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The chapel of the courtesan and the quarrel of the Magdalens
Art Bulletin, The, June, 2002 by Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe
(46.) Matteucci (as in n. 45), 331. The monastery is listed in the census taken in 1526 as "El monasterio Convertitarum," with the number of occupants given as fifty-eight. See Domenico Gnoli, "'Descriptio Urbis' o censimento della popolazione di Roma avanti il sacco borbonico," Archivia della R Societa Romana diStoriaPatria 17(1894): 411, published as Descriptio Urbis: The Roman Census of 1527, ed. Egmont Lee (Rome: Bulzoni, 1985), 46 n. 1251. The site was originally occupied by a medieval church dedicated to S. Lucia alla Colonna al Corso founded by Pope Honorius I about 626. See Christian Huelson, Le chime di Roma nel medio evo (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1927), 302. The church and convent were refounded on the same site by Sixtus V in 1585 (with Carlo Maderno as the architect). The monastery and church received further support from Clement VIII, whose nephew, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, while serving as its protector, also enlarged the convent and built the nuns' choir. See Pietro Martiro Felini, Trattato nuovo felle Cose maravigliose dell'alma citta' di Roma (Rome, 1610; facsimile ed., Berlin: Bruno Hessling, 1969), 73. The church and monastery are marked on Antonio Tempesta's map of Rome of 1593. See Stefano Borsi, Rome di Sisto V: La pianta di Antonia Tempesta, 1593 (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1986), B4. When the convent was destroyed by fire in 1617, Cardinal Aldobrandini and his sister Olimpia oversaw the rebuilding, employing the architect Martino Longhi the Elder. See Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de' pittori, sculton et architetti dal pontificato di Gregorio XIII del 1572 in fino a' tempi di Papa Urbana ottavo nel 1642 (Rome, 1642), ed. V. Mariani, facsimile ed. (Rome: E. Calzone, 1935), 68; and Carlo Bartolomeo Piazza, Euscuologio Romano, overo delle opere pie di Roma (Rome: A Spece di Felice Cesaretti, e Paribeni Librari a Pasquino all'Insegna della Regina, 1698), 193. The convent was abandoned during the French occupation of Rome beginning in 1798. The buildings were subsequently demolished. The street still known as the Via delle Convertite marks the northern limit of the site. See Howard Hibbard, Carlo Maderno and Roman Architecture 1580-1630 (London: Zwemmer, 1971), 205-6.
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(47.) Leon Battista Alberti, The Ten Books of Architecture (The 1755 Leoni Edition) (New York: Dover, 1986), 23. Rhodope was a legendary Egyptian courtesan who allegedly had been brought to Egypt from Greece as a slave. After her release, she continued to practice her profession and amassed a great fortune with which, according to one story, she built a pyramid as a monument to herself, and in another version, gave a tenth part of her possessions to the temple at Delphi for the purchase of roasting spits (Herodotus, Persian Wars 2.135).
(48.) In a letter recorded in the diary of Sanuto (as in is. 38), vol. 26, 135, it is reported that "Madonna Vannozza, once mistress of Pope Alexander and mother of the Duchess of Ferrara [that is, Lucrezia Borgia] and the Duke of Valentino [that is, Cesare Borgia]" had died the day before yesterday [that is, November 26] and that "she was buried yesterday in S. Maria del Popolo, with great honors--almost like a cardinal" (trans. in Gregorovius, 352). Vannozza had endowed the chapel on December 4, 1503, with the donation to the convent of the Frati Eremitani of S. Maria del Popolo of her two houses and tiseir botteghe located on the Piazza Pizza di Merlo (today, Piazza Sforza Cesarini). For the house and the donation, see Pasquale Adinolfi, Roma nell eta di mezzo: RionePonte (Rome: Fratelli Bocca, 1881), ed. Clara Mungari, in 2 vols. (Florence: Licosa, 1989), vol. 2, 308-11. Vannozza had acquired the house on October 7, 1486. My thanks to Alexander Nagel, who brought this book to my attention. The donation is also noted by Gregorovius, 346-47.
