This was a bolt out of the blue. Until a few days previously, Pompeo had still been selling off paintings one by one and he could hardly believe that he could now sell the lot in one go. What was even more surprising was that William, who had always had to go begging for the money to finance his military undertakings, should feel the need to spend a fortune on pictures and statues. Even the Sun King had declined the opportunity to acquire Christina's collections when his ambassador in Rome, Cardinal d'Estrees, had advised him of the possibility of purchasing those treasures.
Then came the second dramatic surprise. Another buyer made an offer: Livio Odescalchi, the nephew of Innocent XI.
For 123,000 scudi, Livio snatched the lot from under William's nose and bought almost all that remained of the estate. Incredibly, not only did William not take the thing badly, but remained on the best of terms with Pompeo Azzolino. In a flash, the whole complicated business of the inheritance had been resolved.
This epilogue was as surprising as it was improbable. A Protestant king who is perennially short of money proposes to buy an exceedingly costly art collection. A nephew of the Pope (who had, incidentally, lent that king a huge sum of money) clinches the deal by a hair's-breadth, yet all the monarch does is to compliment the buyer (Montanari, T., "La dispersione delle collezioni di Cristina di Svezia. Gli Azzolino, gli Ottoboni e gli Odescalchi" in
StoriadeWArte,
No. 90 (1997), pp. 251-299).
A few figures: the Odescalchi had lent William about 153,000 scudi and Livio bought Christina's collection for the not far inferior price of 123,000 scudi.
What refined minds were at work! By the end of 1688, William had at last become King of England, which placed him in a position to reimburse his debt to the Odescalchi. In the following year, however, Innocent XI had died. How could he repay? Probably, at that moment, only part of the debt had been reimbursed. The opportunity created by the legacy of Christina of Sweden was, then, not to be missed. Livio made the purchase, but William paid, through some discreet intermediary.
After so many wars, the secret pact between the House of Odescalchi and that of Orange had, then, ended with the greatest of discretion. It is not hard to imagine the scene. While admiring a Tintoretto or a Caravaggio in the golden light of a Roman afternoon, a trusted representative of William will have passed an envelope containing a letter of exchange to an emissary of Livio Odescalchi; the while, singing the praises of the late and great Christina of Sweden.
Livio and the Paravicini
It was, then, perhaps thanks to the estate of Christina of Sweden that William of Orange was able to repay his debt to the Odescalchi. But the family of Innocent XI had lent at least 153,000 scudi, on which interest must be calculated. Pompeo Azzolino, when he sold Christina's estate to Livio Odescalchi, received only 123,000 scudi. What became of the difference?
Carlo Odescalchi, the brother of Innocent XI, had died in 1673. In 1680, the Odescalchi's business in Venice was liquidated, while that in Genoa had already closed down years before. What trusted expert and go-between then remained to Innocent XI through whom to recover the first tranche of the loan?
He certainly could not entrust this to his nephew Livio, not only because he was too exposed to the eyes of the world. Livio was the prototype of the rich and spoiled young man: sulky, rebellious, introverted, capricious, unstable, perhaps even prone to tears. He loved money, but only when others had earned it. His uncle, Benedetto, kept him far from affairs of state; he wanted him to continue the family line. But, almost as though he were getting his own back, Livio never married. Nor did he ever take the trouble to leave Rome and visit the Hungarian estates of Sirmio which he had acquired from the Emperor. Pope Innocent XI had closed all the theatres? After his uncle's death, Livio took his revenge by purchasing a box at the Tor di Nona theatre. From his uncle, he perhaps inherited a certain tendency to avarice and cunning: when the Austrian Ambassador asked him to change a few imperial ducats into Roman currency, Livio tried clumsily to cheat him, offering forty baiocchi to a ducat, when the official exchange rate was forty-five. As a result, the ambassador, following the fashion of the time for facile anti-Semitism, spread the word that the nephew of Innocent XI did business "like a Jew" (Landau, M.,
Wien, Rom, Neapel—Zur Geschichte des Kampfes zwischen Papsttum und Kaiser turn,
Leipzig 1884, p.
