Galleria Spada historical timeline

A cardinal's palace, a second cardinal's collection, and an architect's joke about appearances that outlived both.

Chronology

1. 1540 — the palace is built for Cardinal Girolamo Capodiferro, architect Bartolomeo Baronino. Structural impact: the courtyard and street ranges that everything later is fitted into. What you see today: the stucco-encrusted courtyard you cross to reach the colonnade.
2. 1632 — Cardinal Bernardino Spada purchases it. Structural impact: a palace becomes a setting for a collection. What you see today: the pictures, which are substantially his.
3. 1636-1637 — the Gallery of the Cardinal is designed to house that collection. Structural impact: a room built around a hang rather than a hang fitted to a room. What you see today: Room III, and the reason the frames sit frame-to-frame.
4. 1653 — Borromini builds the perspective colonnade, with the calculations by the Augustinian father Giovanni Maria da Bitonto. Structural impact: an arcade whose columns, floor, vault and walls all converge on one viewing point. What you see today: the illusion, which still works.
5. November 1926 — the Italian State acquires the palace. Structural impact: a private collection becomes a public one. What you see today: a state gallery sharing a building with the Council of State.
6. 1927 — the Galleria opens to the public. Structural impact: the four rooms take their present role. What you see today: the visit as it is now arranged.
7. 1940s — the gallery closes during the war. Structural impact: none permanent. What you see today: nothing — which is the point of recording it.
8. 1951 — it reopens. Structural impact: none. What you see today: an institution that has run continuously for seventy years.

• Official website
• Wikipedia