THE ROMANS didn’t like Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj much. She moved in with her brother-in-law, Pope Innocent X, and barely left him out her sight. He put her in charge of the Vatican’s finances, a career change that coincided with a sudden surge in the already vastly rich Pamphilj (pronounced Pom-fee-lee) family’s fortune. She gained so much power that she became known as “La Papessa”; it was whispered that she and the pope were lovers. Well, who knows.

Now a portrait of Olimpia painted in the mid-seventeenth century by Diego Velázquez, long thought lost or destroyed, has turned up. Sotheby’s swear blind it’s the real thing, and it will go under the hammer in London on 3 July. It is expected to fetch £2-3 million.

Today the family lives in the sumptuous treasure-filled Palazzo Doria Pamphilj on the Via del Corso, whose many tenants include the Anglican Centre. One of Olimpia’s descendents, Orietta Doria Pamphilj, met a British naval officer, Frank Pogson, at the end of the war; they married in 1958. Pogson added Orietta’s surname to his own, so it would not die out. He was a director of The Tablet, and helped us out of some serious financial holes.