Pope Pius VI's Patronage in Subiaco. Giulio Camporese and the Apartment in the House of the Mission

Abstract

Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Braschi, commendatory Abbot of Subiaco, became Pope Pius VI in 1775; shortly, after his election, he started a great urban renovation of the town. Among the lesser-known works, there was an intervention in the House of Fathers of the Mission, which contained an apartment reserved for commendatory abbot: it was expanded, restored and adjoined with a chapel below, thanks to an opening in the vault. The work also included remarkable frescoes, already known and attributed to Liborio Coccetti, the favorite painter of the Pope. The intervention is related to an unrealized project, recently discovered by Jörg Garms and attributed to Pietro Camporese for the erection of a new church annexed to the same House of the Mission. The resulting reflections allow to propose, for the intervention on the apartment, an attribution to Giulio Camporese, the eldest son of Pietro, who is not well-studied in Roman architecture of the late eighteenth century, in the transition phase between late Baroque and Neoclassicism.

Keywords

• House of the Mission
• Subiaco
• Giulio Camporese
• XVIth Century-revival