By Melis Akçakayalıoğlu (St Andrew’s School ’23)

Letter (detail) from Marie Antoinette to Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi 31 January 1782, announcing the birth of the Dauphin. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.

In summer 2010, HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi recovered a large trove of archival documents in a storage area of her home in Rome, the Casino dell’Aurora. These included a total of 25 letters from the years 1775 through 1787 that either Louis XVI (1754-1793) or Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) of France had sent to Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi (1743-1790).

The couple had married on 19 April 1770 and come to the French throne on 10 May 1774. Their 1775 letters, each dated 12 December of that year, congratulate Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi on his appointment as Cardinal, which had been announced the previous month, on the 13^th of November. The letter of Marie Antoinette shows that the Cardinal wrote to her sharing the news shortly afterwards, on the 15^th of November.

Other than 1775, the rest of the letters are responses to the Cardinal’s New Year’s wishes. For 1776, there is a single letter dated 31 January from the King to the Cardinal, written from the palace at Versailles. For each of the other years in the series, there are messages from both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at Versailles.

All but two of those royal letters bear the same calendar date, namely 31 January, considered the last day on which one could properly acknowledge New Year’s greetings. The exceptions are 1779, when the Queen responds on 30 January, and 1787, when the King answers on 28 February, evidently annoyed at the Cardinal’s moving up the date of his annual New Year’s letter to get a quicker acknowledgement.

Portrait by unknown artist of Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi (1743-1775-1790) holding a letter. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.

The monarchs’ letters have very little personal content, except for those of 1782, which I discuss below. Interestingly, in all these letters Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette each refer to the Cardinal as “Mon Cousin,” revealing how royalty from sovereign states were expected to communicate with one another and betraying the imagined connection underlying royal lines. The Cardinal was from the line of the Princes of Piombino, since 1594 a principality within the Holy Roman Empire, and himself used the title “Principe Cardinale”. In these letters, Cardinal Ignazio clearly takes on significance as royalty for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as evidenced by this use of “Cousin.”

These letters of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette mention little in terms of significant familial or personal developments. This fact and the consistent dating seem to imply that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette merely communicated with the Cardinal out of detached respect and obligation, not true concern.

The two letters in the Vatican Apostolic Archive from the French court to this Cardinal reinforce this impression. When Pope Pius VI appointed Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi on 19 June 1785 as Vatican Secretary of State, Louis XVI and his foreign secretary the Comte de Vergennes each wrote to the Cardinal in congratulations on this promotion on 20 September 1785, three months after the announcement and later than any other European rulers (ASV Archivio Boncompagni Ludovisi Prot. 10 No. 21 ff. 429-437; I owe this reference to Professor T. Corey Brennan).

However one pair of letters stands out in the long series from the Casino dell’Aurora archive, both written on 31 January 1782, which mention the birth of the Dauphin (i.e., heir apparent), Louis Joseph, born 22 October 1781. Here are my transcriptions of the letters of the King and Queen. First, Louis XVI:

Letter from Louis XVI to Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi 31 January 1782, announcing the birth of the Dauphin. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.

Mon Cousin, Je suis persuadé que la part que vous prenez a la joie que m’a causé la naissance de mon fils le Dauphin est aussi sincère que l’assurance que vous me donnez de votre attachement au commencement  de cette année. Les sentiments donc vous accompagnez vos voeux, ne me sont pas moins agréable que les expressions donc vous vous servez et je desire véritablement trouver occasions de vous témoigner ma sensibilité et de vous faire éprouvou les effets de l’estime et de la bienveillance que j’ai pour vous. Sur ce Je prie Dieu qu’il vous ait, Mon Cousin, en sa sainte digne Grâce. Écrit à Versailles le 31 Janvier 1782. Louis.

“My Cousin, I am convinced that the part that you take in the joy that the birth of my son, the Dauphin, has given to me is as sincere as the assurance you gave me of your attachment at the beginning of this year. The feelings with which you accompany your wishes are no less pleasant for me than the expressions which you use. And I truly desire to find opportunities to show you my predisposition to make you feel the effects of the esteem and benevolence that I have for you. Whereupon I pray to God that he hold you, Cousin, in his holy worthy Grace. Written at Versailles on 31 January 1782. Louis.” [Countersigned by his secretary Charles Gravier de Vergennes]

Then Marie Antoinette:

Letter from Marie Antoinette to Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi 31 January 1782, announcing the birth of the Dauphin. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.

Mon Cousin, La naissance de mon fils le Dauphin, est un évenément trop satisfaisant pour moi, pour que je ne sois pas très persuadée de la part qu’y ont pris tous ceux donc je connois l’attachement a ma personne; Je vous sais gré des temoignages que vous m’avez donné de votre joie dans cette circonstance ainsi que des voeux que vous formez pour moi au commencement de cette année, pour moi je ne désire que les occasions de vous donner les marques de l’estime et de la bienveillance que j’ai pour vous. Sur ce Je prie Dieu qu’il vous ait, Mon Cousin, en sa sainte digne Grâce. Écrit à Versailles le 31 Janvier 1782. Marie Antoinette

“My Cousin, The birth of my son, the Dauphin, is for me too satisfying an event for me not to be very convinced of the part played in it by all those whose attachment I know to my person. I am grateful to you for the testimonies that you have given me of your joy in this circumstance as well as for the wishes that you express for me at the beginning of this year. For my part I only desire the opportunities to give you marks of (my) esteem and the kindness I have for you. Whereupon I pray to God that he hold you, Cousin, in his holy worthy Grace. Written at Versailles on January 31, 1782. Marie Antoinette.” [Countersigned by her secretary Nicolas-Joseph Beaugeard]

Significantly, there are no letters by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi that mention the French royals’ other two children. The first was a daughter, Marie-Thérèse, born 19 December 1778. She is not found in the King’s 31 January 1779 or the Queen’s 30 January 1779 letters, though she was born just six weeks before. And after the Dauphin in 1782, there was a second son: Louis Charles, born 27 March 1785 (the future Louis XVII), who is not mentioned in the January 1786 letters.  

Video showing how the 1782 Marie Antoinette letter to Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi was folded, locked and sealed before sending. From Jana Dambrogio (MIT, ADBL board member) and the Unlocking History Research Group: “Marie Antoinette’s Letter with a Removable Paper Lock, France (1782),” Letterlocking Instructional Videos. Unlocking History number 0012/Letterlocking. Filmed Jun 2014.

The Dauphin’s birth is a crucial development because it meant that a male heir has been born. This was a particularly long-awaited event for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who did not produce any children for the first eight years after their marriage in 1770, in the face of growing tension within their family and from the public. The attitude that female children and subsequent males are of lesser importance is clearly demonstrated by the fact that these children’s births were not worthy of mention in the letters. These silences also suggest that overall the letters to the Cardinal were tightly focused on their royalty connection.

As it happened, the Dauphin died in 1789, on the 4^th of June, five weeks before the Bastille uprising that spelled the beginning of the end of the French Old Regime. We cannot trace these developments from the Boncompagni Ludovisi archive. By this time the series of letters to the Cardinal had broken off—he seems to have annoyed them so much that the King and Queen did not write to him after 1787—and in any case there was chaos in France, that ultimately brought down the monarchy.  Cardinal Ignazio did not live to see much of the revolution in France; he died unexpectedly in August 1790, seeking thermal bath therapy in Tuscany at Bagni di Lucca.

Melis Akçakayalıoğlu, a native of Istanbul, is a senior at St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton FL where she is enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program. In summer 2022 she was a member of the internship program of the Archivio Digitale Boncompagni Ludovisi. She thanks Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi for the opportunity to study the materials in the Casino dell’Aurora archive, as well as Professor T. Corey Brennan (Rutgers University) for his guidance in the internship and suggestions on this article, which he made in consultation with Professor Catriona Seth (Oxford University), though emphasizing that she is not responsible for the views offered here.

Bronze medal of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (42mm, 38.99g), commemorating the birth of the Dauphin 22 October 1781, engraved by Pierre-Simon-Benjamin Duvivier. Credit: Bertolami Fine Arts E-Auction 68 Lot 1327 (16 March 2019)

By Avery Soupios (Rutgers ’24)

Portraits drawn by Ottavio Leoni (1622) of Niccolò Ludovisi (1613-1664) and Isabella Gesualdo (1611-1629), married at ages nine and ten respectively by proxy at Caserta on 1 May 1622. Credit: Accademia Colombaria, Florence

With a Pope on the throne, their first princely title, and decorations for the Casino dell’Aurora in its newly purchased Rome villa complete, the marriage between nine-year-old Niccolò Ludovisi and 10-year-old princess Isabella Gesualdo on 1 May 1622 signified a peak in the Ludovisi family’s political influence and social fortune.

An immensely valuable document for this Bolognese family’s image crafting during the pontificate of Alessandro Ludovisi = Pope Gregory XV (reigned 9 February 1621-8 July 1623) is a long inaccessible book of wedding poems edited by the Bolognese poet and artist Giovanni Luigi Valesio, with only three known copies. The book, entitled Roma felice nelle felicissime nozze degl’ Ill(ustrissi)mi et Ecc(ellentissi)mi Sig(no)ri Don Nicolo Ludovisi, et Donna Isabella Gesualda, Principe, e Principessa di Venosa, was printed in Rome at the Vatican itself, in the Stamperia della Reverenda Apostolica, and is dated 15 August 1622.

Rome felice nelle felicissime nozze is one of at least six separate collections of panegyrics published in 1622 celebrating the marriage of Niccolò Ludovisi, nephew of the Pope and younger brother of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi (1595-1621-1632), creator of the Villa Ludovisi. Indeed, the editor Valesio on 17 June 1622 had already published a book of his own sonnets celebrating the Papal family, titled La cicala (“The Cricket”), dedicated to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi.

Frontispiece of Giovanni Luigi Valesio, La cicala (1622), with coat of arms of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, supported by allegorized figures of Truth and Time. Credit: The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 40 via ARTSTOR

The Roma felice composite volume contains contributions by almost two dozen poets, many attested as members of the prominent Roman literary academies of the Fantastici (to which Gregory XV Ludovisi himself belonged) or Umoristi, including important figures such as Girolamo Aleandro, Francesco Balducci, Vincenzo Cesarini, Antonio Guerengo, Marcello Giovanetti, Baldovino di Monte Simoncelli, Pier Francesco Paoli, Giuseppe Teodoli, Ottavio Tronsarelli and Francesco della Valle. The last of these writers in particular explicitly testifies to the magnificence of the Casino in its mythological and political ceiling frescoes.

Frontispiece of Giovanni Luigi Valesio, Roma felice (1622), with Cupid “tying the knot” between Ludovisi and Gesualdo coats of arms. Credit: The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 40 via ARTSTOR

In Valesio’s engraving for the book’s frontispiece, the shield with three stripes represents the Ludovisi, and the lion with fleur-de-lis (which appears twice) is a symbol of the Gesualdo family. The iconography is in some important respects closely related if not identical to imagery in Guercino’s ceiling fresco of the ‘Fama’. Hymen, looking distinctly like Guercino’s ‘Honor’, and a cupid literally tie the knot between the coats of arms of the two families, while the three Graces look on. The winged trumpet player directly refers to Guercino’s figure of Fame. Moreover, the natural imagery reflects the landscapes in the Villa Ludovisi’s gardens, as seen in Guercino’s “Aurora”. The imagery in the engraving by Valesio, like Guercino’s frescoes, borrows the religious and mythological authority that elevates the family’s political power. Guercino goes further in stressing the sunrise of a radiant Papacy and the divine good will bestowed on the family.

