Nicknamed ‘Papessa’ – the ‘lady Pope’, Olimpia effectively controlled appointments at Papal Court with candidates for vacant episcopal roles applying directly to her, and the office typically going to the highest bidder. In 1645 she received the title Princess of San Martino, a position she used in court to bring considerable wealth to the house of Pamphilj. Her influence subsided somewhat following the recalling by Innocent X of Fabio Chigi from Germany, who subsequently became Pope Alexander VII, however, in the last years of Innocent’s life, she guarded access to him and used her position for her own financial gain.

Having constantly feared being condemned to a convent as a young woman – the fate of many a dowerless young lady of the time – Olimpia was empathetic to the plight of her own sex. Contemporary accounts describe how she gave money to women to save them from this fate, delivering provisions to convents and building hundreds of homes as dowries for girls who would otherwise not be able to marry and would be forced into a convent or prostitution. She was also said to have allowed prostitutes in Rome to ride in carriages bearing her coat of arms to indicate that they were under her protection.

Olimpia was also a patron of Roman culture sponsoring numerous artists, musicians, playwrights and sculptors and was responsible for Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in the Piazza Navona in Rome designed and created for Pope Innocent X in 1651.

The Discovery

The Portrait of Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj was last documented alongside Velázquez’s celebrated portrait of her grandson, Cardinal Camillo Massimi, in the collection of Cardinal Pompeo Aldrovandi (1668 – 1752) of Bologna and Rome, in 1724. While the subsequent ownership of Camillo’s portrait is well-documented through to its current location in Kingston Lacy, Dorset, records of the portrait of Olimpia end with Aldrovandi. The only clue to its whereabouts for almost 300 years before it re-appearance at a Dutch auction house in 1986, is an old custom stamp on the reverse of the former stretcher, indicating that the painting had left Italy in 1911.

Brought to the attention of Sotheby’s specialists in Amsterdam who immediately recognised the mysterious cypher on the back of the painting as that of Don Gaspar Mendez de Haro y Guzman, 7th Marques del Carpio, the process of establishing the true creator of the work began in earnest. Viewing the painting and tracking down various inventories from the 17th and 18th centuries, Sotheby’s Senior Specialist, James Macdonald, soon suspected that this striking portrait could be the hitherto missing original by Velázquez. Showing the painting to key experts in the field, the attribution of the work was confirmed, making the portrait one of only a handful of paintings by the great Spanish artist left in private hands.

Another great discovery: a rare, long-lost drawing by Rosso Fiorentino

Scrolling through a batch of images sent through from around the world via Sotheby's online valuation tool Cristiana Romalli, Senior Director and Italian specialist in Sotheby’s Old Master Drawings Department, paused at an intriguingly accomplished sketch. It looked to her like an accomplished work by major Mannerist artist, Rosso Fiorentino, whose drawings are extremely rare. Cristiana retired home to read Giorgio Vasari’s ‘Lives of the Artists’, chronicling the lives of the leading Italian artists of the early 16th-century. And there she found a reference to this work, since then unrecorded – lost from the canon of art history.

Vasari describes how, in 1524, Rosso set out from Florence to Rome, in search of work. He stopped en route in his home town of Arezzo, where he caught up with his old friend Antonio Lappoli (1492-1552). Lappoli – a less successful artist than Rosso – had just been asked to complete a major commission in Arrezzo: a rendering of the Visitation, for the family chapel of a wealthy Aretine citizen. Lappoli turned to his friend Rosso for help and inspiration, and Rosso, forever generous, worked up this beautifully accomplished composition, which Lappoli then used as the basis for his painting.

The beautiful drawing by Rosso – described by Vasari as molto bello – was believed by scholars to be lost. Its re-emergence now adds significantly to our understanding of the working methods of an artist known for his eccentricity, and expressive, unconventional style. Only the second drawing by Rosso to have appeared on the market in over half a century, its survival and fine state of preservation is nothing short of miraculous. That it has clearly been handled with care over the last 500 years is perhaps largely thanks to an old attribution to Michelangelo, penned on the back of the drawing in a 17th-century hand; partly too because it has enjoyed the lucky fate of having, since the 18th century, just one careful family of owners.