Ill,
note 1).
Livio also committed a serious gaffe in relation to the Emperor, to whom he promised to send a loan and a military contingent: 7000 soldiers to support the imperial troops as soon as they arrived in the Abruzzi. In exchange, he demanded the title of Prince of the Empire. As we know, the title was granted him, and Livio did indeed lend the Emperor a modest sum of money; but of the 7000 troops, no trace was ever seen.
A victim of hypochondriac fixations, the nephew of the Blessed Innocent kept careful note in his diary of his medical consultations as well as collecting reports on autopsies. In minuscule, illegible handwriting, he recorded obsessively the most insignificant potential signs of illness. Attracted to the occult, he passed his nights in alchemical experiments and wearisome searching for remedies, for which he was prepared to pay handsomely, even to complete strangers
(Fonda Odescalchi
XXVII B6 Archivio di Palazzo Odescalchi, III B6. Nos. 58 and 80). And when his morbid personality suffered too much from his uncle's impositions, he would find relief noting down malevolent observations and gossip, almost as though he were pursuing some infantile vendetta
(Fondo Odescalchi
, Diario di Livio Odescalchi).
Never could such a man have borne the weight of oppressive secrets, of compromising meetings, of decisions on which there could be no going back. The task of obtaining repayment of William's debt called for an expert go-between, swift-acting and with the requisite sang-froid.
Innocent XI had recourse to such a man in Rome, one well able to care for his interests faithfully and discreetly. This was the banker Francesco Paravicini, who came of a family close to the Odescalchi. He had the competence and the down-to-earth qualities of a true businessman and followed the most varied economic affairs of the future Pope: from rent collection to the acquisition of guaranteed loans, from the encashment of sums sent to Rome by relatives to debt collection. Already, way back in 1640, it was Paravicini who, acting on the instructions of Carlo Odescalchi, had purchased two Chancellery Prelates' secretariats and one presidency (cost: 12,000 scudi) on behalf of Benedetto, thus inaugurating with money, as was then the normal practice, his entry into the ecclesiastical hierarchy.The Paravicini family must, then, have enjoyed the complete confidence of the Odescalchi. As soon as Cardinal Benedetto became Pope, he appointed two other Paravicini, Giovanni Antonio and Filippo, to posts as secret treasurers as well as paymasters-general of the Apostolic Chamber; responsible, in other words, for all manner of donations ordered by the Holy See or by the Pope himself. At the same time, however, the new Pontiff abolished the offices of paymaster at the pontifical legations of Forli, Ferrara, Ravenna, Bologna and Avignon; the latter benefice was, for no clear reason, awarded to the Paravicini (Archivio di Stato di Roma,
Camerate I—Chirografi.
169, 237, 239, 10th October 1676 and 12th June 1667, and
Carteggio delTesorieregenerale del/a Reverenda camera apostolica,
years 1673-1716. Cf. also Nardi, C,
Registri del pagatorato delle soldatesche e dei Tesorieri della legazione di Avignone e del contado venaissino nel Archivio di Stato di Roma,
Rome 1995).
Why go to the trouble of entrusting an office in distant Avignon, where the paymaster-general had only to deal with the routine expenditure of the Apostolic Palace and the soldiers' pay, to the Paravicini, who resided in Rome? (Curiously, the moment that Innocent XI died and the French occupation of Provence came to an end, the office of paymaster at Avignon was restored to Pietro Del Bianco, whose family had held it for generations.)
The depth of the Pope's confidence in Giovanni Antonio and Filippo Paravicini is also borne out by a number of revealing details. When it became necessary to provide the apostolic nuncios at Vienna and Warsaw with the funds necessary for the war against the Turks, the money of the Holy See was made to travel via the markets of Ulm, Innsbruck and (yet again) Amsterdam through trusted intermediaries of the Pope: besides the well- known Rezzonico, the two Paravicini. Would the latter not, then, have been the ideal mediators to encash the money reimbursed by the Prince of Orange?
