18th Century Italian Oil Painting Portrait Pope Clement XIII

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1 Huge Important rare fine art antique original religious Italian 18th century oil painting portrait of head Catholic Church Pope … Read more 1 Huge Important rare fine art antique original religious Italian 18th century oil painting portrait of head Catholic Church Pope Clement XIII beside a cherub holding a bible inscribed 'Profert De Thesauro Suo Nova Et Vetera', bearing further Latin inscription bottom left.
Subject portrait of Pope Clement XIII.
Italian school old master artist.
Set in a magnificent ornate carved gilt frame.
Circa mid 18th century 1760.
Pope Clement XIII (Latin: Clemens XIII; 7 March 1693 – 2 February 1769), born Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 6 July 1758 to his death in 1769. He was installed on 16 July 1758.
This oil painting on canvas depicting Pope Clement XIII, painted circa 1760. The painting has been carried out in an exceptional manner, painted by a hand of the greatest skill; creating very realistic impressions within the faces of the pope and cherub.
The painting depicts Pope Clement XIII next to a Cherub. The Pope is looking directly towards the audience whilst the Cherub is holding the Biblia Sacra.
The Biblia Sacra was written in Venice, Italy, in 1740 by Fransiscum Piteri in which was recognised by Popes Sixtus V and Clement VIII. The Biblia Sacra is the Latin translation of The Holy Bible.
The Pope places his hands in front of him, invoking the audience to join him and the Cherub (Gods messenger on earth) to worship and commemorate the glorification of the newly Beatified Sebastian Maggi. Sebatian Maggi, also known as Blessed Sebastian Maggi O. P. (Order of Preachers) was and Italian Roman Catholic Priest and a member of the Dominicans, he also served as a confessor.
He lived between 1414 and 1496 and was beatified by Pope Clement XIII on the 15 April 1760 at Saint Peter's Basilica, Papal States. In the painting, the Angel represents the messager of God, carrying God's instructions (Biblia Sacra) , to God's representative on Earth, Pope Clement XIII to convey the message of the beatification and worship of the Blessed Priest Sebastian Maggi.
The painting would have been commissioned, especially to commemorate the occasion, making it an important piece of Italian Ecclesiastical history. On the Sacred book that the Cherub holds has a Latin written verse from the Biblia Sacra: "Profert De Thesauro Suo Nova Et Vetera" which is from the book of Matthew, 13: 52. There is a further inscription to the bottom left of the painting, the letters pained by hand in Latin, translate to the following: The highest order issued by the grace of God from the year 1740 (referring to the date the Biblia Sacra was published) , for the Head of Priests (Pope Clement XIII) in 1760 (the year of Sebastian Maggi's beatification) , to invite all to worship the Blessed Martyr Order of Preachers, Sebastian (Sebastian Maggi O. P)
This would have belonged to a Church or monastic institution in Italy. Please note the intricate detail, such as the lacework of the Pope's sleeves and his life-like features, such as the incredible detail of facial hair, wrinkles and even eye vessels.
Pope Clement XIII His pontificate was overshadowed by the constant pressure to suppress the Society of Jesus but despite this, he championed their order and also proved to be their greatest defender at that time.
He was also one of the few early popes who favoured dialogue with Old Catholic Protestants and to this effect hoped to mend the schism with the Catholic Church that existed in England and the low countries. These efforts ultimately bore little fruit.
His early life Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico was born in 1693 to a recently ennobled family of Venice, the second of two children of the man who bought the unfinished palace on the Grand Canal (now Ca' Rezzonico) and finished its construction. His parents were Giovanni Battista Rezzonico and Vittoria Barbarigo, and he had a brother called Aurelio.
Carlo received a Jesuit education in Bologna and later studied at the University of Padua where he obtained his doctorate in canon law and civil law. From there, he travelled to Rome where he attended the Pontifical Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles.
