Villa Farnesina Research Articles

Real-time identification and visualization of Egyptian blue using modified night vision goggles

The possibility to use light in the visible spectrum to induce near-infrared luminescence in some materials, particularly Egyptian blue and related pigments, offers a significant advantage in terms of their detection. Since 2008, this property has been exploited to reveal the presence of those pigments even in tiny amounts on ancient and decayed surfaces, using a technical-photography method. This paper presents a new type of imaging device that enables real-time, easy, and inexpensive identification and mapping of Egyptian blue and related materials. The potential of the new tool is demonstrated by its effectiveness in detecting Egyptian blue within some prestigious sites: (a) Egyptian findings at Museo Egizio, Turin; (b) underground Roman frescoes at Domus Aurea, Rome; and (c) Renaissance frescoes by Raphael, Triumph of Galatea and Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, at Villa Farnesina, Rome. The device is based on night vision technology and allows an unprecedented fast, versatile, and user-friendly approach. It is employable by professionals including archeologists, conservators, and conservation scientists, as well as by untrained individuals such as students or tourists at museums and sites. The overall aim is not to replace existing photographic techniques but to develop a tool that enables rapid preliminary recognition, useful for planning the work to be carried out with conventional methods. The ability to immediately track Egyptian blue and related pigments, through real-time vision, photos, and videos, also provides a new kind of immersive experience (Blue Vision) and can foster the modern use of these materials in innovative applications and future technologies.

Faith in the Stars and Architecture: Astrology as an Interpretation of Religious Permanence and the Birth of Modernity

In 1912, Aby Warburg presented his interpretation of the frescoes at the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara at the 10th International Congress of Art History in Rome. The decision to expound his theory in an academic setting was no coincidence: Warburg’s work, and the subsequent studies of Fritz Saxl, sought to centre the attention of art history on the complex world of astrological studies. The history of astrology demonstrated—via iconological analysis—the migration of knowledge from East to West. Warburg’s innovation was to superimpose the trauma of historical-artistic paths on this network. Through the Schifanoia frescoes, he could reflect upon how an international comparison with the surviving figurative concepts of Eastern Mediterranean civilisations had generated the stylistic transformation of the human figure in Italian art. Warburg defined astrology as ancient religion’s most tenacious form of hidden survival. He traced a path of continuity through art and its relationship to the architectural space hosting it. Astrological illustrations not only enable us to reconstruct the warp and weft of religious permanence but serve as a tool to explain the procedures of iconographic change that led to the Renaissance. After the collapse of paganism, many astrological images survived into the Middle Ages as symbols associated with the essences appropriated by Christianity as its own. A complex store of astrological iconography that migrated from classical cultures and reappeared during the Renaissance's construction of a universal language. Some foretastes emerge in medieval buildings; after a long period in which Christianity and astrology were considered incompatible, astrological language completed and provided meaning to the architecture that welcomed it. Such is the case of the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua. This paper aims to retrace the most significant paths of this migration of symbols through the analysis of such examples of Renaissance architecture as Villa Farnesina in Rome and the aforementioned Palazzo Schifanoia. It will also reflect on the position and training of the architect during the Renaissance and on how astrology was considered both magical thought and a mathematical description that would lead to the discovery of infinity. It is notable that the Farnesina’s astrological contents were dictated by Baldassarre Peruzzi, the building’s architect.

Petrified Beholders: The Interactive Materiality of Baldassarre Peruzzi’s Perseus and Medusa

Baldassarre Peruzzi’s cosmological vault fresco (1510–11) in the Villa Farnesina in Rome, prominently featuring a scene of Perseus and Medusa, showcases a dynamic operation that was often at work in the early modern period between the beholder and an immobile work of art. These types of representational objects participate in the discourse around materiality, not by employing the signifying powers of their constituent materials, but by encouraging thought about their material presence. I explore the process of haptic engagement that the fresco painting urges in its beholders, raising the possibility that the trope of petrification, made popular by Dante and other Italian writers of amorous poems, unlocks the work’s layered meaning.

