The Sassi, della Valle, and Other Collections of Antiques of the Early Part of the Sixteenth Century
[See §§ 2, 32, ante, pp. 28, 93.]
In chapters I and VI of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture Vasari refers to the ‘casa di Egizio e di Fabio Sasso’ and the ‘casa di messer Egidio e Fabio Sasso’ ‘in Parione.’ Parione is that one of the 14 wards or ‘rioni’ of Rome that lies to the south of the Piazza Navona, and according to Gregorovius (Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, Stutt., 1886, etc., III, 537) the name is connected with the Latin ‘parietes,’ ‘walls,’ and was derived from the ruins of the Theatre of Pompeius, that bulked largely within its borders. There is now a ‘Via Parione’ to the west of the Piazza Navona, but older plans of near Vasari’s time show that the name was then applied to the more important thoroughfare south of the piazza, which is now called ‘Via del Governo Vecchio.’ The truth is that the present Via Parione should be called, as marked on older maps, ‘Via di S. Tommaso in Parione,’ beside which church it runs, and should not have been allowed to usurp the old historical name.
Among the families noted by Gregorovius as inhabiting this region were the Sassi, who, he says (VII, 708), possessed there ‘a great palace with many antiques.’ A notice of the Sassi, in the Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, Roma, vol. XX, p. 479, tells us that they were among the most illustrious families of the ‘rione.’ In 1157 one Giovanni Sassi was a senator of Rome, and the family was especially flourishing in the fifteenth century, but later on declined. Branches of the Sassi stock still exist. When Vasari was in Rome in the service of the Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici, about 1530, one branch at any rate of the family was represented by a certain Fabio Sasso and his brother, whom Vasari calls ‘Egidius’ but who appears in a document quoted by Lanciani (Storia degli Scavi di Roma, Roma, 1902, I, 177) as ‘Decidius,’ who possessed the family palace with its antiques, situated a little west of S. Tommaso in Parione. When Michaelis wrote the paper presently to be noticed, the exact situation of the palace was not identified, but the Conte Gnoli, the learned and courteous director of the Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele, has pointed out the remains of the Sassi habitation at No. 48 in the present Via del Governo Vecchio, where an early Renaissance doorway bears above it the cognizance of the family, and below on one jamb the syllable ‘Dom’ and on the other ‘Sax’ (Domus Saxorum). The house in general, which is claimed by legend as the residence of Raphael’s Fornarina, has been reconstructed. The plan, Fig. 8, is taken from a large map of Rome dating 1748 and shows this particularly interesting portion of the city as it was before recent changes. The line of the present Corso Vittorio Emanuele is shown by dotted strokes.
By the middle of the sixteenth century the family fortunes had declined, and in his will made in 1556 Fabio records that he had let all his three houses in Parione. This may account for the fact that no Palazzo Sassi occurs in the lists of Roman palaces of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, in 1546 the two brothers effected a sale of their antiques to the Duke Ottavio Farnese, who transferred them to the then newly erected Farnese palace. See text of Vasari, ante p. 28, and Lanciani, l.c.
When Vasari first knew the Sassi collection it was one of the best in Rome, and Michaelis (Jahrbuch d. deutschen Archeologischen Instituts, 1891, p. 170) quotes two writers of the early part of the century who praise it. Moreover there exists a contemporary drawing of the antiques and the court in which they were kept, that Michaelis (l.c.) has published. The early notices just referred to, and the notes of Aldovrandi (Mauro, Le Antichità della Città di Roma, Venet. 1556, p. 147) who saw the works in the Farnese collection in 1550, give prominence to the two pieces that are specially mentioned by Vasari. The ‘figura a sedere di braccia tre e mezzo’ in porphyry (ante, p. 28) is described by Aldovrandi (p. 147) as ‘un bellissimo simulacro di una Roma trionfante assisa,’ partly in porphyry and partly in bronze, and as having been formerly in the house of Messer Fabio Sasso. The statue has passed with the Farnese antiques to Naples, where it was numbered when Michaelis wrote, 212 b. It is now recognized as not a ‘Rome’ but a seated Apollo fully draped, and is numbered 6281.
The other one of the Sassi antiques mentioned by Vasari is referred to in the text § 7, ante, p. 42, as ‘una figura in Parione d’ uno ermafrodito’ in the stone called ‘paragone’ or ‘touchstone.’ This is also praised by the earlier writers, and is seen in the drawing which Michaelis has published. Aldovrandi calls it (p. 152) ‘uno Hermafrodito di paragone, maggiore del naturale’ and notes its provenance. It is the ‘Apollo’ at Naples, No. 6262, and Michaelis gives the material as basalt. It is noticed by Winckelmann as an Apollo.
