Jan Miel per Alessandro VII Chigi: un ciclo di affreschi ritrovato e una aggiunta al "Missale Romanum"

The article investigates the patronage that linked the Flemish painter Jan Miel (Beveren, 1599? - Turin, 1664) and Pope Alexander VII Chigi in the second half of the 1650s. Although never the subject of specific scholarly interest, this association was anything but marginal: Miel took part in the collective project of the Galleria di Alessandro VII in the Palazzo del Quirinale, under the direction of Pietro da Cortona; provided two drawings for the new edition of the Missale Romanum published in 1662; and created “some frescoed stories” in the Pope’s chapel in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, hitherto considered lost. The author has identified these frescoes in the cappella segreta of Urban VIII, where they had survived with a stylistically untenable attribution to Agostino Ciampelli.