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Patronage rivalries: cardinals Odoardo Farnese and Pietro Aldobrandini

This is a comparative study of two cardinals, one from an established papal family, the other a parvenu nephew of Clement VIII (1592-1605). Both were keen political rivals, and also major patrons of the arts. This is based on my reconstruction of Odoardo’s patronage, which formed a major chapter of the Carracci book (above), and extensive research in the Aldobrandini family archive at Frascati, which is part of a larger project for a book, Rome 1600, which was supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Grant from 2003-2006. (The manuscript for the book should be finished by December 2013 , and will be published by Yale University Press, but will not appear in time for REF.) The chapter stresses the particular role of both patrons in the development of a taste for the “classical landscape”, a genre later taken up by major artists such as Poussin and Claude Lorrain. It also raises broader issues about their personal taste for progressive artists, such as Annibale Carracci and Domenichino (but, interestingly not Caravaggio) as opposed to the official constraints of being a cardinal, and especially a cardinal-nephew.