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Notes

This text is a revised and updated version of an essay of the same name, originally published in 2009 in The Accademia Seminars: The Accademia di San Luca in Roma, c. 1590–1635, edited by Peter M. Lukehart.

My work on this essay was supported in part by a grant from The Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs First (1740–1823) Fund, which was created with the funds left by Dorothy Mix Meigs and Fielding Pope Meigs, Jr., of Rosemont, Pennsylvania, in memory of that soldier of the revolution, whose home was in Middletown, Connecticut, from 1740 to 1787.

I acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of Nicholas Adams, Eleonora Canepari, Patrizia Cavazzini, and Peter M. Lukehart.

Abbreviations

ANSL: Archivio Storico dell’Accademia Nazionale di San Luca
ASR: Archivio di Stato di Roma
CNC: Collegio dei Notai Capitolini
TNC: Trenta Notai Capitolini
Uff: Ufficio

  1. Francesco Cerasoli, “Censimento della popolazione di Roma dall’anno 1600 al 1739,” Studi e documenti di storia e diritto 12 (1891): 169–199; Jean Delumeau, Vie économique et sociale de Rome dans la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle (Paris, 1957–1959), 1:135–220; Eleonora Canepari, “Stare in ‘compagnia’: Strategie di inurbamento e forme associative nella Roma del Seicento” (PhD diss., Università degli Studi di Torino, Dipartimento di Storia, 2005).

  2. Patrizia Cavazzini, Painting as Business in Early Seventeenth-Century Rome (University Park, PA, 2008), chap. 1.

  3. A sample from 1630 revealed that at least half of the 30 Capitoline notaries at that date were born outside Rome; Laurie Nussdorfer, Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome (Baltimore, 2009), 231–234.

  4. ASR, TNC, uff. 11 (Ottaviano Saravezzi), 1593, pt. 1, vol. 25, fols. 425r–427v. For earlier and later meetings, see “Introduction,” The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c. 1590–1635: Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma.

  5. For an overview, see Gregory Martin, Roma Sancta (1581), ed. George Bruner Parks (Rome, 1969).

  6. Sergio Rossi, “La Compagnia di San Luca nel Cinquecento e la sua evoluzione in Accademia,” Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma 5 (1984): 373–374; Antonio Martini, Arti, mestieri e fede nella Roma dei papi (Bologna, 1965).

  7. Mary Hollingsworth, Miles Pattenden, and Arnold Witte, eds., A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal (Leiden, 2020).

  8. See Isabella Salvagni, “The Università dei Pittori and the Accademia di San Luca: From the Installation in San Luca sull’Esquilino to the Reconstruction of Santa Martina al Foro Romano,” in The Accademia Seminars: The Accademia di San Luca in Roma, c. 1590–1635, ed. Peter M. Lukehart, CASVA Seminar Papers 2 (Washington, 2009), 69–121.

  9. Peter M. Lukehart, “Carving Out Lives: The Role of Sculptors in the Early History of the Accademia di San Luca,” in Collecting Sculpture in Early Modern Europe, ed. Nicholas Penny and Eike D. Schmidt, Studies in the History of Art 70 (Washington, 2008), 185–217.

  10. Laurie Nussdorfer, “Writing and the Power of Speech: Notaries and Artisans in Baroque Rome,” in Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), ed. Barbara Diefendorf and Carla Hesse (Ann Arbor, MI, 1993), 105.

  11. Rossi 1984, 371n7.

  12. For the papal brief of 1577, see Monica Grossi and Silvia Trani, “From Universitas to Accademia: Notes and Reflections on the Origins and Early History of the Accademia di San Luca Based on Documents from Its Archives,” in Lukehart 2009, 40n17.

  13. ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Erasto Spannocchia), 1624, pt. 3, vol. 101, fol. 209r–v.

  14. Cited by Noelle de La Blanchardière, “Simon Vouet, prince de l’Académie de Saint-Luc,” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français (1972): 80n2, 90 postscript.

  15. The present site gathers research carried out by Noelle de La Blanchardière, Roberto Fiorentini, Matteo Lafranconi, Peter M. Lukehart, Pietro Roccasecca, and Isabella Salvagni.

  16. De La Blanchardière 1972, 80.

  17. Nussdorfer 1993; Angela Groppi, “Fili notarili e tracce corporative: La ricomposizione di un mosaico,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée 112 (2000): 61–78.

  18. Armando Petrucci, Notarii: Documenti per la storia del notariato italiano (Milan, 1958), 29; Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (London, 1980), 161–162.

  19. Laurie Nussdorfer, “Lost Faith: A Roman Prosecutor Reflects on Notaries’ Crimes,” in Beyond Florence: The Contours of Medieval and Early Modern Italy, ed. Paula Findlen, Michelle M. Fontaine, and Duane J. Osheim (Stanford, CA, 2003), 109–111. See also ANSL, Statuti, 1609 [1607], fol. 35v.

