Carving Out Identity: The Boncompagni Family, Alessandro Algardi and the Chapel in the Sacristy of Santa Maria in Vallicella

This study is devoted to the sculpture of Saint Philip Neri and the Angel by Alessandro Algardi, commissioned by Agostino, Ippolito and Pietro Boncompagni (former Corcos) for the chapel in the sacristy of the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome. By placing the circumstances of the commissioning of the statue in the broader context of the Corcos family’s transition from Judaism to Catholicism, I will examine this episode of patronage in connection with the vicissitudes that led the family to embrace Christianity and its subsequent efforts to refashion its identities. In investigating the relationship of Pietro to Agostino and Ippolito, I will delve further into the lives of the latter two and suggest, on the basis of new documentary evidence, that because of Agostino’s role within the Oratory and Ippolito’s friendship with Bolognese artists, the two played a key role in envisioning the commission. I will thus explore the embellishment of their chapel as a collective enterprise, conceived with the intention both to emphasize the Boncompagni family’s devotion and special bond to Saint Philip Neri as advocate of their conversion and to publicly consolidate their new social and religious identity.