Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

In simplest terms, it is a house tour, but Mario Praz's Roman apartment was no ordinary house it was a wunderkammer, a house of wonders, rooms replete with objects d'art and sculpture, walls hung with paintings and prints, bureaus overflowing with postcards and ephemera. And Praz is no ordinary guide; he leads you, the reader, through each room discussing the objects therein. What emerge are his passions, his immense erudition, his insatiable curiosity, his undeniable amiability, his infectious enthusiasm. What emerges is a multi-layered disquisition on the nature of art, on the challenge of investigation and discovery, on the way in which art and the objects we choose to surround us tell stories.
Preface to "The House of Life" by Mario Praz - transl. by Angus Davidson - 2010 - David R Godine Pub.

A pastiche of reliefs of different periods in the entrance hall of Palazzo Primoli

The book was first published in Italy in 1958 (La Casa della Vita) when Mario Praz (1896-1982), professor of English Literature at Rome University lived in an apartment at Palazzo Ricci, a historical building near Via Giulia. In 1969 he moved to an apartment at Palazzo Primoli, a XVIth century building which had been largely enlarged and redesigned in the early XXth century by Count Giuseppe Primoli who was a grandson of Zénaïde Bonaparte, a niece of Emperor Napoleon. Count Primoli decorated the part of the building where he lived in the style of the First French Empire, which happens to be basically the same which Professor Praz was fond of.

House of Mario Praz: Living room aka gallery (see also the icon of this section)

When I add that against the wall facing the bed, between two chairs, there is a small chest-of-drawers possibly by the cabinet-maker Demay, it will be understood why this room has so overcrowded an appearance. To me, fullness of this kind is not unpleasing. Nor do I dislike a balance of empty spaces, of clear expanses disposed with a shrewd sense of rhythm. But my preference is for the exquisitely ornate, for things abundantly and wonderfully bejewelled. Praz - The House of Life
The living room is decorated in white and gold, a typically neoclassical colour scheme, from the coffered ceiling to the two chimneys placed symmetrically on either side of the alcove with the larger bookcase, as well as the armchairs, sofas, and curtains.

Alcove of the living room with a sofa embroidered by Praz himself

Praz left Italy for England in 1923 to earn his Ph.D. He worked at the British Museum, which gained him entrance as a professor of Italian Studies at the University in Liverpool in 1924. During his tenure in Liverpool, he wrote his most important work for art history which in 1933 was translated into English as The Romantic Agony. In 1932 he moved to Manchester University, also teaching Italian studies. He married Vivyan Eyles (b. 1910) in 1934 and returned to Italy that year. The two divorced in 1947, Eyles claiming that he cared more about his furniture than her. Praz wrote that he embroidered himself the sofa of the alcove because he was unhappy with the work done by his wife. The two swans bring to mind those of Ara Pacis Augustae.

Doors of the living room leading to the library (left) and to the study (right); between them "Eros hunting with his bow", a marble statue attributed to Adamo Tadolini, a pupil of Canova (see an ancient statue of Eros)

Horror vacui (horror of empty spaces). Praz used this term to describe the excessive use of ornament in design during the Victorian age. It was used also by other art historians to define late XVIth century façades e.g. those of Casino di Pio IV and Villa Medici in Rome. The House of Life consists of detailed descriptions of every item of furniture and art in the apartment of Palazzo Ricci which Praz rearranged as much as possible in the same way in that of Palazzo Primoli.

Living room: a view of Villa Mattei with the Sarcophagus of the Muses and Terme di Caracalla in the background by John Newbolt (ca 1850)

John Newbolt (1803/1805-1867) was an English painter who lived in Rome, producing views of the city and its surroundings for his entire adult life. How he trained is unknown and he may have been in Rome as early as 1820. In 1829, he was lodging at 107 Strada Felice. In 1832, Newbolt married Anna Votieri, one of his landladies. He is first mentioned in Murray's Handbook to Rome of 1843 as an English landscape artist of considerable merit. He was skilled at producing polished picturesque views of Rome, ancient and modern, and its surrounding for the visitor market and in easily portable sizes to take or send home. The choice of one of his paintings by Praz added to the Victorian atmosphere of his apartment.

Study

"The House of Life" is, I believe, his masterpiece - a book unlike any other, and a much more complete expression of Mario Praz's sensibility than any of his other books. (..) The apartment is not like a private museum, because it composes a unit, because, like the book which describes it, it is the intimate integument of Praz himself. The apartment is "The House of Life" because it is the house of Praz's life, and the description of his collections here is inextricable from the memories of his life. [Praz:] will come to be known to posterity (..) as one of the best Italian writers of his time.
Edmund Wilson - The Bit Between My Teeth - l967

Study: portraits: (left) Ugo Foscolo by François-Xavier Fabre; (right) Teresa Pikler, wife of Vincenzo Monti, another Italian poet, at Villa Borghese by Carlo Labruzzi (1807)

Praz's extremely rich collection of items is almost exclusively focused on the early XIXth century and the portrait of Ugo Foscolo who died in 1827 is indicative of this choice. The poet lived the last eleven years of his life in exile in London where he befriended with members of the best literary circles and wrote essays on the most famous Italian poets. His English experience made him especially dear to Praz.

Furniture: (left) chair with sphinxes; (right) chaise longue sofa with a sphinx and a musical instrument

Mr. Praz was a collector of antiques, art objects and furniture, particularly of the Empire period. A visit to his house on the Via Giulia was "since time immemorial part of the grand tour" for those travelers who visited Rome to learn, in the spirit of Goethe, wrote Masolino d'Amico, a critic, in an obituary essay in La Stampa. In his last anthology, titled "Voce dietro la scena" ("Voices backstage") Mr. Praz wrote: "It can be said of me that my intellectual wardrobe contains few whole pieces. I also belong to that category of persons gifted with imperfect intelligence. One will not find in this book a philosophical system, or, to adopt the language of the wardrobe, a cloak or a suit that can serve as protection against an inclement sky. No, my wardrobe abounds in useless garments, if garments they can even be called; it abounds in things of little usefulness and little ordinariness, perhaps more than a little bizarre and melancholy. In sum, rather than a wardrobe, one of those cupboards in which one keeps, or kept in a period when there was no need to economize space, objects out of use, fragments of garments out of fashion, spangles and ostrich feathers and some mutilated dolls, relics cast up upon the far side of the grand sea of being."
The New York Times obituary of Mario Praz - April 8, 1982

Wax portraits

He was a scholar and collector with a particular attraction to dioramas and portraits in wax. (..) The waxes, which the Professor collected passionately and almost morbidly into his old age, are realistic in the extreme; more than seventy of these objects are scattered throughout the house.
ROCAILLE, a blog by Annalisa P. Cignitti

Curiosities: (left) theatre diorama illuminated by hidden bulbs; (right) embroidery portraying two Muses; the image used as background for this page shows a wooden golden eagle

See the houses of:
Hendrik Christian Andersen
Blanceflor Boncompagni Ludovisi
Pietro Canonica
Isa and Giorgio de Chirico
Keats-Shelley