The exhibition of prints with depictions of Roman popes from the Pietro Kandler graphic collection was open from March 18th until April 1st of 2008, at the art pavilion Juraj Šporer. The collection is a valuable asset of the State Archives in Rijeka.
Pietro Kandler was born in Trieste on May 25th of 1804 and attended school in Koper and Vienna. Domenico de Rossetti, in particular, encouraged him to study local Trieste, but also Istrian history. His first work was published in the magazine Osservatore triestino as early as 1834. From that time until his death, he diligently published the results of his research on the history of Trieste and Istria, indebting future generations of this region. He started the publication Atti istriani, on the municipal status of Pula and Poreč. In 1842, he became the procurator of Trieste and started writing about economy, law, literature and history, basing his knowledge on immediate written sources and archeological research. He made note of some sources which were later lost. He was especially prominent as a conservator of architectural, artistic and cultural monuments and heritage.
In 1845, he started the publication L’Istria where he published important sources for the history of Trieste and especially Istria. Between 1853 and 1864, he published a collection of documents of extraordinary historical value under the title Codice diplomatico istriano. Aside from his published work, his correspondence with the leading intellectuals of his time, F. de Bradamante, marquis G. Polesini from Poreč and the Croatian poet Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, is also noteworthy. He died in Trieste on January 18th of 1872.
His legacy, partly stored at the State Archives in Rijeka, contains the manuscript Epigrafske kartice, a collection of epigraph ancient carvings with notes on their location that Kandler found in Istria. The collection also contains prints. A group of 230 prints is entitled Roman popes from St. Peter to Clement X. The Roman popes, heads of the Roman Catholic Church, are depicted in an idealized manner, for the most part, in ornamental frames and crests in cartouches inspired by Roman Baroque and artistic imagination. The portraits are signed with first and last name and contain information on the depicted pope in Latin. From the Latin cover, we can glean the year, and place of printing, as well as the authors of the publication. This information places the prints in the Roman Baroque period. Beside the decorative cover with its composition of putti holding the papal tiara, and the decorative vegetation-inspired frieze, we find an exhaustive text that names the printer as Joannis Jacobus de Rubeis. The drawings are signed by Petrus Aquila Panormitano of Rome. The whole publication was created in 1681. An interesting fact is that the prints were cut, three portraits at a time, some of them in pairs and some single. Next to these central prints, parts of the title and decorative frames can be found, indicating that the portraits were actually printed as one single big print and sectioned up later, perhaps by their owner, Pietro Kandler. This assumption is corroborated by the known publications of the printing dynasty of de Rubeis, Giovanni Jacopo de Rossi Rubeis, Domenico de Rubeis and others over several centuries.
(Theodor de Canziani Jakšić, from the exhibition catalogue)
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