ABSTRACT
In 1725 the Academy, over which he presided, took an eight-year lease on the palace of the Marchese Mancini in the Corso opposite the Palazzo Doria, and in this large, handsome building the casts after the antique, on which so much store had been set by successive directors, could at last be properly installed. In 1733, Pope Clement XII made a move which changed the nature of Roman sculpture collections more than anything that had been done since Julius II had established the Belvedere statue court in the first years of the sixteenth century. Sculptures in the British Museum clearly stood a better chance of achieving international celebrity than those in private houses whether in London or the country – a fate so obscure, according to a German visitor to Italy, that they might as well never have been excavated.
