The Loves of the Gods (Carracci)
Encyclopedia
The Loves of the Gods is a monumental fresco
cycle, completed by the Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci
and his studio, in the Farnese Gallery which is located in the west wing of the Palazzo Farnese, now the French Embassy) in Rome
, Italy
. The frescoes were greatly admired at the time, and were later considered to reflect a significant change in painting style away from sixteenth century Mannerism
to anticipation of the development of Baroque
and Classicism
in Rome during the seventeenth century.
, Pope Paul III
's nephew, commissioned Annibale Carracci and his workshop to decorate the barrel-vaulted gallery on the piano nobile of the family palace. Work was started in 1597 and was not entirely finished until 1608, one year before Annibale's death.
His brother Agostino
joined him from 1597-1600, and other artists in the workshop included Giovanni Lanfranco
, Francesco Albani
, Domenichino and Sisto Badalocchio
. The Farnese Gallery consists of profusely decorated quadratura and framed mythological scenes.
(1595-7), in the Palazzo Farnese with scenes from the life of Hercules
; the theme was probably selected because of the famous ancient Roman statue, known as the Farnese Hercules
, which at that time was also in the Palazzo Farnese. In 1597, he began to decorate the Gallery with mythological themes set within painted frames (quadri riportati) painted on an illusionistic architectural framework referred to as quadratura http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/080bg.jpg. Ignudi or painted nudes, putti, and herm
s help support the painted framework. Gian Pietro Bellori
, a famous biographer of artists' lives of the next generation, called it 'Human Love Governed by Celestial Love'.
In the center panel, the ‘Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne’ depicts a both riotous and classically restrained procession which ferries Bacchus
and Ariadne
to their lovers' bed. Here, the underlying myth is that Bacchus, the god of wine, had gained the love of the abandoned princess, Ariadne. The procession recalls the triumph
s of the Republican and Imperial Roman era, in which the parades of victorious leaders had the laurel-crowned ‘imperator’ in a white chariot with two white horses. In Carracci’s procession, the two lovers are seated in chariots drawn by tigers http://trionfi.com/0/t/01/ and goats, and accompanied by a parade of nymphs, bacchanti, and trumpeting satyrs. At the fore, Bacchus' tutor, the paunchy, ugly, and leering drunk Silenus
, rides an ass. The figures carefully cavort in order to hide most naked male genitals.
The program refers to Ovid
's Metamorphosis
(VIII; lines 160-182) and may allude to a trifling carnival song
-poem written by Lorenzo de Medici in about 1475, that entreats: http://trionfi.com/0/gg/103/t.html
and Pietro da Cortona
, over the number of figures to be included in a painting. Carracci's treatment of the composition and the disposition and expression of the figures would influence painters such as Sacchi and Poussin
, whereas his effervescent narrative manner influenced Cortona.
Annibale Carracci, in his day, was seen as one of the key painters to revive the classical style. In contrast, a few years later, artists such as Caravaggio
and his followers would rebel against representing spatial depth in colour and light, and introduce tenebrous dramatic realism into their art instead. But it would be inappropriate to view Annibale Carracci as solely the continuation of an inherited tradition; in his day, his vigorous and dynamic style, and that of his studio assistants, changed the pre-eminent style of painting in Rome. His work would have been seen as liberating for artists of his day, touching on pagan themes with an unconstrained joy. It could be said that while Mannerism had mastered the art of formal strained contraposto and contorsion; Annibale Carracci had depicted dance and joy.
Later followers of Neoclassic formalism and severity frowned on the excesses of Annibale Carracci, but in his day, he would have been seen as masterful in achieving the supreme approximation to classic beauty in the tradition of Raphael
and Giulio Romano
's secular frescoes in the Loggia of the Villa Farnesina
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/farnesina/raphaeldet2.jpg. Unlike Raphael though, his figures can display a Michelangelo
-esque muscularity, and depart from the often emotionless visages of High Renaissance painting.