Survey, Data Analysis and Modeling Raphael’s Stables in Villa Farnesina, Rome

This work contributes to the knowledge of historical contexts that have radically mutated over centuries and have lost their original characteristics. In these cases, information techniques and technologies can support the reconstruction of peculiarities in the digital domain and reveal their distinctive traits. This process applies to the architectural complex of Villa Farnesina in Rome, the realization of which involved the collaboration of influential artists from the 16th century; in particular, we focus on the Stables building, which no longer exists and can only be visualized by joining survey data, historiographic data, and metric measurements in digital and virtual assets. Starting from an integrated digital survey project, the paper highlights the potential of the graphic analysis of iconographic-archival and cartographic components for reconstructing a 3D model of the original appearance of the building. Furthermore, the correlation of geometric data and information parameters allows for the construction of a digital model to fulfill the demand for the transmission of interdisciplinary information to portray this jewel of Renaissance Rome to real and virtual tourism consumers.

Aretino's Urban Gardens

Abstract‘Petrus Arretinus vir acerrimi iudicii’ – Pietro Aretino, a man of most acute mind – went down in history as an intimate of Agostino Chigi (1466–1520), the great banker and patron of the arts. In his letters and drama, Aretino frequently evokes the golden years he spent as a protégé and household member. He recalls his brief but formative residence at Chigi's Villa Farnesina (ca. 1516–1520) as a time of freedom and creativity, when allegedly he gained the friendship and respect of the major artists who worked there. This article will review Aretino's literary evocations of the Chigi environment, especially its green spaces and gardens. In contrast to his famous portrait of Venice, Aretino's cityscape of remembered Rome gives us an ecology of the urban garden. As well as the published letters and the Cortigiana, it will draw on the Ragionamenti, dialogues that observe Roman life through the characters of marginalized and disreputable women.

Laser Scanning Investigation and Geophysical Monitoring to Characterise Cultural Heritage Current State and Threat by Traffic-Induce Vibrations: The Villa Farnesina in Rome

A multidisciplinary approach is often the only way to assess the state of the cultural heritage, thus involving different specialist expertise and techniques. The paper shows the paired use of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and geophysical monitoring (GM) to detect past effects and analyse the actual vibration levels induced by traffic on cultural heritage. The case study is the Villa Farnesina, one of the most important Renaissance buildings commissioned by the banker Agostino Chigi. The Villa contains frescoes attributed to Raphael and other famous 16th century artists, and it is located a few meters from the Lungotevere, which is one of the busiest roads in the historic centre of Rome. Testimonies report the damages caused by the construction of the embankment of the Tiber River, as well as by the traffic in the second half of the 20th century, so much so as to require requalification of the road artery. The TLS survey allows for detecting cracks and deteriorations of the frescoes, although these were subjected to restoration activities over the time, whereas the (GM) allows analysing actual vibrations induced by traffic at the different floors and outside the Villa. Although the measured vibration limits, as velocity peaks in defined frequency ranges, are below the thresholds established by international codes, the importance of the wall paintings and their already-shown susceptibility to damage suggest keeping the building under constant monitoring.

Traffic-induced vibrations on cultural heritage in urban area: the case of Villa Farnesina in Rome

Abstract The study aims to analyse the vibrations induced by traffic on the Villa Farnesina in Rome. The ancient building was designed and erected by the architect Baldassarre Peruzzi and the walls, vaults and lodges were decorated with frescoes attributable to Raphael and other relevant Italian Renaissance painters. Villa Farnesina is located near the Lungotevere road, therefore it suffers the dangerous effects due to the urban traffic even with heavy vehicles passing, so much so that in the early seventies an anti-vibration paving was built. A six-month geophysical monitoring made it possible to analyse the propagation of the waves on the building, characterizing the vibration due to the current traffic level. The results show the vibration levels recorded on the different floors of the building.

Iconography of Beans and Related Legumes Following the Columbian Exchange.

