Fireplace

Penna Agostino

(active in Rome 1768-1836)

Cardelli Lorenzo

(Roma 1733 ca. - 1794)

De Rossi Antonio

attivo ultimo quarto del sec. XVIII

This fireplace features a mantelpiece with a relief in rosso antico marble with a Lustratio (an ancient purification ritual involving washing or sprinkling with water), with a gilt bronze frame. It has a mantle in statuary marble with a border decorated with acanthus leaves and rows of beading. On the sides, there are two herms of Bacchus in rosso antico marble, placed next to the Luni marble parapets, with fluted shafts and socles. The inside is decorated with square majolica tiles, arranged in groups of four to create a geometric pattern in a palette of light yellow with dark dots, green, pink and white, framed by a border embellished with a wavy blue ribbon and pansies.  It was made as part of the redecoration of the Palazzina on designs by the architect Antonio Asprucci, commissioned by Marcantonio Borghese in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

Object details

Commentary

This is the oldest and most ornate of the Palazzina’s six fireplaces. Completed in 1782 (it is the only one with a date), it is made of statuary marble, rosso antico marble and gilt bronze. It was in all probability designed by Asprucci, architect of the Borghese residence and the one who gave the building its Neoclassical interior in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. There is a pair of herms of Bacchus in rosso antico marble on the sides, with tapered, fluted shafts like the ones of the fireplace in Room XVI. The relief on the front was carved by Agostino Penna, a sculptor active in Rome in the second half of the eighteenth century, who was first an academic (1768) and then prince (1787) of St Luke. The inscription on the middle of the central band on the base of the altar reads: AVGVSTINVS PENNA ROM INV ET FEC MDCCLXXXII. According to documentation in the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, published by Ferrara (1987) and González Palacios (1993), Penna carved the sculptures in rosso antico marble between 1781 and 1782, and the gilt bronze frame of the bas-relief is by De Rossi (‘On the day 12 August [1782]. Again made ribbon-like 15 palmi 8 oncie frame with a rosette in the middle all in wrought, gilt copper for the bas-relief in rosso antico marble above a fireplace in the Palazzo of Villa Pinciana 12.56 scudi’). Penna’s work is documented as well: ‘bas-relief in rosso antico marble with a bacchanal [1781]; two rosso antico marble heads for a fireplace [1782]’. There is a drawing by Luigi Valadier related to this work, which might represent an early idea for it. The Lustratio scene by Penna is exactly the same, but with different proportions. Considering that the sculptor made the bas-relief in 1781 and the heads for the herms in 1782, it seems likely (Palacios 1993) that the idea for the architectural framework of the fireplace changed in the middle of the work.

On the front, there is a scene of sacrifice drawn from a famous work from the late Republican period: the Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus. Penna copied, with variants, the central portion of the fragment now in the Louvre, with a scene of the Lustratio purification ritual. In order to reach the necessary length, he expanded the scene to include figures from the Bacchic thiasos, including Pan, Silenus, bacchantes and flautists. The symmetrical addition of these figures to the far sides of the composition, along with the change in the direction of the offerer, now turned to the middle, eliminates the rightward orientation of the Roman relief, hardening it into the perfect compositional centrality typical of the late eighteenth century. The same abstract fixity is found in the two herms that serve as jambs. The difficulty of working the precious red marble, which is extremely hard, lends the Lustratio scene a rigid air. This fireplace is mentioned in a bill issued by Cardelli in September 1782 (‘the carving of the three fireplaces in statuary marble’). Other documents (‘Registro dei mandati’ 1781-82) mention the polisher Nicola Bugazzi. The colourful tile decoration was made in the Roman workshop of Domenico Cialdi: ‘to Domenico Cialdi, majolica maker in S. Gallicano … 110 painted majolica tiles for the porphyry fireplace in the Stanza di Cantone in the upper apartments of S.E.P. [...] 16 scudi per hundred’. According to the inventory of 1809, there was a clock on the mantle ‘in rosso antico marble with six colonettes by Luigi Valdier’.  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. There is a detailed description of this fireplace in the inventory of 1809: ‘Bedroom … Fireplace in Rosso antico marble with Bacchanalian figures with fireguard painted on wood with its andiron, shovel and tongs’.

Paola Berardi