Already in 1988, Carolyn H. Wood noted that “Valesio’s anthology is the best single source of panegyrics in which the Ludovisi stemma is the basis for a celebration of a golden age”. But Wood did not go much beyond this general assessment (see her Indian Summer of Bolognese Painting 92 and 157 with 103 n. 21). The Roma felice anthology does not figure in any of the contributions to the new (2022) edited volume Guercino nel Casino Ludovisi (= Storia dell’arte no. 157).

I maintain that by studying these poems (which fill over 200 pages in Valesio’s edition) in connection with other original texts from the family’s archive, we can better understand the iconographic symbolism of the frescoes and how their existence in a public sphere perpetuated important messages regarding the family’s power in Italy.

A word about chronology. On 3 June 1621, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi purchased the Casino dell’Aurora and its vineyard from Cardinal Francesco del Monte, who had owned it since 1596. Soon afterward Ludovisi commissioned multiple prominent painters to complete a series of ceiling frescoes including the Aurora and Fama by Guercino, with frames by Agostino Tassi, and landscapes by Guercino, Domenichino, Paul Bril and Giovanni Battista Viola.

As these works were being completed, the wedding of Isabella Gesualdo, Princess of Venosa, and Niccolò Ludovisi was underway—in multiple locations, but first in Caserta by means of proxy on 1 May 1622. To arrange the marriage, two portraits of Gesualdo were sent to the Ludovisi, which show up in a 1664 inventory of the family at the Villa Ludovisi in Frascati, outside Rome. 

On 3 June 1622—as we now know thanks to a letter that emerged on ebay.it in early 2020, and was purchased in 2022 for the Archivio Boncompagni Ludovisi—the 10 year old newlywed bride wrote to her brother in law Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi to move along plans for her finally to meet her 9 year old husband in Rome. The union took a further two and half months to achieve, culminating in ceremonies in Rome on 15 August (on the Campidoglio) and 30 November 1622 (in the Sistine Chapel).

Letter of 3 June 1622 by Isabella Gesualdo, Princess of Venosa, to her new brother-in-law, Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi. Purchased on ebay February 2022 by TC Brennan and donated to Archivio Boncompagni Ludovisi at Casino dell’Aurora, Rome. Now collection of HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi.

Valesio’s Roma felice volume shows that Guercino’s Aurora and Fama in the Casino dell’Aurora were fully executed by August 1622, the date of the first meeting in Rome. This confirms what we would otherwise suspect, for Giovanni Battista Viola, who worked alongside Guercino in the Landscape Room of the Casino dell’Aurora, died on 10 August 1622.

By working with family inventories, studying ceiling frescoes in the Villa Aurora, and secondary sources from Italian scholars, I was able to identify and compare repeated imagery to the cover of the book of wedding poems edited by Valesio. I transcribed and translated specific poems within the text as they mentioned the ‘Aurora’ and the ‘Fama’ of the Casino dell’ Aurora, and the Villa Ludovisi gardens. These are the first mentions of these ceiling frescoes by Guercino, and the sensory effect of the gardens.

Most important here was a long ‘Epitalamio’ by the Calabrian poet Francesco della Valle (ca. 1590-1627), 77 eight-line stanzas in length that opens the volume. It is extraordinarily rich in specific detail, revealing e.g., that Gregory XV himself approved the precocious marriage (GREGORIO disse; Nicolo sia sposo); on the occasion of the first meeting of the young couple in Rome fireworks were set off from the Castel Sant’Angelo (vomita fiamme l’Adriana mole); and that meeting was on the Campidoglio (dal Campidoglio fuo Roma s’inchina).

Opening stanza of Calabrian poet Francesco della Valle’s ‘Epitalamio’, in G. L. Valesio (editor), Roma felice (1622). Credit: Google Books.

As for references to the art of the Casino dell’Aurora, the figure of Aurora is mentioned three times in the poem, indeed scattering flowers as in the Guercino fresco (all’ or che và là mattutina Aurora / Spargendo brine, e seminando rose). The fact that the beauty of Isabella Gesualdo as represented in a painting is compared to a “phoenix”—a focal point of Guercino’s “Fama”—strongly implies that della Valle knew the art work, reinforced by his mentions of fama (twice), Virtue (10 times) and Honor (seven times) in the poem. Fully 13 stanzas are devoted to a description of the new garden of the Villa Ludovisi on the Pincio.

The Villa Ludovisi represented the papal family’s establishment of the political influence they were gaining through their new titles and the advantageous union to the Gesualdo family, who brought their own claim to power and their own degree of cultural significance, as Isabella’s grandfather, Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) was a famed composer and notorious murderer. The union of the two children brought together these two families. But the celebrations around this union also displayed the importance of music, art, and poetic testimony in the creation of familial myth and cultural legacy, and communicating political power.

Portrait drawn by Ottavio Leoni (1622) of composer Paolo Quagliati. Credit: Accademia Colombaria, Florence

During this period and following in the Renaissance, music was a signifier of an important event, and with art, formed political myth. La Sfera Armoniosa is a complicated mix of chamber duets and monodies created by the Roman composer Paulo Quagliati for the celebration of the 30 November 1622 ceremony. The work included 25 numbers and a poem from the court of Alfonso II, where Carlo Gesualdo maintained political influence. The author of the libretto for the work was none other than Francesco della Valle, whose outsized contribution to the Roma felice volume we have already seen.

Maestro Lorenzo Tozzi on the first modern performance of Paolo Quagliati, ‘La Sfera Armoniosa’ (1622), interviewed by TC Brennan in the Casino dell’Aurora, 13 August 2013. ‘La Sfera Armoniosa’ was recorded live for the Bongiovanni label on 14 May 2014 in the Auditorio S. Nicolò di Chioggia (Venice), and performed at the Casino dell’Aurora on 6 February 2015, with the sponsorship of †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi.

The combination of art, poetry, music and ritual performance is crucial to understanding how this 1622 wedding brought together these two families of enormous influence. Taken together, the cultural production around this marriage illustrates well the socio-cultural ambitions these families from Bologna and Naples had in an evolving Italian noble society centered on Rome. With this understudied resource and further research, I believe we can further uncover the relationship between social prominence and artistic expression in 17th century Papal Rome.

Avery Soupios (Rutgers ’24) is a junior in the Rutgers Honors College, majoring in Art History with a double minor in Archaeology and Chemistry. In academic year 2021-2022 Avery worked on the artistic program of the Casino dell’Aurora under the auspices of Rutgers’ Aresty Research Center, and presented her work in April 2022 at the annual Aresty Undergraduate Research Symposium. She thanks Professor Brennan for his unwavering support over the course of this project. She also extends her deep gratitude to HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi for granting her and other researchers access to the invaluable private family archive.

Detail from the “Aurora” of Guercino (1621), showing a villa in its landscape. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.

By Hatice Köroglu Çam (Rutgers ’22)

‘Pan’ attributed to Michelangelo at the Casino dell’Aurora. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome. Photo: T. Corey Brennan (October 2022)

Introduction

In the garden of the Casino dell’Aurora in Rome, a superbly executed 16th-century statue with short horns, pointed ears, goat-like legs, an animal pelt, and an erect phallus explicitly displays how its sculptor was fascinated by classical mythology. This life-size Pan was exhibited in several different places in the area of the Villa Ludovisi since the 17th century, before landing in its present position against the southeast façade of the Casino. Starting in the late 18th century, for about 100 years the statue was commonly attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), though the identification seems largely forgotten today.

My first post “A new self-portrait of Michelangelo? The statue of Pan at the Casino dell’Aurora in Rome. Part I: Correspondences” defended the traditional attribution of the Ludovisi Pan to Michelangelo by presenting numerous correspondences between this Pan and the master’s well-known works of art, including the Moses, the David, and his drawing The Dream of Human Life; these provide ample evidence that this statue shows Michelangelo’s artistic style and language. Most significantly, the very close resemblance between the facial depiction of the Ludovisi Pan and the mask at the center of the box in Michelangelo’s Dream (ca. 1533)—widely considered to be a self-portrait of the master—reinforces the attribution to Michelangelo and indeed suggests that this statue is Michelangelo’s satirical self-portrait.

Left: ‘Pan’ attributed to Michelangelo at the Casino dell’ Aurora. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome (photo by the author). Right: Detail of Michelangelo, Il Sogno (The Dream)

My second post, “Part II: Testimonia (sketches, earlier inventories)” examined a red-chalk drawing by Michelangelo from Frankfurt’s Städel Museum, which I argued conveys quite close similarities between the facial depiction of the Pan and that of a figure on the left side of the Frankfurt sheet. Part II showed also a remarkable connection between this Frankfurt drawing and an unusually significant representation of the Ludovisi Pan by Hamlet Winstanley (1723) at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Left: detail of Michelangelo, Grotesque Heads and Other Studies (recto) ca. 1525, Städel Museum, Frankfurt. Right: Hamlet Winstanley, Statue of Pan (1723), Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Credit: L. C. Bulman, Georgian Group Journal 12 (2002) 64

Here I also stressed that examining the statue of Pan through the mirror of the 18th-century drawings and sketches gives us a chance to compare this statue’s former and present states, which show its slow deterioration. I considered representations of the Ludovisi Pan in drawings by Bernardino Ciferri (ca. 1710-30), Pompeo Batoni (ca. 1727-1730), and Antonio Canova (1780), as well as historical photographs of the statue from 1885. In sum, I came to the conclusion that this statue is literally melting away in front of the world, as it stands outside in the garden of the Casino dell’Aurora, unprotected and in fact underestimated.

The most important contribution of my Part II was a review of Ludovisi and Boncompagni Ludovisi inventory records of the 17th and 18th centuries. Based on the information from the statue’s first appearance in a family inventory, that of 1633, I surmised that the first location of the Ludovisi Pan was in or near the Villa’s “Labyrinth” (i.e., a wooded sculpture garden, in front of the Palazzo Grande) in a niche formed by an elevated sarcophagus and lid. On further reflection, in the light of the description by inventories (1633-1733) of the statue’s position between two tall cypress trees, confirmed by early maps and guidebooks, it seems that the Pan’s first location is not the Labyrinth proper. It was located further north, against the Aurelian Wall from the beginning. Indeed, the 1641 and 1733 inventories show the Pan at a location against the Aurelian Wall in what we may call the “niche” formed by an elevated sarcophagus. Also, the 1749 inventory shows a high evaluation of the Ludovisi Pan, namely as 4000 scudi.

The purpose of this post however is to gather many important testimonies, from the 17th century to the 20th century, in forms that range from private diaries to public guidebooks, to convey all the reactions to the Ludovisi Pan I could find, and trace the origin and development of its attribution to Michelangelo. I will also discuss at some length the primary subject matter of this statue—the erect phallus—because this work, which closely engages with the language of antiquity, faced difficulties in reception specifically related to its problematic subject matter.

Display of the ‘Pan’ in the garden of the Casino dell’Aurora before the 2009 renovation campaign conducted by Prince Nicolò and Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi. Above: ca. 1980, as illustrated in A. Schiavo, Villa Ludovisi e Palazzo Margherita (Rome 1981). Below: 2008, in image from the collection of †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome

In fact, here I will argue that it was the Pan’s erect phallus that negatively affected its placement and presentation—from at least the early 18th century exhibited with a fig leaf, and eventually positioned behind a tree—at different locations on the property of the Villa Ludovisi. Moreover, I aim to show that the phallus is what prevented this sculpture from getting proper recognition, which in turn directly affected its attribution to Michelangelo. Squeamishness about subject matter overshadowed all the stylistic similarities between Michelangelo’s works and Pan, derailed its scholarly acceptance, and caused the sculpture to be abandoned to its present fate.

