Journal of Icon Studies, Volume 4 | Fall 2025

abstract

During the 18th century, the abbot and lawyer Agostino Mariotti (1724-1806) formed an extensive art collection in Rome. Of the 198 paintings that made up the Mariotti collection, 35 were works of what was then understood as the Byzantine style. Mariotti, an important scholar of ancient Greek, collected these panels with a dual purpose: as testimonies of rites of the Orthodox Church in juxtaposition to those of the Western Church, and as reflecting the influence that the school of “Greek” art exerted on Latin schools throughout the Middle Ages. After the death of Mariotti (1806), many of these objects, including Byzantine icons, were purchased in 1820 by the Vatican Museums, where they are still preserved today.

author

Ginevra Odone is an Independent Scholar with a focus on the history of collecting. She is the co-founder of the Italian Chapter of the Society for the History of Collecting, based in London.

citation

Recommended Citation: Ginevra Odone, “Collecting Orthodoxy in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Rome: From the Collection of Agostino Mariotti (1724–1806) to the Vatican Museums (1820–Present),” Journal of Icon Studies 4, 2025

license

The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). All images are reproduced with the permission of the rights holders acknowledged in captions, or are reproduced under license, and are expressly excluded from the CC BY license covering the rest of this publication. These images may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted, or manipulated without consent from the owners, who reserve all rights, and outside the terms of any specified license.

keywords

Agostino Mariotti, Vatican Museums, Greek Icons, Ecclesiastical History.

Objects from the Byzantine or Greek Eastern territories have long been present in Roman collections. However, until at least the seventeenth century, very few objects of this type are mentioned in private inventories. It is only starting in the eighteenth century that we find more objects and more frequent mentions of Eastern art in the collections of important churchmen or scholars; often the works are designated in the inventories as Greek-Russian. This change in taste is echoed in the writings of scholars and art lovers who began to look at the history of painting with a focus on early painting and medieval art with a renewed interest. After recounting the Roman situation in the seventeenth century, this paper will investigate the presence of Byzantine art in Rome between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and explore the reasons why it was collected. I will focus in particular on the collection of Agostino Mariotti (1724–1806), who was a lawyer of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, an antiquarian, and a Greek scholar well known in eighteenth-century Rome. ^[1] By studying his motivations for amassing his rich collection and tracing its placement in the nineteenth century, we can better understand the growing interest in Byzantine art during this period.^[2]

In the seventeenth century, there were already objects recognized as “Greek” or “Byzantine” in some Roman collections, although these were rare exceptions, and their identifications were sometimes false, indicating style rather than origin. These works interested collectors mainly because they were considered tangible connections to the first centuries of Christianity and appealed to scholars who appreciated this era.

An example of such interest is the circle around Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597–1679), nephew of Pope Urban VIII Barberini, which included his librarian, the scholar Leo Allatius (ca. 1586–1669), the collector Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637), and the artist Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657). Allatius, born in Chio, Greece, was a member of an Eastern Orthodox church in communion with the papacy, that is, a Greco-Catholic Church; and he also was an ardent student of the history of the Church and its rites.^[3] He used images and artistic demonstrations to compare the rites of the Eastern Church to those of the Western Church,^[4] and he authored a book about Byzantine architecture titled De templis graecorum (On Greek Temples), published in 1645, which focused on the church of Saint Athanasius in Rome.^[5] His interests certainly influenced Barberinis taste for artwork that originated in the East.

In fact, Barberini’s collection included two famous Byzantine ivories, both published several times over the centuries. The first is the so-called Barberini ivory, a gift from Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc to the cardinal, today on display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.^[6] The second is the triptych now in the Palazzo Venezia Museum in Rome.^[7]In the eighteenth century, an engraving of the Barberini ivory was published in the second volume of the book Thesaurus veterum diptychorum (Treasury of Ancient Diptychs) by Antonio Francesco Gori (1691–1757), issued posthumously by his friend Giovanni Battista Passeri (1694–1780) in 1759.^[8] The French scholar Jean-Baptiste-Louis-Georges Seroux dAgincourt (1730–1814) also commissioned an engraving of this ivory, which was published posthumously in 1823 in his famous six-volume Histoire de l’art par les monumens. (History of Art through Monuments).^[9]

The second ivory is an equally famous masterpiece that was reproduced by Cassiano dal Pozzo in a drawing included in his Museo cartaceo(Paper Museum), which consists of different albums of drawings and watercolors of artworks, now in the Royal Library in Windsor.^[10] Dal Pozzo was also the cupbearer of Francesco Barberini, a role that allowed him privileged access to the Barberini collection.

