Nicolo Martines


Nicolo Martines was Maestro di Camera at the papal nuncio in Wien, the Pope's embassy to the Austrian Empire.

Life

Nicolo Martines’s father was a Spanish soldier who had settled in Naples in the late 17th century. He grew up there and for a time pursued a career as a soldier. In the early or middle 1720s he became nuncio apostolico at the Habsburg court.
For service to the Empire, Nicolo’s sons in 1774 acquired a patent of nobility, hence the "von" in the family surname.

Pietro Metastasio

was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti. At the age of thirty-two, he was appointed court composer to Emperor Charles VI of Vienna. There he met his lifelong friend and companion Nicolo Martines.
Metastasio resided with the Martines family for the entire rest of his life. His presence would prove crucial to Nicolo’s daughter, Marianne's career. Marianna Martines was an Austrian singer, pianist and composer of the classical period.
The Martines family lived in rooms in a large building on the Michaelerplatz, "a stately building still standing in the Kohlmarkt."