Ercole Graziani, Painter of «Regulated Devotion». The Apostles from the Colonna Collection

Abstract

In 2003, the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in Palazzo Barberini in Rome bought an important series of paintings representing eight Apostles, originally from the collection of Edoardo Testori. The paintings, now on display at the Pandone Castle Museum in Venafro and attributed to the Sicilian artist Gioacchino Martorana, all feature the Colonna family coat of arms at the bottom right. A new review of the eighteenth-century inventories, relating to the Colonna collections, has allowed the works to be unquestionably assigned to the Bolognese painter Ercole Graziani.