The piazza Navona is one of the most celebrated urban spaces in
Rome and perhaps Europe. Despite its lasting fame, neither the
uninitiated nor the specialist has been fully privy to the history
of its remarkable transformation from a medieval field to a
magnificent Baroque piazza. The ambititions of a single family, The
Pamphilj, engendered this remarkable change. Pope Innocent X
(1644-55) sought to proclaim his family's identity through a
building program, including the monumental palace, church of S.
Agnese in Agone, Collegio Innocenziano, and Gianlorenzo Bernini's
Fountain of the Four Rivers and Fountain of the Moor. The Pamphilj
endowed the entire urban space with its indelible presence.
Although the Palazzo Pamphilj was the catalyst for the single
most important building program in mid-seventeenth-century Rome,
its history has been largely neglected, and misconceptions have
hindered an accurate understanding of the monument and its place in
early modern architecture. Presenting a fundamentally revised
history, this book argues in favor of a collaborative process of
execution, in two distinct phases (1634-38, 1645-50), involving
three architects (Francesco Peperelli, Girolamo Rainaldi, Francesco
Borromini), two patrons (Innocent X and his sister-in-law Olimpia
Maidalchini), and an architectural revisor (Virgilio Spada). The
history of the palace is presented as inextricably linked to the
social milieu of the early modern papal court and the development
of piazza Navona and the city. From the vicissitudes of this story
arise broader issues: building as identity, architecture and social
ritual, artistic collaboration, women patrons, and collective
memories of sites.
Stephanie Leone teaches Art History at Boston College. Her
primary field of research concerns seventeenth-century domestic
architecture in Rome.