Matteo Lovatti

(1770-1849)

edited by Maurilio Lovatti

(free adaptation with additions of news about Matteo Lovatti taken from ALBERTO CRIELESI, Matteo, Clemente ed Antonio Lovatti: Capimastri, architetti ed imprenditori romani, in «La Strenna dei Romanisti», Rome 2007, p. 191-224)

Born in Rome on 11 January 1770, baptised in the parish of San Lorenzo in Lucina, he was the first son of the master builder Francesco Antonio Lovatti (1741-1819) who had worked as a decorator for the architect Sebastiano Orlandi in 1790, then master builder of the chamber in the construction of the barracks in Piazza del Popolo in 1794.
He reached the highest levels of architecture, even though he began as a master builder and never attended an academy. He was compared to the great masters of the late eighteenth century, such as Cosimo Morelli, Michelangelo Simonetti, Francesco Milizia, Antonio Asprucci, and Nicola Forti.
His first architectural work was a large, four-story building, constructed around 1792 on Via del Corso, near San Lorenzo in Lucina.
He later became the trusted architect of the Spanish ambassador to the Papal Court, Nicolao José de Azara (1731-1804), who commissioned him to design a "country house" in the Macao district, outside Porta Pia, behind the Baths of Diocletian. These two works by Lovatti are cited in F. Gasperoni, L'architetto girovago. Opera piacevole ed istruttiva, Rome 1841-1843, vol. I, notebook V.
Professor Crielesi comments: "As we have noted, the two Roman works cited by Gasperoni - and which were certainly not the only ones in the city ("I would like to see more of Lovatti's work, that is, to note some of his other works, both in Rome and beyond") - are both civil works and can be dated to the last two decades of the eighteenth century. They mark the end of an early phase in the work of our Matteo, who, as Gasperoni always points out, was an innovator in the architectural field, as "he was among the first to emerge from the stench of the putrid and nefarious Baroque" and to approach the modern ideas that would find their greatest proponent here in Rome in Valadier." (A. CRIELESI, Matteo, Clemente and Antonio Lovatti: Capimastri, architetti ed imprenditori romani, in "La Strenna dei Romanisti", Rome 2007, p. 197).

During the years of the Roman Republic, he was featured prominently in the news, in the dramatic episodes that accompanied the French occupation; in November 1798, a fervent and staunch Jacobin, he stored in the papal Arsenal of Ripa Grande the numerous works of art, defrauded by the occupiers from the city's churches and museums, and the volumes stolen from the Vatican Library, awaiting transport by sea to France, as documented in a "Notice" dated November 13, 1798.
After the French retreat in 1799 and the subsequent entry into Rome of the new Pope, Pius VII, he was present in the restoration projects planned by the Pontiff to restore the churches damaged during the occupation. In 1801, he owned a company involved in the reconstruction of the Cathedral of Nepi, burned by the French army in 1798. The project was signed by the architect Ferdinando Folcari, and he was appointed Capomastro (which then also meant building contractor and project manager). A few years later, with the new occupation of Rome by Napoleonic troops, Matteo Lovatti reappeared in the news: in 1809, on July 5 and 6, he was one of the protagonists in the "climbing" of the Quirinal Palace, an undertaking that led to the kidnapping of Pius VII by General Miollis. Between two and three in the morning, the Quirinale Palace was scaled and the shutters broken. Gendarmerie General Radet, with 66 men, entered the papal apartments and arrested Pius VII, who was immediately dispatched to Tuscany. Matteo provided masonry ladders, ropes, and pickaxes, after drawing a plan of the palace to facilitate the kidnapping. These behaviors can be explained by his staunch Jacobin political views, which, however, he was often forced to conceal in order to work as an architect under the papal government.
In 1814, upon Pius VII's return to Rome from French captivity, he had banished many of his bitter adversaries from Rome, but pardoned many others: this was the case of Matteo Lovatti who, although he had shown clear sympathy for the Jacobins, once he had repudiated his ideas and made peace with the Church and the Papal Authority, embarked on a rapid career, achieving great economic prosperity and a fair amount of social prestige.
On May 1, 1816, he was in Marino to prepare an architectural report regarding the arrangement of a building near one of the towers of the former Colonna castle, for a wealthy local landowner, Nicola Vitali. And it was also in Marino that he created (1819) one of his best-known and most appreciated works, the famous peperino stone pronaos of the small church of S. Maria dell'Acquasanta, just outside the town, commissioned, as the inscription on the architrave recalls, by the Marino canon Francesco Fumasoni.

