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Gerolamo Garimberto

Parma, 1506 - 1575, Rome

BiographyLC name authority rec. n92084283
LC Heading: Garimberto, Gerolamo, 1506-1575

Biography:
Italian bishop, antiquarian and collector. He went to Rome some time before 1527, serving as a canon of St Peter’s and as vicar of S Giovanni in Laterano (where his mortuary monument remains) before being made Bishop of Gallese by Pius IV in 1562. By this date he had published five books, the first of which, De reggimenti pubblici delle città, appeared in 1544. In 1550 Ulisse Aldrovandi recommended his readers to the antiquarian collection ‘nella camera di messer Hierolimo Garimberto’ in the Palazzo Gaddi on Monte Citorio.

In 1562 Garimberto helped to evaluate the antiquities that Paolo Bufalo offered to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. He also served as archaeological adviser to Cesare Gonzaga, Lord of Guastalla, and to his cousin Guglielmo Gonzaga, 3rd Duke of Mantua. The extensive correspondence (1562–73) with the former and the letters written to the latter in 1572–3 provide a highly readable source of information on the contemporary Roman antiquities market and on Garimberto’s relations with such other antiquarians and dealers as Alessandro de’ Grandi (d after 1590) and Vincenzo and Giovanni Antonio Stampa (active in Rome 1550–80). His own collection of antiquities is documented in detailed inventories of 1567 and 1576 sent to Albert V, Duke of Bavaria, in anticipation of a possible sale. Several of the works described can be related to engravings of items ‘in Museo Garimberti’, shown in books 3–4 of Giovanni Battista de’ Cavalieri’s Antiquarum statuarum urbis Romae (1594), and of these some can be identified with extant works as, for example, the Infant Hercules Wrestling with Snakes (Turin, Mus. Civ. A. Ant.), the acquisition of which is mentioned in the correspondence with Cesare Gonzaga. The same source documents the major purchase of his career, the collection of the Milanese merchant Francesco Lisca (d 1564/5), which he bought in 1565.

In 1572 Garimberto wrote to Cesare Gonzaga describing his library of over 2000 books, arranged according to subject and interspersed with busts of many of the authors, his gallery displaying figurines and imperial heads and his loggia containing ‘statove grande del naturale’ (i.e. life-size statues). He was not the most learned member of the contemporary Roman intelligentsia, but his aspirations were typical and are unusually well documented.

(Clifford M. Brown. "Garimberto, Gerolamo." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed December 14, 2015,)

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Last Updated8/7/24

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