Marcantonio Sabatini Explained

Marcantonio Sab[b]atini (1637 - 1724), of a noble family of Bologna, was an antiquary and papal curator to Pope Clement XI and art advisor to Charles VI, a central figure among the cognoscenti in Baroque Rome. Under his supervision the pope's nephew, Alessandro Albani, developed the taste for antiquities for which he is remembered;^[1] it was Sabbatini who selected from Albani's collection the antique moss agate carved in high relief with a sleeping tiger that would make a suitable gift to Prince Eugene of Savoy.^[2] Among carved gems the "Strozzi Medusa"^[3] bearing a signature "Solon" passed through Sabatini's collection. Carved gems in his collection were included among those in Paolo Alessandro Maffei's Gemme antiche (Rome: Domenico de' Rossi), 1708; one of them, a head of Vespasian bears the added inscription LAUR. MED. of Lorenzo de' Medici,^[4] which was a habit of Lorenzo's.^[5] A caricature by Pier Leone Ghezzi of Sabbatini and Baron Philipp von Stosch, another renowned antiquary, closely examining engraved gems, is conserved in the Ashmolean museum.^[6] Sabbatini's portrait is in the library of the Università di Bologna.^[7]

Notes and References

1. Seymour Howard, "Some Eighteenth-Century 'Restored' Boxers" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993, pp. 238–255) p. 239.
2. The agate, which Antonio Francesco Gori later considered "unico al mondo", was obtained from Prince Eugene's heirs by Antonio Maria Zanetti, who sold it in 1764 to the Earl Spencer and his countess (Diana Scarisbrick, "Piranesi and the 'Dactyliotheca Zanettiana'" The Burlington Magazine 132 (June 1990:413-414).
3. Now in the British Museum: Arthur Hamilton Smith and Alexander Stuart Murray, A catalogue of engraved gems in the British Museum 1888:148, cat. no. 1256; British Museum: The Strozzi Medusa"
4. Noted by Walter Holzhausen, "Studien zum Schatz des Lorenzo il Magnifico im Palazzo Pitti" Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 3.3 (August 1929:104-131) p.104: "Maffei Gemme figurate", vol. I pl. 34.
5. Observed by Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford:Blackwell) 1973:190.
6. http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/objects/objectviews/WA1863.847.html The Ashmolean Museum: "Due famosi Antiquari': Baron Stosch and Marcantonio Sabbatini"
7. http://www.archiviostorico.unibo.it/template/detailQuadreria.asp?IDFolder=311&IDOggetto=19533 Biblioteca Università di Bologna