CHANCELLERY, Palace of the. - It is one of the largest and most significant Renaissance buildings in Rome. Construction was begun in 1485 by Cardinal Raffaele Riario on the site where the ancient basilica founded in honor of St. Lawrence by Pope Damasus and the fifteenth-century palace of its titular cardinal stood; it was completed only after the year 1511.
The inscription that can be read on the facade suggests that by 1495 the building had reached that point and that the cardinal had already resolved to incorporate into the great quadrangle occupied by his construction also the rebuilt basilica of which he was titular.
Indeed, it is to be held that the arrangement realized by Cardinal Riario and his architects for the rebuilt Basilica represents a makeshift solution compared with the first designs, which, moreover, are not known. In any case, in the construction of the palace three successive phases can be distinguished: the first, extending to about 1480, essentially comprises the side facing via del Pellegrino; the second, the main body of the facade and perhaps some parts of the courtyard and of the church; the third, finally, the completion of the courtyard, the main body facing the present-day corso Vittorio Emanuele, and a general arrangement of the third. For the first two phases it is to be held that a preponderant part in the works was played by that Andrea Bregno (v.), a Lombard sculptor and decorator very active in Rome in the second half of the 15th century, to whose workshop the most elegant frames of the windows of the front and of many doors also within the building must certainly be assigned. The third, on the other hand, according to Vasari as well, would have been presided over by a commission of architects of which Donato Bramante (v.) was a member. However, it is to be thought that Bramante himself had already previously occupied himself with the palace and particularly with the beautiful courtyard, a masterpiece of the architecture of the early Roman Renaissance and to which tradition has always kept the name of the supreme architect.
In the interior of the building, which since 1521 has housed the Apostolic Chancery, particular mention is deserved, besides the grandiose Sala Riaria, by that known as the Sala dei Cento Giorni (v. ACCADEMIA), decorated with frescoes by Giorgio Vasari depicting scenes from the life and pontificate of Paul III Farnese (this one alone, damaged during the fire that broke out on New Year's Eve of 1940, has undergone radical restorations) and by the chapel known as del Pallio, decorated with most elegant paintings and stuccoes by Perino del Vaga, who also painted in other places in the same palace, such as the vault of the hall known as di Studio.
In the palace the tribunal of the Roman republic had its seat in 1798, and in 1848 the Chamber of Deputies of the Papal State, and it was at the foot of the grand staircase that on 15 Nov. of that year Pellegrino Rossi was killed. In 1849 the palace was also the seat of the Constituent Assembly of the second Roman republic. - See PLATES XXXVIII-XXXIX.
Bibliography2 works
Emilio Lavagnino
CANCELLERIA DEI BREVI APOSTOLICI:
v. SEGRETERIA DI STATO.