L'inedito contributo di Monsignor Egidio alla collezione Colonna : i dipinti fiamminghi, Rubens e il mercato

The essay is focused on Antoon Verpeene, a Flemish merchant active in seventeenth-century Rome, analyzing his personality and his professional and social network – with painters, merchants and collectors – in the Flemish community. A receipt for the purchase of paintings by Monsignor Egidio Colonna, here published, reveals that Verpeene mainly dealt with works by Flemish artists active in Rome, in close relationship with him and with the merchant-painter Cornelis de Wael. The Assumption of the Virgin by Rubens’ workshop, still preserved in the Colonna collection, is among the paintings acquired by Egidio Colonna. This purchase offers the opportunity to reflect on the trade and the fortune of Rubens’s works on the 17th century Roman market, as well as on Egidio Colonna’s activity as art collector, hitherto unknown, who greatly contributed to the Colonna collection.