In 1716 Rezzonico became the Referendary of the Apostolic Signatura and in 1721 was appointed Governor of Fano. He was ordained to the priesthood on 23 December 1731 in Rome. Pope Clement XII appointed him to the cardinalate in 1737 as the Cardinal-Deacon of San Nicola in Carcere. He also filled various important posts in the Roman Curia.
Rezzonico was chosen as Bishop of Padua in 1743 and he received episcopal consecration in Rome by Pope Benedict XIV himself, in the presence of Giuseppe Accoramboni and cardinal Antonio Saverio Gentili as co-consecrators. Rezzonico visited his diocese on frequent occasions and reformed the way that the diocese ran, paying attention to the social needs of the diocese. He was the first to do this in five decades. He later opted to become the Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in 1747 and later still to become the Cardinal-Priest of San Marco in 1755,
Election to the papacy, Pope Benedict XIV died of gout in 1758 and the College of Cardinals gathered at the papal conclave in order to elect a successor. Direct negotiations between the rival factions resulted in the proposal for the election of Rezzonico. On the evening of 6 July 1758, Rezzonico received 31 votes out of a possible 44, one more than the required amount. He selected the pontifical name of "Clement XIII" in honor of Pope Clement XII, who elevated him to the cardinalate. Rezzonico was crowned as pontiff on 16 July 1758 by the protodeacon, Cardinal Alessandro Albani.
Notwithstanding the meekness and affability of his upright and moderate character, he was modest to a fault (he had the classical sculptures in the Vatican provided with mass-produced fig leaves) and generous with his extensive private fortune. He also permitted vernacular translations of the Bible in Catholic countries.
The Jesuits, Clement XIII's pontificate was repeatedly disturbed by disputes respecting the pressures to suppress the Jesuits coming from the progressive Enlightenment circles of the philosophes in France.
Clement XIII placed the Encyclopédie of D'Alembert and Diderot on the Index, but this index was not as effective as it had been in the previous century. More unexpected resistance came from the less progressive courts of Spain, the Two Sicilies, and Portugal. In 1758 the reforming minister of Joseph I of Portugal (1750–77), the Marquis of Pombal, expelled the Jesuits from Portugal, and transported them all to Civitavecchia, as a "gift for the Pope."
In 1760, Pombal sent the papal nuncio home and recalled the Portuguese ambassador from the Vatican. The pamphlet titled the Brief Relation, which claimed the Jesuits had created their own sovereign independent kingdom in South America and tyrannised the Native Americans, all in the interest of an insatiable ambition and avarice,[1] did damage to the Jesuit cause as well.
Clement XIII's tomb in St. Peter's Basilica
On 8 November 1760, Clement XIII issued a Papal bull Quantum ornamenti, which approved the request of King Charles III of Spain to invoke the Immaculate Conception as the Patroness of Spain, along with its eastern and western territories, while continuing to recognize Saint James the Greater as co-patron.
In France, the Parliament of Paris, with its strong upper bourgeois background and Jansenist sympathies, began its campaign to expel the Jesuits from France in the spring of 1761, and the published excerpts from Jesuit writings, the Extrait des assertions, provided anti-Jesuit ammunition (though, arguably, many of the statements the Extrait contained were made to look worse than they were through judicious omission of context).
Though a congregation of bishops assembled at Paris in December 1761 recommended no action, Louis XV of France (1715–74) promulgated a royal order permitting the Society to remain in France, with the proviso that certain essentially liberalising changes in their institution satisfy the Parlement with a French Jesuit vicar-general who would be independent of the general in Rome. When the Parlement by the arrêt of 2 August 1762 suppressed the Jesuits in France and imposed untenable conditions on any who remained in the country, Clement XIII protested against this invasion of the Church's rights and annulled the arrêts. Louis XV's ministers could not permit such an abrogation of French law, and the King finally expelled the Jesuits in November 1764.
Clement XIII warmly espoused the Jesuit order in a papal bull Apostolicum pascendi, 7 January 1765, which dismissed criticisms of the Jesuits as calumnies and praised the order's usefulness; it was largely ignored: by 1768 the Jesuits had been expelled from France, the Two Sicilies and Parma.
