Casino Ludovisi Rome

Ludovico Ludovisi (22 or 27 October 1595 – 18 November 1632) was an Italiancardinal and statesman of the Roman Catholic Church. He was an art connoisseur who formed a famous collection of antiquities, housed at the Villa Ludovisi in Rome.

Biography[edit]

Ludovisi Palace Hotel, Esposizioni ed eventi a Roma: Scopri tutte le mostre, i concerti, le opere e gli eventi sportivi e ludici che avranno luogo nella Capitale. Casino Ludovisi, a delightful treasure in the center of Rome When I stroll through the centro storico in Rome, its streets filled with ancient palazzi and their huge wooden doors, I like to think about what’s behind the doors, and who owns and lives in these frescoed buildings.

Ludovico Ludovisi was born in Bologna, then part of the Papal States, the son of Orazio Ludovisi and Lavinia Albergati. Following in the footsteps of his uncle Alessandro Ludovisi, he was trained at the Jesuit Collegio Germanico of Rome, and went on to the University of Bologna, where he received his doctorate in canon law on 25 February 1615.

When Alessandro Ludovisi was acclaimed pope, taking the name Gregory XV, Ludovico was made cardinal the day after his coronation, though he was only 25. The following month he was made archbishop of Bologna though he remained in Rome. His uncle had great faith in his judgement and energy and was in need of a strong and able assistant to help govern the Papal States (the Pope was, after all, in his late 60s). On the same day, Orazio Ludovisi, Ludovico's father, was put at the head of the pontifical army. Gregory XV was not disappointed in his nephew. As the Catholic Encyclopedia avers:^[1]

Ludovico, it is true, advanced the interests of his family in every possible way, but he also used his brilliant talents and his great influence for the welfare of the Church, and was sincerely devoted to the pope.

He was sent as legate in Fermo in 1621 and in Avignon, 1621–1623. He served briefly as Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church (19 April 1621 to 7 June 1623).

In August 1623, Ludovisi participated in the papal conclave that elected Pope Urban VIII. Due to conflict with the new pope's family, Ludovisi was forced to leave Rome.^[2]

He continued, however, as prefect of the sacred consulta of the Propaganda Fide (1622 to 1632) and Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church (1623 to 1632).^[3] He died in Bologna in 1632.

Patron of the arts[edit]

Cardinal Ludovisi is remembered as a connoisseur and patron of arts. He paid for the construction of the Jesuit Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio and Palazzo Ludovisi (now Palazzo Montecitorio), where Gian Lorenzo Bernini was his architect. He rapidly assembled from private owners and the Carmelite brothers of Santa Maria in Traspontina a holding of vineyards and small plots to create the Villa Ludovisi, a vast complex of gardens and buildings on the Monte Pincio near Porta Pinciana, in the so-called 'Gardens of Sallust' on the site where Julius Caesar and his heir, Augustus, had had their villas.^[4] The Ludovisi Ares, a spectacular discovery of 1622, found its way quickly to the collection. He employed Alessandro Algardi to restore other finds, some of which were unearthed in the grounds of the Villa itself. The sculpture was lightly restored by Bernini and joined the Dying Gaul in the Cardinal's gallery. The Ludovisi collection was enlarged with purchases from Cardinal Altemps' collection, all housed at the splendid Villa Ludovisi, which he surrounded with gardens. Guercino painted frescoes at the villa, and Cardinal Ludovisi's house poet was Alessandro Tassoni.

At the casino of the Villa, Cardinal Ludovisi employed Carlo Maderno to rebuild a simple house further up the hill. In a small ground-floor gallery of the casino, Guercino frescoed a ceiling with his Chariot of Aurora (1621–1623).^[5] It remains one of the most famous painted decors of Rome.

His cousin, Niccolò Albergati-Ludovisi, was made cardinal in 1645.

Episcopal succession[edit]

While bishop, he was the principal consecrator of:^[6]

• Aurelio Archinto, Bishop of Como (1621);
• Giuseppe Acquaviva, Titular Archbishop of Thebae (1621);
• Pierre François Maletti, Bishop of Nice (1622);
• Carlo Bovi, Bishop of Bagnoregio (1622);
• Marco Antonio Gozzadini, Bishop of Tivoli (1622);
• Luigi Caetani, Titular Patriarch of Antioch (1622);
• Giovanni Pietro Volpi, Auxiliary Bishop of Novara (1622);
• Alfonso Manzanedo de Quiñones, Titular Patriarch of Jerusalem (1622);
• Giovanni Battista Agucchi, Titular Archbishop of Amasea (1623); and
• Francisco Sánchez Villanueva y Vega, Archbishop of Taranto (1628).

