The Aldobrandini Wedding

After a Roman wall painting in the Vatican Museum. The fresco was discovered in 1601 from the remains of an ancient house on the Esquiline, Rome. It was purchased by Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini and entered the Vatican collection in 1818. Williams visited Italy in 1904 on his honeymoon and his wife, Emily referred to this painting in the 1957 publication 'Christopher Williams'. The following is an extract from that book. "After a few weeks in the lovely old city of Siena, we went to Rome, where we stayed for three months in a pension on the banks of the Tiber, not far from the Vatican. A German scholar who was working in the Vatican Library gave Christie [Christopher Williams] an introduction to Father Ehrle, the Prefect of the Library, from whom he got permission to make a copy of 'The Aldobrandini Marriage', a celebrated fresco of early times. He gave much time and care to this, and Father Ehrle told him his was the best copy he had seen. There was an amusing incident connected with this. Christie wanted to leave Rome, but his copy was not quite finished and he could only work certain hours when the galleries were open to the public. So he asked the German scholar if he could get permission to work extra hours. The Herr Doctor said he could loan him the key, but that Christie would never pass the Swiss guard at the entrance to the Vatican. Christie said he would like to borrow the key and see what he could do. The following day he studied how the officials saluted the various guards as they passed. Christie set off boldly, saluted the guards the way the others had done - and got through. That night in the pension, the German Doctor asked Christie over the dinner table how he had got on, and when to his amazement he found that Christie had passed the Swiss guard, he said, "Oh, you English". Having once passed he found it easy to pass again and soon finished the picture."