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
cycle, completed by the Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci
Annibale Carracci
Annibale Carracci was an Italian Baroque painter.-Early career:Annibale Carracci was born in Bologna, and in all likelihood first apprenticed within his family...
and his studio, in the Farnese Gallery which is located in the west wing of the Palazzo Farnese, now the French Embassy) in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. The frescoes were greatly admired at the time, and were later considered to reflect a significant change in painting style away from sixteenth century Mannerism
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
to anticipation of the development of Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
and Classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
in Rome during the seventeenth century.
Production
Cardinal Odoardo FarneseOdoardo Farnese
Odoardo Farnese was Duke of Parma and Piacenza from 1622 to 1646.-Biography:Odoardo was the sole legitimate son of Ranuccio I Farnese and Margherita Aldobrandini...
, Pope Paul III
Pope Paul III
Pope Paul III , born Alessandro Farnese, was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from 1534 to his death in 1549. He came to the papal throne in an era following the sack of Rome in 1527 and rife with uncertainties in the Catholic Church following the Protestant Reformation...
's nephew, commissioned Annibale Carracci and his workshop to decorate the barrel-vaulted gallery on the piano nobile of the family palace. Work was started in 1597 and was not entirely finished until 1608, one year before Annibale's death.
His brother Agostino
Agostino Carracci
Agostino Carracci was an Italian painter and printmaker. He was the brother of the more famous Annibale and cousin of Lodovico Carracci....
joined him from 1597-1600, and other artists in the workshop included Giovanni Lanfranco
Giovanni Lanfranco
Giovanni Lanfranco was an Italian painter of the Baroque period.-Biography:Giovanni Gaspare Lanfranco was born in Parma, the third son of Stefano and Cornelia Lanfranchi, and was placed as a page in the household of Count Orazio Scotti...
, Francesco Albani
Francesco Albani
Francesco Albani or Albano was an Italian Baroque painter.-Early years in Bologna:Born 1578 in Bologna, his father was a silk merchant who intended to instruct his son in the same trade; but by age twelve, Albani became an apprentice under the competent mannerist painter Denis Calvaert, where he...
, Domenichino and Sisto Badalocchio
Sisto Badalocchio
Sisto Badalocchio Rosa was an Italian painter and engraver of the Bolognese School.Born in Parma, he worked first under Agostino Carracci in Bologna, then Annibale Carracci, in Rome. He worked with Annibale till 1609, then moving back to Parma...
. The Farnese Gallery consists of profusely decorated quadratura and framed mythological scenes.
Scheme
Annibale Carracci had first decorated a small room, the CamerinoThe Camerino Farnese
The decision to paint the ceiling of the Camerino instead of proceeding with the original plans for the Alessandro Farnese cycle Farnese Gallery was taken before the summer of 1595...
(1595-7), in the Palazzo Farnese with scenes from the life of Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
; the theme was probably selected because of the famous ancient Roman statue, known as the Farnese Hercules
Farnese Hercules
The Farnese Hercules is an ancient sculpture, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by a certain Glykon, from an original by Lysippos that would have been made in the fourth century BC...
, which at that time was also in the Palazzo Farnese. In 1597, he began to decorate the Gallery with mythological themes set within painted frames (quadri riportati) painted on an illusionistic architectural framework referred to as quadratura http://www.usc.edu/schools/annenberg/asc/projects/comm544/library/images/080bg.jpg. Ignudi or painted nudes, putti, and herm
Herm
Herm is the smallest of the Channel Islands that is open to the public and is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. Cars are banned from the small island just like its Channel Island neighbour, Sark. Unlike Sark, bicycles are also banned...
s help support the painted framework. Gian Pietro Bellori
Gian Pietro Bellori
Gian Pietro Bellori , also known as Giovanni Pietro Bellori or Giovan Pietro Bellori, was an Italian painter and antiquarian but more famously, a prominent biographer of artists of the 17th century, equivalent to Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century...
