Bologna and Rome: Francesco Albani’s Correspondence and his Reflections on Art (1637–59)

Morselli’s chapter reassembles the surviving correspondence of the painter Francesco Albani to understand his relationship with the city of Rome, where he had lived for a long period and which he saw as a location of great artistic and critical complexity. Originally composed of more than 200 letters, the correspondence was dispersed for centuries. Thirty-five letters are reunited here, some cited by Malvasia, some published, and some unpublished. The letters, written by Albani to his students Domenico Maria Canuti and Girolamo Bonini between 1637 and 1659, investigate Roman art of the present day as well as the earlier golden years of the generation of Bolognese painters close to Annibale Carracci. The correspondence furnishes important evidence for the history of Bolognese classicism.