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Oblong folio (350 x 450 mm). With 32 watercolors of high quality by Annibale Angelini delineated from the original frescos. Original red pebbled cloth (shaken), upper cover with the crowned monograph of Prince Camillo IX (Vittorio Emanuele) Massimo. In excellent unrestored state. Preserved in a protective case. An important discovery. This album of watercolors is the only surviving record of the once spectacular frescos and interiors of the elegant garden Casino Felice of the Villa Peretti Montalto alle Terme (later known as the Villa Massimo), built for Sixtus V by famed Roman architect Domenico Fontana. After centuries of neglect, the Villa, its two palaces, and its lush gardens were destroyed in the 1880s in order to make way for the central railroad station in Rome, the Roma Termini. The long-lost frescos of the Casino Felice are of the greatest interest to scholars of Renaissance Italian art: among the artists were C. Nebbia, F. Rosselli, D. Cresti (called il Passignano), G.P. Severo, L. Mainardi and G. Stella. All iconographic depictions of the these frescos survive only in the present album of watercolors. Situated on the highest point in Rome (on the Esquiline Hill overlooking the Diocletian Baths), the Villa Peretti Montalto was the palatial home of Cardinal Montalto Felice Peretti (b. 1521) who became Pope Sixtus V in 1585. Construction of the Villa and gardens continued unabatedly until the Pope died in 1590. The 160-acre Villa became the largest and most luxurious ever built within the Aurelian walls. The Pope's ambitions knew no bounds. In order to provide fresh water for the palace and its vast gardens, fish ponds, fountains, fruit trees, and cypresses, Sixtus commissioned Fontana's brother Giovanni to engineer and build an aqueduct fifteen miles long (!) which came to be known as the Acqua Felice. Despite the tragic destruction of the Villa, and the complete lack of documentation of its art and architecture, the present manuscript allows us, for the first time since the 19th-century, to study and partially reconstruct the pictorial decoration of the interiors of the Casino Felice. The existence of the present manuscript was discovered by Patrizia Tosini in the archives of the Massimo family, but the manuscript itself was presumed lost (Tosini, 2015). The Villa Peretti Montalto had two palaces. The Casino Felice, the favored residence of Sixtus and the subject of the present manuscript, was built first (1578-1581), while Peretti was still a Cardinal. Then, as Pope, he authorized his sister Camilla Peretti to build the Palazzo alle Terme (1586-1588). The Casino Felice was situated on an elevated place in the gardens, and consisted of three floors. Although it was the smaller of the two palaces, it was more secluded, and Sixtus preferred to stay there according to Fontana. The present manuscript was created by Annibale Angelini in 1871-1872 for the then owner of the Villa Peretti Montalto, Prince Camillo IX (Vittorio Emanuele) Massimo (1803-1874). Angelini (1810-1884) was Prof. de Geometria, Propet. et Ottica nell'Accad. di S. Luca (Perugia). It was his intent to "restore" the Casino Felice, but as we can see from his watercolors in the present album, this would have taken years. Angelini's patron, Vittorio Emanuele Massimo, died the following year and the project was abandoned. By 1888 the Casino Felice was completely destroyed. Vittorio Emanuele had long been interested in the history of his beloved Villa; in 1836 he published the single most important monograph on its history, the Notizie istoriche della villa Massimo alle Terme Diocleziane. The text describes the layout of the Casino Felice in some detail, and a floor-plan of the 1st floor was given (plate V, p. 137), but no illustrations of the frescos or interior decorations have ever been published. Based on solely on Massimo's descriptive text, a theoretical reconstruction of the interiors of the Casino Felice was proposed by Sigrid Epp and Rita Torchetti, Codice articolo 1574
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