The della Valle collection was more important than that of the Sassi, and was the finest of all those that were being formed in the early part of the sixteenth century. There is a full notice of it by Michaelis in the Jahrbuch, 1891, p. 218 f., who prints the inventory drawn up at the time of the sale of the collection in 1584 to Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, by whom the antiques were removed to the Villa Medici, whence many of them, including most probably the ‘Medici Venus,’ found their way to Florence.
The della Valle were a family of high importance, counting many branches and numerous houses in that part of Rome, south-east of the Piazza Navona, where church and piazza and palace and theatre still keep alive their name. The most important member of the family was Cardinal Andrea della Valle, one of Leo X’s creations of 1517. Vasari introduced him into the fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence representing Leo X with his Cardinals, that is given as a favourable specimen of Giorgio’s painting on Plate I. His is the uppermost figure on the extreme right of the picture. Referring to this fresco, Vasari describes him in his third ‘Ragionamento’ (Opere, VIII, 158) as ‘quel cardinale della Valle, che fece in Roma quello antiquario, e che fu il primo che mettessi insieme le cose antiche, e le faceva restaurare.’ About the last clause a word will be said later on.
Lanciani (l.c., I, 123) draws attention to the vast estates, urban and suburban, possessed by these wealthy proprietors, and the opportunities thus afforded of obtaining antique treasures for the mere trouble of digging for them. Nobles who had official charge of the streets and open places could turn the opportunities of their position to account for the same purpose, and in the first half of the century lovers of ancient art did not buy antiques but simply dug for them. Cardinal Andrea, Lanciani says, ‘era appassionato scavatore,’ and he made excavations in the Thermae of Agrippa near which his palace lay, and in the vineyards of the Lateran. Several writers of the early part of the century celebrate this collection. One (Fichard, in Frankfurtisches Archiv, Frankfurt, 1815, III, 68) writes, in 1536, that the Cardinal’s house was the real treasury of Roman antiquity, and he singles out for notice the same porphyry wolf about which Vasari writes, ante, p. 28. There were so many statues there, he says, that you would have thought everything ever found in Rome had been brought together to that one place! The whole collections of the family however were divided among three or four palaces, but Andrea had the lion’s share. He built a new palace for his treasures early in the century and displayed the best pieces in a court. There were to be seen a Venus, that was probably the Medicean, and the Florentine Ganymede, both now in the Uffizi, Nos. 548 and 115, and close to these above a window the porphyry wolf of which we hear from Vasari. The present location of this piece is not known, but Michaelis suggests it might be looked for at the Villa Medici or at Florence. Vasari also mentions ‘two prisoners bound,’ also of porphyry, as being in the garden of the palace (ante, p. 29). These are mentioned in the inventory referred to above (Jahrbuch, 229) as ‘two barbarians, draped, of porphyry, 11 palms high.’ They were transported from the Villa Medici at Rome to Florence in 1790, and are now very familiar to visitors in Florence, for they stand just within the Boboli Gardens, one on each side of the main walk that leads up towards the Amphitheatre. They are about eight feet high, of porphyry, with heads and hands of white marble. Two similar figures are to be seen in the Louvre, under the staircase at the top of which is the Niké from Samothrace.
Della Valle was not content with his fine house and museum, but desired another which he began to build about 1520. The work was directed by Lorenzo Lotti (Lorenzetto) a pupil and assistant of Raphael, and Vasari gives us an account of it in his life of the former artist (Opere, IV, 579). In connection with this we have from Vasari an interesting notice of the beginning of the practice of ‘restoring’ antiques, which from this period onwards was an established custom. When Lorenzetto, he tells us, was building for the Cardinal Andrea della Valle the upper garden of his palace, situated where is now the Teatro della Valle (see Fig. 8), he arranged niches and other places for the Cardinal’s antiques. ‘These were imperfect, some wanting a head and others arms, while others again were legless, and all were in some way mutilated. Nevertheless the artist managed everything excellently well, for he got good sculptors to make again everything that was wanting, and this led to other lords doing the same thing, and having many antique fragments restored. This was done for example by Cardinals Cesis, Ferrara, and Farnese, and in a word by all Rome. And in truth these antiques, restored in this fashion, have a much more pleasing effect than those mutilated torsos, and limbs without a head, and such-like fragments.’ On the restoration of the Papal antiques see Note, postea, p. 116.