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Paolo Giordano II Orsini (1591–24 May 1656) was an Italian nobleman, Patron of arts, poet, and amateur painter.

Biography

He was the firstborn of Virginio Orsini, Duke of Bracciano and his wife Flavia Peretti, a niece of Pope Sixtus V. He grew in Florence, where he attended the Medici court. On the death of his father in 1615, he inherited the dukedom of Bracciano.

In Rome in 1622 he became the second husband of the widowed Isabella Appiani (c. 1630–1635), the last survivor of the Appiani family They not had issue, but he had a natural son, Ippolito. He was also made a prince of the Holy Roman Empire by Ferdinand II on 18 July 1623.

He lived in his castle at Lake Bracciano, near Rome, where he assembled an art collection including paintings by Tintoretto, Salvator Rosa, and Daniele da Volterra, prints by Albrecht Dürer and Ottavio Leoni, sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Johann Jakob Kornmann, among others. Paolo exchanged correspondence on the state of arts in Italy with Christina, Queen of Sweden. He died on 24 May 1656.

References

1. (in Italian) L. Cappelletti, Storia della città e Stato di Piombino, Livorno 1897
2. (in Italian) M. Carrara, Signori e Principi di Piombino, Pontedera 1996.
3. Orsini, Paolo Giordano, II (Italian patron, poet, and amateur artist, 1591–1656)
4. The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Bust of Paolo Giordano II Orsini, Duke of Bracciano

External links

• Media related to Paolo Giordano II Orsini at Wikimedia Commons

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• 1591 births
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• Dukes of Bracciano
• Orsini family
• Princes of the Holy Roman Empire
• 17th-century poets from the Holy Roman Empire
• 17th-century Italian nobility
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