Cardinal Camillo Massimi (1620-1677) as a collector of landscape paintings: The evidence of the 1677 inventory

Abstract

This article analyses the inventory of paintings displayed in Cardinal Massimi's gallery made after his death in 1677. An unusually high proportion were landscapes, and whereas the majority of religious, historical and mythological paintings were by the Carracci and their followers, the majority of landscapes were by Northern European artists. They demonstrate that Massimi had a clear preference for the small‐scale, finely painted, luminous landscapes, often on copper, at which Northern artists in Rome excelled. Unusually, there was an almost total absence of the other minor genres in Massimi's gallery, which suggests that the display was driven less by fashion than by Massimi's construction of himself as a connoisseur of refined tastes.