St. Mary of Acquasanta

Santa Maria dell'Acquasanta is a small sanctuary on the road from Marino down to the Bosco Ferentano valley. Carved into the rock, it is accessed by a thirty-four-step staircase, and beneath the altar lies a spring of water believed to be miraculous. The church has a very simple structure, carved out of an ancient peperino quarry. The church is accessed through a narthex delimited by two Doric columns, with a prominent molded architrave supported by corbels, which runs the length of the façade. Dating from 1819, it was designed and built by Matteo Lovatti. The entrance portal dates back to the 18th century and features a molded architrave and jambs.
The altar is made of a block of rock carved with a frame enclosing the fresco of the Madonna and Child in her arms, holding a bowl of water in her left hand. The work features various pictorial phases, the oldest of which dates to the 6th-9th centuries AD.

In 1818, the Municipality of Albano Laziale (Rome) decided to build a public cemetery on the site of the Domitian Amphitheater (actually built by Septimius Severus and completed by Caracalla), and the project was entrusted to Matteo Lovatti. 
Professor Alberto Crielesi, who reviewed the project, writes:
"The Cemetery, whose facade was intended to favor those arriving from Castel Gandolfo, immediately strikes us as scenographic and celebratory, in keeping with the architectural visions revealed by the "French" during the Republic in their fictitious papier-mâché and plaster structures: it reminds us of a burial mound culminating in a small temple, an idea also suggested by the inevitable trophies, altars, acroteria, pine cones, urns, tripods, etc. that enhance the structure. The cross itself on the chapel's pediment, a double crosspiece, supported at the base by two crossed palm branches, has more the air of a tree of liberty than a symbol of Redemption. All these decorative elements, therefore, like the pines and cypresses of the surrounding area, find, albeit more toned down, their counterparts in the interventions of Valadier on the Pincio, whose idea Lovatti seems to anticipate rather than emulate.
Going into the project's details, it becomes clear that the entire complex was to be built on the masonry - the southern - part of the ancient amphitheater, with the other half of the hemicycle entirely excavated from the peperino rock. The material to be used was, of course, this local stone. As for the most conspicuous remains of the ancient podium, they were to become the structure of a small chapel that would house the clergy's burial site. This square-plan shrine was planned to have a domed roof, with a tapered façade and illuminated by a large thermal window, decorated on the sides with two torch-bearing angels in the style of Canova. Going into the project's details, it becomes clear that the entire complex was to be built on the masonry - the southern - part of the ancient amphitheater, with the other half of the hemicycle entirely excavated from the peperino rock. The material to be used was, of course, this local stone. As for the most conspicuous remains of the ancient podium, they were to become the structure of a small chapel that would house the clergy's burial site. This square-plan shrine was planned to have a domed roof, with a tapered façade and illuminated by a large thermal window, decorated on the sides with two torch-bearing angels in the style of Canova. 