Another important Roman family of the time, the Giustiniani, also collected Byzantine works of art. The family had come into possession of frescoes and mosaics from the portico of the Old Saint Peters Basilica in Rome. These comprised two fragments depicting Saints Peter and Paul and three mosaics of different ages and styles: a Saint Joseph (705–7 CE), a Deesis from the façade (1227–41) and a Christ Child (1294–1303). The fragments were probably collected to preserve a small relic of various parts of the ancient basilica.”^[11] In their inventories, the family recorded these frescoes and mosaics as being of Byzantine origin, aligning their family lineage with the Byzantine emperor Justinian the Great (482–565 CE), to whom the family name also nods. In reality, these fragments all belonged to the Roman artistic sphere, with the exception ofthe Saint Joseph, the only work that has a true Eastern origin.^[12]

These collections were part a strand of renewed interest in the Christian Middle Ages, inaugurated primarily by Ludovico Antonio Muratoris (1665–1736) Antiquitates italicae medii aevi (Italian Antiquities of the Middle Ages), published between 1738 and 1743^[13]This book’s six volumes present artwork as historical evidence for the first centuries of Christendom. Previous books by Antonio Bosio (1575–1629),^[14]Marcantonio Boldetti (1663–1749),^[15]Giovanni Gaetano Bottari (1689–1775),^[16]Francesco Bianchini (1662–1729), and Giuseppe Bianchini (1704–1764) had dealt with Christian history and consequently touched on medieval works of art. Francesco Bianchini, in particular, advocated for a museum entirely devoted to early Christian works within the papal collections: the Ecclesiastical Museum intended for Pope Clement XI Albani (r. 1700–1721).^[17] This project never materialized, but it soon became very famous, especially in Rome, thanks to the publication of the four volumes of the Demonstratio historiae ecclesiasticae quadripartitae (A Demonstration of Ecclesiastical History in Four Parts), conceived by Francesco Bianchini and published by his nephew Giuseppe between 1752 and 1754. The goal of the Bianchinis was to compare Christian” art and that of ancient Rome by using art as testimony to the growing greatness of the Church.^[18]

In addition to these collections, there were others in Rome, assembled with the intent of documenting the past of the Roman Church. This interest grew during the eighteenth century, when private collections possessing many Byzantine—or purportedly Eastern—objects begin to appear. Worth mentioning are those of the cardinals Francesco Saverio de Zelada (1717–1801)^[19] and Stefano Borgia (1731–1804),^[20] and those of Giuseppe Simone Assemani (1687–1768)^[21]and Francesco Vettori (1692–1770),^[22]respectively custodian of the Vatican Library and primo custode of the Museo Sacro in the Vatican.

Among these prominent collectors, we also find the intriguing figure of the lawyer Agostino Mariotti. He was the owner of a collection created over a span of more than fifty years and consisting of different categories of objects, including numerous Byzantine icons. To understand what drove Mariotti’s interest in the Orthodox world, it is necessary to briefly introduce Mariotti and explain his connection with Greek culture.

Born in a modest family, Mariotti became an abbot and a well-known lawyer in Rome. Like most of the ecclesiastics of his time, he was first and foremost a scholar, specifically a bibliophile, numismatist, member of the Italian literary Academy of Arcadia, expert in antiquities, and collector. He was also known in Rome for his deep knowledge of ancient philology and especially Classical Greek. He studied languages from the age of fourteen with Raffaele Vernazza (d. 1780), an expert of Greek at the Vatican Library, teacher at the Congregazione di Propaganda Fide, and great connoisseur of the Greek scholar and theologian Leo Allatius, mentioned above. Mariotti became so close with his teacher that Vernazza designated him as his heir, and a pair of portraits of Vernazza and Allatius were displayed in Mariottis residence as a reminder of his respect and admiration. The two paintings were donated by the lawyer in 1803 to the Vallicelliana Library, together with all the manuscripts of Allatius and Vernazza that Mariotti held in his personal library.^[23] In addition, I discovered an autograph letter in the archives of the Vatican Library in which Agostino wrote to Seroux d’Agincourt to explain the Greek inscriptions on a “bassissimo tempo” (very ancient) painting representing a Madonna and Child of the Greek school in the collection of the French nobleman.^[24]

