The Foppa family Palace is located in Rione VI Parione, on the border with Rione VII Ponte. During the Renaissance, the area was known for its goldbeating workshops—craftsmen who worked precious metals by pounding them into ultra-thin leaves—and was known as the contrada del Trivio dei Parenti, named after the family who owned several houses there. It was also known as San Biagio de Circlo, after a church situated near Santa Maria della Pace (also known as San Biagio alla Pace or alla Fossa, reportedly named after a pit in the church garden, which was demolished after 1820).
In the 16th century, the square overlooked by the palace—which during that period had become the property of Giovanni Paolo Foppa, a nobleman from Bergamo who had been granted Roman citizenship—came to be known as Piazza del Fico due to a fig tree growing there.
Marc'Antonio was born here in 1603. A scholar and man of letters, he was renowned for his work as a collector and editor of writings by Torquato Tasso. His efforts culminated in the publication of the Opere non più stampate di Torquato Tasso ("Unpublished Works of Torquato Tasso", Rome 1666, in three volumes), as well as the compilation of the Codici Vaticani Latini 10973–10980. These manuscripts contain works by Tasso alongside pieces by other authors, reflecting Foppa's lifelong literary pursuits.
Driven largely by the poet's Bergamo roots, his near-obsessive quest for Tasso's published and unpublished writings—mostly acquired from the estate of G.B. Licinio, the poet's agent during his confinement at the St. Anna Hospital—allowed Foppa to build relationships with Italian and foreign scholars. This transformed his family home, inherited in 1618, into one of Rome's most prominent literary salons and an established gathering place for travelers arriving from Bergamo.
Thus, upon arriving in Rome, Francesco Nazari was directed by the Archbishop of Bergamo, Giovanni Barbarigo, to Marc'Antonio Foppa. Foppa welcomed him into the gatherings and discussions held at his palace alongside figures such as Michelangelo Ricci, Ottavio Falconieri, Giovanni Bona, the Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library Stefano Gradi, Stefano Pignatelli, Lorenzo Magalotti, and Cardinal Pietro Sforza Pallavicino. Out of these meetings grew the concept for the Giornale de' letterati. Founded by Nazari in 1668 and published until 1683, the journal featured reviews of new foreign-language books appearing across Europe, contributed by members of the circle themselves.
In 1634, Piazza del Fico was expanded by Marc'Antonio together with his brother, as recorded on the commemorative plaque set into the facade of the palace:
'M ANTONIUS ET IO, BAPTISTA FRATRES/DE FOPPIS/ COEMPTIS EXTURBATISQUE CIRCA/DOMIBUS/AEROLAM HANC DESIGNATUMQUE/VIAE SPATIUM/AMPLIAVERE DE SUO/ANNO SAL. MDCXXXIV'
'Marc'Antonio and Giovanni Battista, brothers of the De Foppis family, having jointly purchased and demolished the surrounding houses, opened up this small courtyard and the space designated for the streets at their own expense in the Year of our Lord 1634.'
His brother Giovanni Battista Foppa, co-heir to a substantial estate comprising property and bank deposits in Rome and Bergamo, managed the family inheritance jointly with Marc'Antonio until 1622, when he entered the Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri. In 1643, he became Archbishop of Benevento. Owing to his absence, joint administration of the estate was no longer viable, leading to its division in 1658, whereupon the Roman residence became the sole property of Marc'Antonio.
Upon his death on July 7, 1673, his brother became the usufructuary of half the properties in Rome as well as those in Bergamo. Following Giovanni Battista's passing shortly thereafter, on December 18, 1673, and in accordance with Marc'Antonio's testamentary bequest, the income from the entire estate was used to establish a dowry fund for impoverished unmarried women of the parish of San Biagio della Fossa (today incorporated into the parishes of San Tommaso in Parione and San Celso). This fund was to be administered by the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor pro tempore.
Still owned by the Opera Pia Foppa in 1845, the palace in Piazza del Fico—by then expanded and comprising 10 rooms on the first floor, 14 on the second, 12 on the third, and 14 on the fourth—passed into the possession of Giuseppe de Rossi Mutarelli, son of the late Ignazio, residing at Via della Pace 35, who was already a third-generation male emphyteutic holder. Inside the palace, the Foppa family's marble coat of arms is still preserved, featuring a hay rake on the side and a cornflower in the center. The original colors were gold on an azure background.
The Foppa coat of arms is also carved into the tombstone of Giovanni Paolo—father of the famous Marc'Antonio—in the floor of the Church of Santi Andrea e Gregorio al Celio. It was placed by his brother Giovanni Battista, canon of the cathedral church of Bergamo, and by his sons:
DOM/IOANNI PAULO FOPPAE/NOB. BERGOMATI/SPECTATE PROBITATIS/VIRO/IOANNES BAPTISTA FRATER/ECCLESIAE CATHED. BERGOM./CANONICUS ET FILII/ SIBI POSTERISQ./ P.P./ OBIIT DIE APRILIS XIII/ AN. SALV. MDCXVIII/ VITIX ANNOS LXVI/MENSES II.
Of the palace's original furnishings, sadly little remains beyond the coat of arms other than scarce fragments of frescoes and decorated ceiling beams in a few rooms. However, an inventory compiled at the time of Marc'Antonio Foppa's death reveals that it was lavishly decorated with furniture, glassware, silverware, gold items, and above all roughly eighty paintings—predominantly featuring sacred subjects along with several portraits—which together must have formed a remarkable collection.
The subjects and artists of several paintings are known because they were designated as testamentary bequests, such as a Expulsion of the Merchants from the Temple attributed to Correggio and inherited by Mons.
Altoviti, a portrait of Bembo by Titian left alongside other paintings to the city of Bergamo, and a portrait of Tasso by Zuccari commissioned by Cinzio Aldobrandini and inherited by Francesco Tassi, executor of the estate—a landmark of culture and a point of reference for Italian and foreign scholars in 17th-century Rome.
