Construction Activity and Patronage
Pope Clement shunned nepotism. His nephew Annibale was appointed a cardinal, but only through personal merit.
As a builder, Clement had a famous sundial added in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri and had an obelisk erected in the Piazza del Pantheon and a river port built on the Tiber River.
He established a committee, overseen by his favourite artists, Carlo Maratta and Carlo Fontana, to commission statuary of the apostles to complete the decoration of San Giovanni in Laterano. He also founded a painting and sculpting academy in the Campidoglio.
He also enriched the Vatican library with numerous Oriental codices and patronaged the first archaeological excavations in the Roman catacombs. In his native Urbino he restored numerous edifices and founded a public library.
Read more about this topic: Pope Clement XI
Famous quotes containing the words construction, activity and/or patronage:
“Striving toward a goal puts a more pleasing construction on our advance toward death.”
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“Criticism is infested with the cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit to imitate the sayers.”
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“She loved money, but could occasionally part with it, especially to men of learning, whose patronage she affected. She often conversed with them, and bewildered herself in their metaphysical disputes, which neither she nor they themselves understood.”
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