ABSTRACT
Cardinal Flavio Chigi, nephew of Pope Alexander VII (r. 1655–1667), was renowned in Rome and beyond for his museum of “natural curiosities, exotica, and antiquities.” The museum, housed in his garden villa within the city walls, included two unsettling displays: the flayed skin of a Turk preserved like leather, and the “nose, mouth, and moustache of a Turk.” Cardinal nephews were frequently celebrated as a new Apollo, bringers of light and art to the Eternal City. Unlike earlier cardinal nephews, who aligned themselves with Apollo as the optimistic bringer of a new day, Chigi’s Turkish skins link him to the merciless Apollo who skinned the impudent satyr Marsyas. The display framed Chigi as the adversary of all those who rebel against proper faith and as a patron with a geographically wide reach. This chapter examines how Chigi made himself a new, bloody Apollo, using his collections to present the role of the cardinal nephew as a force of order in the global Catholic world.
