Karen J . Lloyd | SUNY: Stony Brook University (original) (raw)

Books by Karen J . Lloyd

Drawing on rich archival research and focusing on works by leading artists including Guido Reni a... more Drawing on rich archival research and focusing on works by leading artists including Guido Reni and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Karen J. Lloyd demonstrates that cardinal nephews in seventeenth-century Rome – those nephews who were raised to the cardinalate as princes of the Church – used the arts to cultivate more than splendid social status.

Through politically savvy frescos and emotionally evocative displays of paintings, sculpture, and curiosities, cardinal nephews aimed to define nepotism as good Catholic rule. Their commissions took advantage of their unique position close to the pope, embedding the defense of their role into the physical fabric of authority, from the storied vaults of the Vatican Palace to the sensuous garden villas that fused business and pleasure in the Eternal City. This book uncovers how cardinal nephews crafted a seductively potent dialogue on the nature of power, fueling the development of innovative visual forms that championed themselves as the indispensable heart of papal politics.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, early modern studies, religious history, and political history.

Part of the series Visual Culture in Early Modernity, Routledge

Articles by Karen J . Lloyd

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 2023

Bolognese painter and printmaker Giovanni Luigi Valesio’s varied output included engravings featu... more Bolognese painter and printmaker Giovanni Luigi Valesio’s varied output included engravings featuring heraldic imagery coupled with allegorical figures and, in some cases, perplexing narratives. Their erudite, panegyric character is typical of thesis prints, elaborate ephemera made for the festive academic defences that flourished in early modern colleges. This essay establishes the heretofore unknown subject of one thesis print and offers a note on the dedicatee and art historical significance of another likely ‘conclusione’. Both prints were dedicated to cardinal nephews, Scipione Borghese and Pietro Aldobrandini respectively, and they situate the position of the cardinal nephew as a militant force against the Ottoman world through learned allusion and consciously affective depictions of captivity. Drawing on the monumental imagery of their respective papacies and offering innovative conflations of historical and allegorical representation, they testify to a visual apologetics of nepotism as good government that permeated art and life in the Papal States.

Journal of the History of Collections, 2018

This article is the second part of a study of the collection of Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri based on... more This article is the second part of a study of the collection of Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri based on the evidence of his 1698 death inventory. Part I considered his paintings collection, housed on the first piano nobile of the palace. This study moves to the second piano nobile apartment and considers a broader range of material objects, including sculpture, tapestry, devotional objects, and naturalia, some of which (such as the American import, chocolate) reflect the globalization of the early modern world. A study of this space is key to fully understanding the nature of Paluzzo’s character as a collector, as well as the status of the ex-cardinal nephew and the complex interactions of the personal and the political in seicento Rome. It is invaluable for furthering our understanding of the broader landscape of collecting and display in Rome at this time.

Journal of the History of Collections, Jul 27, 2015

Using the evidence of his 1698 death inventory, this article reconstructs how Cardinal Paluzzo Al... more Using the evidence of his 1698 death inventory, this article reconstructs how Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri’s collection of paintings and furniture was displayed in his apartment in the Altieri palace in Rome. Although scholars have occasionally cited individual objects, the inventory has never been published. Numerous entries are here linked to extant paintings, providing new provenance information for works in public and private collections. Paluzzo emerges as a cautious collector, single-mindedly directed towards underscoring his piety and his identity as a loyal ex-cardinal nephew. Analysis of the inventory provides a new foundation for considering the patronage dynamics of the important late-seventeenth century Altieri family, and contributes fresh material into the study of collecting and display as self-fashioning in papal Rome. This is part one of a two-part study; the second part will consider Paluzzo's other spaces in the palace, and a broader array of objects, including sculpture, decorative arts, and naturalia.

The Sixteenth Century Journal, 2015

In a moment of renewed zeal for resolutely orthodox literature, Torquato Tasso was inspired by a ... more In a moment of renewed zeal for resolutely orthodox literature, Torquato Tasso was inspired by a painting of the sorrowing Virgin to pen his Stanze per le lagrime di Maria Vergine santissima e di Giesù Cristo nostro (Rome, 1593). The introductory texts to Tasso’s poems, a ‘Note to readers’ and a sonnet by Angelo Ingegneri, underscore the connection to the anonymous painting and its owner, Cardinal Cinzio Passeri Aldobrandini (1551-1610). A nephew of Pope Clement VIII by his sister, Cinzio took on the Aldobrandini name in a practice referred to by contemporaries as an ‘aggregation’. The name alone did not however ensure his influence and a true ‘blood’ nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, persistently challenged his authority. Arising from nepotic tension at the papal court, the publication of Tasso’s Lagrime was a means of promoting Cinzio as a devout, reform-minded prelate favoured by the pope. This essay examines three issues: the status of the aggregated nephew, the nature and reception of the painting at the root of Tasso’s verses, and the conception of sacred art that is presented in the introductory texts accompanying Tasso’s Lagrime. These lines of inquiry open the study of Tasso’s Lagrime to the entwined histories of painting, poetry, and politics in the process of defining what was good sacred art in Counter Reformation Rome.