I can quickly summarize the history of the reception of the statue, which falls in three phases. Though the statue of Pan certainly formed part of the Ludovisi collection by 1633, and in the later 17th and early 18th centuries is often mentioned and praised, it takes almost a century and a half after the death of Ludovico Ludovisi for us to find explicit attribution of this work to Michelangelo. The origin of the references to Michelangelo at most predates the 1760s. Joseph Jerome Le Francois de LaLande (writing in 1765-66 and published in 1769) states that this statue was already being recognized as Michelangelo’s work prior to his visit to the Villa Ludovisi, but he dismissed it. Johann Jacob Volkmann (1770) follows him in his skeptical identification of the Pan. However, Jacques Lacombe’s Journal encyclopédiquedictionary (1775) is the first unqualified attribution of the Pan to Michelangelo. That was followed by Dominique Magnan, a learned French abbot of Rome’s Trinità dei Monti convent, in 1779.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the attribution to Michelangelo is common: Carlo Fea (1822), Stefane Piale (1826), Antonio Nibby (1841), Joseph Gwilt (1842), Giuseppe Robello (1854), L’Abbe Moyne (1855), Edmond Lafond (1856), and Emile Montegut (1870). How did these visitors suddenly all know the Pan belonged to Michelangelo? The Boncompagni Ludovisi, Professor T. Corey Brennan has suggested to me, may have put the title “Michelangelo” on or near the Pan, and so visitors consistently started reporting it as Michelangelo’s work.

In 1836, Ernst Zacharias Platner noted in detail the sculptural art of the Villa Ludovisi, published in his book Beschreibung der Stadt Rom III 2 (published 1838). In surveying the area of the Villa against the city wall, he specifically described the Great Battle Sarcophagus as being located inside a structure with “four granite columns” and offers a very brief analysis of the colossal bust of Alexander the Great. Significantly, Platner identifies the statue of Pan as being located at the top of an avenue against the Aurelian Wall, dating it as a 16th-century statue. He furthermore described Pan’s positioning within a niche “supported by columns.” However, his interpretation of the statue’s identification is questionable as he failed to provide any arguments for his assertion that the Pan is not Michelangelo’s work.

In his testimony, Platner stated bluntly “The statue of Pan, also under a gabled roof supported by columns, a very mediocre work, probably of the sixteenth century, is very wrongly attributed to Michelagnolo” (“Die Bildsaule eines Pan, ebenfalls unter einem von Saulen getragenen Giebeldache, ein sehr mittelmalsiges Werk, vermouthlich aus dem 16ten Jahrhundert, wird sehr mit Unrecht dem Michelagnolo zugeschrieben.”)

Platner’s interpretation is echoed in the testimonies of two other noted German scholars, Jacob Burckhardt (Der Cicerone, 1855) and Theodor Schreiber (Die antiken Bildwerke der Villa Ludovisi in Rom, 1880), who likewise also dismissed the attribution to Michelangelo in a sentence, without argument. While Schreiber seems to acknowledge the stylistic similarity of the statue to Michelangelo’s works of art (“Michelangelesque”), Burckhardt considered this Pan simply to be the work of one of Michelangelo’s followers. No scholars since the late nineteenth century have included the Pan among Michelangelo’s genuine works. Indeed, as we shall see, the scholarship on this statue from the dissolution of the Villa Ludovisi in 1885 to the present day fills not quite two pages.

Initial display of the Pan, and basic issues of attribution

Theodor Schreiber (1880) in a useful map shows the original plots of Ludovisi property and identifies which parts were bought by Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, and from whom. As Kim J. Hartswick explains, “within five months of his uncle’s election” as Pope Gregory XV on 9 February 1621, “Ludovico began negotiations for the purchasing of several parcels of land on the Pincio”. He proceeded from west to east. First (3 June 1621) he purchased from Cardinal Francesco del Monte, for ten thousand scudi, the future Casino dell’Aurora, and its surrounding vineyard, and then in the next month a smaller vineyard to its northeast owned by one Leonora Cavalcanti. Next (5 February 1622) came the adjacent large vigna to the east with its “Palazzo Grande”, owned by Duke Giovanni Antonio Orsini. Third, in 1623, Ludovisi bought from the Carmelite monks of Santa Maria in Traspontina another vineyard, to the east of the ex-Orsini estate. “The extent of the cardinal’s property”, as Hartwick notes, drawing on the 1670 map by Giovanni Battista Falda, “was about forty-seven acres, extending from the via di porta Pinciana to the via di porta Salaria.”

Map showing constituent elements of the Villa Ludovisi as it stood in the mid-nineteenth century. by T. Schreiber Die antiken Bildwerke der Villa Ludovisi in Rome (1880). Elements east of the red line, which corresponds precisely to today’s Via Piemonte, were added only after the death of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi in 1632.

Documents from the administration of the Villa Ludovisi and testimonies from especially the guidebooks show us that the Pan moved four times within this area of the Villa, for reasons that can be at least partly explained. For the Pan’s first and original location, inventories of the Villa Ludovisi offer the primary documentary evidence. The 1633 inventory states that the satyr was “between two cypresses” and under an elevated sarcophagus, and the 1733 inventory repeats these “two cypresses” as the statue’s location.

Plan of the vigna Orsini, Carlo Maderno, 1622 (future Ludovisi estate), from Kim J. Hartswick, The Gardens of Sallust (2004) 56. Maderno’s rendition of the obelisk’s remains is indicated here by the red circle; the red arrow points at his detail of the two tall cypresses.

As it happens, Carlo Maderno’s 1622 plan of the vigna Orsini—at the moment Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi was expanding his property eastward and absorbing it into his estate—takes pains to show two tall cypresses against the Aurelian Wall. The map offers remarkable visual evidence, for the twin cypresses are precisely at the top of the path later named the “Viale del Satiro” which ran north from the Orsini “Palazzo Grande”, through the middle of the Labyrinth, past a large broken obelisk (shown by Maderno, and now placed before Trinità dei Monti), and up to the Roman wall. And so this description shows us that the Pan “between two cypresses” in 1633 was against the Aurelian wall. Additionally, Boncompagni Ludovisi family archivist Giuseppe Felici in his Villa Ludovisi in Roma (1952) notes in the documents that the road along the wall—today’s Via Campania—is also sometimes called “Viale del Satiro”.

Plan of the Orsini property by Stefano du Pérac. 1577. From Kim J. Hartswick, The Gardens of Sallust (2004) 22.

The earliest map of the relevant area—by Stefano du Pérac (1577)—shows the Orsini property as totally uncultivated, with no discernible system of paths, but lots of antiquities scattered about such as the broken obelisk. Maderno on his 1622 map shows a path precisely along the line of the future “Viale del Satiro”, and the property to the east of it as now cultivated. But he does not show a statue or sarcophagus-niche at the end of the path between the two tall trees near the wall. Falda’s 1670 map fully shows the extension of the Ludovisi property to incorporate the ex-Orsini vigna, and also shows the broken obelisk just beyond the labyrinth—now in a cultivated field. At the end of the path, one can see a ”niche” formed by a sarcophagus.

Plan of the Villa Ludovisi, published in G.B. Falda, Li giardini di Roma…con le loro piante alzate e vedute in prospettiva (1670)

Presumably, Ludovico Ludovisi before 1633 created that “niche” between the two tall cypresses, and placed the Pan inside it. Given that the Orsini had already started the Labyrinth, constructed a network of paths up to the Aurelian Wall (including one precisely along the lines of the future “Viale del Satiro”), and clearly had antiquities on their land, this raises the possibility (suggested to me by Professor T. Corey Brennan) that the Pan was already on the Orsini property, and came to Cardinal Ludovisi as part of the estate with the broken obelisk and other statuary.

What is clear is that Ludovico Ludovisi expanded the ex-Orsini Labyrinth, doubling it in size, and filling it with many dozens of statues. Whatever the origins of the Pan, Ludovico Ludovisi valued the statue so much that he constructed a niche for it under a sarcophagus ensemble, the latter apparently once part of the Cesarini collection (= Schreiber [1880] nos. 212-213). Friedrich Matz (Antike bildwerke in Rom I [1881 p. 336] gives a very detailed description of this sarcophagus and the lid (showing a married couple), today in Rome’s Villa Ada.

Louis-Hippolyte Lebas, view (1806) of the Labyrinth and the ‘Viale del Satiro’ in the Villa Ludovisi, looking north toward an aedicula at its terminus that housed the ‘Pan’ for much of the 19th century. Credit: L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts

Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi died in 1632, having demonstrably given the statue of Pan a prominent position on the ex-Orsini property in a “niche” against the Aurelian Wall, at the end of a long pathway that extended due north from the entrance of the main residential palace in his new Villa, the Palazzo Grande. He evidently did not consider the statue to be the work of Michelangelo, nor does anyone else attribute it to the master until the 1760s. Why was this identification so slow to come?

One of the reasons clearly is that people were convinced the statue was ancient, just like the Della Valle satyrs that I discussed in my Part I. When the Pan entered the Ludovisi collection in 1621 or shortly afterward, probably it was not identified as a Michelangelo, or forgotten it was a Michelangelo, or not believed it was a Michelangelo. In the 1633 Ludovisi inventory, modern artists are identified—including Michelangelo, specifically his termini in the Palazzo Grande—and there is no reason his name would not be mentioned if known.

The Pan in its “niche” in the 17th and 18th centuries

The earliest depiction of the “niche” with its sarcophagus that we know Ludovico Ludovisi created to house the Pan statue is from 1650, on a bird’s-eye view map, looking west to east, by Flemish artist Conrad Lauwers. Clearly visible on the map is the long avenue extending from the entrance of the Palazzo Grande—at least later known as “Viale del Satiro”—leading to an assemblage with two-by-two columns in front supporting a flat roof, and two taller ones in the back, positioned against the Aurelian Wall. There is no effort to show unusually tall trees here or elsewhere. In the Louwer’s view, the Labyrinth has two distinct parts: to the right/east of the “Viale del Satiro” (Orsini plan), and to the left/west of the Viale (new plan). The cultivation extends to the west of the “Viale del Satiro”.

Plan of the Villa Ludovisi, Conrad Lauwers, 1650. From Carla Benocci, Villa Ludovisi (2010) 88.

G. B. Falda’s 1670 view, taken from south to north, shows the niche from its front, with a façade of four columns supporting a tall sarcophagus, but he does not show two tall cypresses and non-colossal unprotected statues. Even though the Labyrinth, the piazza in front of the building he labels as a Museum (Casino Capponi), the walks, and the area around the Casino dell’Aurora were demonstrably filled with urns, statues, and sarcophagi, Falda only shows a few giant pieces along the wall and a few around the foundation of the Casino dell’Aurora.

