Visit the Piano Nobile of Palazzo Patrizi

The origins of the Patrizi family are in Siena, where local sources mention them as early as the 13th century. The documents of the family archive, partly preserved in the Vatican Secret Archives, tell of saint founders of monastic orders during the Middle Ages, of religious figures, of magistrates of the city of Siena, but also of intellectuals of the papal court, such as Francesco Patrizi, a Renaissance philosopher and mathematician at the time of Pope Pius II Piccolomini, who founded the ideal city of Pienza, one of the most beautiful villages in Tuscany. Alongside this chronicle is the legend: the pride of the Patrizi was to claim descent from the Roman nobleman Giovanni Patrizi, to whom the Madonna, at the time of Pope Liberius in the 4th century, allegedly expressed in a dream the desire to see a basilica built in her honor on the Esquiline Hill. The divine sign for the exact location of the building was the famous out-of-season snowfall on August 5, 358, and it was right there where it snowed that Santa Maria Maggiore was built, one of the four jubilee basilicas of Rome, on which still stands today the highest bell tower in the city.

The Patrizi are documented in Rome from the 16th century, as consistorial lawyers at the papal court. The founder of the Roman branch is another Giovanni, who died in 1522: we remember him because he established a series of rules to transmit the material assets of the house, indissolubly only to the firstborn males, in the absence of which, however, the last heir could adopt another member of the family to guarantee the descent. There is a term used to indicate these constraints and it is “fedecommesso”, and every noble family in Rome used this institution for centuries.

For example, Patrizio Patrizi, who in the second half of the 16th century was “Capitoline conservator” and a great friend of St. Philip Neri, in the absence of a firstborn male, adopts his nephew Solderio as universal heir. With him begins the seventeenth-century history of the house that sees the repetition of the same baptismal names for the males of the family: Costanzo, Francesco, Mariano, Patrizio are the most used, up to our days. Solderio buys a palace worthy of a rising family: it is the current Palazzo Mattei Costaguti, in the Sant’Angelo district, between the Ghetto and Piazza Mattei, famous for its Fountain of the Turtles. In this palace, his son Costanzo in the early seventeenth century will set up the prestigious art collection, made of paintings and ancient statues.

TREASURER COSTANZO: THE BIRTH OF THE ART COLLECTION

Costanzo Patrizi is the first member of the family to reach the highest levels of the ecclesiastical career: he would have also been a cardinal if he had not died suddenly in 1624, at only 34 years old. Until this date he was Papal Treasurer, a position he bought at a high price, as was customary at the time, and which was confirmed by Pope Paul V Borghese, also from Siena like the Patrizi. The pope’s nephew was Cardinal Scipione, to whom we owe the famous Galleria Borghese, and it is his example that Monsignor Costanzo Patrizi follows, both in setting up the painting gallery and sculpture collection and in decorating his palace in Piazza Mattei. In just 15 years, Costanzo constitutes an art collection of 200 paintings, becoming one of the most important collectors in early 17th century Rome, like the Borghese, Ludovisi, Mattei, and Giustiniani. It was not, however, just love for beauty: collecting and patronage were also strategies for promoting and exalting the house, like marriages and client ties.

Upon his death came financial collapse and debts for art purchases were enormous: 14,500 scudi for 200 paintings and 8,700 scudi for over 100 ancient sculptures. The palace in Piazza Mattei was sold to the Costaguti family (who still own it), but the art collection remained with the Patrizi. In the mid-17th century, finally the recovery: Marquis Mariano (the names are always the same, remember?) on September 6, 1642, bought from Olimpia Aldobrandini the palace in front of the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, and it is in this 17th-century building that today Marquis Patrizio Patrizi and his wife Flaminia open to the public for the first time the first floor, that is, the piano nobile, of their historic residence. News about this palace can be found at the end of the room tour, along with the description of the grand staircase, atrium, courtyard, and facade that we recommend you observe as you exit. Before entering the noble rooms, however, remember the family members who between the 17th and 18th centuries contributed to making this palace a noble dwelling, as you now see it: Mariano, who in 1642 bought the palace from the Aldobrandini and enriched the art collection that his brother Costanzo the Treasurer put together in the early 1600s; then Patrizio, who enlarged it, and finally Cardinal Giovan Battista, second Treasurer, who in the first half of the 18th century made it more comfortable and had it redecorated.