Media Information

 
 
 
Collection:
ADJUNCT MODULE C: WORLD ART
Preferred Title:
Council of the Gods
Image View:
Overall view of ceiling
Creator:
Giovanni Lanfranco (Italian painter, 1582-1647)
Location:
repository: Villa Borghese (Rome, Lazio, Italy)
Location Note:
Piazzale Scipione Borghese, 5
GPS:
41.914 12.492
Date:
1624-1625 (creation)
Cultural Context:
Italian
Style Period:
Baroque
Work Type 1:
fresco (painting)
Classification:
Paintings
Material:
pigment on plaster (fresco)
Technique:
fresco painting (technique); grisaille
Subjects:
allegory; deities; mythology (Classical); Borghese family; trompe l'oeil; telamons; Olympus
Description:
Lanfranco carried out one of the first examples of Baroque painting in Rome for Cardinal Scipione Borghese. The Council of the Gods is a ceiling fresco of a large room on the first floor of Casino Pinciano on the grounds of the Villa Borghese, designed at the time as an open loggia opening on to the park. Lanfranco employed the illusionist device of the "quadratura" from the Roman tradition; he treated the ceiling center and the vault as a unified illusionistic space. He used a trabeated system (a construction using lintels rather than arches) painted in perspective along the perimeter of the walls, supported by pairs of grisaille painted telamons (columns sculpted in the form of a man) alternated with lunettes. The loggia was enclosed in 1779 before being restored by Domenico Corvi, a Rome-based Neo-Classical painter. (Source: Discover Baroque Art; www.discoverbaroquea rt.org)
Collection:
Archivision Adjunct Module C: World Art
Identifier:
7A1-LANFRANC-BG-COG- A01
Rights:
© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.

Council of the Gods