  20. Termed adunantia or congregatio by the Roman notaries.

  21. Rolandinus de Passageriis, Summa Totius Artis Notariae (Venice, 1546), 225. See also the form for a meeting of a rural community in Leo Speluncanus, Artis Notarie Tempestatis huius Speculum (Venice, 1538), fols. 211r–212v. (I also use the 1574 edition of this work.)

  22. For an illustration of this common practice, see the meeting of the confraternity of San Luca on November 7, 1599, that authorized the drawing up of an instrument terminating the censo (payment rights) on the house left to the painters by Girolamo Muziano in 1592: ASR, TNC, uff. 11 (Ottaviano Saravezzi), 1599, pt. 4, vol. 44, fols. 387r–388v. For the instrument itself, rogated three days later, see fol. 384r.

  23. ASR, Biblioteca, Statuti, 1421, no. 879, 84.

  24. Rossi 1984; Salvagni 2009.

  25. Renata Ago, “Una giustizia personalizzata: I tribunali civili di Roma nel XVII secolo,” Quaderni storici 34 (1999): 399; Maria Luisa Lombardo, Il notaio romano tra sovranità pontificia e autonomia comunale (secoli XIV–XVI) (Rome, 2012).

  26. “Erectio” (1586), in Statuta Venerabilis Collegii D.D. Notariorum Curiae Capitolii eorumque Facultates et Privilegia (Rome, 1831) [hereafter Statuta 1831], 41–53.

  27. “Reductio ad Perpetuitatem Officiorum DD. Notariorum Collegii Curiae Capitolii” (1612), in Statuta 1831, 54–62.

  28. ASR, TNC, uff. 11 (Ottaviano Saravezzi), 1584, vol. 4, fol. 30. The first instrument bears the date December 29, 1584 (rather than 1583), because the new Roman year began on December 25.

  29. ASR, TNC, uff. 11 (Ottaviano Saravezzi), 1584, vol. 4, fol. 452r. My thanks to Paul Anderson for the information on Saravezzi’s membership in the carpenters’ confraternity, and also to Peter M. Lukehart for informing me of his membership in the confraternity of the Virtuosi al Pantheon.

  30. We do not know for a fact that Saravezzi owned office 11, but if an investor had bought it, the new proprietor retained Saravezzi as titleholder. All Capitoline notarial offices were identified by the name of a practicing notary, regardless of who owned them.

  31. ASR, CNC, Registro delle congregazioni, Libro della massa, vol. 8 (1588–1598), fol. 16r. A percentage of judicial earnings (massa) were pooled and divided among the 30 members of the college. In addition to a judge of appeals, the Senator’s court consisted of the Senatore himself as well as a criminal judge and two civil judges, the first and second collaterali.

  32. Although manuali (records of the office’s daily judicial activities) for Ottaviano Saravezzi’s tenure have not survived, an early 18th-century inventory records his volumes of witness depositions and judicial sentences: ASR, Camerale II, Notariato, busta 25, unpaginated, inventory of the office of Dominicus Ursinus. Cf. ASR, Tribunale Civile del Senatore, Inventory 286 I. The notary received a payment for writing out a judicial order from the Marmorari in 1606: Mauro Leonardo, “Gli statuti dell’Università dei Marmorari a Roma: Scultori e scalpellini (1406–1756),” Studi romani 45 (1997): 283n73. On the large-scale loss of the judicial acts of the Capitoline notaries, see Laurie Nussdorfer, “Roman Notarial Records between Market and State,” in “The Social History of the Archive: Record-Keeping in Early Modern Europe,” ed. Liesbeth Corens, Kate Peters, Alexandra Walsham, Past and Present 230, Supplement 11 (November 2016): 87–89.

  33. See, for example, ASR, inventory of office 1 of the TNC, uff.

  34. Only the titleholder could make so-called public copies of documents, but public copies, which cost more, are the type researchers are least likely to see, since they were given to the clients.

  35. Although these men are difficult to trace before the legislation in 1612 requiring that they sign their work, some of Ottaviano Saravezzi’s employees can be tracked in the libri della massa. They include Pompeo Orsali (September 1593), Benedetto Orchus (October 1593), and Angelo Falcinelli (July 1594): ASR, CNC, Registro delle congregazioni, Libro della massa, vol. 8 (1588–1598), unpaginated.

  36. This hierarchy is discussed in more detail in Nussdorfer 2009, chap. 5.

  37. Some of Palmuctius’s scribal labors for office 15 are represented in ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Spannochia), 1621, pt. 3, vol. 89, fol. 260r–v; 1624, pt. 1, vol. 99, fols. 47r, 402r, 739r–v, 799r; 1624, pt. 3, vol. 101, fols. 25v, 274r; 1625, pt. 1, vol. 103, fols. 87v–88r, 103r; 1627, pt. 1, vol. 114, fol. 833r.

  38. Shortened in 1612 to one day: Bullarium Diplomatum et Privilegiorum Sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum, 25 vols. (Turin, 1857–1872) [hereafter Bullarium 1857–1872], 12:90, no. 43.

  39. Statuta Almae Urbis Romae (Rome, 1580), bk. 1, art. 33. The papal constitution of 1612 “Universi agri dominici” reforming curial and civic tribunals paid considerable attention to notarial writing practices: Bullarium 1857–1872, 12:86–97, in particular 90 (nos. 42, 44). Nussdorfer 2009, 85–91.