The Roman lawyer’s passion for the Greek language also translated into a genuine interest in “Greek” and, more generally, Byzantine works. The Mariotti collection was divided into three broad sections: the Sacred Museum, the Profane Museum, and the Naturalia. The objects of Byzantine origin, due to their intrinsic religious connotation, were entirely included in the Sacred Museum. These works were collected for various reasons, including the need to cover all the centuries of Christian history, which was one of Mariottis primary aims. He explained the reason for this vast chronological period:

Because of the natural inclination for the fine arts that I had since early adolescence, I was able to gather a series of paintings, in which some of them, dated from the coming of the Lord up to Michelangelo, proved the truth of Religion and Ecclesiastical History, while the others, from Michelangelo up to nowadays, testified to the perfection of the drawing.^[25]

In this explanation, Mariotti focused on the paintings, but the same approach can be easily extended to all the objects that made up his collection. As with medieval works, those referred to as “Greek” also fall into the typology of objects that bear witness to the Christian Church. Mariotti’s holdings include paintings, ivory diptychs, wooden objects, and even an ancient manuscript.

Let us start with the paintings. Mariotti’s museum contained 198 paintings of which 35 were Greek, testifying to his avid interest for this kind of art. In Mariotti’s inventories, the icons were accompanied by the qualifying word and phrases: “greco (Greek), “greco-mosco” (Greco-Muscovite), or “opera latina, Scolari dei Greci” (Latin work, [made by] pupils of the Greeks).^[26]

The motivation for Mariotti’s interest was twofold: on the one hand, he wanted to investigate, like many other scholars, the influence of the Greek school on the Latins throughout the Middle Ages; on the other hand, he wanted to study Greek images as testimonies of the Orthodox rites.^[27]An example of one of his objects that served these purposes is the Dormition of the Virgin (Dormitio Virginis) painted by Ioannis Moskos (1635/44–1721).^[28] Archival documents indicate that this icon depicts the Dormitio Virginis alongside the scene of the Holy Belt. The Holy Belt (Sacra Cintola), regarded as the most significant relic of the city of Prato (Italy), is traditionally believed to be the belt of the Virgin Mary, which she is said to have given to the Apostle Thomas as tangible proof of her Assumption into Heaven. The iconography of this specific icon includes two principal scenes: the Assumption of the Virgin, in which she hands the belt to Saint Thomas, and the Dormitio Virginis, depicting the apostles gathered around the Virgin’s lifeless body. This very rare image was analyzed in the book Specimen ecclesiæ Ruthenicæ (A Model of the Ruthenian Church) by Ignatium Kulczynski (1694–1747).^[29] Mariotti likely prized this icon due to its inclusion of this specific iconographic detail, which provided evidence of the Orthodox rites. His knowledge of and passion for the Greek language and culture surely contributed as well to his preference for this type of painting, as testified by his translation and analysis of the inscriptions present on the icons that Mariotti reproduced in his manuscripts.

However, even if the interest in the rites of the Orthodox Church drove Mariotti’s collection of Greek icons and paintings, he was also increasingly drawn to the aesthetics of Eastern art. During the eighteenth century, in Italy as well as in other countries, there was a growing fascination with the works of the Middle Ages, including those of the Greek style. This revaluation was also motivated by authors such as Luigi Lanzi (1732–1810) and Guglielmo Della Valle (1746–1805). They were both interested in Byzantine art because they wanted to reconstruct the genesis of Italy’s pictorial history, starting from the influences of the Greek school and demonstrating how Italian art evolved to achieve different pictorial results. It is no coincidence that these authors both knew Mariotti’s collection, as they visited his apartment for study on different occasions. Indeed, in 1792, in his Lettere Sanesi sopra le belle arti (Sanesi Letters on the Fine Arts) [fig. 1], Della Valle said of Mariotti’s collection, “Greek paintings differ from Latin ones not only for the different Greek or Latin letters affixed to them, but also for the totally different way [of being painted].”^[30] Lanzi, in his Taccuini (Notebooks) of 1794, focused on Christian objects, and specifically on the icons in Mariotti’s collection. He described a triptych representing the Baptism of Christ, the Crucifixion, and the Saints John the Baptist, Mark, and

