ROME (AP) – A Texas-born princess crammed her four bichon frize dogs into a taxi Thursday after being evicted in a bitter inheritance dispute from a historic villa in Rome that contains the only famous painted ceiling by Caravaggio.
Princess Rita Jenrette Boncompagni Ludovisi, born Rita Carpenter, left the Casino dell’Aurora in Via Veneto just hours after carabinieri police arrived to enforce a court-imposed evacuation order. Before he left, a locksmith changed the locks on the big green door.
His dramatic exit – one of the dogs briefly escaped while he was talking to reporters on the street – ended a remarkable years-long soap opera that exposed the dirty laundry of one of Rome’s aristocratic families.
The Boncompagni Ludovisi are perhaps best known for producing Pope Gregory XIII of the Gregorian calendar. But of late they have attracted more attention due to the inheritance dispute and the court-ordered auction of their famous villa in the heart of Rome.
“I feel like I’m in a surreal movie, like Sartre’s No Exit,” said the street princess, repeatedly interrupted by a fluffy white dog barking in her arms and three others at her ankles.
Casino dell’Aurora, also known as Villa Ludovisi, has been owned by the Ludovisi family since the early 1600s. After the death of Prince Nicolo Boncompagni Ludovisi in 2018, the villa became the subject of an inheritance dispute between the sons of his first. marriage and third wife, Princess Rita, born in San Antonio, Texas, whom he married in 2009.
She was previously married to former U.S. Representative John Jenrette Jr. of South Carolina.
The children claimed that the house, built in 1570, belonged to them, that their grandfather had wanted them to inherit it and that their late father abused them and mismanaged his fortune. They launched a multi-pronged legal campaign to gain control of the property so it could be sold.
The latest chapter in the saga came in January after Rome judge Miriam Iappelli issued an eviction order, accusing the princess of violating an earlier order preventing her from giving guided tours of the property.
Boncompagni Ludovisi said the tours were necessary to raise funds for the upkeep of the villa. Furthermore, the judge found that the princess had failed to keep the house in a “good condition” after an exterior wall collapsed.
One of the heirs, Prince Bante Boncompagni Ludovisi, was at the villa on Thursday to see “that woman”, as he refers to his father’s widow, leave the property.
“This house needs renovation. The water pipes need to be restored and the frescoes are in danger,” he told reporters. “This is a country: we have our police, we have judges, and you have to respect our country and our laws if you stay here.”
It is not clear who will now take care of the work on the house, which needs at least 11 million euros for renovations to bring it up to standard.
The villa was auctioned last year as part of the inheritance dispute and awarded for a court-estimated value of 471 million euros ($533 million), largely because of Caravaggio. After the minimum bid of 353 million euros ($400 million) failed to attract buyers at the first auction, the price was progressively reduced in a series of subsequent auctions, with more scheduled until a buyer.
Caravaggio’s ceiling adorns a small room from a spiral staircase to the second floor. It was commissioned in 1597 by a diplomat and patron of the arts who asked the young painter to decorate the ceiling of the room used as an alchemy laboratory. The 2.75-metre (9 ft) mural, depicting Jupiter, Pluto and Neptune, is unusual: it is not a fresco, but rather an oil painting on plaster, and is the only ceiling mural known to have been painted by Caravaggio.
If the fate of the villa is uncertain, so is that of the princess.
Vowing that the truth will eventually come out (and announcing a book deal), Boncompagni Ludovisi insisted that he had taken care of the villa during the two decades he lived there and had digitized the family archive with the help of Rutgers University.
“I don’t see any logic in that. I was a good guardian of the villa,” she said.
She did not say where she would go next, though she noted that the Episcopal Church of Rome has asked for help.
“I love Italy and I am so sorry for such a brutal end to what has been a 20-year labor of love,” she said. His book, about the villa and its famous ceiling, is due to be published later this year.
“It’s dedicated to my husband, Nicolo,” she said, before leaving with the dogs in a taxi in Romanian traffic.
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