The Palazzo Spada is a palace located on Piazza di Capo Ferro #13 in the

rione A (; plural: ) is a neighbourhood in several Italian cities. A is a territorial subdivision. The larger administrative subdivisions in Rome are the , with the being used only in the historic centre. The word derives from the Latin , the 14 su ...

Regola Regola is the 7th ''rione'' of Rome, Italy, identified by the initials R. VII, and belongs to the Municipio I. The name comes from ''Arenula'' (the name is recognizable in the modern ''Via Arenula''), which was the name of the soft sand (''rena'' ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, Italy. Standing very close to the

Palazzo Farnese Palazzo Farnese () or Farnese Palace is one of the most important High Renaissance List of palaces in Italy#Rome, palaces in Rome. Owned by the Italian Republic, it was given to the French government in 1936 for a period of 99 years, and cur ...

, it has a garden facing towards the

Tiber The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the Riv ...

river. The palace accommodates a large art collection, the

Galleria Spada The Galleria Spada is a museum in Rome, which is housed in the Palazzo Spada on Piazza Capo di Ferro. The palazzo is also famous for its façade and for the forced perspective gallery by Francesco Borromini. The gallery exhibits paintings from ...

. The collection was originally assembled by Cardinal Bernardino Spada in the 17th century, and by his brother Virgilio Spada, and added to by his grandnephew Cardinal

Fabrizio Spada Fabrizio Spada (Rome, 17 March 1643 – Rome, 15 June 1717) was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, and served as Secretary of State under Pope Innocent XII. Life Born on March 17, 1643 in Rome, he was the son of Orazio Spada and ...

History

Borromini Perspectival Corridor, Opposing View

In 1540, the palace was commissioned by Cardinal Girolamo Capodiferro, and utilized as an architect Bartolomeo Baronino of

Casale Monferrato Casale Monferrato () is a town in the Piedmont region of Italy, in the province of Alessandria. It is situated about east of Turin on the right bank of the Po, where the river runs at the foot of the Montferrat hills. Beyond the river lies the v ...

, while

Giulio Mazzoni Giulio Mazzoni (1525–1618) was an Italian painter and stuccoist, active during the Renaissance period. He was born in Piacenza, but studied in Rome under Daniele da Volterra, and was active about the year 1568. He helped decorate the Palazzo S ...

and a team provided lavish external and internal stucco-work. The palace was briefly owned by the Mignanelli family, until in 1632, the palace was purchased by Cardinal Spada, who commissioned modifications from

Francesco Borromini Francesco Borromini (, ), byname of Francesco Castelli (; 25 September 1599 – 2 August 1667), was an Italian architect born in the modern Swiss canton of Ticino

. The

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

architect Borromini who created a masterpiece of

forced perspective Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation ...

optical illusion in the arcaded courtyard, in which diminishing rows of columns and a rising floor create the visual illusion of a gallery 37 meters long (it is 8 meters) with a life-size sculpture at the end of the vista, in daylight beyond: the sculpture is 60 cm high. Borromini was aided in his perspective trick by a mathematician. The

Mannerist Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, ...

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

sculptural decor of the palazzo's front and its courtyard façades feature sculptures crowded into niches and fruit and flower swags, grotesques and vignettes of symbolic devices (''impresi'') in bas-relief among the small framed windows of a

mezzanine A mezzanine (; or in Italian language, Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft ...

, the richest '' Cinquecento'' façades in Rome. The colossal sculpture of

Pompey the Great Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (; 29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), known in English as Pompey or Pompey the Great, was a leading Roman general and statesman. He played a significant role in the transformation of ...

, erroneously believed to be the very one at whose feet

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and ...

fell, was discovered under the party wall of two Roman houses in 1552: it was to be decapitated to satisfy the claims of both parties, which appalled Cardinal Capodiferro so, that he interceded on the sculpture's behalf with

Pope Julius III Pope Julius III ( la, Iulius PP. III; it, Giulio III; 10 September 1487 – 23 March 1555), born Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 7 February 1550 to his death in March 155 ...

, who purchased it and then gave it to the Cardinal.

Gallery

The palazzo hosts the

, the Cardinal Spada's collection, which includes four galleries of 16th and 17th-century paintings by

Andrea del Sarto Andrea del Sarto (, , ; 16 July 1486 – 29 September 1530) was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early Mannerism. He was known as an outstanding fresco decorator, painter of altar-pieces, ...