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), maize, and squash were described by explorers as early as 1492. The illustration of common bean recognized as the first in Europe is in Fuchs’ Di Historias Stirpium, published in 1542 and a half-century after beans were observed in the Caribbean. Besides herbals and herbarium specimens, the sources of information on the introduction of New World crops are paintings and illustrations. Two early sources of images of maize and squash are the Grandes Heures d’Anne de Bretagne and the Loggia di Amore e Psiche in the Villa Farnesina, Rome. The former was illustrated between 1507 and 1508 and has an image identified as the common bean. The Villa Farnesina Loggia was decorated in 1515–1518, with festoons containing three instances of bean pods. Our first objective was to evaluate these images to determine whether they represented depictions of common bean earlier than the illustration by Fuchs. Neither image appears to be a common bean based on a combination of botanical characters and size. Folio 194 of the Grandes Heures d’Anne de Bretagne is most likely a Vigna species in the Ceratotropis subgenus. In the Loggia, one set of pods appears to be a species in the Mimosoideae subfamily and the second and third sets of pods most closely resemble Canavalia gladiata. Neither image likely represents common beans and are probably Old-World species. Secondly, illustrations of common beans from ten early herbals were analyzed for traits that are characteristic of the centers of domestication and races of common beans. Our objective was to characterize the diversity observed among herbals and determine whether beans from both centers of domestication were present. We potentially identified both Middle American, race Mesoamerica and Andean, race Nueva Granada types. We posit that both Middle American and Andean types were in the Caribbean at the time of the Columbian exchange and that beans from both centers were informally introduced into Europe early on. This review of 16th-century manuscripts and illustrations has provided some answers to the questions of what and when common beans reached Europe and provide new hypotheses for researchers studying the origins, diversity, and distribution of this crop.

Assessing the impact of vehicular particulate matter on cultural heritage by magnetic biomonitoring at Villa Farnesina in Rome, Italy

Magnetic biomonitoring methodologies were applied at Villa Farnesina, Rome, a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, with loggias frescoed by renowned artists such as Raffaello Sanzio. Plant leaves were sampled in September and December 2020 and lichen transplants were exposed from October 2020 to early January 2021 at increasing distances from the main trafficked road, Lungotevere Farnesina, introducing an outdoor vs. indoor mixed sampling design aimed at assessing the impact of vehicular particulate matter (PM) on the Villa Loggias. The magnetic properties of leaves and lichens - inferred from magnetic susceptibility values, hysteresis loops and first order reversal curves - showed that the bioaccumulation of magnetite-like particles, associated with trace metals such as Cu, Ba and Sb, decreased exponentially with the distance from the road, and was mainly linked to metallic emission from vehicle brake abrasion. For the frescoed Halls, ca. 30 m from the road, the exposure to traffic-related emissions was very limited or negligible. Tree and shrub leaves of the Lungotevere and of the Villa's Gardens intercepted much traffic-derived PM, thus being able to protect the indoor cultural heritage and providing an essential conservation service. It is concluded that the joint use of magnetic and chemical analyses can profitably be used for evaluating the impact of particulate pollution on cultural heritage within complex metropolitan contexts as a preventive conservation measure.

Things Always Come in Three: Non-Invasive Investigations of Alexander and Roxane’s Wedding Room in Villa Farnesina

Non-invasive optical spectroscopical analyses were conducted on the three main walls of Alexander and Roxane’s Wedding Room in Villa Farnesina, Rome. The north and the east walls were frescoed by Sodoma in 1519. The decoration of the third wall was subsequent and neither the author nor the period is known. The north and east walls underwent various restorations, some even very invasive. For these reasons, the supposed remaining original parts of the two walls by Sodoma were studied and compared with the third one, aiming to obtain more information about its author and epoch. The results show the use of the same pigments for the three walls. In particular, the same yellow pigments including lead antimonate, the use of enamel blue with Bi impurities whose use is time-limited, and the use of a certain kind of purple hematite. The commonality in the pictorial technique also emerged, especially in the yellow parts, painted in the same way on each wall. This information, and documentary sources, reinforce the hypothesis that the third wall was decorated shortly after the death of Agostino Chigi by someone who was well-acquainted with the materials and techniques used by Sodoma for the other two walls.

