Luke Wadding's art: Irish Franciscan patronage in seventeenth-century Rome

The Irish Franciscan friar, Luke Wadding (Waterford, 1588 - Rome, 1657), was a very significant figure for his time. Aged fifteen, he left Ireland for Portugal never to return. In 1618 he moved to Rome as part of a Spanish diplomatic mission to ask the Holy See to recognize the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, remaining there for the rest of his life. Primarily, Wadding is famous for his highly important contribution to Franciscan history, having written the first eight volumes of Annales Minorum, the great work devoted to the history of the three Franciscan orders. As an accomplished theologian, he also played a prominent role in the ecclesiastical politics of Rome in the 1600s. This book deals with Wadding’s artistic involvement in commissioning works of art and architecture, chiefly for ‘his’ Church of St. Isidore in Rome; his portraits – both painted and engraved – are also investigated. By choosing such important artists as Andrea Sacchi and Carlo Maratti, he was showcasing the Church of St. Isidore as a significant example of art and architecture in seventeenth-century Rome. Most of this research has been carried out from unpublished documents kept in Roman archives.