References[edit]

1. ^Catholic Encyclopedia article.
2. ^History of the popes; their church and state (Volume III) by Leopold von Ranke (Wellesley College Library, reprint; 2009)
3. ^Miranda, Salvador. 'LUDOVISI, Ludovico (1595-1632)'. The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. Florida International University.
4. ^Associazione Culturale 'Salvaguardia della Romanità': Rione XVI Ludovisi
5. ^Riccardo Cigola, 'Casino dell'Aurora Ludovisi'(in English)
6. ^'Ludovico Cardinal Ludovisi'Catholic-Hierarchy.org. David M. Cheney. Retrieved January 1, 2017

The Villa Ludovisi was a suburban villa in Rome, built in the 17th century on the area once occupied by the Gardens of Sallust (Horti Sallustiani) near the Porta Salaria.^[1] On an assemblage of vineyards purchased from Giovanni Antonio Orsini, Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte and others, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi erected in the 1620s the main villa building to designs by Domenichino; it was completed within thirty months, in part to house his collection of Roman antiquities,^[2] additions to which were unearthed during construction at the site, which had figured among the great patrician pleasure grounds of Roman times. Modern works, most famously Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Pluto and Persephone, were also represented. The engraving of the grounds by Giovanni Battista Falda (1683)^[3] shows a short access avenue from a tree-lined exedra in via di Porta Pinciana and cypress-lined avenues centered on each of the facades of the main villa, laid out through open fields, the main approaches to both the villa and the Casino dell'Aurora^[4] converging on gates in the Aurelian Walls, which formed the northern bounds of the park; symmetrical parterres of conventional form including bosquets peopled with statuary^[5] flanked the main avenue of the Casina, and there was an isolated sunken parterre, though these features were not integrated in a unified overall plan.^[6] The overgrown avenues contrasting with the dramatic Roman walls inspired Stendhal to declare in 1828 that the Villa Ludovisi's gardens were among the most beautiful in the world.^[7]

Frescoes in the villa were carried out by Domenichino, Guercino, Giovambattista Viola, and others. A casina was added, largely to house the Cardinal's growing collection of Roman sculptures and inscriptions, which Alessandro Algardi treated to sometimes extensive restoration.

The villa passed to the ownership of the BoncompagniLudovisi family, which in 1872 rented it to King Victor Emmanuel II. The King used the villa as residence for his lover, Rosa Vercellana.^[8]

Casino Boncompagni Ludovisi Rome

İn 1885, despite great protests among the intellectuals, its last owner, Don Rodolfo Boncompagni Ludovisi, the Prince of Piombino, faced serious financial troubles and decided to sell the property to the Società Generale Immobiliare. The Villa was divided into building lots.^[9] The sculptures^[10] were dispersed, and most of the buildings destroyed, the only one to remain being the Casino dell'Aurora.^[11]

The Via Veneto was driven through the former grounds, part of which are occupied by the American Embassy in Palazzo Margherita, and the Rione Ludovisi took shape, borrowing its district name from the cardinal and his villa.

Casino Ludovisi Roma Caravaggio

• The gardens of the Villa and the Aurelian Walls in the early 1880s, in a painting of Ettore Roesler Franz

• The Villa gardens, by Luise Begas-Parmentier

• Fashionable Via Veneto was driven through the heart of Villa Ludovisi's park

Notes[edit]

1. ^A. Schiavo, Villa Ludovisi e Palazzo Margherita, Rome 1981; I. Belli Barsale, Ville di Roma, Milan 1970, vol. III.1; D.R. Coffin, Gardens and Gardening in Papal Rome, Princeton 1991;
2. ^Inventories of Villa Ludovisi have been partly published: paintings inventory of 1623 (C.H. Wood, 'The Ludovisi Collection of Paintings in 1623' The Burlington Magazine, 1992) and of 1633 (K. Garas, 'The Ludovisi Collection of Pictures in 1633' The Burlington Magazine, pt. I, ; pt. II, 1967).
3. ^The engraving is illustrated in Eva-Bettina Krems, 'Die 'magnifica modestia' der Ludovisi auf dem Monte Pincio in Rom.' Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft29 (2002:105-163) p. 107, fig. 2.
4. ^Named for Guercino's ceiling fresco of Aurora
5. ^M.P. fritz, 'Der statuenhain in den Gärten der Villa Ludovisi', Daidalos65 (1997:42-51).
6. ^The name of the French garden designer André Le Nôtre became optimistically associated with Villa Ludovisi in the 19th century (as in Th. Schreiber, Die antiken Bildwerke der Villa Ludovisi, Rome 1880, p. 5).
7. ^Stendhal, Promenades dans Rome (18 April 1828), in Voyages en Italie.
8. ^Her temporary absence permitted Henry James to inspect the villa and its grounds and indulge in some snobbish daydreams: on-line text.
9. ^The Boncompagni Ludovisi financial crisis of 1893-96 is analysed in S. Palermo, Terra, città, finanza. I Boncompagni Ludovisi di Roma (1841-1896), 2008.
10. ^The sculptures had been described by Th. Schreiber, Die antiken Bildwerke der Villa Ludovisi, Rome 1880.
11. ^'Villa Aurora, Rome's best kept secret?'. Minor Sights. Retrieved 20 November 2016.