Paolo Giordano II Orsini

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

Engraving of Paolo Giordano II Orsini by Ottavio Leoni, c.1625

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^[1][2] 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.^[3] He died on 24 May 1656.^[4]