Alle origini della collezione
Dragonetti de Torres:
l’inedita raccolta aquilana del
marchese Massimo Alferi
Marco Vaccaro
Dragonetti de Torres was one of the most important art collections of Abruzzo, known to scholars and travellers as early as the 19th century and remained in L’Aquila until 1970-1971. Devoid of ancient history and formed through the union between the two families in 1864, it has been investigated only in recent times retracing the events of the de Torres family, who moved to Abruzzo from Rome in the second half of the 17th century. Unpublished documents show the different origin of an ancient nucleus of the collection, which in 1720 already appeared to be made up of more than 150 paintings, bound by the marquis Massimo Alferi to the family’s palace in L’Aquila, which was then passed on to his daughter Lucrezia, wife of Cosimo de Torres. The transcribed inventories contain the names of artists linked in some way to L’Aquila, such as Giovan Battista Spinelli, Girolamo Cenatiempo and Dionisio Montorselli, but also those of the Neapolitans Massimo Stanzione, Andrea Vaccaro and Luca Giordano. Other documents cited in the text show the consistency of the Dragonetti nucleus after the distraint caused by the bankruptcy of the Banca del Tavoliere. The text analyzes the correlations between the inventories and the characteristics of the Alferi collection; proposals are also made to link the references identified to existing paintings, some of which have never been discussed in this sense or are known only for the origins noted in the Zeri photo archive.