Nicholas as very beautiful with preserved folds [of the drapery], very reasonable faces and nudes, but with ugly hands and too thin feet. In the Baptism of Our Lord represented as in certain mosaics and bas-reliefs, the water is represented by parallel lines, one above the other, Saint John with camel clothes, the angel who holds the garments. . . . They are believed to be works of Italians, disciples of the Greeks.^[31]

These considerations were also publicized in his best-known text, Storia pittorica d’Italia (The Pictorial History of Italy), published between 1795 and 1796 [fig. 2].^[32] Nevertheless, Lanzi seems to not have accepted the eleventh or twelfth century date put forward by Mariotti for this triptych because, as we can read in Storia pittorica d’Italia, “among the paintings defined as Greco-Muscovite, some are of good quality, [there is] beautiful architecture, they all have a good balance of colors, the feet are well placed . . . I think they are however more recent.”^[33] Today, the triptych is identified as belonging to the sixteenth or seventeenth century.Overall, Mariotti’s proposed dates for his objects were often inaccurate and generally too early, reflecting the Western assumption that the “Greek” style remained static over time. This notion also attracted the attention of Seroux d’Agincourt, who devoted part of his Histoire de l’art to the evolution of the styles of the Greek and Latin schools, emphasizing the influence of the former on the latter, and often assuming that Greek art always came first. As evidence for this theory, the French historian studied several works, including the aforementioned Dormitio Virginis by Ioannis Moskos^[34]The interest in Byzantine art reflects an eagerness for knowledge and connoisseurship of Eastern styles among 18th-century scholars—albeit their conclusions were shaped by their limitations.

A list of the thirty-five icons in the Mariotti collection reveals his fascination with various image types, as well as his largely incorrect dating:

1. Ioannis Moskos, Dormitio Virginis, Mariotti dated to eighteenth century, now dated seventeenth or eighteenth century;

2–4. Panels from a triptych, Mariotti dated eleventh to twelfth
century, now dated sixteenth or seventeenth century:

•The Baptism of Jesus Christ, by the Latin pupils of the Greeks;
•The Crucifixion with Madonna and Saint John the Evangelist;
•Saint John the Baptist with Saints Mark and Nicholas;

5. The Five Doctors of the Eastern Church (Saints Anastasius, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Cyril), Mariotti dated to eight century [fig. 3];^[35]

6. Virgin and Child with Saints Anne, Paraskeva, Helen, and Photini, Mariotti dated between the tenth and eleventh century, now dated to the sixteenth century [fig. 4]

8–9. Moses and Melchizedek, Mariotti dated to twelfth century, now dated between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries;

10. The Annunciation and Selected Saints, inscribed with the date 1551;

11. Giovanni Panalopolo, Jesus Christ, the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist, inscribed with the date 1743;

12–17. Six icons of the Virgin and Child, without further details;

18–20. Three icons of the Virgin Mary, without further details;

21. Dormitio Virginis;

22. A triptych in a silver riza with only the heads of the Virgin, Child, and various saints visible;

23. The Adoration of the Magi;

24. Christ Child Holding the World in His Hand;

25. A triptych with Christ, the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist in the center, and Saints Nicholas of Bari and Maximus on the sides;

