Coffin, Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian, p. 112. 19 For the art collection of the Duke of Ferrara see L. Spezzaferro, ‘Perché per molti segni sempre si conosconi le cose…: Per la situazione del lavoro artistico nella Ferrara di Alfonso II’, in L’ impresa di
Alfonso II: saggi e documenti sulla produzione artistica a Ferrara nel secondo Cinquecento, ed. J.
Bertini & L. Spezzaferro, Bologna, 1987, pp. 3-22; H.E. Wethey, The Paintings of Titian. III, The
Mythological and Historical Paintings, London, 1975, pp. 29-33; D.R. Coffin, ‘Pirro Ligorio and
Decoration of the Late Sixteenth Century at Ferrara’, The Art Bulletin, xxxvii, 1955, pp. 167-185. 20 D. Fava, La biblioteca Estense nel suo sviluppo storico, Modena, 1925, pp. 130-157, where the author points out that Alberto Pio da Carpi had created in Rome a remarkable library, which was passed to his nephew Cardinal Rodolfo Pio da Carpi after his death 1531. When Rodolfo died in 1564, his library, even richer than his uncle’s, was dispersed and sold to different collectors.
21 Coffin, Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian, p. 112.
22 For De’ Grandi’s letter to the Duke on May 10 1572, Fava, La biblioteca Estense nel suo sviluppo
storico, p. 154.
23 The Duke of Ferrara arrived in Rome on January 19, 1573, and went back to Ferrara on March 4 of the same year; Coffin, Pirro Ligorio: The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian, p. 117.
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the Duke’s refined tastes. And if this were the case, perhaps it was this recommendation that led to the commission for the painting later found in Lucrezia D’ Este’s collection. An annotation written by Domenicos in the margin of his copy of Vasari’s Vite does suggest that the Cretan held the Duke of Ferrara in great esteem: when Vasari reported that Michelangelo offered 12,000 crowns to Duke Alfonso in order to politely avoid his pressing invitation to stay at his court, Domenicos wrote: ‘I don’t know if this can be said to a Duke of Ferrara’24. If indeed Alessandro de’ Grandi had approached the Cretan, this would not have been the first time that a member of Farnese’s entourage had gone on to work for the D’ Este. As already noted, not so long before, Pirro Ligorio had accepted the post of ducal antiquarian in Ferrara after the death of Enea Vico in 156725.
After appearing in Lucrezia’s inventory of 1592, Domenicos’ Circumcision of
Christ was subsequently listed in the inventories of the Aldobrandini family of 1603,
1626 and 168226, a fact that can be explained by the events that took place in Ferrara after Alfonso II’s death in 1597. It was then that Lucrezia d’ Este formed an alliance with Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (1571-1621), nephew of the Pope Clement VIII (Ippolito Aldobrandini, 1591-1605) and chief leader of the 25,000 troops that were marching against Ferrara in October 159727. Before she died, she left two hundred and fifty paintings of the ducal collections to Cardinal Aldobrandini in her will28, including Titian’s Worship of Venus, the Andrians, Bacchus and Ariadne, and the
Holy Family with St. Catherine29. It seems that Domenicos’ Circumcision was also
24 Marías, El Greco y su tiempo, Greek transl. p. 103; Vasari, Vite, vol VII, p. 199; for the translation of the incident see G. Vasari, Artists of the Renaissance: A Selection from Lives of the Artists, Engl. transl. G. Bull, London, 1979, p. 268: “then he [the Duke] tried to persuade him to stay in his service in Ferrara, promising to pay him a generous salary. Michelangelo, however, who had other plans, was unwilling to remain; so the duke begged him to stay at least while the war continued and renewed the offer to give him anything in his power. Not wanting to be outdone in courtesy, Michelangelo thanked him warmly and then, turning towards his two companions, said that he had brought twelve thousand crowns to Ferrara and that if the duke needed them they were at his disposal”.
25 Mandowsky & Mitchell, Pirro Ligorio’s Roman Antiquities, p. 5.
26 P. Della Pergola, ‘Gli inventari Aldobrandini’, Arte antica e moderna, 12, 1960, pp. 428, 439, no. 20: “un quadro con la Circoncisione di N.S di mano del Grecho del n. 20”; P. Della Pergola, ‘Gli inventari Aldobrandini: l’inventario del 1682 (III)’, Arte antica e moderna, 22, 1963, p. 178: “un quadro bislongo della Circoncissione de Nro Sig.re del Greco in tela alto palmi tre con cornice nera, come a detto inventario a fogli 237 N.410 et a quello del Sig.r Cardinale Ca 101”.
