SILVESTRE, Israël
(b. 1621, Nancy, d. 1691, Paris)

View of the Casino

1637-38
Graphite, watercolour, with gray and brown wash on paper, 206 x 316 mm
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge

The Casino dell'Aurora is the only portion spared from nineteenth-century demolition of the Villa Ludovisi in Rome. Originally the Casino, erected around 1570 and enlarged in the nineteenth century, was a three-story structure on a cruciform ground plan. During the pontificate of Pope Gregory XV Ludovisi the villa and its casino were used mainly for official functions such as dinners for the college of cardinals.

The Casino is decorated by paintings on the ground floor and the second floor. A tiny and very low room on the second floor, a space that the owner Ludovico Ludovisi used as a "studiolo," contains the only wall painting by Caravaggio. The other rooms were painted by Bolognese artists, Domenichino, Guercino, Giovanni Luigi Valesio, and Giovanni Battista Viola.