Fireplace

Pacetti Vincenzo

Rome 1746 – Rome 1820

De Rossi Antonio

attivo ultimo quarto del sec. XVIII

This fireplace dates to the renovation of the interiors in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, headed by the architect Antonio Asprucci and commissioned by Prince Marcantonio Borghese. It has a white marble mantelpiece with inlaid amethyst panels. The middle of the front is decorated with an ancient relief in rosso antico marble, in a green granite frame. The panels and frames are embellished with gilt bronze applied decoration. The jambs are decorated with gilt bronze grape vines tied with a ribbon. The ancient bas-relief depicts Theseus looking at Phaea, who he has just killed, a rare subject drawn from Plutarch that evokes the representation of the death of Dido on the ceiling in the same room.

Object details

Commentary

This ornamental fireplace is in the ‘French style’, which is to say built into the wall. It has a mantelpiece in Luni marble with a projecting mantle shelf and a front embellished with amethyst panels framed by gilt metal beading. In the middle, there is a bas-relief in rosso antico marble with a green granite frame and a gilt metal rabbet, which comes down over the upper listel of the opening of the fireplace. The jambs are projecting and in Luni marble with amethyst panels decorated with a cascade of gilt bronze grape vines. The opening of the fireplace is finished with beaded moulding and a listel decorated with acanthus leaves.

The interior is covered with square majolica tiles measuring 22 x 22 cm and decorated with symmetrical cornucopias and plant motifs against a white background. On the sides, two circular medallions host an eagle and a dragon, the Borghese family’s heraldic animals. The metal backplate is decorated at the top with a volute with a Medusa’s head in the middle, of the Rondanini type (named after the example in the Glyptothek of Munich), between two laurel festoons, while other, smaller festoons fall from the curl of the volute. In the middle, there is a trophy of weapons in an oval panel above two crossed laurel branches.

It is one of the Palazzina’s six ornamental fireplaces, made following the designs of the architect Antonio Asprucci, who was in charge of the new interiors commissioned by Marcantonio Borghese. It replaced a seventeenth-century fireplace in peperino ‘with a portasanta marble cornice carved with a dragon’ (Montelatici 1700). Like the other fireplaces, it has precious marble inserts and the decoration on the front was inspired by ancient models collected and published by Giovan Battista Piranesi in Diverse maniere di adornare i cammini (1769). This example plays on the cool tones of the amethyst and the green of the granite, in harmony with the palette of the ceiling.It was created by Vincenzo Pacetti, as reported by Nibby, although it needs to be kept in mind that the author also attributed Pacetti with the relief of the fireplace in Room XX, which was instead by Penna. The gilt bronze applied decoration is by Vincenzo de' Rossi, a brass worker for the Borghese house (1784).

The ancient rosso antico marble bas-relief inserted on the front is a literal reproduction of a gem described by Winckelmann in Monumenti antichi inediti (1767) and depicting a rare subject, Theseus looking at Phaea, who he has just killed. This episode, drawn from Plutarch, was intended to remind the viewer of the death of Dido depicted on the ceiling in the same room.

The documentation for these works is kept in the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano and was published by Ferrara (1987) and González Palacios (1993). In a bill issued on 17 July 1784, De Rossi describes in detail the fireplace’s decorations. There was a mirror above the fireplace, which was described in the inventory of 1809: ‘Fireplace in white marble with an amethyst background and bas-reliefs in the middle in rosso antico marble with a fireguard with green silk shaft in walnut Shovel and tongs. Above same, two painted glass pilasters, and a large mirror in the middle with a small, gilded frame’.

Five of the Villa’s six fireplaces still have their original metal backplates (the one in Room XI has an older one). They were supplied by De Rossi, four of them in 1783: ‘On the day 31 July 1783 … a large brass backplate, with festoons, altar in the middle, palm trunks … On the day 29 December 3 brass backplates similar to the first one, having changed the bas-relief of the oval in the middle’ (AAV, Arch. Borghese, 5342, no. 5205). These four backplates seem to be the ones in the fireplaces in Rooms IX, X, XIX and XX, since the only difference between them is the decoration in the central oval. The tiles covering the interior were made by Domenico Cialdi, a ‘Majolica maker’ based in S. Gallicano.

Paola Berardi