Guido Bentivoglio

Guido Bentivoglio d'Aragona was an Italian cardinal, statesman and historian.

Early years

A member of the Ferrara branch of the influential Bentivoglio family of Bologna, he was the younger son of marchese Cornelio Bentivoglio and Isabella Bendidio. After studying at the universities of Ferrara and Padua, where in 1598 he received a doctorate utroque jure— in both civil and canon law— he returned to Ferrara, to the humanistic studies that honed his elegant writing style. There Pope Clement VIII, on a visit to the city that had recently fallen under direct papal control, made him his private chamberlain, and he returned with Clement to Rome.

Nuncio in Brussels and Paris

Under Clement's successor, Pope Paul V, he was appointed titular archbishop of Rhodes, 14 May 1607, with a dispensation for being three months shy of the canonical age and not having yet received the sacred orders, in order to give him appropriate credentials as nuncio at the court of the Archdukes Archduke [Albert of Austria (1559–1621)|Albert] and Infanta [Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain|Isabella] in the Habsburg Netherlands,.
He arrived in Brussels when negotiations between the Habsburgs and the Dutch Republic to end the Eighty Years' War were about to begin. Following the conclusion of the Twelve Years' Truce in April 1609, he was greatly concerned with the position of Catholicism in the Republic. Accredited to a Habsburg court, he likewise took a keen interest in the final stages of the reign and the succession of Emperor Rudolf II.
Three more topics occupied a great deal of his time: the struggle over the Jülich-Cleves inheritance, which was set to ignite the Thirty Years War, the flight of the prince de Condé from France in objection to Henri IV's divorce and remarriage, and the degree of toleration for Catholics in England and Ireland under James I. His correspondence reveals Bentivoglio as "the skilled diplomatist, polished by constant intercourse with the most refined society, as well as the mature observer," according to Ludwig Pastor.
Afterwards he was nuncio to the Court of France, where he witnessed the uproars of the Regency of Queen Marie de' Medici, the fall of Concino Concini in the coup operated by Louis XIII and his favorite Charles d'Albert, the discord between the Queen-Mother and her son and the first Huguenot rebellions. The King rewarded his services as nuncio with the appointment on 11 July 1622 to the bishopric of Riez, a position from which Bentivoglio would resign on 16 October 1625.

Cardinal in Rome

In accordance to custom, Bentivoglio was made a cardinal on 11 January 1621 at the end of his mission at the Court of France. His first titular church was the San Giovanni a Porta Latina. He subsequently switched to the Santa Maria del Popolo, the Santa Prassede and the Santa Maria in Trastevere. On 1 July 1641, his intimate friend, Pope Urban VIII appointed him to the suburbicarian see of Palestrina. Until his nomination to the order of cardinal-bishops, Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu had entrusted him with the post of Cardinal protector of France.
On 22 June 1633, Cardinal Bentivoglio was one of the signers of the papal condemnation of Galileo. An able writer and skilful diplomat, Bentivoglio was marked out as Urban's successor, but he died suddenly after the opening of the 1644 Papal conclave. He is buried in the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale, Rome. The complete edition of his works was published at Venice in 1668.

Patron of the arts

Bentivoglio was a famous connoisseur and patron of artists. A music enthusiaste, he took Girolamo Frescobaldi with him to Brussels as his household composer. In Brussels and Paris he collected paintings, tapestries and tapestry cartoons for his patron, Cardinal Scipione Borghese. On his return to Rome in 1621 Bentivoglio bought Cardinal Borghese's new palazzo on the Quirinale. For the palace he commissioned decorations from various artists, including, from 1623 to 1627, Andrea Camassei, who painted a Cupid and Psyche, Filippo Napoletano, who painted a frieze of landscapes and marines, and Giovanni da San Giovanni, who painted mythological scenes.
Guido was most noted, however, for his patronage of northern European artists working in Rome. In 1623 he commissioned Anthony van Dyck to paint his portrait and also a Crucifixion. His portrait bust was sculpted by François Duquesnoy "Il Fiammingo", a Flemish sculptor active in Rome. In 1633 Bentivoglio commissioned an engraved portrait from Claude Mellan and in 1640 arranged for landscape paintings by François Perrier and Herman van Swanevelt to be included among several pictures commissioned for Francesco I d'Este, Duke of Modena. He was an influential supporter of Claude Lorrain: Lorrain's biographer Filippo Baldinucci reported also that Bentivoglio was one of the first Roman patrons to visit Claude’s studio and that he introduced this artist’s work to Pope Urban VIII.
Guido’s interest in music and literature led him also to patronize several composers and to correspond with poets, including Giambattista Marino. There are many references to the visual arts in his letters and memoirs, although these are seldom qualified by artists’ names. His writings reveal his extraordinary sensitivity to landscape and a mind attracted equally to the magnificent and the simple: the grandeur of Venice and the fresh and verdant landscapes of northern Europe.
His collection was partly dispersed, either sold with the Palazzo Bentivoglio on the Quirinal or given away. The remainder was inherited by his nephew Annibale, papal nuncio to Florence, from whom the portrait by van Dyck passed into the collection of the Medici family.

Works

Della guerra di Fiandria. Bentivoglio's three volumes were translated in 1654, by Henry Carey, 2nd Earl of Monmouth Relazioni di G. Bentivoglio in tempo delle sue Nunziature di Fiandria e di Francia

Lettere diplomatiche di Guido Bentivoglio.Raccolta de Lettere Scritte dal Signor Cardinal Bentivoglio in tempo delle sut Nuntiature do Fiandra, e di Francia..