This fascinating and beautifully illustrated book presents for the first time the rediscovered frescoes painted by Andrea Sacchi (1599–1661) for the loggia of
Cardinal del Monte’s Roman palace near via di Ripetta, Rome.
Considered lost by generations of scholars, Andrea Sacchi’s fresco cycle has survived in a private apartment in Rome. Largely unpublished and rarely mentioned in recent literature, the frescoes underwent a revelatory restoration in 2010–11. For the past three years, the author was granted exclusive access to study them thoroughly – resulting in this monograph.
Accompanied by beautiful and full photographic documentation, this study aims to compare the painted images with the detailed description given by the
biographer Giovan Pietro Bellori; to shed light on the iconography and style, above all with respect to the sources used; and to integrate this key commission within Sacchi’s early career. The cycle’s iconography is explored with careful verification of early sources that now allows us to resolve some particularly complex problems of interpretation – above all those relating to alchemy. Cardinal del Monte’s Palazzo di Ripetta housed a fully equipped pharmacological laboratory. Research on this cycle of frescoes has also made it possible to discover new archival evidence regarding
Sacchi’s date and place of birth.