For the Pan’s location, the earliest written testimony outside of the inventories (1633, 1733) is by Francis Mortoft, a young English traveler who visited the Villa Ludovisi on the afternoon of Sunday 9 February 1659 during the lifetime of Niccolò Ludovisi, younger brother of Ludovico Ludovisi. In a diary (first published in 1925) he finds the Ludovisi Pan against the Aurelian Wall, where Falda’s map of 1670 has it. In Mortoft’s manuscript, among his extensive descriptions of the sculptures in the area of the Villa Ludovisi, he positions the Ludovisi Pan at the “lower end” of the garden—i.e., against the Wall—and also mentions as in its vicinity the colossal bust of Alexander the Great (called “Commodus”), and the Great Battle Sarcophagus. He calls the Pan “ridiculous”, yet does justice to the fact that it is well done, though he does not describe it as Michelangelo’s work—all important because it explains the Pan’s later reception. He writes that after a visit to art housed indoors,

“…we went about the Garden, where, at the lower end, we saw a very ridiculous statue of a satyr, which canot but stir up any man to much laughter in looking on such a Rediculous piece, but yet very excellently well made. A little below is the Head of Commodus, the Emperor, and not far from it is a description of a Battell of the Rom[ans], made all of one stone, where is to be seen at least 40 several pieces of men and horses, some fighting, some dying, and some killing others, and everyone representing these Actions that they were in, so much to the life that by all Report it is esteemed to be one of the most incomparable pieces that were ever made by any human hands.”

Another useful testimony about the first and the original location of the Pan is from Pietro di Sebastiani’s 1683 book, Viaggio curioso de’ palazzi, e ville più notabili di Roma. Sebastiani describes the location of the Pan against the wall without associating it with Michelangelo. “There are gardens, vegetable gardens, vineyards, woods, avenues, but what is more than amazing is a Labyrinth arranged in the form of a gallery in a forest, and adorned with ancient statues, and in good taste, which seems enchanting. The whole site is adorned with statues, low reliefs, colossi, terms, urns, & other ancient things, & the Satyr and low relief beside the walls are marvelous (il Satiro e basso rilievo accanto le mura riescono di merauiglia)”.

From Pietro Rossini’s 1693 Mercurio Errante, the first page of his detailed (pp. 91-95) description of the Villa Ludovisi. Credit: Google Books

In 1693, Pietro Rossini offers a thorough description of the garden areas of the Villa Ludovisi in his influential Mercurio Errante. It is worth quoting expansively, since here he goes far beyond his predecessors Mortoft and di Sebastiani in providing detail (extending even to measurements), while confirming their reports of the location of the Pan. Rossini measured the gardens’ total circuit as 1500 passi romani (= ca. 2130 meters); the future Viale dei Cipressi that led from the Villa Ludovisi main gate to the colossal “Faustina” (i.e., Juno) as 200 passi in length and 5 passi in width (= ca. 296 x 7.4 meters); and the Labyrinth as 85 passi long and 60 passi wide (= ca. 126 x 89 meters). In the Labyrinth, Rossini places a “curious Egyptian idol;…beautiful Consular figures; two Barbarian Kings, prisoners with their hands tied; the handsome Silenus, who sleeps on an ancient urn decorated with a battle in low relief; the group of the Satyr with the young Faun; the Statue of Leda” as well as sixteen busts of emperors and “the beautiful Statue of Nero in sacrificial dress”.

Rossini then differentiates the Labyrinth to what lies to its north. “You will come out of the Labyrinth, and entering the Vineyard (Vigna) you will see a large Obelisk on the ground, 30 passi long and 5 palmi wide [i.e., 44.4 meters long—a wild exaggeration—and a little more than a meter wide].” The author then turns to the Viale “that corresponds to the Palazzo [i.e., the ex-Orsini Palazzo Grande]”. He measures that as 170 passi long and 3 passi wide (= ca. 252 meters long and 4.5 meters wide). Rossini continues regarding this viale: “at the bottom of it, near the walls of the City, there is a statue of a Satyr by a good craftsperson. Above this one sees an ancient Sepulcher with two portraits. (…vi è la Statua d’un Satiro di buon Artefice. Sopra di questo si vede un Sepolcro antico con dui ritratti). Beyond this, you will continue along the walls toward the west, and you will see the head, whether a colossal one of Alexander Severus or someone else” followed by the Great Battle Sarcophagus, on which Rossini speculates at some length.

Rossini’s account not only confirms for 1693 the placement of the Pan at the top of an avenue that terminates at the Aurelian Wall. It also offers the first literary description of the Pan’s sarcophagus-topped niche, and also suggests that the “Viale del Satiro” was second only to the “Viale dei Cipressi” in dimensions and importance. Later editions of Rossini’s Mercurio Errante (starting with that of 1700) also add more (inaccurate) detail on the sarcophagus, asserting that its inscription identifies it as that of “the consular M. Aurelius and Theodora his wife”. (In reality, it is Aurelius Theodorus and his wife Varia Octavia.)

Joseph Vernet’s 1737 sketch of the “niche”, formed by a sarcophagus and lid mounted on columns, with the Pan (with fig leaf) placed inside, close by the Aurelian Walls that bounded the Villa Ludovisi to the north. Credit: D. Cordellier, P. Rosenberg, & P. Märker, Dessins français du musée de Darmstadt (2007) 459. See also detail below.

The most significant and earliest drawing showing the actual context of the Pan is by Joseph Vernet, dated 1737. It shows at the end of a broad avenue what is unmistakably the Ludovisi Pan, rendered in great detail. Even though Vernet seems trying to be very realistic in his depiction, he shows the Pan without its tree trunk which supports the sculpture. Unlike Vernet’s depiction, the other representations by 18th-century artists display the Pan with its tree trunk. The sculpture in Vernet’s drawing stands on the ground within a façade formed by four columns, two on each side. A surface behind the Pan is visible, with a rectangular niche not much taller than the human-sized statue. Above the columns is placed an unusually deep sarcophagus with a lid depicting a married couple in three dimensions, all against the city wall. There is also the subtle suggestion of a path running horizontally in front of the statue, along the wall. Before the columns on either side are set two low and square objects, which are standing slightly raised on four legs, and seem like small marble bases; presumably, lamps would have been placed on them. The one on the right looks hollow with a raised lid. This drawing also shows two immense cypresses, one on either side of the structure. It is important to note the depiction of this statue with a fig leaf hanging on its genitalia—the earliest rendering of this covering.

Italian antiquarian Francesco De Ficoroni’s testimony regarding the Pan demonstrates that the niche with sarcophagus was still extant in 1744, with the Pan under it. “At the end of this third large road, you can see the curious statue of a Satyr, with an urn [i.e., sarcophagus] on it, where a marriage, with its inscription from a late age, is carved in bas-relief and carved.” (“Nel fine di questo terzo stradone si vede la curiofa statua d’un Satiro, con Sopra un’ urna, dove a bassariluevo e scolpito un Matrimonio, con sua iscrizione del basso secolo.”) As documentary evidence, without mentioning its location, the 31 March 1749 inventory record of the sculptures in the Villa Ludovisi gives the Ludovisi Pan a high value of 4000 scudi. As we have seen in Part II of this study, of statues exhibited outside the Villa Ludovisi, only three earn a higher valuation, each of them colossal in scale.

Following De Ficorini, Ridolfino Venuti’s 1766 book Di Roma Moderna, as part of an extensive description of the sculptures of the Villa Ludovisi, also describes the Ludovisi Pan as positioned against the Aurelian Wall. This comes as part of a survey of “the most noteworthy” statues exhibited outside in or near the area called “the Labyrinth”. He lists nine works in rapid succession: “two captive Barbarian Kings; the beautiful Silenus, who rests on the wineskin; the group of a Satyr with a small Faun; another [group] of Leda, and of Nero; another satyr; and the great head of Alexander Severus. In the avenue on the right you can see the statue, quite curious, of Nero, dressed as a priest; and a beautiful statue of Mercury, with some women gazing at the sky. It is not known whether they are Sibyls or Muses.”

Venuti then reports that there is “on the third avenue”—apparently the Viale del Satiro—”the head of black marble, colossal with hair, and horribly unattractive, perhaps some Lemur or terror-causing god.” This piece is not readily identifiable. He then continues, “At the end [of the third avenue] is the statue of a Satyr with an urn [i.e., sarcophagus] above, where in bas relief there is carved a marriage [scene] with its inscription of late antiquity”. In the very next sentence, Venuti mentions the Great Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus: “further along the Aurelian Walls, there is another large urn, where there is carved a battle between Romans and Persians”.  (Nel terzo viale la testa di marmo nero colossale con capelli, a cesso orribile, forse qualche Dio Lemure, o Terifico; nel fine la statue d’un satiro con sua iscrizione del basso secolo. Interno alle mura d’Aureliano e’un’altra grande urna, ov’e scolpita una battaglia fra Romani, a Persiani, opera del tempo d’Alessandro Severo.)

Moreover, we must note a significantly changed later edition of Pietro Rossini’s Mercurio Errante, originally published in 1693 and discussed above. The 1776 edition literally copies Venuti’s 1766 description of the Ludovisi Pan at the niche against the wall and other statues at the Labyrinth, and so has no independent value.

Hubert Robert’s 1764 depiction of the “niche” at left, along with the colossal Juno at right, against the city wall. Credit: Artstor (with erroneous date ‘1789’)

Indeed, there is good reason to believe that even when Venuti published his guide in 1766, the display of the Pan had seen important changes. In a drawing dated 1764, Hubert Robert depicts a large structure on the site of the original “niche” being examined by two visitors. The façade consists of four noticeably tall columns, and there is now a concave back to the “niche”, and on top a different sarcophagus—much more shallow than the one we find in Vernet’s 1737 drawing, without a three-dimensional lid. Close by on the right side of the structure, the colossal “Juno” is depicted, even though in reality it was much further away along the pathway of the wall. Also, a tall cypress tree is shown on the right side of the “niche”. In the composition, people are shown climbing on the walls; indeed someone is drying clothes on a level above the “niche”. The artist depicts at least four enormous barrels placed somewhat haphazardly around the structure.

It is the whole “niche” structure that dominates Robert’s drawing. He also does not show any sculpture within, because he has chosen a vantage point that hides the statue inside the niche. It would seem that the artist deliberately removes the Pan from view; if so, we may view the incongruous barrels as attributes of the Pan, a substitute for depicting him. As for the unexpected “shallow” sarcophagus on top, as we shall see, the deeper sarcophagus with a three-dimensional lid was indeed at some point removed from the “niche”, to the area just east of Juno, as 1806 drawing from Louis-Pierre Lebas shows.

Separation of the Pan from the Aurelian Wall, and the building of a new aedicula

So far in our discussion, the testimony that the Ludovisi Pan was moved in the mid-eighteenth century from its original location against the city wall (seen in the Vernet sketch of 1737, and in the travel guides of De Ficoroni 1744 and Venuti 1766) to the Labyrinth is slight, essentially only the 1779 account of Magnan. Yet visual confirmation for the removal of the Pan is soon to come, as we shall see, in the first years of the nineteenth century. Drawings from the years 1800-1806 by French architects Louis-Pierre Baltard (1764-1846) and Louis-Hippolyte Lebas (1782-1867) show a different statue in its place at the top of the “Viale del Satiro”. Furthermore, an 1806 drawing by Lebas shows that the original “deep” sarcophagus with its three-dimensional lid that had topped the “niche” was removed and placed further to the east, apparently with its own protective wall.

