Fabio Albergati received by Philip II of Spain, while an artist secretly executes his portrait on the king's instructions

Fabio Albergati (1538-1606) was a noted diplomat and political theorist. Moving to Rome following the election of his fellow countryman, Ugo Buoncompagni (1502-1585), to the papal throne as Gregory XIII in 1572, he conducted a number of delicate missions at the court of Phillip II of Spain on the Pope's behalf, including the negotiations for a proposed marriage between the King's only daughter and Franois Duc d'Anjou. According to Zanotti in Storia dell' Accademia Clementina (1739, I, pp. 323-4), Burrini often worked for the Albergati family, and the present work in fact corresponds to the description of one of five pictures illustrating important episodes from the history of the family, with inscriptions in Latin along the lower edge. They were hung in a large room on the first floor of the palace, corresponding to no. 14 on one of the plans in F. Albergati Capacelli's 1857 guide (loc. cit.). The other four works can no longer be traced.