My first Publication CAMUCCINI GB - Magic Land-db_compressed | Page 59

dedicarsi agli affari domestici, riponendo nel talentuoso fratello
minore l’ambizione di una carriera artistica di successo che
avrebbe garantito l’ascesa sociale della famiglia.
All’età di venticinque anni, Giovanni Battista entrò in
possesso di quel patrimonio artistico su cui si era formato e
da cui aveva appreso l’amore per l’arte: la prestigiosa quadreria
messa insieme da Pietro e gestita dal fratello dopo la sua morte,
nonché l’immensa mole di opere grafiche e pittoriche lasciate
da Vincenzo, prevalentemente materiali di studio. La gestione
dell’eredità avvenne in linea con i desideri espressi dallo zio e
dal padre durante la loro vita. Riguardo alla collezione d’arte
di Pietro, quest’ultimo ne aveva incoraggiato la vendita e
l’investimento del ricavato in beni immobili, al fine di assicurare
alla famiglia rendite sicure: Giovanni Battista, infatti, realizzerà
quanto auspicato dallo zio mentre, al contrario, manterrà
intatto il cospicuo nucleo di materiali di studio di Vincenzo,
come a voler assecondare il forte attaccamento che il pittore
aveva sempre dimostrato per gli stessi e la volontà di conservarli
in famiglia.
Nel 1854, in seguito alla scomparsa di Bianca Emilia Allier,
seconda moglie di Vincenzo, Giovanni Battista ereditò un
grande feudo presso Torri in Sabina (Rieti), zona in cui di lì
Fig. 1. Vincenzo Camuccini, Studio per il dipinto Curio Dentato rifiuta
i doni dei Sanniti, ante 1824, Roma, collezione privata
sister Lucia had lost their father many years before, decided to
stop painting in order to devote his energies to his domestic
affairs, leaving his talented younger brother to pursue the
successful artistic career that was to propel the family up the
social ladder.
Giovanni Battista was only twenty-five when he came into
possession of the substantial artistic inheritance on which he
himself had trained and from which he had learnt to love art,
in other words the prestigious picture gallery put together
by Pietro and managed by his brother after his death and
the mass of drawings and paintings – chiefly preliminary
drafts – left to him by Vincenzo. He managed his inheritance
in accordance with the wishes formulated by his uncle and
father during their lifetimes. His uncle Pietro had encouraged
him to sell the art collection and to invest the profits in the
property market in order to ensure that his family might enjoy
a regular income. Giovanni Battista followed his uncle’s advice
where the collection was concerned, yet he was never to sell
the considerable corpus of material inherited from Vincenzo,
almost as though he wished to respect the strong attachment
that the painter had always shown for it and to keep it in the
family.
Following the death of Vincenzo’s second wife Bianca
Emilia Allier in 1854, Giovanni Battista inherited a large estate
in Torri in Sabina in the province of Rieti, where he was soon
to add to his property. Emilia - who was born in Avignon -
was especially fond of the area where she was to spend the last
years of her life, and she was also very attached to her stepson 7 .
A year of great change in both the financial and personal
spheres awaited Camuccini following his stepmother’s death.
In the space of only a few months, between April and August
1855, he sold part of his uncle’s collection of paintings to
Lord Algernon Percy, 4th Duke of Northumberland and
married his second wife, Anna Massani, who was to give him
three children 8 . Negotiations over the sale of the paintings,
which involved a number of artfully contrived stratagems for
obtaining an export licence from the Papal States, ended with
the sale of seventy-four pictures for 80.000 scudi 9 . Camuccini
invested this considerable sum in restoring Palazzo Cesi in via
della Maschera d’Oro in Rome, which his father had purchased
some years earlier, and in acquiring an estate in Cantalupo in
Sabina, not far from Torri, in 1862. He moved a large part of
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