The Seventeenth Century in Villa Farnesina

The exhibition “The Seventeenth Century at Villa Farnesina” presented the public with an extraordinary discovery: previously unseen frescoes that have re-emerged in the villa’s so-called Farnese drawing room, concealed by a nineteenth-century vault. This is a decorative section dating from the Farnese period, comprising a sky with cherubs in flight around the Farnese coat of arms at the centre of the vault, two cherubs against a blue background in the corbels, and a landscape in autumnal colours adorning the only visible lunette.

The exhibition – organised under the patronage of the Associazione Amici dell’Accademia dei Lincei, in collaboration with the École française de Rome as part of the celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of its foundation, and with the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo – also provided an opportunity to examine in greater depth the influence of Raphael’s style in seventeenth-century Rome. To this end, important paintings inspired by or reproducing the frescoes of the artist from Urbino and his collaborators were exhibited for the first time at the Farnesina: two reworkings of the spandrels painted by Giulio Romano, attributed to Antonio Carracci, the Galatea by Pietro da Cortona, Galatea by Andrea Sacchi, and the seventeenth-century copy of Galatea from the École française de Rome.

With the aid of digital technologies and a first photographic campaign curated by Luigi Spina, the seventeenth-century frescoes were also presented to the public.