Guido Reni Guido Reni (; 4 November 1575 – 18 August 1642) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, although his works showed a classical manner, similar to Simon Vouet, Nicolas Poussin, and Philippe de Champaigne. He painted primarily religious ...

Titian Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...

Jan Brueghel the Elder Jan Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Elder (, ; ; 1568 – 13 January 1625) was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. He was the son of the eminent Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A close friend and frequent collaborato ...

Guercino Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (February 8, 1591 – December 22, 1666),Miller, 1964 better known as Guercino, or il Guercino , was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The vig ...

, Rubens, Dürer,

Caravaggio Michelangelo Merisi (Michele Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio, known as simply Caravaggio (, , ; 29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610), was an Italian painter active in Rome for most of his artistic life. During the final four years of hi ...

Domenichino Domenico Zampieri (, ; October 21, 1581 – April 6, 1641), known by the diminutive Domenichino (, ) after his shortness, was an Italian Baroque painter of the Bolognese School of painters. Life Domenichino was born in Bologna, son of a sho ...

the Carracci The Carracci ( , , ) were a Bolognese family of artists that played an instrumental role in bringing forth the Baroque style in painting. Brothers Annibale (1560–1609) and Agostino (1557–1602) along with their cousin Ludovico (1555–161 ...

Salvator Rosa Salvator Rosa (1615 –1673) is best known today as an Italian Baroque painter, whose romanticized landscapes and history paintings, often set in dark and untamed nature, exerted considerable influence from the 17th century into the early 19th ...

Parmigianino Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (11 January 150324 August 1540), also known as Francesco Mazzola or, more commonly, as Parmigianino (, , ; "the little one from Parma"), was an Italian Mannerist painter and printmaker active in Florence, Rome, Bo ...

Francesco Solimena Francesco Solimena (4 October 1657 – 3 April 1747) was a prolific Italian painter of the Baroque era, one of an established family of painters and draughtsmen. Biography Francesco Solimena was born in Canale di Serino in the province of ...

Michelangelo Cerquozzi Michelangelo Cerquozzi, known as Michelangelo delle Battaglie (18 February 1602 – 6 April 1660) was an Italian Baroque painter known for his genre scenes, battle pictures, small religious and mythological works and still lifes. His genre s ...

Pietro Testa Pietro Testa (1611–1650) was an Italian High Baroque artist active in Rome. He is best known as a printmaker and draftsman. Biography He was born in Lucca, and thus is sometimes called ''il Lucchesino''. He moved to Rome early in life. O ...

, Giambattista Gaulli, and

Orazio Orazio is a male given name of Italian origin, derived from the Latin name ( ''nomen'') Horatius, from the Roman gens (clan) Horatia. People so named include: *Orazio Alfani (c. 1510–1583), Italian painter * Orazio Antinori (1811–1882), Ita ...

and

Artemisia Gentileschi Artemisia Lomi or Artemisia Gentileschi (, ; 8 July 1593) was an Italian Baroque painter. Gentileschi is considered among the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists, initially working in the style of Caravaggio. She was producing profess ...

, and has the additional interest of being hung in the 17th-century manner, frame-to-frame, with smaller pictures "skied" above larger ones.

Public authority

Palazzo Spada was purchased by the Italian State in 1927 and today houses the

Italian Council of State The Consiglio di Stato ( en, Council of State) is a legal-administrative consultative body that ensures the legality of public administration in Italy. The council has jurisdiction on acts of all administrative authorities, except when these author ...

, which meets in its richly frescoed and stuccoed rooms.

External links

Official websiteAerial photo
- The Farnese is the large square palace at the left, while one block along the same street to the south-west is the smaller Palazzo Spada with its gardens facing the Tiber.

commissioned from Guercino by Cardinal Spada, 1631, on behalf of

Marie de Medici Marie de' Medici (french: link=no, Marie de Médicis, it, link=no, Maria de' Medici; 26 April 1575 – 3 July 1642) was Queen of France and Navarre as the second wife of King Henry IV of France of the House of Bourbon, and Regent of the Kingdom ...

Video of Palazzo Spada''Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi''
a fully digitized exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Palazzo Spada (see index) {{Authority control Houses completed in 1540 Francesco Borromini buildings Spada Art museums and galleries in Rome Former private collections in Italy Galleria Spada Rome R. VII Regola