Pope Clement XII

Financially shrewd pontiff used papal cash for building projects

Pope Clement XII commission many
architectural works in Rome and Ancona

Lorenzo Corsini, who during his time as Pope Clement XII substantially built up the wealth of the Vatican, was born on this day in 1740 in Florence.

While he was pontiff, Clement XII began the construction of the Trevi Fountain, established the Capitoline Museums in Rome, and carried out extensive public building works in the Papal States.

Corsini was the son of Bartolomeo Corsini, Marquis of Casigliano, and Elisabetta Strozzi, who was from an old Florentine noble family. He was a nephew of Cardinal Neri Corsini and a distant relative of Saint Andrew Corsini.

After studying at the Jesuit College in Rome, he went to the University of Pisa where he achieved a doctorate in both civil law and canon law.

He practised law under his uncle, Cardinal Corsini, but after the death of both his uncle and father, he renounced his right to become head of his family.

Instead, he purchased from Pope Innocent XI, for 30,000 scudi, a position as a prelate. He subsequently devoted his time and his money to the enlargement of the library bequeathed to him by his uncle.  His home in Piazza Navona went on to become the centre of Rome’s scholarly and artistic life.

In 1690, Corsini was made titular Archbishop of Nicomedia and he was chosen as nuncio to Vienna, receiving a dispensation from Pope Alexander VIII because he had not yet been ordained as a priest. He did not proceed to the imperial court, because Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor, declared that he had the right to select the nuncio from a list of three names furnished by the pope.

Corsini was appointed as governor general of the Castel Sant’Angelo in 1696. Under Pope Clement XI, his talents were used as a courtier and in 1706 he was named as Cardinal Priest of Santa Susanna, and he was also retained as papal treasurer.

Pope Benedict XIII made him Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and he was also appointed as the Cardinal-Priest of San Pietro in Vincoli and Cardinal Bishop of Frascati.

Luigi Vanvitelli was Pope
Clement XII's architect of choice

Under Benedict XIII the finances of the Papal States had been drained by the cardinal who had been looking after them. After Pope Benedict’s death, the College of Cardinals selected Corsini as his successor, who was by then aged 78.

After he became Pope in 1730, Corsini took the papal name Clement in honour of Pope Clement XI, who had made him a cardinal.

He restored the Papal finances, demanding restitution from the people who had abused the trust of his predecessor. Soon money was pouring into his treasury, enabling him to undertake extensive building programmes in Rome and the Papal States.

Clement XII restored the Arch of Constantine, paved the streets of Rome, and widened Via del Corso.

As part of his aim to improve the wellbeing of his subjects through economic development, Clement XII granted Ancona in Le Marche freeport status and commissioned the architect Luigi Vanvitelli to redesign the ancient port.

He also commissioned Vanvitelli to build the Lazzaretto of Ancona as a quarantine station for the port.

After Clement XII’s death in 1740 his remains were transferred to a tomb in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, for which he had commissioned the building of a new facade after organising a competition, won by Alessandro Galilei, who completed it in 1735.

The statue of Pope 
Clement XII in Ancona

Travel tip:

The architect Luigi Vanvitelli  worked extensively in Ancona in the 1730s under Pope Clement XII, who commissioned him to modernize and expand Ancona’s maritime infrastructure, which had fallen into decline. His contributions included redesigning the port layout, building the Molo Nuovo (New Pier) and most notably the Lazzaretto, also known as the Mole Vanvitelliana, a striking pentagonal complex built on an artificial island, which originally served as a quarantine station for travelers and goods. He also built the Chiesa del Gesù and Casa degli Esercizi spirituali - a church and adjoining spiritual retreat house facing the port, and the Arch of Clementine, which he built just a few metres away from the Arch of Trajan, built 1600 years earlier by the Senate and people of Rome in honour of the Emperor Trajan, who expanded the port of the city out of his own pocket, improving the docks and the fortifications.

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The Clementine Arch stands
beyond the Arch of Trajan

Travel tip:

Also in Ancona, in front of the Chiesa di San Domenico and looking out across the rectangular Piazza del Plebescito, is a statue of Pope Clement XII, the work of the sculptor Agostino Cornacchini, which was erected in 1738. It was originally destined for the portico of the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome, where it remained for just under a year before being moved to Ancona at the suggestion of the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, in recognition of the work he had commissioned to modernise the port and the city.  Piazza del Plebiscito is also known locally as Piazza del Papa. The Chiesa di San Domenico, at the top of the square’s incline, is a Baroque church built by Carlo Marchionni and completed in 1778. The interior is notable for two outstanding paintings, the Annunciation by Guercino in the first chapel on the left, and Titian’s altarpiece, The Crucifixion. 

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More reading:

How the election of Antipope Clement VII sparked a split in Catholic Church

Pope Innocent XII, the pontiff who ended the practice of nepotism in the papal appointments

The flamboyant pope who helped make books available to ordinary people

Also on this day:

1763: The birth of musician Domenico Dragonetti 

1794: The birth of opera singer Giovanni Battista Rubini

1883: The birth of painter and mosaicist Gino Severini

1906: Vesuvius eruption kills more than 200

1973: The birth of footballer Marco Delvecchio

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