The entrance is preceded by a pronaos with two Doric columns supporting a tympanum with a cross at the apex and two corner acroteria at the ends. Noteworthy - if it weren't for the presence of these last architectural elements - is the similarity of the pediment (equally less "sharp") to that of the Acquasanta in Marino. To the sides of the small chapel, flanked by the sacristy and the custodian's chamber, are the anonymous burials of common people using the Grottoni, or arches of the ancient vomitoria. Regarding the use of the arena, the architect must have had a strong vision of both St. Peter's Square in the Vatican and, even more so, the Colosseum of the time: so much so that, like the one in Rome, along the southern ellipse of the Albano amphitheater he placed niches for the "Via Crucis and the Most Holy Sorrows," while in the center of the arena, at the crossroads of paths, a large cross will rise up like a gnomon (p. 207-208).
In relation to the cost of construction, Matteo Lovatti sticks to just over 3090 scudi, a considerable sum in truth, well set out in detail in the "Scandaglio del progetto per il nuovo Cemeterio da costruirsi nelle rovine dell'Anfiteatro Domiziano nella Città d'Albano, con ordinazione dell'Ill.mi Signor Gonfaloniere, e Rappresentanti la Commune della Città di Albano".

On November 14, 1820, the Governor of Albano, Stefano Fabrini, submitted the project to the Congregazione del Buon Governo in Rome. Architect Pietro Bracci, speaking on behalf of the Congregation, expressed a dissenting opinion, citing in particular the limited space allocated for the tombs, the mortuary chapel, and the caretaker's quarters, as well as the inadequate cost of the works, although he described the project's layout as "commendable."

The project was finally shelved by the municipality of Albano only in 1827.

This church appears for the first time in a document from 1065. It was entrusted to the Clerics Regular of Somascan Order in 1616. Since the old structure was in disrepair, they commissioned the architect Nicola Giansimoni from Velletri to reconstruct the church. Giansimoni completed it in 1778 in the form of a Greek cross with a striking false dome. The façade was built in 1822 based on a design by architect Matteo Lovatti. The four Evangelists in the dome's pendentives are the work of the Pescara artist Carlo Gavardini, who created them in 1857. On the high altar, the large altarpiece depicting a miracle of St. Martin is by Antonio Maria Garbi, who executed it in 1878. Other works of art preserved in the church include the 15th-century Madonna known as "dell'orto" (of the garden) and a 14th-century fresco called "Madonna della Pace," the only surviving piece of the apse paintings.

Laracca writes [I. Laracca, La chiesa di S. Martino e i Padri Somaschi a Velletri (dalle origini al 1967), Rome 1967]:

"Despite financial difficulties, in 1821 the Somaschi Fathers entrusted the design and construction of the façade to architect Matteo Lovatti, who executed it in its current style, perhaps partially repeating the idea of the ancient portico with the construction of the tetrastyle Doric pronaos, supported by four large peperino columns. The work was inaugurated in 1825".

After 1835, Matteo Lovatti worked mainly in Rome. Crielesi writes:

"But beyond the outskirts of Rome, his activities were concentrated primarily in the city itself, and Matteo's services were so highly esteemed that the Pope granted him - a repentant Jacobin - the title of Knight of the Order of St. Sylvester of the Golden Militia and of the Golden Spur. To further consolidate his prestige, he chose a residence befitting his rank: the former Palazzo Pichi-Manfroni in Piazza del Paradiso, next to the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle. His heirs, in the midst of an economic crisis, sold this building (after 1870) to the Banca Romana. In 1881, due to construction work on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, the building's main façade was demolished (it was later rebuilt further back), thus losing the Lovatti coat of arms that once graced the entrance.
The architect Matteo died in his octogenarian years on March 14, 1849, and was buried in the family tomb in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, the first chapel on the right, dedicated to the church's patron Saint. The Lovatti family had succeeded the Montana as patrons of this chapel in the first half of the nineteenth century, likely shortly before the radical restoration commissioned by Pope Pius IX and carried out by the architect Busiri Vici with the assistance of the painter Roberto Bompiani. It was only in 1855 (after the basilica's completion) that the funerary monument was erected to the right of the altar…"

In reality, the Pichi-Manfroni-Lovatti palace was not purchased by Matteo, but by his son Filippo (1822-1893) on 25 January 1862, when Matteo had already died.

Maurilio Lovatti - main index of online papers