, a famous biographer of artists' lives of the next generation, called it 'Human Love Governed by Celestial Love'.
In the center panel, the ‘Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne’ depicts a both riotous and classically restrained procession which ferries Bacchus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
and Ariadne
Ariadne
Ariadne , in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Minos of Crete, and his queen Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios, the Sun-titan. She aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur and was the bride of the god Dionysus.-Minos and Theseus:...
to their lovers' bed. Here, the underlying myth is that Bacchus, the god of wine, had gained the love of the abandoned princess, Ariadne. The procession recalls the triumph
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...
s of the Republican and Imperial Roman era, in which the parades of victorious leaders had the laurel-crowned ‘imperator’ in a white chariot with two white horses. In Carracci’s procession, the two lovers are seated in chariots drawn by tigers http://trionfi.com/0/t/01/ and goats, and accompanied by a parade of nymphs, bacchanti, and trumpeting satyrs. At the fore, Bacchus' tutor, the paunchy, ugly, and leering drunk Silenus
Silenus
In Greek mythology, Silenus was a companion and tutor to the wine god Dionysus.-Evolution of the character:The original Silenus resembled a folklore man of the forest with the ears of a horse and sometimes also the tail and legs of a horse...
, rides an ass. The figures carefully cavort in order to hide most naked male genitals.
The program refers to Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
's Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation...
(VIII; lines 160-182) and may allude to a trifling carnival song
Carnival song
A carnival song or canto carnascialesco was a late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century song used to celebrate the carnival season in Florence, mainly the weeks preceding Lent and the Calendimaggio, which lasted from May 1 to June 24...
-poem written by Lorenzo de Medici in about 1475, that entreats: http://trionfi.com/0/gg/103/t.html
| Quest’è Bacco ed Arïanna, | Here are Bacchus and Ariadne, |
| belli, e l’un de l’altro ardenti: | Handsome, and burning for each other: |
| perché ’l tempo fugge e inganna, | Because time flees and fools, |
| sempre insieme stan contenti. | They stay together always content. |
| Queste ninfe ed altre genti | These nymphs and other gents |
| sono allegre tuttavia. | Are ever full of joy. |
| Chi vuol esser lieto, sia: | Let those who wish to be happy, be: |
| di doman non c’è certezza. | Of tomorrow, we have no certainty. |
Legacy
Annibale Carracci's decorations in the Farnese Gallery demonstrated a new grand manner of monumental fresco painting. It exerted a powerful formative influence on both canvas and fresco painting in Rome during the seventeenth century. The dual classicizing and baroque tendencies in this work would fuel the debate by the next generation of fresco painters, between SacchiAndrea Sacchi
Andrea Sacchi was an Italian painter of High Baroque Classicism, active in Rome. A generation of artists who shared his style of art include the painters Nicolas Poussin and Giovanni Battista Passeri, the sculptors Alessandro Algardi and François Duquesnoy, and the contemporary biographer Giovanni...
and Pietro da Cortona
Pietro da Cortona
Pietro da Cortona, by the name of Pietro Berrettini, born Pietro Berrettini da Cortona, was the leading Italian Baroque painter of his time and also one of the key architects in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture. He was also an important decorator...
, over the number of figures to be included in a painting. Carracci's treatment of the composition and the disposition and expression of the figures would influence painters such as Sacchi and Poussin
Poussin
Poussin refers to:*Charles Jean de la Vallée-Poussin Belgian mathematician*Charles-Louis-Joseph-Xavier de la Vallée-Poussin Belgian geologist and mineralogist, father of Charles Jean*Nicolas Poussin , French painter...
, whereas his effervescent narrative manner influenced Cortona.
