Galleria di Bacco

A narrative scene painted on a wall as a framed picture was referred to as a “quadro riportato,” which to seventeenth-century thinking suggested that a framed panel painting had been translated into the medium of fresco. The simulated tapestry, first employed in monumental wall pictures by Raphael and his pupils in the painting of the Sala di Constantino in the Vatican, can be thought of as a variant of the quadro riportato. Given the appearance of tapestry, the wall painting took on added richness. At the same time, the simulation of the medium of tapestry in the medium of fresco painting permitted playful trompe-l’oeil effects like those in the Galleria di Bacco at Sassuolo shown in the picture.