Evolution of Root Morphology in Table Beet: Historical and Iconographic.

The Beta vulgaris complex includes sugar beet, mangel wurzel, Swiss chard, fodder beet, and table beet. Mangel wurzel and fodder beet are considered to be the same general crop type, with the former possessing lower dry matter content (<13%) than the latter. Mangel is likely derived from crosses between table beet and chard, while fodder beet may have a more recent origin, arising from crosses between mangel and sugarbeet. The table beet was derived from the wild sea beet, B. vulgaris (L.) subsp. maritima (L.) Arcang, with small non-spherical roots. Table beet is presently a popular vegetable cultivated for its pigmented roots, typically red but also yellow and other colors. Wild forms were consumed in antiquity mainly for their leaves with roots used medicinally. Beet is referred to in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the first five books of the Hebrew bible, made in Ptolomeic Egypt in the third century BCE. A beet identified as Beta maritima is included in De Material Medicus of Pedanius Dioscorides written in the first century CE, and the first illustrated version of 512, known as the Juliana Anicia Codex, includes an image with non-spherical root. Beet is mentioned in several tractates of the Talmud, a sixth century collection of history and civil law written in Babylonia. Beta maritima possesses supernumerary root cambia, which facilitated selection of swollen rooted forms. The first colored illustration of swollen rooted table beet, B. vulgaris, can be found in the 1515–1517 frescos of Raphael Sanzio and Giovanni Martina da Udine in the Villa Farnesina in Rome. Swollen roots in Roman beet are illustrated and described in the 1587 French herbal Historia Generalis Plantarum of Jacques Dalechamps. Conically shaped beet roots are found in the market painting of Franz Snijders in the 17th century. Various spherical forms of beet root are found in the work of American painter James Peale in 1826. A complete array of beet root types is found in the Benary catalog of 1876. Modern, spherical beet roots were depicted in 1936 by the Russian painter Zinaida Serebriankov, 1936. Artistic and historical representations of table beet suggest that swollen rooted forms have existed during the past five centuries, but conically shaped roots were gradually replaced by spherically shaped roots during this period.

Theorizing Image and Abstraction in Ancient Rome: The Case of the Villa Farnesina

This essay argues that abstract colouristic effects were favoured in the arts of ancient Rome in a manner long overlooked. Taking the wall paintings of Cubiculum B from the Villa Farnesina as a case in point, the article demonstrates that these images display an interest in interlocking planes of colour and shape that might be described as formalist. It juxtaposes this visual evidence with overlooked passages in ancient texts to explore how such effects were conceptualized in ancient Roman thought. What emerges is a model of aesthetic value that foregrounds terpnopoietic planar effects of colour and shape above those of mimetic representation – so long revered as the most important artistic practice theorized in the classical world. This paradigm of visual value is employed in relation to both figural and non‐figural works alike. The absence of these surface effects in the standard narrative of classical art becomes testimony to that narrative's limitations.

Editor’s Note: What We See Doth Lie

Editor’s Note: What We See Doth Lie

Imaging the antique: unexpected Egyptian blue in Raphael’s Galatea by non-invasive mapping

Unexpected finding of Egyptian blue emerged in Raphael’s fresco Triumph of Galatea at Villa Farnesina, in Rome. This pigment is the oldest man-made blue, dating back to Egyptians who manufactured it first and whose occurrence was thought to be lost with Romans. Thanks to advanced imaging techniques it has been possible to non-invasively map its distribution throughout the frescoed surface and to obtain a non-invasive imaging stratigraphic analysis indicating whether pure painting layers, mixtures or overlapping occurred. Egyptian blue identification on Raphael’s Galatea is so far the earliest of sixteenth century, and could be the first step towards its tracking in Renaissance, demonstrating that non-invasive techniques are a mandatory step not only for materials identification but also for understanding art history and its dynamics.

