Marcello Massarenti

In his official position he traveled extensively and amassed a collection of Italian paintings and Roman antiquities especially during the years following the Unification of Italy, when the suppression of many monastic communities and the displacement of many aristocrats from hereditary positions brought a great number of works of art onto the market in Italy, both privately and publicly.

An English-language Catalogue of pictures, marbles, bronzes, antiquities... Palazzo Accoramboni (Rome: Forzani) was published in 1894, with a view to attracting prospective purchasers.

Joseph Duveen, his famous nephew recalled, had been less than impressed by the authenticity of the paintings, and Duveen's close associate Bernard Berenson, played an uncertain role in the sale of the collection, disparaging the attribution to Raphael of Massarenti's Madonna of the Candelbra[2] in a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1897.

Its loss to the nation raised no protest among Italians, and was dismissively remarked upon by Wilhelm von Bode,[5] who was informed that Walters was advised in the purchase by William M. Laffan, an owner of the New York Sun.

[7] The collection, for which Europeans of the time considered Walters to have greatly overpaid, has weathered a century of close study with new, less inflated attributions, and greater confidence in their authenticity, providing the city of Baltimore with a first-rate gallery of art.