  40. ASR, TNC, uff. 11 (Ottaviano Saravezzi), 1593, pt. 1, vol. 25. One 14th-century notarial handbook defined a congregatio as two men and a collegio as three; Leo Speluncanus, Artis Notarie Tempestatis huius Speculum (Venice, 1574), fol. 338r. See Nussdorfer 2009, chap. 3.

  41. “Accademia” was used frequently in the body of documents made in Saravezzi’s office, but does not appear in the table of contents of a protocol until the painters’ switch to notarial office 15 in 1609; ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Giovanni Antonio Moschenio), 1609, pt. 2, vol. 45.

  42. Nussdorfer 1993, 112; Lukehart 2008, 206.

  43. The offices of the 30 members of the college of notaries of the Capitoline curia received archival numbers in the 19th century, but these were later changed. I use the modern numeration. For the list of officeholders, see Romina De Vizio, Repertorio dei Notari Romani dal 1348 al 1927 dall’Elenco di Achille Francois (Rome, 2011). On recent efforts to update this information, see Paolo Buonora, “Notarilia: L’informatizzazione dei fondi notarili dell’Archivio di Stato di Roma,” in Notai a Roma. Notai e Roma, ed. Orietta Verdi and Raffaele Pittella (Rome, 2018), 205–208.

  44. Groppi 2000, 63–64. The carpenters’ guild also paid their notary 5 scudi a year; ASR, Biblioteca, Statuti, 377/5, fol. 32v.

  45. Mentioned in a codicil to the will of their secretary, the Capitoline notary Lorenzo Bonincontro; ASR, TNC, uff. 18 (Grappolini), Testamenti, 1634–1639, vol. 7, fol. 19v.

  46. ANSL, Statuti, 1609 [1607], refer to a secretario accademico (fol. 37r) who is clearly not a notary, but Spannocchia refers to himself as secretarius when he signs the manuscript of the 1619 statutes (January 8, 1619): ANSL, Statuti, 1619, fol. 28r. See also ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Erasto Spannocchia), 1622, pt. 2, vol. 91, fol. 593r–v; de La Blanchardière 1972, 80.

  47. ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Erasto Spannocchia), 1623, pt. 1, vol. 95, fol. 321r–v. He also received back pay of 15 scudi, raising questions about how much, if anything, he had been paid over the previous five years.

  48. An example of this usage can be seen in the stima found in ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Erasto Spannocchia), 1618, pt. 2, vol. 76, fol. 637r–v.

  49. See Antonino Bertolotti, Artisti belgi ed olandesi a Roma nei secoli XVI e XVII (Florence, 1880), 178. Originally in ASR, Tribunale criminale del Governatore, the petition was relocated by Bertolotti to the ASR fondo Miscellanea artisti, busta 2, fasc. 100; republished in Lukehart 2009, 365. A date in a later hand has been added to the original document.

  50. ANSL, Statuti, 1609 [1607], fol. 39r. Quoted also in Grossi and Trani 2009, 40n28.

  51. ASR, TNC, uff. 11 (Alessandro Saravezzi), 1609, pt. 2, vol. 81, fol. 85r.

  52. ASR, TNC, uff. 11 (Alessandro Saravezzi), 1609, pt. 2, vol. 81, fol. 213r.

  53. ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Giovanni Antonio Moschenio), 1609, pt. 2, vol. 45, fol. 548r. See also the Tribunale Civile del Senatore database for his litigation on behalf of the Accademia in 1613. The Accademia’s litigation now shifted judges in the Tribunale Civile del Senatore from the second to the first collaterale because office 15 supplied notarial services to the first collaterale.

  54. My thanks to Matteo Lafranconi for identifying Moschenio as Celio’s notary; see table of contents to ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Giovanni Antonio Moschenio), 1608, pt. 2, vol. 45.

  55. ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Giovanni Antonio Moschenio), 1610, pt. 3, vol. 49, fol. 376r; 1612, pt. 1, vol. 53, fol. 166r; 1615, pt. 3, vol. 65, fol. 31r (“camerarius et secretarius”); 1616, pt. 1, fol. 924r. Notaries performed routine banking functions for clients, such as holding deposits, but did not take formal charge of the accounts of most organizations.

  56. See Pietro Roccasecca, “Teaching in the Studio of the ‘Accademia del Disegno dei pittori, scultori e architetti di Roma’ (1594–1636),” in Lukehart 2009, 123–159.

  57. ANSL, vol. 2a.

  58. De La Blanchardière 1972, 81–83.

  59. ASR, TNC, uff. 15 (Lorenzo Tigrino), 1625, pt. 2, vol. 104, fol. 681r–v.

  60. Renata Ago et al., “I Trenta Notai Capitolini: Schedatura dei protocolli del 1645,” in Popolazione e società a Roma dal medioevo all’età contemporanea, ed. Eugenio Sonnino (Rome, 1998), 382. Salvatore had succeeded Tigrino as titleholder by 1628.