26. Christ the Savior Holding the Gospels;

27. Christ the High Priest;

28. Christ and the Adulteress;

29. The Ascension of the Lord with the Virgin and Apostles;

30. A triptych with Saint John the Baptist in the center;

31. An icon of Saints John the Baptist, Anthony, George, and Catherine;

32. The Angels Burying Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai;

33. An icon of Saint Catherine, the Virgin, and an unidentified martyr;

34. Saint George on Horseback;

35. A small icon with Greek bishops.

Besides these icons, Mariotti also owned other works of Greek art, among them eighteen wooden objects. The vast majority were small items, including diptychs, triptychs and crosses that depicted stories from the life of Christ or the apostles.^[36] This group included four crosses, two ovals, and a busso traforato (perforated boxwood), all from the monasteries on Mount Athos.^[37] A boxwood heart “ben lavorato, ed intagliato finissimo” (well worked and very finely carved), was decorated on one side with the image of the Virgin and on the other with a saint.^[38] Another crucifix was considered a “latina” (Latin) work, but it was so beautiful that “it does not have to envy the other [works] described above from Greece”.^[39]It is also important to mention one diptych that was described in the third volume of the history of Benevento written by Cardinal Stefano Borgia, who commissioned an engraving of it by Pietro Leone Bombelli (1737–1809). Mariotti’s collection was mentioned in connection with this piece: “a fine example of a wooden Greek diptych that the lawyer and scholar Agostino Mariotti owns in Rome along with various other sacred antiquities.”^[40] In this text, the cardinal uses Bombelli’s engraving as a parallel to explain the iconography of the birth of Jesus depicted on the door of the cathedral of Benevento.

An overview of Greek objects from Mariotti’s collection should also mention the book Fragmentum troparii graeci, a copy of a Byzantine troparion, or short hymn, which was yet another testimony of the Orthodox rites for its collector.^[41]

Thanks to documents found in the Vatican archives, we can reconstruct the events surrounding the dispersal of the collection when Mariotti passed away in 1806. All the objects passed by inheritance to Mariotti’s sister, Apollonia (dates unknown), and to his brother-in-law, Donato Luparelli (d. 1818). A few months after Donato’s death, Apollonia decided to sell her brother’s whole collection and started negotiations with the Vatican, which immediately showed a pronounced interest in some of the objects. The first document that mentions the sale, dated February 12, 1819, was drafted by Abbot Giuseppe Lelli (d. 1821) and Filippo Aurelio Visconti (1854–1831), the emissaries of Pope Pius VII Chiaramonti (r. 1800–1823).^[42] Lelli had known Mariotti directly because the lawyer had estimated some valuable objects from Lelli’s own collection.^[43] Visconti had succeeded his father, Giovanni Battista (1722–1784), as director of the Pio-Clementino Museum and was therefore very familiar with the pope’s collections.^[44] The list they compiled of works they wished to purchase includes 419 objects accompanied by brief descriptions, as well as their estimations (see table below). From this list, we can see how the pope’s art experts favored Christian coins, medals, and series of lead seals, a category that made up more than half of the objects they wished to purchase, constituting 242 pieces (57.8 percent of the listed items). The second most represented category is icons and paintings, numbering 99 objects, or 23.6 percent of the total.

These data help us understand the interests of the papal collections. The focus on the series of lead seals, for example, can be explained by the rarity of having complete series with all the pieces extant. In addition, some seals were considered rare or extremely rare. As for the other coins and medals, they likely helped complete series already present in the papal collection. The interest in Mariotti’s paintings, however, was more linked to the history of the collections of the Vatican Museums. The Treaty of Tolentino of 1797 and the period of the Roman Republic (1798–99) had resulted in the dispersal of the pope’s collections and the loss of many masterpieces.Napoleon’s military campaigns in Italy led to the occupation of the Papal States, and under the Treaty of Tolentino, the pope was forced to cede territory, pay heavy reparations, and surrender many valuable artworks, which were transported to France.^[45] After the fall of Napoleon (1769–1821), some confiscated pieces returned to Rome, and the pope continued to expand his collections with new acquisitions. The section of his museum dedicated to “primitive” artists (namely artists who were active in the century and a half between Giotto and Raphael) was still very limited, although this type of work was already present in many private Italian and European collections and enjoyed a growing popularity. The Pacca Edict,^[46]published in April 1820, highlights this change of taste and reveals that the categories neglected previously by the pontifical authorities were now officially recognized as worthy of being safeguarded, including all the works that “can illustrate the decadence, the resurrection, and the history of the arts”—meaning that premodern art was now considered important.^[47]For this reason, from 1819 to 1820, the pope decided to purchase the icons and works of “primitive” artists of the Mariotti collection with the aim of decorating the rooms of the Vatican library. The pope was also interested in his frescoes, engraved stones, and miscellaneous objects and acquired a total of seventy-eight pieces.

