Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
This article explores the intellectual foundations for the development of princely art collections, and of Italian picture galleries in particular, as spaces for combined physical and mental exercise and recreation. This study then establishes the relationship between the therapeutic function of picture galleries and the manner in which landscape paintings produced for princely collectors at this moment in Italy embodied ideals of both exercise and repose.
I wish to thank the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library at St. Louis University for facilitating the completion of this research. Many individuals provided assistance and advice at different stages of this article. Special thanks go to Paula Findlen and the anonymous reviewer who carefully read the text and provided invaluable comments. Elizabeth Cropper, Anne Nellis, and Debra Pincus read and commented on the manuscript at various points along the way. Richard Spear provided information about the attribution and whereabouts of paintings by Domenichino, while Rita de Tata of the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna helped me obtain a photograph. I am indebted to Dawson Carr for very kindly providing a photograph of Landscape with Fortifications, and to Sir Denis Mahon for his gracious permission to publish a reproduction of this painting. My thanks go to Claudia Zatta and Christopher Perrin for assistance translating Latin and, as always, to Douglas Basford for editorial guidance along the way and for his insight on translation. All other translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
Manuscripts