(Fondo Odescalchi
, XXIIA13 p. 440.)
The phrases of Monsieur de Saint-Clement and Monsieur de Beaucastel reported by Monsignor Cenci lead one to suspect that, in order to pay off the debts contracted with the Pope's family, a sort of "Odescalchi tax" had been imposed on the citizens of Orange. Once the money became available, the safest and most economical solution would, then, have been to hand it over at a place only a few kilometres distant from Orange: in Avignon itself, perhaps, for which the trusted Paravicini were responsible. William's treasurer would have delivered periodically to an intermediary of the Pope a simple letter of exchange, in some obscure corner of the Provencal countryside; no more straw men or international bank accounts and triangulations.
Other untraceable papers
In order to find documentary proof of this hypothesis, it was necessary to search through the acts of the Avignon repository kept in the Rome State Archives. From these papers, it will be learned that, no sooner had the Paravicini taken up their duties as paymasters than they entered at once into credit. Instead of making payments, they received several thousand scudi, deriving from cash compensations. This is an interesting clue. Unfortunately, there is a serious, inexplicable lacuna in the Avignon registers: five years are missing, between 1682 and 1687, almost half of the pontificate of Innocent XI.
In order to dispel doubts, it would have been useful to consult the correspondence of the hierarchical superior of the Paravicini, the treasurer-gen- eral of the Apostolic Chamber. This too is, however, missing; for all the years between 1673, the year of Carlo Odescalchi's death, and 1716.
Conclusions
In the aftermath of the Second World War, a few years before the beatification of Innocent XI, the Secret Archives of the Vatican acquired the Zarlatti papers, an archival bequest containing documents relative to the Odescalchi and the Rezzonico families. This bequest was established from the eighteenth century onwards; it would have been interesting to know whether at that time there still existed traces of the old relationships between Benedetto Odescalchi, his brother Carlo and their procurator in Venice. That, however, will never be known. Those responsible for the Vatican Secret Archives themselves noted the "strange dispersions" and "obvious extrapolations" suffered by the bequest as soon as it was deposited in the Vatican: folders separated from the original bequest, left unsigned (i.e. unidentifiable). (Cf. Pagano, S. "Archivi di famiglie romane e non romane nell'Archivio segreto vaticano" in
Roma moderna e contemporanea
I, September/December 1993, pp. 194; 229-231. Strange disappearances of documents are also reported in Salvadori, V (ed.),
I carteggi delle btblioteche lombarde: Censimento de- scrittivo.
Vol. II, Milan 1986, p. 191 Perhaps someone wished to take all possible precautions...
Pieces of Music Performed in
Imprimatur
For more information about the music in
Imprimatur,
and to listen to samples, go to
http://polygon.birlinn.co.uk/
.
Page references are provided below:
1.
The mysterious
rondeau
(pp. 29-31) Performed on the piano
2.
"Disperate speranze" (p. 35) Luigi Rossi
3.
"Ai sospiri, al dolore" (p. 64) Luigi Rossi
4.
& 5. Story of Fouquet (pp. 64
etseq.)
Luigi Rossi, passacaglia and courante 6. "Chaconne des Harlequins" (p. 69) Jean-Baptiste Lully
7 "Piango, prego e sospiro" (p. 97) Luigi Rossi
8.
The mysterious
rondeau
(p. 98) Performed on the harpsichord
9.
"A chi vive ogn'or contento" (p. 104) Luigi Rossi
10.
"In questo duro esilio" (p. 112) Luigi Rossi
11.
"Chaconne des Harlequins" (p. 135) Robert Devize after Jean-Baptiste Lully
12.
"Fan battaglia i miei pensieri" (p. 173) Luigi Rossi
13.
"Speranza, al tuo pallore" (p. 190) Luigi Rossi
14.
Amanti, sentite
, which contains:
"Son faci le Stelle", (p. 207); "A petto ch'adora", (p. 368); "Chi giace nel sonno", (p. 374) Luigi Rossi