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Searching   for  the Stuarts

 by Mary Jane Cryan  copyright 2007

The  Stuarts , exiled royal family of England and Scotland ,  resided in Italy for over 90 years. In 1717 James III Stuart, the “Old Pretender” to the English crown arrived in Italy coming from France and two years later married the Polish princess Maria Clementina Sobieska.  Together with their sons Charles (Bonnie Prince Charlie) and Henry (later Cardinal & Duke of York ) they lived in many different towns and cities and travelled extensively through the Italian peninsula some time before the days of the Grand Tour. To mark  the 200th anniversary of the death of Cardinal Henry Benedict Stuart (1725-1807), the last of this royal dynasty, here is a guide to the heraldic monuments and mementos dedicated to the Stuarts in central Italy. Our  gallery of images shows  objects conserved in various Italian localities; in Rome , Florence , Frascati and Bologna and also in Northern Lazio towns such as Vetralla and Montefiascone - two towns with strong  Stuart family  ties.

 We begin this journey in Rome since many sites, heraldic monuments and mementos of the Stuarts dot the city. Noel McFerran’s exhaustive website dedicated to the Jacobites www.jacobites.ca lists many places connected to the presence of the Stuarts in Rome and the Vatican .                         

The funerary monument in St. Peter’s Basilica is the best known Stuart memento due to its setting and sculptor, Antonio Canova, who set portraits of the three Stuarts (left to right James III, Cardinal Henry and Charles) and above them, the royal  arms .

  Looking down upon this monument is that dedicated to Queen Maria Clementina Sobieska, wife of James III and mother of Cardinal Henry and Charles, one of only three women buried in the Basilica. In the Vatican Treasury many objects donated by Cardinal Henry Stuart are conserved.          

  In the Basilica of S. Maria in Trastevere one can admire three large coat of arms of Henry who was titular Cardinal there even after he moved to Frascati.

The Cardinal-Duke of York ’s arms are visible above the arch bringing to the Winter Chapel and on the base of the altar.  

A cross reliquary in rock crystal donated in 1761 and its leather carrying case with his royal arms can also be admired  

Palazzo Muti, on Piazza Santi Apostoli, has a plaque inside the entrance way reminding passers-by that this was the building used by the royal English court in exile and the birthplace of  Henry, the last of the Stuart dynasty.

Nearby in Piazza Pilotta, the Palazzo Muti-Papazzuri today home of the Biblicum Institute, was decorated thus for the festivities of the Cardinal’s crowning in 1747.  

now

then

The former Scots College (now a bank) on Via Quattro Fontane, just off Piazza Barberini, has windows decorated with Scottish symbols, royal arms and busts of the Stuarts along its roof.

Frascati’s Duomo has several monuments with royal arms surmounted by the Cardinal’s hat among which this monument and a marble sink located in the Sacristy. 

   In Velletri the Cardinal’s arms can be seen over the doorway of a school founded by Cardinal Henry in 1804 and precious sacred vestments embroidered with the royal insignia donated by the Cardinal are kept in the Basilica. 

Other mementos of Cardinal Henry-Duke of York are scattered among the Castelli Romani: Albano Laziale, Castle Gandolfo, Colonna, Frascati, Grottaferrata, Lanuvio, Monte Porzio Catone, Montecompatri and Rocca di Papa.

North of Rome other sites testify to the presence of the Stuarts during the first decades of the 1700’s: plaques on a doorway in Caprarola

 and a palazzo in Civita Castellana where the queen mother visited, and on the Castle in Soriano nel Cimino

where we find a marble plaque recalling James III‘s first visit as guest of Cardinal Albani in 1717. In the following years both James and his queen often visited Palazzo Chigi-Albani , today in a dreadful state of disrepair.

  In 1719 James III and Maria Clementima Sobieska were married in the Bishop’s Palace in Montefiascone overlooking Lake Bolsena . Here they passed their honeymoon under the protection of her godfather, Pope Clemente XI Albani, as guests of the Bishop and surrounded by Scottish nobles and ladies of the court in exile. Even today there are Scottish names among the inhabitants of the villages around the Lake of Bolsena

  Montefiascone ‘s Santa Margherita church conserves an important collection of sacred vestments donated by the Polish-Scottish queen in memory of the happy days spent there. The vestments, embroidered in silver and gold thread, show the crowned lion passant (symbol of the English royal family), the thistle (symbol of their beloved Scotland ) and other English heraldic devices.  They have been beautifully conserved for two and a half centuries in a strong-box chest of drawers made specially to protect them.

  A marble plaque decorates the room (now the dusty archives of the diocese) where the Stuart wedding and baptism of the first born, Bonnie Prince Charlie, took place.

   In his diaries, recently discovered at the British Library, and the basis for the book “Travels to Tuscany & Northern Lazio” (Davide Ghaleb Editore, Vetralla) the 1776 visit of Cardinal Stuart to Vetralla is described meticulously along with the gifts and banquets the community offered to him.  

In memory of this significant day, in 1802 a portrait bust of the Cardinal was transported to Vetralla by a group of Pontifical Dragoons and since then it has graced the city’s Council Hall.    

The coat of arms of two other English: King Henry VIII and his ambassador Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge along with that of Pope Julius II Della Rovere, can be admired on the stairway of the city hall: a further proof that Vetralla is the only city in Italy and the world, outside England, to be granted the protection of the English crown since 1512.

   Continuing into Tuscany , the Marche and Emilia Romagna we find numerous Stuart memories. In Florence the exiled royals were guests of the Corsini family and there is still a “Cardinal’s Room” in their palazzo on the Lungarno in memory of his visit in 1764. Two gift portraits on copper of the Stuart princes, after the painter Liotard, are jealously conserved in the Corsini family collection.  In Santa Croce Basilica, next to the burial places of great Italians such as Michelangelo and Galileo, stands the funeral monument  of Louise Stolberg (died 1824) Charles II’s wife (and poet Vittorio Alfieri’s mistress), complete with the royal coat-of-arms, the lion and the unicorn.

Palazzo Guadagni-San Clemente, today Florence University ’s School of Architecture , is adorned by this huge frescoed coat-of-arms datable between 1773 and 1785, when the family lived in the palazzo.  

One of many palazzi that hosted the Stuarts in Bologna was Palazzo Fantuzzi, known for its interesting façade decorated with an elephant frieze.

A visit to San Petronio and other moments of the Stuart life (weddings, birthdays, baptisms, visits to Bologna ) are recorded by the designs in the Anziani del Comune di Bologna annuals, conserved in the Bologna archives.      

Many thanks go to fellow  Stuart specialists in different parts of the world for information and photos :  Noel McFerran (Toronto , Canada), Edward Corp (Toulouse , France), Maurizio Ascari (Bologna - Italy) Benedicta Froelich (Switzerland ) and  Luca Leoni  ( Velletri , Italy )