Art and festivities in eighteenth-century Rome: letters from a Portuguese priest, 1721-22

Manuel de Campos (1681-1758), a Jesuit priest from Lisbon, arrived in Rome in June 1721 as part of a Portuguese royal delegation to the papal court. In letters home over the following year, he described the city’s churches, their works of art, and furnishings and the lavish temporary decorations made for religious festivals. He addressed the letters to a Jesuit who is not named, but may have been Padre Luis Gonzaga, a gifted mathematician and tutor to the royal family. Padre Manuel's original letters do not survive but copies are preserved in the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo in Lisbon Portugal. The letters reflect a personal point of view of him which focuses on his own interests and on the buildings and works of art that caught his attention.