An Ardent Patron explores the exceptional contribution Cardinal Camillo Massimo (1620–1677) made to the culture of seventeenth-century Rome.

A close friend of Nicolas Poussin and Diego Velázquez and an even closer friend of Giovanni Pietro Bellori, Massimo combined a sophisticated intellect with a wide range of cultural interests, wich he pursued with determination. He became a highly regarded antiquarian collector and patron of contemporary artists, including, besides Poussin and Velázquez, Claude Lorraine and Carlo Maratti, and he significantly influenced the taste of the following century. This book reconstructs his patronage and collection in the context of the society that produced him, and argues for his role as an active force promoting particular artists, theories and enterprises in Baroque Rome.

Lisa Beaven is a lecturer in art history at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Her research interests focus on the patronage and collecting of art in seventeenth-century Rome, the early modern history of archaeology and its relationship to the Catholic Church, and landscape painting and the environment.

“A vital contribution to 17th-century Roman studies. […] This book is packed with scholarly research and the illustrations are exemplary in their clarity and pertinence to the text”, Clare Ford-Wille, The Art Newspaper

“Il volume si distingue per la ricchezza della documentazione e per la capacità di intrecciare storia politica, storia del collezionismo e storia dell’arte, offrendo un quadro inedito dei rapporti tra Roma e la Spagna attraverso la figura di Massimo”, Xavier F. Salomon, Storia dell’arte

“A rounded picture of the man and his collections […] an example of the kind of trans-national cosmopolitanism that would have pleased Massimo himself”, Piers A. Baker-Bates, Journal of the History of Collections

“Grâce à Beaven, le personnage, intelligent et chaleureux, épris de beauté idéale et ami de Velázquez, qui fit de lui un admirable portrait (Kingston Lacy), se dessine au centre de tout son monde d’images, tout en gardant sa part de mystère”, Alain Mérot, Revue de l’Art

“Beaven, whose book vastly enriches our knowledge of Cardinal Massimo’s achievements, demonstrates how he developed an unusually consistent taste”, Ann Compton, The Burlington Magazine

“Because of the author’s deep learning and impressive scholarship, An Ardent Patron is a ‘must-have’ for anyone studying the Roman Baroque”, caa.reviews