« ‹ Aurum omnia vincit ›, Lo ‹ Studiolo della Ricchezza › dell’umanista romano Antonio degli Effetti »

The Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome contains a description of a cabinet(or ‘studiolo’, as it is called) in the hand of Antonio degli Effetti, which was apparently located in his palace in Rome. Despite numerous internal inconsistencies, Antonio’s account allows an approximate reconstruction of this piece of furniture which no longer survives. When the wings were opened up, a miniature gallery was revealed: some eighty tiny panel paintings were affixed to the cabinet’s small doors, the front of its drawers, and the inner side of its wings. Over sixty artists of the period contributed to the cabinet’s decoration, including Pietro da Cortona, Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, Pier Francesco Mola, Carlo Maratti, Giacinto Brandi, Guillaume Courtois, Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, Fabrizio Chiari, Viviano Codazzi, Filippo Lauri, Flaminio and Francesco Allegrini, Michael Sweerts and Otto Marseus. In choosing which painters were to contribute to this miniature gallery, it seems that Antonio deliberately strove for the widest possible variety: his aim was apparently to reflect a spectrum of all the leading contemporary artistic currents. In effect, by commissioning painters of the most diverse styles and nationalities to contribute to his ‘studiolo’, Antonio created, ‘en miniature’, a gallery that comprised a genuine anthology of the Roman painting of his time.