The Caprarola Portrait of Columbus

Abstract

The palace of caprarola, summer residence of the Farnese family, stands high on the slopes of the Ci ini hills, overlo king the countryside north of Rome. There, on a spot selected because its elevation kept it out of the malarial zone around Rome, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, nephew of Pope Paul III, built his country place, destined to rival the Farnese palace of Rome as one of the great masterpieces of late Renaissance architecture. Sangallo designed and Vignola built the palace, and the five floors of the great facade remain as impressive as they ever were, greeting the visitor approaching it from the village below. The third floor, noble floor in Italian parlance, was the residence of the Cardinal, and it is in the scheme of decorations of that suite of rooms that the portrait of Columbus fits in. The outline of Caprarola palace is a pentagon, the apex pointing north, towards the crest of the hills that tower above the building and its magnificent formal gardens. The facade of the palace, forming the base of the pentagon, is occupied by the state dining room. The west and east wings contain two apartments, perfectly symmetrical in their layout, but in their decorations carrying out a double theme: active life, the theme of the east, or summer, apartment; contemplative life, the theme of the west, or winter, apartment. The frescoes covering the walls and ceiling of the two wings illustrate the two themes. Those of the east apartment are a pictorial record and chronicle of the Farnese, and represent a portrait gallery of the great and near-great of the mid-sixteenth century, associated with that powerful patrician family. The frescoes of the west apartment on the other hand are symbolic in character, devoted to representations of religious and metaphysical themes.1 All rooms of the west apartment fit into this scheme, but the largest of the rooms, the great reception hall, located at the south-west corner of the palace, broadens the scope of contemplation to include the universe. The reception hall of the west apartment is called the hall of maps. There, the theme chosen was the representation of the world: the ceiling is covered with images of the heavens, while the walls are a mural atlas, covered by seven large maps, all painted al fresco. The south wall of the hall is covered in its entirety by a world map, 25 feet wide and 14 feet high; the other maps show Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa, Italy, and the Holy Land. Above the entrance doors and above the windows five medallions were painted, representing the heroes of discovery: Columbus, Vespucci, Cortez, Magellan and Marco Polo were thus honoured. The portraits as well as the maps are remarkably well preserved; the fact that Caprarola was continuously inhabited until the 1930's seems to have had a beneficial effect on the frescoes. The portrait of Columbus appears particularly alive, and the fact that it is one that seems to be different from all others thus far known and that it does not appear in any of the principal iconographies adds considerably to even so short a description of its setting. Curtis' catalogue of the portraits and monuments of Columbus does not