Back to 1815

14.11.1815 - 1844

Workshops at 20 Vicolo delle Colonnette, Piazza Barberini, Rome. Today the street is called Vicolo Barberini.

Primary sources

  • Lease dated 14.11.1815 between Francesco Barberini and Thorvaldsen (“Case poste nel Vicolo delle Colonnette, cioè la Casa posta nel Giardinetto numo. 19. contigua allo Studio ritenuto in affitto dal medo. Sig. Thorvaldsen sege. numo. 20., la Casa posta nel Cortile prossimo numo. 18., e l’altra che hà L’ingresso nel vicolo sudo. numo. 17., tutte spetti. alla lode”).
  • Letter dated 2.1.1816 from C.W. Eckersberg to J.F. Clemens (“At the moment, Thorvaldsen is having a very beautiful and spacious workshop built and equipped, consisting of three separate buildings around a small garden with a fountain, which will be both beautiful and convenient”).

Other references

  • Th. Oppermann: Hermann Ernst Freund, Copenhagen 1916, p. 40 (”[The workshops] consisted of three low buildings surrounding a small garden separated by a wall from the street, Vicolo delle Colonnette. The garden, with its pergola, the large, brown flowerpots, the strongly flagrant oleanders, and the tortoises crawling about made a friendly impression on the visitor and created a harmonious introduction to the workshops with their splendid variety of models of completed works and works in progress.”
  • Friedrich Noack, Das Deutschtum in Rom, vol. 2, Berlin and Leipzig 1927, p. 594.
  • Thiele II, p. 283.
  • Thiele II, p. 128-130 (“Three workshops at the corner of Piazza Barberini and Colonetta di Barberini. Behind one of these, there was a smaller one which was also Thorvaldsen’s. On the other side of Colonetta di Barberini, Thorvaldsen used to have a workshop which he surrendered to his pupil, the sculptor Tenerani”).
  • Thiele II, 1832, p. 129 (“A gate giving admittance to a small garden and an arcade, which in the warmest summer months was shaded from above by vine leaves and hanging grapes and below by a rose hedge, leads to three of our artist’s workshops [...] The garden is practically uncultivated; here and there among the hollyhocks, there is a large reddish-brown flowerpot with an aloe, while the wild roses twine round scattered slabs and blocks of marble which offer shelter to two tortoises crawling about. In one corner of the garden, the workshops and the adjacent richly overgrown wall form a cool grotto, where a small fountain splashes in the mossy basin”).

Last updated 06.01.2017