27 The Pope, who was intending to annex the Duchy to the Papal States on the pretext that Alfonso II had died without direct heirs after three marriages, entered the city on January 29 1598; C. D’Onofrio, ‘Inventario dei dipinti del Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini compilato da G.B. Agucchi nel 1603’,
Palatino, viii, 1964, pp. 15-20.
28 Ibid, p. 16.
29 F. Haskell, Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and Society in the
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among those paintings, possibly with other works by the Cretan, as I shall outline below. The collection would later pass to the Pamphili family, when Cardinal Pietro’s heiress, Olimpia Aldobrandini (1623-1681), married Prince Camillo. And while all trace of Domenicos’ pictures disappeared after the death of Olimpia Aldobrandini, they probably passed to one of Olimpia’s sons, either Giovanni Battista Pamphili (1649-1709), together with the family villa in Frascati, or Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili (1653-1730), who inherited part of the Aldobrandini collection from their palace on the Corso after 168230.
Curiously, there was a second Circumcision by El Greco listed in the 1603 Aldobrandini inventory, which compiled by the Bolognese prelate Giovanni Battista Agucchi (1570-1632), private secretary and maggiordomo of Cardinal Aldobrandini31. While the first painting was described in the 1682 inventory, drawn up at the time of Olimpia Aldobrandini’s death, as ‘oblong’ (‘bislongo’), ‘tre palmi’ in height, just over 67cm, and painted on canvas (‘in tela’)32, this second painting was described by Agucchi as small (‘una circoncisione piccola’)33. Surely this painting also came originally from the D’ Este collection, and was probably a modello for the larger one, sent to the Duke either as evidence of the painter’s talents, or as an example of how the painter intended to handle the subject, or both.
Another small picture by Domenicos, this time a portrait, can also be found in the inventory of 1603 and again in the 1665 inventory of Donna Olimpia. The portrait (‘un ritratto in quadro piccolo di mano del Greco’)34, which was ‘uno palmo et un quarto’ high (about 27cm)35, is described as having its upper part inscribed with Greek letters (‘con alcune lettere greche sopra la testa’)36. The inclusion of the inscription in Greek supports the hypothesis that this painting also came from the D’
30 B.B. Fredericksen, ‘Leonardo and Mantegna in the Buccleuch Collection’, The Burlington
Magazine, 133, 1991, pp. 116-118, esp. p. 117; I have not been able to consult the inventory of 1710.
31 D. Mahon, Studies in Seicento Art and Theory, London, 1947, p. 112.
32 Della Pergola, ‘Gli inventari Aldobrandini: l’inventario del 1682 (III)’, p. 178, no 527: “un quadro bislongo della Circoncissione de Nro Sig.re del Greco in tela alto palmi tre con Cornice nera, come a detto Inventario a fogli 237 N.410 et a quello del Sig.r Cardinale Ca101”; D’Onofrio notes that “palmo architettonico romano” was 22,3 cm.
33 D’Onofrio, ‘Inventario dei dipinti del Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini compilato da G.B. Agucchi nel 1603’, p. 18, no 20: “Una circoncisione di mano del Greco”; ibid, p. 19, no 30: “Una circoncisione piccola di mano del Greco”.
34 D’Onofrio, ‘Inventario dei dipinti del Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini compilato da G.B. Agucchi nel 1603 (ΙΙΙ)’, p. 208, no 285.
35 Ibid, p. 208, no 285: “un quadro in tavola piccolo alto p[almi] uno et un quarto con un ritratto con cornice dorata di mano del Greco con alcune lettere greche sopra la testa segnato n. 285”.
36 D’Onofrio, ‘Inventario dei dipinti del Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini compilato da G.B. Agucchi nel 1603 (ΙΙΙ)’, p. 208, no 285.
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Este collection, as the history of the Ferrarese ruling family, published by the ducal secretary G.B. Pigna in 157037, claimed that the origins of the family dated back to