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The following description of Rome, as it appeared to the eyes of an English traveller in 1622, is taken from an MS. diary in the British Museum (Harl. 6867), which occupies folios 27–40 of a quarto volume of miscellanea. The writer's name is unknown, but it may be conjectured that he was a Roman Catholic.
The diary opens with a description of the Medici chapel at S. Lorenzo in Florence, which was often reckoned by English travellers among the wonders of Italy. The author goes on to give a account of a fund established by the Grand Dukes Ferdinand and Cosimo II. in order to give dowries every year to seventy poor maids. The money for the fund was provided by economies in the Dukes' funerals who wished, says the diarist, to be buried like poor men. After a visit to Pisa and Leghorn, where contrary winds prevented him from going by sea to Rome, our traveller went there by the usual posting road through Siena and Viterbo.
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References
page 483 note 1 Itinerary containing a Voyage made through Italy (London, 1648), p. 58.
page 483 note 2 Travels through Italy (London, 1766), p. 111Google Scholar.
page 484 note 1 These were among the curiosities usually shown to strangers. They are described by Montaigne.
page 484 note 2 This fountain is mentioned by John Richards in 1698 in his MS. diary (B. M. Stowe, 459, f. 46 v.). For a photo see Triggs, The Art of Garden Design in Italy, Pl. 73.
page 484 note 3 Perhaps the central acroterion of the earlier Pantheon of Agrippa (cf. Petersen, in Amelung, Sc. d. Vat, Mus., i. p. 903Google Scholar), or a fountain (cf. Huelsen, in Röm. Mitt. xix. 1904, 112 ff.Google Scholar).
page 484 note 4 Note in the margin: in Compasse 40 brace, in height 18.
page 485 note 1 Richards (op. cit. f. 45 v.) has hit on the singular name Pantaleon ! The Pantheon fascinated most travellers. It was measured in about 1638 by Nicholas Stone the younger.
page 485 note 2 The author is at his best in this explanation.
page 485 note 3 Scipione Borghese (d. 1633), of whom two admirable portraits by Bernini are now in the Villa Borghese. He was a great nephew of Paul V. and a masterful person, who took full advantage of his kinsman's pontificate Both these statues are now in the Louvre. One is probably that of the goddess with Cupid tying the arms of Mars (Cat. Som. No. 370), a celebrated work in the sixteenth century. The other is the famous Borghese warrior by Agasias.
page 485 note 4 The Mamertine Prison and the Scala Santa.
page 485 note 5 The Ambassador was the Duke of Albuquerque, as Mr. J. M. Rigg has kindly ascertained from the Avisi, (Arch. Segr., vol. 9, 1623Google Scholar). There is no volume of Avisi for 1622. A contemporary account of the journey of an imperial ambassador in 1612–1613 is to be found in Des bamberger Fürstbischofs Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen Gesandtschafts-Reise nach Italien und Rom (Tübingen, 1881Google Scholar). The bishop left Bamberg with a train of no less than 180 horses, and was everywhere like the Spaniard received with great ceremony, but his suite was unruly and inclined to drink too freely of good Italian wine.
page 486 note 1 Sta. Costanza.
page 486 note 2 It was a common opinion that the existing walls of Rome were not those which enclosed it under the Empire.
page 486 note 3 Roncilgione.