DEATH IN ROME
[DEATH CERTIFICATES.]
Certificates recording the deaths of three women.
Rome, 1762–1819.
Three printed certificates completed in manuscript (265 x 190 mm to 315 x 215 mm), the first two with woodcut headpieces (the latter within a woodcut border) and the third with a copper-engraved headpiece, each with blind-embossed seals; creases from folding, a few small holes and stains; otherwise good copies.
An interesting set of death certificates for three female residents of Rome, issued respectively by the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, and the hospital of San Salvatore (now San Giovanni in Laterano).
The first, issued at the basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina, attests to the death and burial of Anna Salera of Tagliacozzo, wife of Filippo Valeri of the Piazza di Spagna, on 8 February 1761 at the age of fifty-one. It is signed by the curate Rocco Maria Barsanti and by Cardinal Marcantonio Colonna (1724–1793), and bears the blind-embossed seals of the church and of the cardinal himself. Valeri was perhaps the fattore at the Fabbrica di San Pietro of the same name, in charge of managing staff and materials for the restoration of the dome of St Peter’s. The woodcut headpiece shows St Lawrence holding a gridiron alongside the Virgin Mary. Cardinal Colonna here signs on 3 May 1762 as Cardinal Priest of Santa Maria della Pace, a position to which he had been appointed only two weeks earlier; he would later serve as archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore and cardinal priest of San Lorenzo. Barsanti (1707–1784) was later bishop of Fossombrone.
The second, from the basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo, records the death and burial of Margarita Maccioni, wife of Giuseppe Capellini, on 12 October 1765, also aged fifty-one. The woodcut headpiece of the Virgin and Child is flanked by skulls and crossbones.
The final certificate, issued by Giuseppe Zucca, subprior and scribe of the hospital of San Salvatore, attests that Agata, the forty-year-old wife of Filippo Grandi, was admitted to the hospital on 18 April 1817, occupying bed number ten on the women’s ward, and died at ten in the morning on 18 May. The hospital of San Salvatore in the Lateran (now the Ospedale di San Giovanni), one of the oldest hospitals in Rome, aided the sick and poor, and by the start of the eighteenth century had 120 beds for men and 60 for women. By 1836 the hospital catered to women only. The copper-engraved headpiece depicts Christ the Saviour flanked by two candles.
