Alessandro Albani

Alessandro Albani (15 October 1692 – 11 December 1779) was a leading collector of antiquities in Rome and a commissioner of works of art. He supported the art historian, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and commissioned paintings from Anton Raphael Mengs. As a Roman Catholic cardinal (from 1721) he furthered the interests of the governments of Austria, Savoy and Britain against those of France and Spain.

Biography

Alessandro Albani was born in Italy on 15 October 1692 in Urbino, then part of the Papal States. He was the son of Orazio Albani. His education at La Sapienza University in Rome was towards a degree in jurisprudence. Early in life he also studied for a military career. He was made an honorary member of the military brotherhood of justice of the Knights of St. John, Rome, on 26 August 1701, at the age of nine, and a colonel of a regiment of dragoons in the pontifical troops, in 1707.

Alessandro Albani descended from the Albani family (branch of Urbino), which originated from into the Albani (family) that had established itself there from northern Albania in the 15th century. Alessandro's father, Orazio, was the brother of Pope Clement XI Albani, who convinced Alessandro to set aside his budding military career, for which the weakness of his eyesight, that led to blindness in his advanced age, did not recommend him, and become a clergyman. After Pope Clement XI's death in March 1721, Pope Innocent XIII appointed Alessandro as a cardinal, on 16 July 1721 - for which Alessandro required numerous special dispensations, not least because his brother, Annibale Albani, had been made a cardinal in 1711 and still sat in the Sacred College