Pietro Cussida

Pietro Cussida, Pietro Cuside or Pedro Cossida (died October 1622) was a Spanish diplomat in the service of Philip III of Spain and his successor, Philip IV. He was an art collector and patron, known for his patronage of Caravaggisti artists, including Jusepe de Ribera and Dirck van Baburen.

Biography Originally from Zaragoza, Cussida was in Rome by at least 1596, when he is a regular customer of the bank Herrera & Costa. He is known to have had a wife, Giulia Martinez, by whom he had two sons, Gianfrancesco (or Giovan Francesco) and Luigi, who became a Carmelite friar.

Pietro Cussida died in Rome in October 1622.

Art collection It was through Cussida's patronage that Van Baburan painted the Entombment, Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and Christ on the Road to Calvary for the Chapel of the Pietà of the Church of San Pietro in Montorio. Van Baburen shared the commission (ca. 1617) with David de Haen, who is now believed to have done the lunettes in the Chapel. De Haen was a guest at the Cussida palazzo on the Via del Corso in 1621.

Between 1615 and 1616, he commissioned Jusepe de Ribera to paint allegories of the Five Senses, a commission Ribera probably completed in Naples.

It was the discovery of the 8 March 1624 inventory of Gianfrancesco Cussida (Archivio Storico Capitolino, Rome), Cussida's son, that led to the attribution of the works to Ribera that had previously been thought to be by the Master of the Judgement of Solomon. Dirck van Baburen, Saint Peter, oil on canvas, 165 x 137 cm, placed in the 1624 inventory.