Capitoline Hill

Baur Johann Wilhelm

(Strasbourg 1607 - Vienna 1642)

This work forms part of a series of four circular miniatures depicting Roman squares, which were painted by Johann Wilhelm Baur during his stay in Italy in the 1630s. The series perhaps entered the Borghese Collection through a purchase made by Marcantonio II or through a donation of the artist to the prince. The miniature attests to the appearance of Capitoline Hill before the completion of Palazzo Nuovo, whose construction defines the current configuration of the square, which is based on a project by Michelangelo.

Object details

Commentary

The miniature presents a view of Capitoline Hill. It is one of a series of four representations of Rome’s emblematic squares, all of which form part of the Borghese Collection (inv. nos 481, 482, 488 and 489). They are circular in shape, have identical dimensions (roughly ten centimetres in diameter) and were all executed in tempera on parchment.

The artist is the Alsatian miniaturist Johann Wilhelm Baur, who trained under Friedrich Brentel and lived in Italy from 1631 to 1637.

Baur worked mostly in Rome and Naples, enjoying the protection of the Duke of Bracciano, Marquis Giustiniani, Ferdinando Colonna and Marcantonio Borghese, who added these miniatures to the family collection. At the end of his Roman period, the artist moved to Vienna, working at the court of the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III until his death. According to older sources, Baur died in 1640; yet this date needs to be moved back by at least a year, in the wake of the discovery of his View of a Villa on the Sea, which is signed and dated 1641 (J. von Sandrart, L’Academia Todesca della Architectura, Scultura & Pittura, 1675, II, pp. 306-307; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, 1718, p. 333; N. Pio, Le vite di pittori, scultori et architetti [1724] 1977, p. 91; F. Baldinucci, Notizie de’ Professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua. Secolo V dal 1610 al 1670, 1728, p. 197; Salerno 1976, pp. 460, 464).

The Borghese series was perhaps commissioned to him by Prince Marcantonio II, who also possessed a view of Villa Pinciana by the same artist, dated 1636, which likewise still forms part of the Collection (inv. no. 519). Although larger, this work is similar to the four other miniatures, such that critics date the latter to around the same year (Della Pergola 1959, p. 146, nos 200-203; Herrmann Fiore 1990, pp. 193-194, nos 67-68; Barchiesi 2002, p. 144, no. 15).

The first mention of the series in connection with the Borghese Collection is found in the inventory of 1693, where the attribution is to an uncertain artist. In the next two inventories, those of 1790 and 1833, it is rather ascribed to Baur. The entry in the 1833 inventory in fact reads, ‘Four small tondos with prospects, by Giovanni Gugliemo Bagar, 5 inches in diameter’.

The artist used the same circular format, albeit with larger dimensions for two other miniatures which attest to his stay in Rome, namely the views of Piazza San Pietro and Piazza di Santa Maria Maggiore, which Busiri Vici discovered in the 1950s (1957, pp. 32-33). This scholar proposed that they were also meant for Marcantonio Borghese, and perhaps specifically commissioned by him. If this is the case, it would prove a particular interest in this genre on the part of the prince as well as his appreciation of Baur’s skill as a miniaturist, a field in which he in fact demonstrated extraordinary talent.

The work depicts the main square of Capitoline Hill in a moment prior to its definitive configuration, before the demolition of the buildings near Piazza d'Aracoeli to make room for Palazzo Nuovo, which would be built in front of Palazzo dei Conservatori. Indeed the Marforio fountain is visible here on the left: it would later be dismantled and reassembled in the inner courtyard of Palazzo Nuovo, which was completed in 1663.

Baur’s Roman views – including that of the Villa – are in fact of even greater interest because they provide us with indications of the appearance of the 17th-century city, prior to the great rebuilding programmes of those years. In addition to their artistic merits, they aid us in reconstructing the history of the Eternal City.

Pier Ludovico Puddu