In Spain, they appeared to be safe, but Charles III of Spain (1759–88), aware of the drawn-out contentions in Bourbon France, decided on a more peremptory efficiency.
During the night of 2–3 April 1767, all the Jesuit houses of Spain were suddenly surrounded, the inhabitants arrested, shipped to the ports in the clothes they were wearing and bundled onto ships for Civitavecchia.
-The King's letter to Clement XIII promised that his allowance of 100 piastres each year would be withdrawn for the whole order, should any one of them venture at any time to write anything in self-defence or in criticism of the motives for the expulsion, motives that he refused to discuss, then or in the future.
Much the same fate awaited them in the territories of the Bourbon Duke of Parma and Piacenza, advised by the liberal minister Guillaume du Tillot. In 1768, Clement XIII issued a strong protest (monitorium) against the policy of the Parmese government. The question of the investiture of Parma aggravated the Pope's troubles. The Bourbon Kings espoused their relative's quarrel, seized Avignon, Benevento and Pontecorvo, and united in a peremptory demand for the total suppression of the Jesuits (January 1769).
Driven to extremes, Clement XIII consented to call a consistory to consider the step, but on the very eve of the day set for its meeting he died, not without suspicion of poison, of which, however, there appears to be no conclusive evidence.
Ecumenism, Clement XIII backed plans to reunite the Catholic Church, with Old Catholic branches that split from Rome in 1724 over the issue of Papal authority, as well as with Protestants. This made little progress since Clement refused to compromise on doctrine with Protestants or on Papal authority with Old Catholics.
In support of this policy, he recognised the Hanoverians as Kings of Great Britain despite the long-term residence in Rome of the Catholic House of Stuart. When James Francis Edward Stuart, aka James III died in 1766, Clement refused to recognise his son Charles Edward Stuart as Charles III, despite the objections of his brother Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart.
Clement XIII created 52 new cardinals in seven consistories in his pontificate. The pope created his nephew Carlo as a cardinal in his first consistory and later created Antonio Ganganelli - who would succeed him as Pope Clement XIV - as a cardinal.
The pope approved the cultus for several individuals: Andrew of Montereale and Vincent Kadlubek on 18 February 1764, Angelus Agostini Mazzinghi on 7 March 1761, Antoine Neyrot on 22 February 1767, Augustine Novello in 1759, Elizabeth Achler on 19 July 1766, James Bertoni in 1766, Francesco Marinoni on 5 December 1764, Mattia de Nazarei on 27 July 1765, Sebastian Maggi on 15 April 1760 and Angela Merici on 30 April 1768. He formally beatified Beatrix of Este the Elder on 19 November 1763, Bernard of Corleone on 15 May 1768 and Gregorio Barbarigo on 6 July 1761.
Clement XIII canonized four saints in his pontificate: Jerome Emiliani, Joseph Calasanz, Joseph of Cupertino, and Serafino of Montegranaro on 16 July 1767.
Death, Clement XIII died during the night of 2 February 1769 in Rome of an apoplexy. He was laid to rest on 8 February 1769 in the Vatican but his remains were transferred on 27 September 1774 to a monument in the Vatican that had been sculpted by Antonio Canova at the request of Senator Abbondio Rezzonico, the nephew of the late pontiff.
From the Annual Register, for 1758: Pope Clement XIII was "the honestest man in the world; a most exemplary ecclesiastic; of the purest morals; devout, steady, learned, diligent
Provenance bought from a fine art auction antiques interior sale in Oxfordshire.
Highly sought after due to the collectible nature of the religious subject matter.
With hanging thread on the back ready for immediate home display.
Incredible conversation piece for your guests.
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Dimensions in centimetres of the frame approximate

High highest point from the floor to top of pediment crown (119cm)
Wide (104.5cm)
Depth (3cm) See less