[1] Donna Olimpia Pamfili, nata Maidalchini, wife of the brother of Innocent X. [↑]
[2] Cancellieri Mercato, § ix. note 7. [↑]
[3] He had not, however, been originally intended for the Church; had been General of the Pontifical forces before he was Cardinal, and was only in Deacon’s orders. [↑]
[4] His simplicity was the subject of many contemporary mots and anecdotes; e.g. at the time of his elevation to the purple the Pasquin statue had been temporarily lost to view by a hoarding put up for the erection of a neighbouring palace; ‘Marforio’ was supposed to express his condolence for the eclipse of his rival in the following distich:
‘Non piangere Pasquino
Chè sarà tuo compagno Maidalchino.’
His want of capacity seems however to have been compensated by his goodness of heart. [↑]
[5] Cancellieri Mercato, § viii. As I have been desirous to put nothing in the text but what has reached myself by verbal tradition, I will add some no less interesting details collected by Cancellieri, in this place.
It was at her house in Piazza Navona that Bernini was rehabilitated in his character of first sculptor and architect of his time. ‘Papa Pamfili,’ though only the son of a tailor,[6] was yet a patron of art. Highly famed under Urban VIII. the preceding Pontiff, Bernini had been misrepresented by his rivals to Innocent. In an unpublished Diary of Giacinto Gigli, Cancellieri finds that he was taken so seriously ill on St. Peter’s Day, 1641[7] that his life was for some time despaired of, in consequence of his Campanile—a specimen one of two he had designed for St. Peter’s—being disapproved by the Pope and ordered to be taken down. Another cognate tradition he gives from a MS. Diary of Valerio is, that in digging the foundations for this tower a ‘canale d’acqua’ was discovered deeper than the bed of the Tiber and wide enough to go on it in a boat; Mgr. Costaguti, maggiordomo of his Holiness, told me about it himself, and he had had himself let down to see it. As it had a sandy bottom, it washed away the foundations of the tower, and rendered it impossible to leave it standing. The water came from Anguillara’ (on Lake Bracciano, about 28 miles) ‘and the Pope had the old conduit reconstructed and used the water for many fountains in imitation of Sixtus V.[8] He goes on to add an extraordinary account of a Dragon quite of the legendary type, that was found in charge of this water, and was killed, not by a hero or a knight, but, by the labourers working at the conduit.