Paolo Guidotti

1559 – 1629

Paolo Guidotti, known as Il Borghese or Cavaliere Borghese, Italian painter and architect, active in Rome. As painter he was a representative of late Roman Mannerism. In 1610 he decorated the Sala della Felicità Eterna in the Palazzo Odescalchi Giustiniani in Bassano Romano in the province of Viterbo. His influence on painting in Lucca was important. Many of his architectural works, completed for Pope Sixtus V have been lost. He completed a series of sculptures for Pope Paul V, who allowed him to adopt the surname Borghese, and made him conservator of the Campidoglio and leader of the Accademia San Luca. Somewhat of a polymath, he made the preparations for the ornamentation surrounding the canonization in 1622 of Isidore the Labourer, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Filippo Neri, and Saint Teresa of Ávila. He wrote an epic poem titled Gerusalemma Distrutta, concluding each eighth line with the same words of Gerusalemme liberata. He is said to have traveled to cemeteries at night to examine cadavers for drawing. He claimed to have designed a flying machine, or parachute, but succeeded only on breaking a leg.

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