Latest of all the great papal families to settle in Rome were the
Braschi, Pius VI.'s kinsmen, and they built a palace in the Piazza
Navona. Not far off are the Patrizi and Giustiniani palaces near the
French church of San Luigi in the street of the same name. The
Giustiniani are Earls of Newburgh in the peerage of Scotland through
the marriage in 1757 of the heiress of the title and estates to the
Prince Giustiniani of that date.
Great was the opulence and magnificence of the Roman princes. When
they issued forth into the city they were attended by mounted grooms
with staves while running footmen cleared a way before them. An army
of servants waited upon their needs, their stables were filled with
horses, and their coaches were wonderful equipages of gilding glass
and painting, costing thousands of francs. Powdered flunkeys in silk
stockings stood behind on the foot board, three on a prince's coach,
two on a cardinal's. One of these men carried an umbrella and a
cushion. For if during his drive the prince chanced to meet his
Holiness the Pope or a religious procession in which the Host was
carried, he would instantly stop his coach, and alighting would kneel
upon the ground, the cushion being placed by his servants under his
knees and the umbrella held over his bared head to protect it from the
sun.
Many of the Roman nobles had private theatres in their houses; they
were great collectors of books, bronzes, tapestries, and mosaics, and
the Roman private galleries of pictures and statues are unsurpassed.
The Borghese alone possessed four Raphaels as well as their famous
collection of statues. At the same time they were generous to the city
of their adoption. They threw open their beautiful parks and villas to
the people, they admitted the public to their galleries museums and
libraries, and they endowed hospitals asylums and orphanages. The
Roman ladies had always patronised and promoted works of charity.
Nevertheless the later custom, which persists to this day, of
personally visiting the poor and the hospitals began with Gwendoline
Talbot, the daughter of the last Catholic Earl of Shrewsbury, who as
the wife of Prince Borghese was the first of the Roman ladies to walk
alone at all hours, intent on her errands of mercy. The wit which made
her present a gold coin to a man who on one occasion followed her, was
the talk of the city. Her name is still a household word in Roman
mouths, and her tragic death when only twenty-four years old, leaving
four little children, one only of whom, the present Princess Piombino,
survived the infection which killed their mother, moved an entire
population.
[Illustration: ILEX AVENUE AND FOUNTAIN (_Fontana scura_), VILLA
BORGHESE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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