*note: 'Lucrezia Borgia' (pg. 5) is incorrect - it should read 'Lucrezia d'Este'

This article identifies the correct subject of a painting by Giovan Battista Gaulli (Baciccio) in... more This article identifies the correct subject of a painting by Giovan Battista Gaulli (Baciccio) in the collection of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and establishes the context in and purpose for which the painting was produced.

In The Burlington Magazine (2008) I analyzed a previously unknown document entangling Gian Lorenz... more In The Burlington Magazine (2008) I analyzed a previously unknown document entangling Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s work in the violent public reaction to Pope Urban VIII’s death.

Book Chapters by Karen J . Lloyd

The Discovery of the New World in Early Modern Italy: Encounters with the Americas in the 16th-18th Centuries

Making and Moving Sculpture in Early Modern Italy, editor Kelley Helmstutler di Dio, 2015

When Bernini's equestrian statue of French King Louis XIV was shipped from Rome to Versailles in ... more When Bernini's equestrian statue of French King Louis XIV was shipped from Rome to Versailles in 1685, it was packed up and accompanied by a mason and master artisan named Giacomo Borzacchi. Borzacchi had been in the employ of the Building Works of St. Peter's for over twenty years, working under artists such as Bernini and Carlo Maratti to carry out the unglamorous but crucial tasks necessary to the completion and decoration of one of Rome's most important monuments. In France Borzacchi was presented as an architect and engineer, a significant step up in professional status. His work for the French crown earned him significant monetary rewards, including a gold medal from the French Academy in Rome. Yet, on his return from France Borzacchi went back to his anonymous work at the Vatican, and on his death several years later he left a decidedly modest estate to his wife. Borzacchi's trip with the Louis XIV raises questions about what kinds of expertise were required to move monumental sculpture and what kinds of benefits could be expected from the successful completion of such a task, while his return to relative anonymity highlights the difficulty of long-term upward social mobility among Rome's artisan classes. Incorporating previously unpublished archival material on Bernini's Louis XIV and key works for St. Peter's, this essay examines Borzacchi's career between Rome and France as a micro-history of the practical challenges, professional hierarchies, and potential rewards encountered by the craftsmen who created 'Bernini's Rome'.

A Transitory Star. The Late Bernini and his Reception, Jul 2015

Reviews by Karen J . Lloyd

Journal of Early Modern History, 2023

Renaissance Quarterly 70, 3 (2017): 1065-1067.

Italian Art Society Newsletter, 2013

Talks by Karen J . Lloyd

The 1698 inventory of Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri's Roman apartments places a sculpted bust of his u... more The 1698 inventory of Cardinal Paluzzo Altieri's Roman apartments places a sculpted bust of his uncle, Pope Clement X Altieri, in the cardinal's 'Room of Paintings.' The bust was particularly precious, as it was the last papal portrait in marble made by the then-aged Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Analysis of the inventory indicates that Paluzzo intended his collection to shape his public image as a rigorously devout prelate and, as was typical of the time, to acknowledge his political allegiances and debts. Bernini's bust was however set apart, as the only sculpture and the only portrait displayed in a space dedicated solely to art. How did the circumstances of display shape the meaning and reception of Bernini's last papal bust?

Some scholars, most recently Caroline Eck, have argued that early modern sculpture was at times perceived as having a 'living presence,' that the boundaries between art and life could become blurred in viewer experience. However, the mechanisms by which such an experience might be triggered and the extent to which patrons sought to cultivate such a response, remain murky. Consideration of the display of Bernini's Clement X, as well as seventeenth-century descriptions of the installations of the artist's busts of Popes Paul V Borghese and Urban VIII Barberini in their respective family palaces, provide valuable insight into how such responses may have been intentionally fostered in learned audiences. Drawing on Alfred Gell's theory of art and agency as well as early modern literary and theological sources, this talk explores Bernini's papal busts at the intersections of patronage, display, and living presence.