Louis-Hippolyte Lebas, drawing of the sarcophagus of the “niche” after its move, 1806. Credit: L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts

What was the motivation for this transformation? As Professor Brennan has suggested to me, it was the crumbling of bricks of the Aurelian Wall precisely at the terminus of the Viale del Satiro. This prompted a reevaluation of the niche and caused the Pan to be moved away from the Wall into the Labyrinth, and the deep sarcophagus and its lid to be removed from the niche, and placed further east, where it was in fact protected and highlighted to better effect. Records from the Archivio Boncompagni Ludovisi show that the wall near the Viale del Satiro had suffered a major collapse on 8 April 1786. Prince Antonio (II) Boncompagni Ludovisi and the Conservators of the city of Rome split the cost for the repairs, which came to 350 scudi, each employing their own architects, Melchiorre Passalacqua for the family and Carlo Puri de Marchis (1715-1790) for the city. Patching to the bricks can still be seen in the relevant portion of the Wall today. The Pan may have been moved away from the wall even prior to 1786, if the instability of the Wall was evident.

The second location of the Pan, one assumes in the Labyrinth, was to last just a few decades at most. In the principate of Antonio (II) Boncompagni Ludovisi (1777-1805), and probably before 1800, the original “niche” was reworked into a neoclassical aedicula, with pediment and pitched roof. This aedicula was constructed precisely on the spot of the “niche”, to maintain the strong visual focus on the terminus of the “Viale del Satiro”—but also, we can assume, to offer better protection from falling bricks. In time, this would be the Pan’s third location, where it would remain until the dissolution of the Villa Ludovisi. The likely architect of this structure was Melchiorre Passalacqua, from a famed family of architects, who built the main gate of the Villa Ludovisi in 1809.

Louis-Pierre Baltard (1800-1802), drawing of the new aedicula with a female sculpture against the city wall. Credit: Bibliothèque municipale de Bordeaux

The new aedicula itself in fact shows three stages of development. The first artistic depiction of this new aedicula, dated between 1800-1802 and confirming its placement, is by French architect Louis-Pierre Baltard. The interior of the structure is shown with a romanesque arch in the back, with no ornamentation. Surprisingly, a life-size female figure is shown within. Here Baltard seems to create a deep perspective with the depiction of the female sculpture and its pedestal. Indeed, they look like a mural painting, as a part of the back wall, when compared to the column’s three-dimensionality.

The second depiction of the new aedicula is by the French architect Louis-Hippolyte Lebas, and consists of both an elevation and ground plan. His drawings are probably to be dated to 1806, the year he was at the French Academy in Rome—in the Villa Medici, next door to the Villa Ludovisi. He also sketched the Casino dell’Aurora, in its pre-expansion (1855-1858) state. In Lebas’ elevation, the aedicula is shown with a rectangle back, with fake foliage clustered about. What seems to be a Medusa head has been added to the pediment. Within an unidentified figure is vaguely rendered, more consistent with the female sculpture that Baltard showed us that with our Pan. In truth, Lebas seems not so much interested in the sculpture, which seems deliberately anonymized, as its structure. On the same sheet as this drawing, he depicts the ground plan of the aedicula, with six columns arranged in a 4 x 2 pattern. When comparing Lebas’s depiction of the aedicula with that of Baltard, the placement of the pedestal and the three-dimensionality of the columns are not the same.

Louis-Hippolyte Lebas, ground plan of the aedicula, and elevation of the aedicula with unidentified statue, 1806. Credit: L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts

Indeed, Lebas’s 1806 drawing may capture the moment when the Boncompagni Ludovisi architect is preparing the niche for the Pan—hence the fake vegetation—but has not yet removed the female statue. It remains an open question where the Pan was ca. 1800-1806 when the aedicula was first built. In all likelihood, it was in the Labyrinth. But perhaps it was moved inside the Boncompagni Ludovisi Museum (= Casino Capponi) by Antonio II, and then for reasons of subject matter, moved back out after his death in 1805 by his son Luigi Boncompagni Ludovisi, Prince of Piombino from 1805 to 1841. Wherever the statue was placed, surely it was still kept in a place of honor.

A third phase of the aedicula, with the Pan, finally restored within, can be seen in the 1885 photos of the Villa Ludovisi. The ‘Medusa’ relief sculpture is still intact, as is the fake foliage. But now a wrought-iron fence surrounds the columns, and the pitched roof has gained a chimney. The chimney may belong to the mid-19th century, added at the same time as gas lights are installed on walkways of Villa Ludovisi.

The Pan in its aedicula as it stood in 1885, with chimney installed on roof. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome

Why a chimney? Here Giuseppe Felici in his Villa Ludovisi (p. 256 n. 35) offers an answer. He cites a May 1893 document that envisions the sale of the collection of statues.  Two statues are explicitly left out of the sale: Bernini’s Proserpina, said to be “found at the base of the principal staircase” in the new Palazzo Piombino on Via Veneto; and “the statue of the Satyr that is in the tempietto where is the so-called tiro del calorifero”. The “calorifero” means radiator or heater, and so the phrase (not easily paralleled in Italian) apparently means chimney. Perhaps there was an actual heater in the temple to warm up people on winter walks.

One further point. An 1833 description by marble specialist Faustino Corsi says all the columns—four in front, two behind—were made of “Hymettian marble”, i.e., marble from Mount Hymettus near Athens. And so he thought all six columns to be ancient. In any case, it seems that when the Boncompagni Ludovisi dismantled the “niche” with the sarcophagus, they reused the configuration of 4 columns that fronted the original structure, and surely other elements as well. Schreiber (1880) claims that four columns were ancient; two were modern.

The gradual acceptance of attribution to Michelangelo

As we have seen, the earliest identification of the Ludovisi Pan as a work of Michelangelo dates back to the 1760s. In his Voyage d’un francais en Italie, fait dans les annees 1765 et 1766 (published 1769), Joseph Jerome Le Francois de LaLande conveys his observations from 1765-1766 on the artworks of the Villa Ludovisi. He describes the location of the Pan with the structure (the niche with the columns) and mentions the common attribution of the statue to Michelangelo. In his writing, LaLande indirectly criticizes the sculpture without stating any negative description. Instead, he implied that it was inappropriate to attribute the artwork to Michelangelo. He also adds a brief description of a “semi-colossal” Juno. “One of the alleys has a view, a tomb between four large cypresses, carried in part on four Doric columns without a base…the effect would not be happy without the matting of the walls of the city which pass behind…there is a standing Satyr below, which is said to be by Michelangelo, but which does not correspond to the reputation of this author. At the end of another aisle is a figure of a semi-colossal woman, whose draperies are well rendered, but whose head and arms not well.” 

Johann Jacob Volkmann (1732-1803) follows LaLande’s account point by point in volume II of his 1770 book, Historische-kritischen Nachrichten von Italien, with a critical tone and without explicitly endorsing or rejecting it. Volkmann praised the Villa Ludovisi garden as “one of the most beautiful in Rome” and described its “labyrinth, fountains, and numerous ancient statues”. He also mentioned the sarcophagus, the niche with columns, and the Pan located between “four cypress trees”. Volkmann considered the statue to be “mediocre”, however, his implicit reference to previous scholarly reactions suggests that prior to his visit (before 1770), there may have been scholarly opinions that the statue was the work of Michelangelo. “At the end of the avenue stands an old tomb, between four great cypress trees and four Doric columns; beyond it lies the half-derelict city. Under the tombstone is a mediocre Satyr, which is taken to be the work of Michael Angelo.”  

However, the first unqualified attribution of the Pan to Michelangelo is the Lacombe dictionary, Dictionnaire historique et géographique portatif de l’Italie…A-M, Volume 1, published in 1775, which has the following anonymous entry. “The gardens, works of [André] Le Nôtre [1613-1700], are charming: they contain beautiful statues, an ancient colossal Faustina [i.e., the Juno]; a natural-size Satyr, by Michelangelo; an ancient Silenus, sleeping with his head leaning on a wineskin; an ancient tomb between four tall cypress trees, offering a vantage point to one of the avenues.” This description is too brief to indicate whether the Pan was still in its original location against the city wall, though the mention directly following the Juno implies it.

Next, in his 1779 book Descrizione Della Citta di Roma II, the French abbot Dominique Magnan (1731-1796) also considers the Pan as by Michelangelo’s hand and interestingly describes this statue at its second location—the Labyrinth proper. It is a summary list, overlapping in good measure with that of Venuti (1766), and his description mentions nothing about a structure for the Pan. “There you can see a labyrinth, a beautiful variety of avenues, most of them made up of cypresses, laurels and holm oaks, basins, jets of water, urns, busts, ancient bas-reliefs, and a large number of statues, among which we observe the figure of a half-colossal woman, whose draperies are plain; a reclining Silenus; two captive Kings; a group of a satyr and a faun; Nero in a priestly dress; Mercury in the company of women who look at Heaven; and a standing satyr of natural size, made by Michel’Angiolo Buonarroti” (un Satiro in piedi di naturale grandezza, fatto da Michel’Angiolo Buonaroti.) 

However, the impact of these early attributions to Michelangelo initially seems quite limited. In 1780, as I discussed in Part II, the famed neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822) sketched the Ludovisi Pan on the same sheet with an ancient group of sculptures, Pan and Daphnis (now in Palazzo Altemps). In a travel diary for the years 1779-1780 (published in 1957) Canova, at the time aged 22, tells how he visited the Ludovisi Pan on Wednesday 26 April 1780, and he drew this statue the following week, on Saturday 6 May. But he knows nothing of its identification as a work of Michelangelo.

Antonio Canova, Statue of Pan and Group of Pan and Daphnis, 1780. Bassano, Museo Civico (Neg. E. b. 15 1026). From Palma, MNR I 4 (1983) 162.

In his diary of the first visit to the Villa Ludovisi, Canova mentions the statues and sarcophagi in the garden and inside four consecutive rooms of the Casino dell’Aurora. For the exterior art, after mentioning other statues and sarcophagi, he notes another sarcophagus and then a satyr—our Ludovisi Pan—and he highlights its high quality and doubts about whether it is ancient. (Vi sono altri sarcofagi, e poi un satiro di buona scultura ma non lo credo antico). For this initial visit, he says that he did not start to draw the statues because a servant always accompanied him on this day. On Thursday 27 April, he started drawing interior statues, such as the “Gladiator” (= Dying Gaul) and Mars. After visiting several other places in Rome, at the end of the following week, he returned to the Villa Ludovisi. On 6 May, in the morning, Canova draws first the Ludovisi Pan, and then another sketch, that of the Pan and Daphnis group. (Roma 6 Maggio 1780: Questa mattina andiedi dopo la cademia nella villa Ludovisi e mi misi a disegnare il Sattiro, poi fecci unaltro schizzo del gruppo del satiro che insagna a sonare la zampogna ad un fauno …)

Canova does not note the Pan’s location other than the fact it is outside. Nor does he have anything to say about a protective structure. Yet Canova’s testimony is of extreme importance for our study, for it shows that he admired its workmanship, was unaware of the statue’s recent attribution (Lacombe 1775, Magnan 1779) to Michelangelo, and indeed felt compelled to note that he did not think the Pan to be ancient. Canova in his actual drawing also depicts a hole in Pan’s genitalia that marks the place where a fig leaf would be mounted, confirming Joseph Vernet’s 1737 depiction showing that enormous fig leaf. The 1885 historical photos show the statue still with this fig leaf.

The Swiss painter and writer Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) independently shared Canova’s suspicions on the Pan, but developed those thoughts more fully: he argued that the work was a Renaissance classicizing statue that predated Michelangelo. Fuseli says the statue was not ancient, but so close to Michelangelo’s style that Michelangelo modeled his Moses on it. He thought that Michelangelo studied the statue for an arm and the head of Moses. However, he does not say that it was by Michelangelo.