A breakdown of Lelli and Visconti’s list for papal acquisitions allows us to draw four main conclusions:

1. Icons made up a large number of the paintings from the Lelli-Visconti list, comprising twenty-nine items out of a total of ninety-nine (29.3 percent);

2. Paintings dated to the fourteenth (nineteen works), fifteenth (seventeen works), and sixteenth centuries (eleven works), numbering forty-seven in sum, constituted almost half of the entries (47.5 percent);

3. A sizeable part of the budget allocated to painting acquisition was spent on the icons (448.50 scudi romani [40.9 percent]), followed by early Renaissance paintings from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (respectively, 307 scudi romani [28 percent] and 117 scudi romani [10.7 percent])

4. The average price paid for an icon was 15.47 scudi romani, second only to that paid for a painting from the fourteenth century (16.16 scudi romani).

Most of the twenty-nine icons purchased from the Mariotti collection were small in size, but the most expensive was the large altar triptych with the Annunciation and Selected Saints of 1551, valued at 80 scudi romani, followed by the Virgin and Child with Saints Anne, Paraskevi, Helen, and Photini, estimated at 40 scudi romani. Four other icons were each estimated at 30 scudi romani, such as the Dormition by Ioannis Moskos, the Five Doctors of the Eastern Church, the panel with Moses, and an icon of the Virgin Mary. The pope’s collection already boasted a respectable number of icons thanks to the donation of Francesco Vettori before 1757, and the additions from Mariotti’s collection were intended to help fill in the last chronological and iconographic gaps.

While the archival sources enable a general reconstruction of the collecting preferences of the pope’s emissaries, there is only sufficient information in a few cases to reconstruct the history of individual icons. Regrettably, it is impossible to trace the current location of the entirety of these twenty-nine icons; however, the location of the triptych with the Baptism of Jesus Christ, the Crucifixion, and Saints John the Baptist, Mark, and Nicholas, the Five Doctors of the Eastern Church, the Virgin and Child with Saints Anne, Paraskevi, Helen, and Photini, and the pair of panels representing Moses and Melchizedek is known.^[48]

The paintings and the icons purchased from Mariotti’s collection joined the rooms of the Christian Museum when they entered the papal collection. However, they would not remain there very long, as over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Vatican Museums underwent many changes, with much rearrangement of the galleries and relocation of the objects. Why they were displayed in these rooms rather than in the museum’s picture halls, which would have been the most obvious choice, is something of a mystery. At the time, the works of “primitive” artists and icons were regarded primarily as testimonies of the medieval Christian past, whereas the picture gallery showcased the most important modern works in the Vatican Museums, such as paintings by Raphael (1483–1520) and Caravaggio (1571–1610).^[49]

An important change took place with the 1837 inauguration of the room of paintings of the Middle Ages, commissioned by Pope Gregory XVI Cappellari (r. 1831–46). On this occasion, some of Mariotti’s paintings were moved from the Christian Museum to that new location, which is currently known as the Sala degli Indirizzi (Addresses Room).^[50] The objects here were displayed in twenty cabinets made by Raffaele Stern (1774–1820) in 1820.^[51] This arrangement was much appreciated by the pope’s contemporaries, including Antonio Nibby (1792–1839) who, in 1838, celebrated the new opening in his guide to Rome:

Returning to the hall of ancient paintings, embellished on the high walls with frescoes by Professor Filippo Cavaliere Agricola, you can see around the cabinets rich in American wood, equipped with crystals, made with beautiful architecture and decorated with gilding. Within them are, jealously guarded, many rare paintings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, most of them on panel and all with sacred subjects. These very valuable paintings, excluding a few, come from Mariotti’s museum, and Pope Gregory XVI had them cleaned and decorated with rich frames and here placed and arranged them in a beautiful order.^[52]