Recent studies of indigenous and creole agency in the Spanish Americas have emphasized the impor... more Recent studies of indigenous and creole agency in the Spanish Americas have emphasized the importance of local cults - most famously that of the Virgin of Guadalupe - in the gradual creation of new national identities. Critical in that process were attempts to export New World cults to Europe in search of recognition from colonial and religious authorities. Such was the case of the Virgin of Copacabana, a statue of the Madonna and Child created by indigenous Incan artist Francesco Tito Yupanqui in 1582 and said to have been completed by the divine intervention of Mary herself. From the mid-17th to the early 18th centuries, painted and engraved versions of the Copacabana Virgin appeared in Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Turin, and Bologna, promoting Spanish and Augustinian success in spreading Catholicism in the New World.
The first version of the Virgin of Copacabana to reach Italy took on a curious hybrid painting-sculpture form. That form is reproduced in Italian engravings, which emphasize the original sculpture's miraculous creation and subtly remove the visual clues - such as a pedestal - that would allow it to be identified as a representation of a statue. Italian visual and written sources suggest that colonial material culture, particularly cult objects like the Copacabana Virgin, held lingering associations with indigenous religious practices and materials - especially gold - that evoked concerns about idolatry. This talk investigates how the embrace of naturalism and the visionary in Italian representations of the Virgin of Copacabana functioned to cleanse the cult image of such problematic associations, refashioning it for an audience skeptical about the orthodoxy of Spanish American sacred art.

During the 1675 Holy Year, Romans were treated to an unusual, and thus far unstudied, spectacle: ... more During the 1675 Holy Year, Romans were treated to an unusual, and thus far unstudied, spectacle: an elaborate celebration in the church of S. Lorenzo in Damaso of the Virgin of Copacabana, a cult statue from the Viceroyalty of Peru. Anchoring the celebration was a copy of the original statue belonging to Duke Francesco Caetano, an Italian with deep ties to Spain and a personal devotion to the Copacabana Virgin. An account of the Holy Year by Ruggiero Caetano describes the pomp of the Virgin’s installation, and the excitement that it caused among the people and nobility of Rome. Ruggiero carefully tells the story of the original Virgin’s miraculous creation for his Italian audience. The work of an unskilled but faithful Inca of noble descent, Francesco Tito Yupanqui, whose study with a Spanish painter could not overcome his artistic limitations, the statue was made suitable only by divine intervention. Ruggiero’s edited narrative is steeped in the terms of Italian art writing, and he characterizes the Copacabana Virgin as a miracle of art, the blessed transformation of a work “senza disegno” into something worthy of its ardent New World faithful. This paper will situate the 1675 event as a staging of Spanish power in Rome, effected through the importation of a cult image from the Peruvian viceroyalty, and analyze Ruggiero’s text as an articulation of the complex discourse surrounding the role of the arts, the status of the artist, and the power of miraculous imagery between the Old and New Worlds.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, early modern studies, religious history, and political history.

Part of the series Visual Culture in Early Modernity, Routledge

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 2023

Journal of the History of Collections, 2018

Journal of the History of Collections, Jul 27, 2015

The Sixteenth Century Journal, 2015

*note: 'Lucrezia Borgia' (pg. 5) is incorrect - it should read 'Lucrezia d'Este'

The Discovery of the New World in Early Modern Italy: Encounters with the Americas in the 16th-18th Centuries

Making and Moving Sculpture in Early Modern Italy, editor Kelley Helmstutler di Dio, 2015

A Transitory Star. The Late Bernini and his Reception, Jul 2015

Nepotism is one of the defining characteristics of papal politics, yet historians have struggled ... more Nepotism is one of the defining characteristics of papal politics, yet historians have struggled to define the nature and extent of papal nephews’ political influence in the seventeenth century. The visual arts have not been adequately considered as a discursive site of political theory, nor have political writings, such as those of Giovanni Botero, been read in connection to works such as Carlo Maratti’s Altieri Clemency. Significant relationships, notably that between Guercino’s Ludovisi Aurora (1621-2) and Guido Reni’s Borghese frescoes in the Vatican Palace have been overlooked; the two projects reveal a marked divergence, even conflict, in defining their respective patrons’ roles as papal nephew. I consider painted representations of nepotism as an ongoing discussion about the political identity of the nephew and show that the tension between obedience and autonomy that divides modern views of nepotism is rooted in early modern nephews’ own conception of their political power.

In 1608 Guido Reni frescoed the ceilings of two rooms in a newly constructed wing of the Vatican ... more In 1608 Guido Reni frescoed the ceilings of two rooms in a newly constructed wing of the Vatican Palace: the Sala delle Dame features three Gospel scenes, while the Sala di Sansone has three episodes from the life of the eponymous Old Testament hero, Samson. Built for Paul V (1605-21), the two spaces served as reception rooms for the pope and the cardinal nephew, Scipione Borghese, respectively. Not a Borghese by birth, Scipione’s legitimacy as papal nephew required consolidation. Through Samson, Scipione is represented as the militant, protective arm of the church, given strength through dutiful obedience to God and the pope. Long overlooked by Reni scholars, the frescoes will be examined for their iconographical and political importance, as they codify the goals of Paul V’s papacy and define the role of the papal nephew, providing a mature statement of the ideology, structure, and purpose of nepotism in Counter-Reformation Rome.