“In his Lectures”, wrote James Dennistoun in 1851, “Fuseli has exposed several of [the Moses’] defects, and the impression it most frequently leaves upon the spectator is thus aptly expressed by him in an Italian letter to the translator of [Daniel] Webb On the Beautiful”.  The reference is to Irish writer Daniel Webb’s An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting (London 1760), which in 1791 was published in Venice in an Italian translation by Maria Quarini Stampalia (†1849).

Then follows a quotation from Fuseli writing to Quarini Stampalia, probably no earlier than ca. 1790: “In the Moses, Michael Angelo has sacrificed beauty to anatomical science, and to his favorite passion for the terrible and the gigantic. If it is true that he looked at the arm of the famous Ludovisi satyr, he probably, also, studied the head, in order to transfer its character to Moses, since both of them resemble that of an old he-goat. There is, notwithstanding, in the figure [of Moses] a quality of monstrous grandeur which cannot be denied to Buonarroti, and which, like a thunderstorm, presaged the bright days of Raffaele.” Fuseli’s views gained wide circulation, and for instance, were quoted by Stendhal in 1817.

The aedicula of the Pan as it stood in 1885; the arrow indicates the new location of the sarcophagus and lid that topped the original “niche”, set up by 1633 and dismantled before 1800. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome

A turning point in the reception of the Pan as a work of Michelangelo seems due to the pioneering Italian archaeologist Carlo Fea (1753-1836), who praises the Ludovisi Pan and for the first time in more than 40 years pronounces it in print as the work of the master. In his 1822 book, Descrizione di Roma e de’ Contorni, vol. II, Fea conveys his observation about the sculpture by walking in the Villa Ludovisi along the Aurelian Wall from west to east. “The gardens are filled with many statues and sculptures, including a colossal head of Alexander, a large sarcophagus representing a battle between the Romans and the Dacians; a statue of Jupiter Ammon: a life-size standing Satyr by Michelangelo, so beautiful that it is comparable to any ancient work (un Satiro in piedi di grandezza naturale di Michelangelo; cosi bello che è paragonabile a qualsivoglia opera antica). [Then] a cinerary urn with bas-relief of a battle between Greeks and Romans; and above it an ancient Silenus asleep; with his head resting on a wineskin.” Fea’s description implies that the Pan is now back against the Wall and in the aedicula.

Soon afterward, Stefano Piale also identifies the Ludovisi Pan as Michelangelo’s work and describes it in the niche against the city walls. In his Le Ville de Rome (1826) he devotes a section to the Villa Ludovisi and the sculptures in the garden. But his account simply translates verbatim that of Magnan 1779  and has no independent value

More authoritative is Italian archaeologist and topographer Antonio Nibby, who describes the statue of Pan as made by Michelangelo in his posthumously published 1841 book Roma nell’anno MDCCCXXXVII (vol. II, p. 398 ff.) He relates that in the Villa’s “grove” (bosco) one sees “the colossal sarcophagus, the colossal statue of Pluto, the colossal head of Alexander the Great, a semi-colossal figure reclining, a Silenus immersed in sleep, two captive barbarian kings, the Satyr by Michelangelo Buonarroti.” Nibby highlights the Pan’s position that the Pan was near “two enormous plane trees”.

In another book published in 1841, Voyage dans l’Italie méridionale, Rome et ses environs IV (p. 203), J.-C. Fulchiron also identifies Ludovisi Pan as Michelangelo’s work and describes it as “one of the most valuable modern sculptures.” Fulchiron characterized Ludovisi Pan as follows: “..among modern marbles, Michelangelo’s Satyr, with a harsh and proud touch, for the impetuous and rough artist never took the time to soften his work; nevertheless, this statue is one of the most valuable modern sculptures.”  A decade later, in 1851, Louis de Sivry in his Dictionnaire géographique, historique etc. copied the same description of Pan from Fulchiron’s book, seconding his attribution of this statue to Michelangelo. 

In 1842, the monumental work of English architect Joseph Gwilt (1784-1863), An Encyclopaedia of Architecture, Historical, Theoretical, and Practical, shows the Pan as Michelangelo’s work, providing a sketch. It is a quite small image, and amazingly the first published representation of the work; everything else we have seen so far has been private sketches and drawings and a photograph in an album produced for the Boncompagni Ludovisi family. Gwilt’s book proved hugely popular and saw many further editions (1859, 1876, 1891, 1899), each time with this sketch of the Ludovisi Pan. As it happens, no other author published an image of the sculpture until Beatrice Palma in her 1985 catalogue of the Ludovisi pieces in the Museo Nazionale Romano. Interestingly, in Gwilt’s volume, the depiction of the face of the sculpture is evocative of Michelangelo’s later appearance portrayed by Daniela da Volterra.

The first published image of the Pan (second from left), in Joseph Gwilt, An Encyclopaedia of Architecture, Historical, Theoretical, and Practical (1842) 739.

After Nibby and Gwilt, identifications of the Pan as by Michelangelo become routine. For example, Giuseppe Robello in his 1854 book, Les curiosités de Rome et de ses environs, devotes a section on Villa Ludovisi. “Walking through the alleys of the villa, you can still see many statues, busts, bas-reliefs, and antique urns. You will notice, among other things, a satyr which can compete with the best Greek works; it is by Michelangelo.” Moreover, in his 1855 Italie: guide du jeune voyageur, L’Abbe Moyne describes the statues in the garden of Villa Ludovisi and considers the Pan by Michelangelo as one of its priceless pieces. “It takes nothing less than the Villa Ludovisi to make you forget the Capuchins [i.e., their notoriously grisly crypt, now on Via Veneto]. Located on the slope of Mount Pincius, it occupies part of the gardens of Sallust; Le Nôtre, its designer, inspired by this memory, seems to have wanted to surpass himself in his decoration. Although the Ludovisi villa has not retained all of its reputation and rival villas are now vying for public recognition, it deserves, more than many others, to be visited. Its three palaces contain treasures of sculpture and painting. The antique groups of Orestes and Electra; a draped statue, the Repose of Mars; the death of Paetus and Arria; the Satyr by Michelangelo; and the Proserpina by Bernini are priceless pieces.”

Edmond Lafond in his 1856 book, Rome, lettres d’un pèlerin, vol. II, similarly considers the Pan to be Michelangelo’s work. “Let’s go back to Villa Ludovisi”, he writes. “Its gardens, carved into the old gardens of Sallust, extend to the crenelated walls of the City which form a magnificent enclosure. There, at the end of an aisle, is a colossal Satyr by Michelangelo (On y trouve, au fond d’une allée, un Satyre colossal de Michel-Ange.)” This is the first author to describe the statue as “colossal”; perhaps he did not walk the full length of the path he reports and so saw the sculpture at a distance. The French poet and writer Louise Colet in her book L’Italie des Italiens: Rome, published in 1864, also mentions the Pan as a highlight in her detailed description of the Villa Ludovisi. Among the sculptures found in the gardens, there is “a superb statue attributed to Michelangelo’s radiant throne”.

Former site (as seen in April 2021) of the Pan aedicula, against the wall near the intersection of the present day Via Campania and Via Toscana. The ground level is several meters lower today, thanks to the post-1885 construction work that formed the Rione Ludovisi. Credit: Google Streetview

Yet against Fea, Nibby, Gwilt and these others, the Swiss art historian Jacob Burckhardt took a different position. In his 1855 book Der Cicerone: Eine Anleitung Zum Genuss der der Kunstwerke Italiens, in a quick survey of satyr sculptures in Rome, he states that the Ludovisi Pan was not executed by Michelangelo but by a later 16th-century imitator. Burckhardt does not tell us how he arrived at that conclusion. But his point indicates that contemporary visitors now generally believed the Pan to be by the master. “Often [one finds] a small Pan in a cloak with the multi-piped shepherd’s flute in his hand, with a funny expression of waiting and watching”, writes Burckhardt. He cites examples in the courtyard of the Capitoline Museums, and “also in the garden of the Villa Albani; the one in the garden of the Villa Ludovisi is a work of the 16th century, but not by Michelangelo, but by an affected imitator of the same (derjenige im Garten der Villa Ludovisi ist ein Werk des 16. Jahrhunderts, aber nicht von Michelangelo, sondern von einem affektierten Nachahmer desselben).”

If French journalist and critic Armand de Pontmartin (1811-1890) knew of Burckhardt’s views on the Pan, he ignored them. In his 1865 book Nouveaux samedis vol. II, de Pontmartin offers an imaginative dialogue between the Pan and an author who visits the Villa Ludovisi, fascinated by the statue’s vivid details. (For the sculpture’s features as they once appeared, see my Part II.) In this story, the narrator explicitly believes that this statue was made by Michelangelo.

Pontmartin writes, “The author goes a step further, and finds himself in the presence of a satyr. The gigantic shadow of Michelangelo hovers over this ensemble like an eagle over its threshing floor.” Then, significantly, de Pontmartin points out how the vivid and life-like depiction of the god Pan impressed the visitor and prompted an intense dialogue between them. “Then it seems that the marble satyr comes to life and that his flesh quivers before his eyes, in this imagination endowed with such life that it vivifies death and idealizes matter.” Furthermore, we are told that “between the walker and the statue a dialogue is established which sums up the immortal antagonism, the implacable duel of good and evil, of the soul and the senses, of the spirit of clarity and the spirit of darkness, Christianity and paganism”. 

It is quite important to state that de Pontmartin’s testimony confirms not only the strong belief in the mid-19th century that the sculptor of the Pan was Michelangelo but also the unfortunate loss of details of this statue—details which we have seen fascinated 18th-century artists. Similarly, Michelangelo’s sculptural language—especially his depiction of the anatomical details—gives the same sense to viewers, largely lost in replicas such as that of his David.

Writing in 1870, the French critic Jean-Baptiste Joseph Émile Montégut (1825-1895) considered the Pan to be Michelangelo’s, yet categorized it as a “secondary work” among those of the master in Rome. “I pass over a few works of secondary importance”, says Montégut, “of no interest to anyone who has not seen Rome: a head of Christ at Santa Agnese at Porta Pia; a painting representing Christ on the cross in the Doria Palace; two figures of apostles, fresco painting studies, made by Michelangelo in his youth, in the Borghese Palace; his own portrait, at the Capitoline Gallery. Among these works, most of which are moreover contested, there are some that we will have occasion to find on the way, the Satyr of the Villa Ludovisi for example; but we cannot however omit the frescoes executed for the Pauline Chapel, in the Vatican”. Finally, one notes that in the Fratelli Treves guide Rome and the Environs (1889 with later editions), there is a very interesting and indeed wild interpretation of the Pan’s animal pelt hanging over his right shoulder—one of the characteristic features of the god Pan. “In the Garden are several ancient statues and sarcophagi”, we are told. Just two are singled out: “On one of these latter (near the wall) a battle is represented. The satyr bearing his son’s skin, is attributed to Michelangelo.” The origins of this macabre notion are unclear.

Like Burckhardt, Theodor Schreiber in his 1880 catalogue of ancient sculptures in the Villa Ludovisi was unwilling to accept this Pan’s attribution to the master, although he interpreted the sculpture he found in the aedicula against the wall as “Michelangelesque” (“Michelangelesken Pan” or “Michelangelesken Satyr”) and so admits the stylistic resemblances between Michelangelo’s works of art and the Pan. Schreiber gives no reason for his conclusion. Though he discusses with great authority what lid originally went on the sarcophagus in the original “niche”, he says nothing about the Medusa head set into the pediment of the aedicula (confirmed by the 1885 photos). That may suggest Schreiber thought the relief was modern.