Festoons in Villa Farnesina Loggia: Complexity beyond Decoration

The Villa Farnesina Loggia is a resting and meeting place in the Villa Farnesina, used to be called the Villa Chigi, owned by the wealthiest man in Renaissance Rome, Agostino Chigi. The frescoes are the story of Cupid and Psyche painted by Raphael Sanzio, from the Metamorphoses, and they have long been visitors' and experts' focus. Nevertheless, the festoons surrounding the frescoes created by Giovanni Udine, the team member of Raphael, are sometimes disregarded by art historians. The inclusion of 170 botanical species, including those introduced from the New World just twenty years before the commission of Villa Farnesina, may infer that these festoons mean more than decoration. This paper will merely target on the festoons and to prove how the artist masters these fruits and vegetables, artistically and contextually.

Editor’s Note: New Baggage for Old Masters

Editor’s Note: New Baggage for Old Masters

로마 빌라 파르네시나의 갈라테이아 방 천장화에 표현된 키지 가문의 이상과 야망

로마 빌라 파르네시나의 갈라테이아 방 천장화에 표현된 키지 가문의 이상과 야망

Detection and study of a palimpsest: macro-X-ray fluorescence scanning in the Loggia Room of Galatea

Within the frame of a collaboration among the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, XGLab-Bruker and ENEA, some of the Renaissance wall paintings decorating Villa Farnesina interiors have been investigated by macro-X-ray fluorescence (MAXRF). In this paper is presented and discussed a case study concerning some sketches discovered about 50 years ago during the detachment of painted curtains. Results have brought to light a palimpsest whose discussion calls into question the attribution proposed when it has been discovered.

The Astronomical Framework Underlying the Sala di Galatea

Abstract This paper examines the much-debated ceiling painting by Baldassare Peruzzi on the vault of the loggia in Agostino Chigi’s Villa Farnesina. To date, most studies have examined the ceiling painting from a largely astrological and mythological point of view. Here an astronomically coherent model is proposed that helps to clarify the structure and several of the individual features of the painting.

Review: Becoming an Architect in Renaissance Italy: Art, Science, and the Career of Baldassarre Peruzzi, by Ann C. Huppert

Ann C. Huppert Becoming an Architect in Renaissance Italy: Art, Science, and the Career of Baldassarre Peruzzi New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2015, 224 pp., 35 color and 140 b/w illus. $70 (cloth), ISBN 9780300203950 Elusive, enigmatic, and engaging, Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481–1536) was among the most compelling artists of the Italian Renaissance. He was responsible for some of the greatest architectural achievements of the sixteenth century and was a pioneering antiquarian and draftsman. In Rome, he was a close collaborator with Raphael, Donato Bramante, and the Sangallo family architects, and in his native Siena, a skilled fortification architect and a knowledgeable designer of hydraulic works. In recent decades, his prolific graphic output and masterful constructions have rightfully been the subjects of a significant body of scholarship. Yet where much has been written in Italian and German, comparatively little has been published in English. Ann Huppert's Becoming an Architect in Renaissance Italy: Art, Science, and the Career of Baldassarre Peruzzi addresses this lacuna, providing the first English-language monograph on this exceptional artist in nearly a century. Richly illustrated and beautifully produced, Huppert's volume engages Peruzzi's entire career, bridging the two halves of his life—characteristically marked by the Villa Farnesina (1506–10) and the Palazzo Massimo (1532–36)—and examining the practices that grounded these achievements. Above all, this is a book about Peruzzi as a draftsman. As argued by Huppert, it was Peruzzi's adroitness with the pen (stylus and chalk) that allowed him to excel in diverse artistic fields, from facade painting to book illustration, theatrical design, fortifications, and surveying. Further, as documentary evidence, the drawings offer insight into those periods of Peruzzi's life not directly associated with his authorial achievements. They reveal aspects of his early training in Siena, his methodical study of antiquity, and his approach to building design. The image of Peruzzi formed by the reader is that of a pragmatist, an artist whose creativity was tempered and refined by his distinctly rational …