The Altieri chapel in the Roman church of San Francesco a Ripa is a stylistic mongrel: the early ... more The Altieri chapel in the Roman church of San Francesco a Ripa is a stylistic mongrel: the early Seicento chapel proper is austere and reserved, while Gian Lorenzo’s statue of the beata Ludovica Albertoni (1674) and the golden space that enshrines it present all the hallmarks of Baroque spiritual and stylistic excess. The iconography of Bernini’s Ludovica has been debated at length, largely without critical agreement. Relatively little attention has been given to how the form and decoration
of the chapel on the whole, with its visibly incongruent phases, may have served the personal and spiritual interests of the chapel’s patron, Angelo Albertoni-Altieri. Examining how the chapel reflects earlier Albertoni monuments, and how it was then in turn used by Angelo in his own funerary chapel (1706), this paper traces the visual strategies used by an adopted Roman nobleman to preserve and promote the memory of his extinguished lineage.

Among Bolognese artist Giovanni Luigi Valesio's (1583?-1640) many prints are two that include Tur... more Among Bolognese artist Giovanni Luigi Valesio's (1583?-1640) many prints are two that include Turkish and Barbary Coast captives and slaves among a complex cast of allegories and fictional characters. Unlike their companions, the captives are signifiers of actual, if anonymous, bodies; they personify the enemies of the Catholic world in a conceptual space between the rhetorical and the real. These understudied prints feature the arms of Aldobrandini and Borghese cardinals respectively, and can be iconographically connected with key works honouring papal nephews, including the Villa Aldobrandini water theatre and Guercino's Ludovisi Aurora. The captives in Valesio's prints suggest that the iconographies of these monumental Roman works were linked to the broader Mediterranean world. Yet such 'real' figures are not present in them. What does their absence tell us about the limits of the rhetorical use of the body? My talk will re-consider the meanings of Valesio's prints, their links to monumental nepotistic imagery, and the question of political ambition and bodily decorum in Seicento Rome.

The panel will be made up of talks by Samuel Y. Edgerton (Williams College), Karolina Zgraja (Bib... more The panel will be made up of talks by Samuel Y. Edgerton (Williams College), Karolina Zgraja (Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome), and Diva Zumaya (University of California, Santa Barbara).

The conference program can be accessed here:

http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/rsa/rsa14/

""Keeping pace with our digital, mobile, and globally conscious
reality, in recent years art historians have recast the discipline through ideas of performance, time, geography, and exchange. Movement, it would seem, is the paradigm of our age. Movement was, of course, also of interest to early modern Italian art theorists, who sought the adept depiction of the affetti and praised paintings in which the figures seem to move and breathe. Yet, the focus on movement belies an inherent limitation of the painted image: its stillness. Stillness is more than an objective fact in the history of Italian painting; it is also an important theoretical and critical construct. Stillness is a defining quality in the continuum between icon and narrative and in the formulation of devotional art such as the sacra conversazione, it is a precondition of single point
perspective, and it is an element of decorum, as seen in later sixteenth-century condemnation of the figura serpentinata.
Art, according to Wincklemann, “can express her own peculiar nature only in stillness.” In our current age of mobility, is it possible to reflect on the significance of stillness? This panel seeks papers that examine any aspect of stillness in early modern Italian art: as a problem in the depiction of narrative (as in Caravaggio’s stories ‘without action’), an issue of categorization (ie. ‘classical’ vs. ‘baroque’), a defining quality of devotional art and spiritual experience, a stylistic trait (eg. Guido Reni), the setting for aesthetic response, a condition of perspectival constructions of space and fictional architecture, a corollary of silence and part of the debate of painting versus poetry, or as a trope of sleep or death. The goal is to theorize stillness as the necessary counterpart to movement, and as a critical component of the aesthetic and devotional function of early modern Italian art.""

This symposium is organized on the occasion of Tod A. Marder’s retirement from active teaching. A... more This symposium is organized on the occasion of Tod A. Marder’s retirement from active teaching. A generous and insightful scholar, mentor, and colleague, Tod has been a significant influence on the fields of Baroque architecture, Bernini studies, and architectural history and criticism for over forty years. To celebrate Tod’s scholarship and to reflect on the current state and historiography of architectural history and Bernini studies, this symposium brings together colleagues, mentees, and former students who will speak on a range of topics inspired by Tod’s work and example.