The alleged substitution of the Ludovisi Satiro Versante for the Ludovisi Pan

In my Part II, I have already discussed a consequential mistake on the part of Boncompagni Ludovisi family archivist Giuseppe Felici in his understanding of the placement of the Pan. In his 1952 Villa Ludovisi in Roma, Felici argued that it was the ‘Satiro versante’ (= Pouring Satyr, MNR inv. 8597) that gave the name to the “Viale del Satiro”, and only at a late stage was switched with the Ludovisi Pan. Beatrice Palma (1985) followed Felici in this, and introduced a further error by ignoring the sarcophagus on four columns, thinking that the aedicula was always there (see especially Palma I 4 p. 211; also p. 84 on 1641, p. 125 on 1720-1730, and p. 132 on 1733). Moreover, even though 1633 and 1733 inventory records marked the Ludovisi Pan at the niche against the wall, Felici believed that it was the “Pouring Satyr” in the niche until the early 19th century.

Stereoscopic image (ca. 1859) by the Naples firm of Grillet of the “Satiro Versante”(Schreiber no. 71) as it was exhibited in Sala II of the Museo Boncompagni Ludovisi in the Villa Ludovisi. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.

Felici’s mistake does not need extensive refutation: the Vernet drawing from 1737 (which he did not know) shows the Ludovisi Pan in the niche, and the Baltard and Lebas drawings make it clear that there is a female sculpture in a newly-built aedicula between 1800 and 1806. No image shows the Satiro Versante in a garden setting. Considering all the findings presented here from the inventories of the Villa Ludovisi, from artists’ and architects’ renderings, and various guidebooks, we can soundly reject Felici’s claim that the Satiro Versante was originally placed against the wall in the niche. Palma herself (I 4 p. 53) informs us in 1665 the Satiro Versante was recorded indoors, in the Casino dell’Aurora, in the “Room of the Clock” (Stanza dell’ Orologio).

In truth, the fact that Felici found the Ludovisi Pan as of “a repugnant and obscene appearance” (… d’aspetto ripugnante ed osceno…) seems to have affected his usually solid academic judgment. Yet Felici’s criticisms of the appearance of the Ludovisi Pan misled not only himself but also subsequent experts about the placement of the statue, and the source of the name of the “Viale”. Moreover, Felici’s strong reaction to the Ludovisi Pan also negatively impacted his overall interpretation and the later reception of Ludovisi Pan.

Felici does usefully provide for us the exact terminal date of the move of the Ludovisi Pan to its present location, its fourth, outside the southwest wing of Casino dell’Aurora: 20 February 1901. Felici notes that “today [i.e., in 1952] ‘il satiro Michelangelosco’ is exhibited in the garden around the Casino dell’Aurora, where this statue was transported just ahead of 20 February 1901.” Interestingly, Felici himself admits the stylistic similarities with Michelangelo. Nevertheless, at some point in the latter half of the 20th century, a tree was grown by the Boncompagni Ludovisi in front of the statue, evidently because of the embarrassment to the owners. Fortunately, in 2008 or 2009 this tree was removed by Prince Nicolò and Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, and in 2011 the statue was cleaned.

Left: detail of the Ludovisi Pan, October 2022. Photo: T. Corey Brennan. Right: Ludovisi Pan in 1986. Photo: Maria Elisa Micheli, in Palma MNR I 6 (1986).

Other than Felici’s 1952 polemic against the Pan, a two-page 1986 contribution (to Palma, Museo Nazionale Romano: Le Sculture I 6) remains the only scholarly discussion of the statue since the dissolution of the Villa Ludovisi in 1885. In the Palma volume, Maria Elisa Micheli merely describes the statue as a modern work and touches very simply on the attribution to Michelangelo. Micheli’s photos of the statue however are of extreme value. The resemblance between the depiction of the pointed ears of the Pan captured in Micheli’s photos and the pointed ears of Michelangelo’s satyr compared to his Bacchus is remarkable. However, when comparing Micheli’s 1986 photos with my 2022 photos of the Ludovisi Pan in the garden of the Casino dell’Aurora, unfortunately, one can detect marked deterioration in the face of the statue over the past four decades. It can be seen that the right side of the forked beard has been divided into two, and a huge gap is now formed in the middle, noticably losing its old form.

The tree trunks of the Ludovisi Pan and Michelangelo’s David

As my last point, we now turn our focus to the tree trunk depicted to support the statue. When comparing the David’s tree trunk with the Pan, the placement of the right leg in front of the tree trunk looks very different. We can see that the David’s right leg is perfectly settled at the front of a tree trunk. In contrast, the Pan’s tree trunk stands like a column to support the statue. Presumably, Pan’s goat-like legs caused its different placement. Two other reasons for depicting the large tree trunk with the Pan: firstly, to emphasize the rustic nature of the Pan, and secondly, to show inspiration from antique models, especially considering the depiction of ancient statues with large tree trunks.

Left: detail of tree trunk of Michelangelo’s David. Right: detail of tree trunk of the Ludovisi Pan. Photos by the author.

It is also important to bear in mind that ancient satyr sculptures were usually depicted in a sitting position. In marble statues, it is surely very hard to maintain the balance of the whole body with goat-like legs, because the lower part of the legs is very thin when compared to the upper part. As an example, the Della Valle Satyrs have a large rectangular supporting platform to support the whole statue from the back, from bottom to top.

Of course, overall size also makes a big difference. When comparing the David’s colossal body with the tree trunk, the latter seems quite small, and realistically shaped—indeed almost real. The Pan’s tree trunk seems very rough, in fact unfinished, when compared to its detailed body. However, on closer examination, the forked branch at the top of the trunk of the David, with all pruned branches, is similar in idea to that of the Pan, though there the forked branch seems unfinished.  Significantly, we know from the drawings that so many details of this Pan have largely disappeared. Still, the chisel marks on the tree trunk are visible, and invite technical study.

Conclusions

The visual and documentary evidence presented in the three parts of my article defends the traditional attribution of the Ludovisi Pan to Michelangelo. As visual evidence, we have demonstrated that two of the master’s drawings—the Dream and the Frankfurt sheet—show strong stylistic similarities with the Pan, especially in the facial depictions. These two drawings should be accepted as visual evidence supporting attribution to the master.

Regarding the acceptance and attribution of Ludovisi Pan to Michelangelo, my research has furthermore revealed important reactions from many French, Italian, and German artists and writers of guidebooks, from the 17th century to the late 19th century. No authority seems to have identified this Pan by Michelangelo until 1775. Despite positive reactions to the Pan and general acceptance of Michelangelo as its sculptor in the 19th century, Burckhardt followed by Schreiber were resistant, without offering a rationale. It is fair to state that their interpretations negatively affected the work’s later acceptance. More generally, the lack of a satisfactory published public image of the statue and the failure to produce a cast of this Pan to be created and exported formed essential problems for its acceptance.

Here in Part III, the main reason I have focused in such detail on Pan’s journey (its placement and treatment) is to demonstrate how this statue’s display directly affected its reception. The inventory records of the Villa Ludovisi which I presented in Part II, and the maps and numerous guidebooks from the 16th and 17th centuries discussed in Part III, show that the Ludovisi Pan was displayed in four different locations and conditions. The original location of this statue was against the city wall. Even though many guidebooks describe this statue at its first location, until 1775 they did not identify this statue as Michelangelo’s work. Although Volkmann in 1770 characterized the Ludovisi Pan as “mediocre” and like LaLande (1769) appeared to be reluctant to accept its attribution to Michelangelo, he suggests that there were prior opinions identifying the statue as a work by Michelangelo. Unfortunately, when they do—first in a dictionary—as yet we cannot provide the name of the author who first identified the Pan as Michelangelo’s work.

Then Magnan (1779) accepts this statue as Michelangelo’s work and describes this statue at its second location, at the Labyrinth. For a few decades at the end of the 18th century it indeed seems to have been relocated, but only to protect it from a crumbling wall and to allow a more protective covering to be built. By the early nineteenth century, we see the Pan restored to its original place against the wall.

As seen in all the inventory records, visual evidence, and guidebooks, we can say that it was placed in a very dignified position and formed one of the main focal points of the entire garden. Felici’s attempt to posit the Satiro Versante at the aedicula while ignoring Pan, offering (uncharacteristically) misleading information, shows the importance of this location for placement of a statue. Practically alone of the sculptures in the gardens it received a fence in the 19th century, and alone of all the statues it had its own heater. This statue has been located in the garden of the Casino dell’Aurora since 1901. Yet the fact that the statue was then deliberately hidden behind a tree highlights the nature of its reception in the late 20th century and the very beginning of the 21st century.

Furthermore, this study exposed how this statue has lost so much detail standing outside for at least four hundred years, in the last ca. 125 of which it has been unprotected. Representations of the Ludovisi Pan by 18th-century artists—particularly the very detailed 1723 depiction by artist Hamlet Winstanley that we closely discussed in Part II—as well as historical photos from 1885 have revealed these disappeared anatomical details. When comparing the Pan’s present state to its former condition, it is clear that this particular statue has suffered an unfortunate loss of detail, especially in the face and beard and the anatomical features such as the depiction of veins in his left arm.

Another major factor affecting the reception of this Pan statute is its problematic subject as a Greek god with an erect phallus. That not only negatively affected its exhibition and its reputation, but also delayed its attribution to Michelangelo, as guidebooks shows. For this reason, this statue early on (certainly by 1737) gained a fig leaf, a feature still visible in the 1885 photos.

This tragic scenario is evocative of the story of the cast of Michelangelo’s David in London. In 1857, the Grand Duke of Tuscany commissioned a cast of the David to present to Queen Victoria. The Queen gave this statue to the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) because of embarrassment. Whenever the Queen visited the sculpture, they covered his genitalia with this leaf. This fig leaf is now exhibited separately in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

It is important to note that eighteenth-century depictions of this Pan by Winstanley, Canova, Batoni, and Ciferri show the statue without a fig leaf. We can assume that these artists were able to move this leaf for drawing; the depiction of the hole on the genitalia in Canova’s 1780 drawing provides evidence for this claim. Indeed, its subject matter caused artists and scholars to fail to attribute this statue to Michelangelo consistently until the mid-nineteenth century, which in turn affected its later reception. 

Moreover, this statue, which eventually was hidden behind a tree in the late twentieth century due to its problematic subject, was abandoned to its fate, unprotected—despite the efforts of Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi in 2010 to move it inside the Casino dell’Aurora, for which permission was denied by the relevant authorities. Its display in the garden has caused many details to be lost and influenced the few modern scholars who have seen the sculpture to undervalue it.  

Even though this study, which examines the Ludovisi Pan in terms of representation, style, position and display, has brought to light much forgotten or ignored scholarly recognition showing this statue as Michelangelo’s work, it is not yet complete. We need to explore further to uncover unresolved issues, most urgently, the ultimate origin of this statue. A new investigation for Part IV will turn our focus to the Orsini archive and its sculpture collection, to investigate the possibility that the Pan came to Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi as a result of his purchase of the Orsini vigna with its Palazzo Grande and large obelisk in 1622.

A second aim will be to identify the female sculpture temporarily placed in the Pan’s aedicula in the late 18th century (as Baltard shows us), and also find the location of the Pan during that time. Ultimately, of course, a scientific analysis of the Pan’s marble and a technical study of the sculpture’s carving techniques are highly desirable, and will surely give us more information.

