Materialising political economy: olive oil, patronage and science in Eighteenth-century Rome

From Firenze University Press Journal: Diciottesimo Secolo

Lavinia Maddaluno, European University Institute (EUI), Florence

On the 1st of May 1796, the skilled farmer, olive grove owner and apothecary in the city of Tivoli, Francesco Carlandi, was signing and sending off a letter to the Prince Andrea Doria Pamphilj Landi. Patron of arts and science and last heir of the renowned Renaissance Genoese family, Prince Andrea was one of the most powerful members of the Papal States’ landed aristocracy, and owned lands and feuds from Tivoli to Albano Laziale, from Canino to Montelanico, from Melfi to Genua.

The letter accompanied a box containing twelve small flasks of olive oil «for display and to taste» (per mostre e per assaggio), for the Prince to taste and to have an idea of what his lands could yield. The small flasks were accurately numbered and labelled with the name of the different cultivars in an attempt to determine the quality of the Prince’s agricultural produce and standardise it for marketing purposes. The letter also included information on the quantity of oil produced in the Doria Pamphilj’s lands and olive mill in Tivoli, not much, according to other manuscript documents, at least in comparison with the produce yielded from the olive mill that the Pamphilj owned in the city of Albano Laziale.

Carlandi also mentioned that the techniques of olive oil production had been «advantageously» improved by a certain Bartolomeo Gandolfi, a member of the Scolopi order who had been professor in Philosophy, Mathematics and Theology at the Collegio Nazareno, during the 1780s, then taking up the Chair of Experimental Physics at the Sapienza. Archival documents tell us that, as of 1800, Gandolfi had worked as tutor to the children of Prince Andrea for 15 years, developing a relationship of mutual trust with the Pamphilj family and carrying out surveys of their lands to increase their olive oil as well as grain productions. It is not unlikely that he lived with the Doria Pamphilj family, as it frequently happened to the tutors of aristocratic families at the time. The Doria Pamphilj employed Gandolfi for yet another reason, so that he could build new models of olive presses and mills which would extract more olive oil, and fix extant ones at the same time.

This letter, which is part of a series of unpublished manuscript documents regarding the Doria Pamphilj Landi’s olive mill in Tivoli, and held in the family’s private archive, features three figures or characters, each displaying a specific form of historical agency: a tenant farmer, possibly, although not certainly, a figure that in the Papal States would be called ministro di campagna, a person in charge of managing lands on behalf of a third party, and, in this case, himself owner of a small olive grove; a member of the Roman landed aristocracy, Prince Andrea Doria Pamphilj Landi, and a naturalist, protégé of the aristocratic family and in charge of carry-ing out agrarian improvements.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13128/ds-12119

Read Full Text: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/ds/article/view/12119