Wall decoration

The picture shows a detail of the wall decoration in the Salone Turco in the Palazzo Colonna.

The powerful Colonna family had lived on the western slope of the Quirinale in Rome since the Middle Ages. Over the years it managed to link together the various houses it had built and purchased over time into a unified ensemble of palaces, courtyards, and gardens. In the seventeenth century, the art-loving cardinal Girolamo I Colonna (1604-1666) began turning the complex into a Baroque residence. Construction began in 1650. The south wing, containing the Grande Galleria, was built between 1661 and 1700 at the behest of the cardinal’s nephew Lorenzo Onofrio (1637-1689).

Under the sons of Filippo II Colonna (1663-1714) more additions were made to the palace. A new wing was erected between 1730-33 by Nicola Michetti. Of this wing only the corner pavilion has survived unchanged, and in it is one of the loveliest interiors from the Roman Rococo, the Coffeehouse. The most important eighteenth-century additions were completed under Cardinal Girolamo II Colonna (1708-1763). He commissioned Paolo Posi to build a gallery in the highly theatrical style of the eighteenth century. The cardinal’s favourite painter was Stefano Pozzi who, together with his brother Giuseppe (1723-1765) and the landscape painter Giovanni Angeloni (1740-1788), painted the doors, mirrors, and wall panels of Girolamo’s apartment, the so-called Salone Turco, with cheerful and decorative arabesques and small-format scenes.