Thus, thirty years after his death, Mariotti’s collection continued to interest scholars and art lovers. The investment of the Vatican in Byzantine, or “Greco-Russian,” art prompted Monsignor Gabriele Laureani (1788–1849), primo custode of the Vatican Library, to assemble in the Sacred Museum “a precious collection of the most ancient images of the Christian rite.” ^[53] The upheavals and changes in the museum’s internal structuring in 1854, due to Giuseppe Marchi (1795-1860) and pupil Giovanni Battista De Rossi (1822-1894), were also recalled by the text of Canon Xavier Barbier de Montault (1830–1901), published in 1867 and devoted to the artworks in the various rooms of the Vatican Museums.^[54] According to this guide, immediately after the library, the visitor entered the room of the Museo Sacro, whose objects were divided into three major periods and displayed in six cases and eighteen cabinets. Here viewers encountered “first of all, the Latin art of the catacombs or of the first centuries; [then] the art of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and modern times; and finally Byzantine art, which, having a distinct character, was not to be confused with the art of the West.” ^[55] These latter works were divided according to the material from which they were produced: “We have different categories for goldsmithing, silverware, bronze, enameling, ivory, ceramic, glyptic, numismatic, painting, etc.” ^[56]

The arrangement of the showcases and cupboards still forms a geometric partition today, with the cabinets (three per side) separating the eighteen cupboards (nine per side) in groups of three. The Byzantine section continues to present some works that belonged to Mariotti. We find the icons of the Five Doctors of the Eastern Church, the Virgin and Child with Saints Anne, Paraskevi, Helen, and Photini, and the two Greek paintings of Moses and Melchizedek. At the start of the twentieth century, further changes disrupted the pope’s museums, starting with the Pinacoteca during the pontificate of Pius X Sarto (r. 1903–14). In 1909, he decided to add paintings from the Middle Ages to the picture gallery and to move all of the collections to the ground floor of the Apostolic Palace, into the seven large rooms of the Belvedere corridor, the so-called Bramante Gallery. However, because of the direct sunlight on the works, this arrangement was not retained for long.

The paintings found their current place in the building constructed in 1930–31 by Luca Beltrami (1854–1933), the architect of Pope Pius XI Ratti (r. 1922–39). This new space, opened in 1932, consists of two floors: the lower one houses the conservation and restoration laboratories, the photography cabinet, the depository, and the administration offices. Upstairs is the gallery, following the same ground plan. The new rooms of the Pinacoteca still preserve the layout of 1932, but a chronological arrangement is now privileged over an organization by schools. In addition to these works, this new arrangement was accompanied by the first-ever exhibition to the public of a large number of paintings that were hitherto inaccessible, namely: a set of Byzantine and Russian icons; other paintings from “primitive” artists; panels from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; as well as a number of works previously displayed in the pope’s summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. This display brought on view artworks that had previously been in the pope’s private apartments, the offices of the papal administration, or stored in the depository. The change made it possible to appreciate a large selection of the works preserved in the Vatican and several paintings from the Mariotti collection, which are still exhibited alongside other pieces of the papal collections.

Among the pieces of Mariotti’s collection, we know the current location of six of them. In Room XVIII: Fifteenth to Nineteenth Century (Icon Room), are the Five Doctors of the Eastern Church (display case 7/c, inv. no. 40089), the Virgin and Child with Saints Anne, Paraskevi, Helen, and Photini (display case 7/b, inv. no. 40074), and the Deesis (display case 2/a, inv. no. 40050). In the papal private administration rooms or reserves are the triptych with the Baptism of Jesus Christ, the Crucifixion and Saints John the Baptist, Mark, and Nicholas (inv. nos. 40034–36), the Moses (inv. no. 40892), and the Melchizedek (inv. no. 40893).

This study of the Mariotti collection provides insight to the Roman collections of Eastern art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Mariotti’s great interest in icons was due to his passion for the Greek language and culture. His training and his acclaim as a Hellenist inspired him to collect this class of objects, then still rare in such large numbers in private collections. Marrioti appreciated both the icons’ visual style and their value in documenting Greek devotional practice, hence his attention their inscriptions and iconography. The pope’s acquisition of Mariotti’s rich collection and its current display in the Vatican Museums indicates the lasting importance of this complex and multifaceted man, who is today almost completely forgotten.