Annibale Carracci, in his day, was seen as one of the key painters to revive the classical style. In contrast, a few years later, artists such as Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
and his followers would rebel against representing spatial depth in colour and light, and introduce tenebrous dramatic realism into their art instead. But it would be inappropriate to view Annibale Carracci as solely the continuation of an inherited tradition; in his day, his vigorous and dynamic style, and that of his studio assistants, changed the pre-eminent style of painting in Rome. His work would have been seen as liberating for artists of his day, touching on pagan themes with an unconstrained joy. It could be said that while Mannerism had mastered the art of formal strained contraposto and contorsion; Annibale Carracci had depicted dance and joy.
Later followers of Neoclassic formalism and severity frowned on the excesses of Annibale Carracci, but in his day, he would have been seen as masterful in achieving the supreme approximation to classic beauty in the tradition of Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
and Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano
Giulio Romano was an Italian painter and architect. A pupil of Raphael, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism...
's secular frescoes in the Loggia of the Villa Farnesina
Villa Farnesina
The Villa Farnesina is a Renaissance suburban villa in the Via della Lungara, in the district of Trastevere in Rome, central Italy.The villa was built for Agostino Chigi, a rich Sienese banker and the treasurer of Pope Julius II. Between 1506–1510, the Sienese artist and pupil of Bramante,...
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/farnesina/raphaeldet2.jpg. Unlike Raphael though, his figures can display a Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
-esque muscularity, and depart from the often emotionless visages of High Renaissance painting.
Visiting the Farnese Gallery
To visit the gallery you must schedule a free appointment by phone or mail with the Servizio Culturale, French Embassy, Piazza Farnese 67, Rome 00186, Italy, Phone: 06-686011. Indicate when you wish to visit and provide a local phone number to receive confirmation a few days prior to your visit.Panels of Farnese Ceiling
- Central Ceiling Fresco
- Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne
- Ceiling Scenes
- Jupiter and Juno
- Diana and Endymion
- Hercules and Iole
- Venus and Anchise (father of Aeneas) (GENVS VNDE LATINVM)
- Medallion with Apollo and Marsyas'
- Medallion with Cupid and Pan'
- Medallion with Boreas and Orithyia'
- Medallion with orpheus and Euridice'
- Medallion with Pan and Syrinx'
- Medallion with Salmacis and Hermaphroditus'
- Medallion with Europa and the Bull (Jupiter)'
- Medallion with Hero and Leander'
- Medallion with a scene of abduction
- Medallion with Jason and the Golden Fleece'
- Medallion with Paris'
- Medallion with Pan'
- Aurora and Cephalus
- Venus and Tritone, a.k.a Glaucus and Scylla
- Polyphemus Innamorato
- Polyphemus Furioso
- The Rape of Ganymede by Jupiter's Eagle and satyrs
- Apollo and Hyacinthus
- Pan and Diana
- Mercury and Paris
- Apollo and Hyacinthus
- Ganymede and the Eagle
- Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne
- Wall Scenes
- Fortitude
- Temperance
- Justice
- Charity
- Perseus and Andromeda
- Combat of Perseus and Phineas (turning followers to stone using the head of Medusa)
- Impresa of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese
- Impresa of the Duke Alessandro Farnese
- Impresa of Cardinal Odoardo Farnese
- Impresa of the Duke Ranuccio Farnese
- Virgin with the Unicorn
- Dedalus and Icarus
- Diana and Callisto
- Metamorphosis of Callisto into a Bear
- Mercury and Apollo
- Arion the Citharist is rescued by Dolphins
- Minerva and Prometheus
- Hercules slays the Dragon
- Hercules liberates Prometheus
External links
- Painting of the room with the fresco
- A paraphrased copy decorates the ceiling of the Blue Drawing Room at West Wycombe ParkWest Wycombe ParkWest Wycombe Park is a country house near the village of West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, built between 1740 and 1800. It was conceived as a pleasure palace for the 18th century libertine and dilettante Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet. The house is a long rectangle with four façades that...
in England.
