Fulvio Orsini

Fulvio Orsini (born December 11, 1529 in Rome ; † in May 1600 ibid) was an Italian late humanist , antiquarian ("antiquarian") and librarian. He did fundamental work in the field of iconography of ancient personalities.

Fulvio Orsini, copper engraving around 1610

Life

Fulvio Orsini came from the Mugnano line of the ancient Roman Orsini family , but was rejected early in his childhood by his father Maerbale Orsini . He was educated around the Farnese family . Probably in 1535 he was canon of the Church of San Giovanni in Laterano , the most important teacher and patron was Gentile Delfini , Antonio Agustín (1516–1586) another teacher. By 1554 at the latest, he was one of the Farnese advisors; In 1558 he became secretary and librarian to Cardinal Ranuccio Farnese . Until his death, he lived in the Palace of the Farnese in Rome, which was one of the political and cultural centers of the city at the time. In 1565, after the death of Ranuccio, he became the curator of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese's collection of antiquities . In 1566 and 1568 he inventoried the collections according to location. Orsini's private collection also contained antique gems that passed into the hands of the Farnese after his death. He also owned autographs and manuscripts , for example by Julius Pomponius Laetus , which went to the Vatican after his death.

Sheet from the imagines et elogia .

In addition to his duties as a librarian and curator, Orsini devoted himself to scientific studies. In 1570 he was able to publish his main work Imagines et elogia virorum illustrium et eruditorum ex antiquis lapidibus et nomismatibus expressa cum annotationibus . Here, inspired by the studies of Achilles Statius , he put together portraits of ancient Greeks and Romans, whose portraits he took from various groups of pictures including their inscriptions . These included herm shafts , busts, sculptures, gems and coins. To do this, he collected information about the appearance of the people, which he gathered from the ancient authors and published with the pictures. He was based on the ancient authors Titus Pomponius Atticus and Marcus Terentius Varro . Most of the pictorial models came from the property of the Farnese and his own collection; he included other Roman collections indirectly through pictures by Pirro Ligorio . The font Familiae Romanae was published without images, although at times it was planned to combine it with images by Theodor Galle , which had been created by Imagines et elogia for a new edition that was ultimately not realized . Here Orisini compiled information on Roman families based on the coins received and arranged them alphabetically according to their names. He used literary and epigraphic sources to comment on images and symbols . In 1574 he was involved in the reconstruction of the ancient city plan of Rome by Étienne Dupérac .

El Greco: Mount Sinai , painting that was in the possession of Orsini.

In addition to the antiquarian iconographic studies, Orsini also worked in the philological field. Among other things, he published an illustrated edition of Virgil, as well as Caesar's Commentarii and the writings of Cicero ; in addition, he dealt with epigraphy. With all of these important publications he made a name for himself across Europe. In 1577 he got a call to the University of Cracow and Vilna , but he turned it down. Before that, he met the painter El Greco in 1570 , who was also employed for a time in the Farnese family. Through Orsini's friend Pedro Chacón , the painter came into contact with the Spaniard Luis de Castilla , who later placed his first orders in Toledo and thus ushered in the most important phase in the artist's work. Orisini himself owned seven works by El Greco. In 1581 Pope Gregory XIII appointed him . to the corretore greco of the Vatican . Since 1589, after the death of Alessandro, he was in the service of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese , who was a well-known art collector and patron.

Orsini's studies were fundamental in many areas and some of them were of long duration. To this day, the names of some ancient portraits are due to the work of Orsini. His order of republican Roman coins was in effect until it was superseded by a chronological order in the 20th century. Its systematization in the Farnese Collection made it the Museum Farnese , one of the central study sites of antiquarian classical studies. Thanks to Orisini, it also had the character of a scuola publica , a publicly accessible educational institution.

Fonts

• Inventario delle statue che sono nel Palazzo Farnese. Rome 1566-1568.
• Virgilius collatione scriptorum graecorum illustratus. Antwerp 1567.
• C. Iulii Caesaris commentarii novis emendationibus illustrati. … Ex bibliotheca Fulvi Ursini. Rome 1570.
• Imagines et elogia virorum illustrium et eruditorum ex antiquis lapidibus et nomismatibus expressa cum annotationibus. Lafrery Formeis, Rome 1570.
• Familiae Romanae Qvae Reperivntvr In Antiqvis Nvmismatibvs Ab Vrbe Condita Ad Tempora Divi Augusti Ex Bibliotheca Fulvi Vrsini. Rome 1577 (Open Access urn: nbn: se: alvin: portal: record-206264 ).
• De legibus et senatus consultis liber. Adiunctis legum antiquar et Senatus consultor. fragmentis. Rome 1583 ( digitized ).
• Notae ad M. Catonem, M. Varronem, L. Columellam de re rustica. Rome 1587 ( digitized version ).
• Illustrium imagines ex antiquis marmoribus nomismatibus et gemmis expressae quae extant Romae, maior pars apud Fulvium Ursinum, editio altera… Theodorus Gallaeus delinebat. Antwerp 1606.

literature

• Pierre de Nolhac : La bibliothèque de Fulvio Orsini. Contributions à l'histoire des collections d'Italie et à l'étude de la Renaissance (= Bibliothèque de l'école des hautes études. Volume 74). F. & E. Vieweg - E. Bouillon, Paris 1887.
• José Ruysschaert: Fulvio Orsini et les élégiaques latins. Notes marginales à une bibliothèque du XVIe s. et à une biography you XIXe. In: Roberto Cardini, Eugenio Garin , Lucia Cesarini Martinelli, Giovanni Pascucci: Tradizione classica e letteratura umanistica. Per Alessandro Perosa II. Rome 1985, pp. 675-684.
• José Ruysschaert: Fulvio Orsini, son père, ses prénoms et les Orsini de Mugnano. In: Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome. Moyen-Age, Temps modern. 99, 1987, pp. 213-230.
• Bertrand Jestaz (ed.): Le palais Farnèse, III, 3. L'inventaire du palais et des propriétés Farnèse à Rome en 1644. École française de Rome, Rome 1994.
• Giuseppina Alessandra Cellini: Il contributo di Fulvio Orsini alla ricerca antiquaria. In: Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Class di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. Memory. Series IX, Volume 18, 2004, pp. 227-513.
• Nunzio Bianchi: Fulvio Orsini ei romanzi greci. Una lista di scrittori di amatoria nel Vat. Gr. 1350. In Quaderni di storia. Volume 73, 2011, pp. 87-103.
• Jörn Lang: Orsini, Fulvio. In: Peter Kuhlmann , Helmuth Schneider (Hrsg.): History of the ancient sciences. Biographical Lexicon (= The New Pauly . Supplements. Volume 6). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02033-8 , Sp. 909-912.

Web links

Commons : Fulvio Orsini  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Orsini at sandrart.net
• Imagines et elogia virorum illustrium et eruditorum ex antiquis lapidibus et nomismatibus , 1570, e-book of the Vienna University Library ( e-books on demand )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ probably on May 18th