I conclude Part III of our deep investigation of the Ludovisi Pan with an important question to consider about this statue. How does a sculpture attributed to Michelangelo for 100 years deserve this unacceptable treatment today? Fortunately we still can stylistically compare this sculpture with works of art by Michelangelo, and reveal a great deal of correspondence. That means we still have details to preserve. The time is now to act and make a change, to conserve this once highly-regarded sculpture.

Hatice Köroğlu Çam is a 2022 graduate of Rutgers University, with a degree in Art History, and has been researching the statue of Pan under the direction of Professor T. Corey Brennan since January 2022. Hatice plans to pursue her academic journey towards a Ph.D., including further research into this Pan project. She expresses her sincerest gratitude to Professor Brennan for introducing her to this statue and encouraging her throughout the process of this research, for providing to her numerous guidebooks, his translation of all Italian documents, and his significant contributions, interpretations, guidance, and support. She extends a special thanks to HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi for her wonderful encouragement and inspiration for this project.

HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, CBS Sunday Morning host Mo Rocca, and a pixelated (by CBS) ‘Pan’ for a televised segment on the Casino dell’Aurora that aired 16 April 2017.

By Defne Akçakayalıoğlu (St Andrew’s School ’23)

Letter (detail) from Marie Antoinette to Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi 12 December 1775, congratulating him on his recent appointment as Cardinal. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.

In summer 2010, HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi discovered hidden within a large trunk in a storage area of the Casino dell’Aurora some of the most valuable documents of the private Archivio Boncompagni Ludovisi, most of which in 1947 was given to the Vatican Apostolic Archive. At the top of the trunk’s contents were 13 letters of French king Louis XVI (1754-1793) and 12 of queen Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), none previously known, spanning the years 1775 to 1787.

The French monarchs came to the throne on 10 May 1774, and so the series starts in the second year of their reign. All are addressed to Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi (1743-1790), who was created a Cardinal by Pope Pius VI in 1775, and then Vatican Secretary of State on 29 June 1785. Cardinal Ignazio held the latter post for four years before he had to step down in September 1789 because of poor health. He moved to the healing center of Bagni di Lucca, famous for its thermal baths, where he died in August 1790, aged just 47.

Funerary monument of Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi, recording his career and untimely death at Bagni di Lucca in 1790, aged 47. Set up in 1791 by his elder sister Marianna at the church of St Ignazio, Rome. Photo: T.C. Brennan

Of the 25 recovered letters from Louis XVI (1754-1793) and Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), the first two, each from 1775, congratulate Ignazio on his election as Cardinal. In the rest of the letters, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette thank Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi for New Year’s wishes that he had sent them. They always write from their palace at Versailles, and address him as “Mon Cousin”, because of his status as a prince, not because of actual family ties.

The timing of the letters raises interesting speculations. The 1775 letters are both dated 12 December 1775, which is almost exactly one month after Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi’s appointment as Cardinal on 13 November 1775. The lateness with which Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette chose to congratulate him may display their lack of immediate concern for the Cardinal, who in fact may have initiated the correspondence. It seems that they are writing out of formality and the structure of social expectations rather than any genuine excitement about his appointment. The archive at the Casino dell’Aurora contains another letter of congratulation to the Cardinal on his appointment, from Marie Antoinette’s mother, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. That is dated 7 December 1775.

Medal commemorating the marriage of the future Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette on 16 May 1770. Credit: Jean Elsen & ses Fils S.A., Auction 124, Lot 1849, 14 March 2015.

As noted, each of the letters from the French royals that date between 1776 and 1787 are acknowledgements of New Year’s wishes, responding to the Cardinal’s original letter. New Year’s was one of the most important days of the year in the French court of the time, and was the occasion for the exchange of gifts, rather than Christmas. The fact that the Cardinal was the first to write in all twelve years again shows how the royal family was not much concerned with being overly deferential to the Cardinal. Rather, they perhaps expected him to write first.

This is reiterated by the dates on the letters. Every letter from Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the years 1776 through 1786 was written on the 31st of January, with one exception: in 1779 Marie Antoinette writes on 30 January. To send someone New Year’s wishes, and particularly to respond to previously-sent New Year’s regards, the end of January would be the last socially acceptable date to respond, as the new year is well underway by February. This appears to demonstrate that, for the French royals, the Cardinal was of less significance to them compared to others with whom they had personal ties, who must have received letters much earlier, or maybe even received an initiating letter as opposed to a response to a letter.

Letter (detail) from Marie Antoinette to Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi 31 January 1787, noting that he had rushed his traditional New Year’s greetings. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.

From this, it can be inferred that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette considered their social and political position far enough above the Cardinal to warrant such a late response, fearing no negative repercussions. In fact, the royals may have allotted the last day of January to write all such routine letters to Cardinals. A recently auctioned letter from 1791 addressed by Marie Antoinette to Cardinal Stefano Borgia (1731-1789-1804) is very close in content to the impersonal letters in the Boncompagni Ludovisi collection, and is similarly dated to the 31st of January of that year.

Etching by Angelo Campanella of Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi (1743-1775-1790). Credit: Creative Commons.

Because of this social hierarchy, Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi wrote his New Year’s letters relatively early. Louis XVI mentions in four letters from four different years (1777, 1779, 1780, and 1783) that the Cardinal’s letter was dated the 25th of November of the previous year. It may be assumed that the Cardinal would write to both king and queen on the same date, although Marie Antoinette never specifically mentions this in her letters. Ergo, it may be inferred that, for the Cardinal, the royal family was of considerable significance given how early he chose to send them letters, even though he, by the third of fourth year of correspondence, could certainly expect their late responses.

Interestingly, we can tell from Louis XVI’s 1787 letter of response that in the previous year, Cardinal Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi wrote even earlier—on the 22nd of November 1786 now under his new title as Vatican Secretary of State. It is possible that, due to his heightened position, he was awaiting an earlier response from the royal family. Unfortunately for him, this was not the case.

Not only do the king and queen again respond late, but Marie Antoinette actually questions him for his quickness: “you seem to be in a rush.” In the same year, Louis XVI responds not on the final day of January, but on the final day of February.

Letter (detail) from Louis XVI to Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi 28 February 1787, sent a full month later than any other letter in the long series of New Year’s greetings between monarchs and cardinal. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.

Following the 1787 exchange, there are no further letters in the Archivio Boncompagni Ludovii between Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI, and the Cardinal. This may suggest that the French royal family was pushing the Cardinal out of their social circle, perhaps for being too pushy with his new position. In any case, the thirteen year series of letters 1775-1787 reveals a previously unknown connection between the French court of Louis XVI and this important Cardinal, and also sheds fascinating light on the official personalities of the monarchs.

Melis Akçakayalıoğlu and I have transcribed below, with translation, the 1786 and 1787 letters from king and queen to the Cardinal which end the long series of their correspondence:

MARIE ANTOINETTE 31 JANUARY 1786

Vous ne pouvez douter que je ne reçoive votre sentiment à l’occasion de la nouvelle année avec autant de satisfaction que j’en ai à me persuader que votre attachement à ma personne est une suite de/du sentiment que vous avez toujours eu pour moi. Je saisirai avec plaisir l’occasion de vous en témoigner ma sensibilité en vous (donnant) la marque de ma bienveillance. Sur ce je prie Dieu qu’il vous ait, Mon Cousin, en sa Sainte digne grâce. Écrit à Versailles le 31 Janvier 1786

Do not doubt that I received your sentiment for the new year with the same satisfaction that I have when I convince myself that the attachment you have for me is the continuation of feelings you always had for me. I would gladly seize the opportunity  to show you my affection by giving you tokens of my kindness.  Thereupon I pray God has you, my Cousin, in his holy worthy grace. Written at Versailles on the 31st of January 1786. Marie Antoinette. [Countersigned by her secretary Nicolas-Joseph Beaugeard]

LOUIS XVI 31 JANUARY 1786

Mon cousin, les vœux que vous formez pour moi à l’occasion du renouvellement de l’ année me flattent autant que le sentiment que vous me témoignez pour ma satisfaction et ma prospérité. Je suis aussi persuadé de leur sincérité que vous devez l’être du désir que j’ai de vous faire ressentir les effets de mon estime et de mon affection. Sur ce je prie Dieu qu’il vous ait, Mon Cousin, en sa sainte digne grâce. Écrit à Versailles le 31 Janvier 1786

My cousin, the wishes you wrote to me for the renewal of the year are very flattering, as well as the feelings that you show for my wellness and prosperity. I am convinced of their sincerity as much as you should be convinced of my wish to make you feel my affection and the high esteem. Thereupon I pray God that he has you in his holy worthy grace.  Written at Versailles on the 31st of January 1786. Louis. [Countersigned by his secretary Charles Gravier de Vergennes]

MARIE ANTOINETTE 31 JANUARY 1787

Mon cousin, votre empressement à me faire parvenir les vœux que vous formez pour moi à l’occasion de la nouvelle année ne me permet pas de douter de la sincérité de votre attachement à ma personne. Je désire bien véritablement de trouver l’occasion de vous en témoigner ma sensibilité en vous donnant des preuves de ma bienveillance. Sur ce je prie Dieu qu’il vous ait, mon cousin, en sa sainte et digne grâce. Ecrit à Versailles le 31 Janvier 1787

My Cousin, the rush you are in to send me good wishes for the new year do not allow me to doubt your sincere attachment towards me. I truly wish to find the opportunity to show you my affection by giving you tokens of my kindness. Thereupon I pray God that he has you in his holy worthy grace. Written at Versailles on the 31st of January 1787. Marie Antoinette. [Countersigned by her secretary Nicolas-Joseph Beaugeard]

LOUIS XVI 28 FEBRUARY 1787

Mon Cousin, J’ai reçu la lettre que vous m’avez écrite le 22 Novembre (dernier) j’y vois avec plaisir la sincérité de vos sentiments pour moi et les vœux que vous formez pour ma personne à l’occasion du renouvellement de l’année. Je vous en sais gré (et) vous devez compter sur les assurances que je vous donne bien volontier de ma parfaite estime et de mon affection particulière. Sur ce je prie Dieu qu’il vous ait, Mon Cousin, en sa sainte digne grâce. Écrit à Versailles le 28 Février 1787

My cousin, I received the letter that you wrote to me on the (last) 22nd of November, I see with pleasure the sincerity of your feelings for me and the wishes you formulated for my person upon the renewal of the year. I am grateful for you and you should count on the proofs that I gladly give you of my unique affection and the perfect esteem I hold you in. Thereupon, I pray God that he has you, My Cousin, in his holy worthy grace. Written at Versailles on the 28th of February 1787. Louis. [Countersigned by his secretary Count Armand Marc de Montmorin]

Defne Akçakayalıoğlu, a native of Istanbul, is a senior at St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton FL where she is enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program. In summer 2022 she was a member of the internship program of the Archivio Digitale Boncompagni Ludovisi. She thanks Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi for the opportunity to study the materials in the Casino dell’Aurora archive, as well as Professor T. Corey Brennan (Rutgers University) for his guidance in the internship and suggestions on this article, which he made in consultation with Professor Catriona Seth (Oxford University), though emphasizing that she is not responsible for the views offered here.

Letter (detail of address) from Marie Antoinette to Ignazio Boncompagni Ludovisi, 31 January 1780. All the letters in the 1775-1787 series in the Casino dell’Aurora archive still preserve their original seals as here. Collection †HSH Prince Nicolò and HSH Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, Rome.