GENGA, Girolamo

Raphael’s solution for ceiling decoration, stretching a velarium, or awning, across the illusive opening in the ceiling and using it as an autonomous support for the painting, found widespread application. Analogous solutions are found in later works, such as in the Villa Imperiale.

The picture shows the ceiling of the Camera dei Semibusti in the Villa Imperiale. The central part shows the scene Charles V Arrives at San Petronio in Bologna for the Imperial Coronation in 1530. In front of the Emperor are the bearers of the insignia of the empire, and below them, in second position, is Francesco Maria della Rovere with a sword. Around the central painting, the depiction of the Arts can be seen.

The ceiling decoration is the work of Girolamo Genga, Dosso Dossi, Battista Dossi, and Agnolo Bronzino.

In 1511 Vittoria Piccolomini, niece to Pius III, married Borghese Petrucci, son of Pandolfo Petrucci, the ruler of Siena. This alliance was duly commemorated in one of the principal rooms in the Palazzo Petrucci in Siena. (The Petrucci coat-of-arms quartered with that of the Piccolomini appear on many of the pavement tiles and in three places on the surviving woodwork from this room.) Located in a medieval tower, the base of which became the principal entrance of the building, early sixteenth-century references to this third-floor room suggest that it originally functioned as an audience chamber where Pandolfo received guests and conducted official business. Nothing of the sixteenth-century painted decoration remains in the room today but it is clear from two eighteenth-century descriptions that it was originally decorated with eight fresco paintings representing classical subject matter, five of which survive today (the Triumph of Chastity and the Coriolanus Persuaded by his Family to Spare Rome both by Luca Signorelli in the National Gallery, London; the Return of Ulysses by Pinturicchio in the National Gallery, London; Fabius Maximus Ransoming Prisoners from Hannibal and the Flight of Aeneas from Troy, both by Girolamo Genga in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena) and three are lost (two by Luca Signorelli and one by Pinturicchio). While all the surviving paintings demonstrate both the complex nature of the imagery chosen and Pandolfo’s taste for antiquity, each of the painters retained his distinctive style.

Genga in his painting of the Flight of Aeneas from Troy shows Aeneas’s wife, Creusa, in a loose robe that is not dissimilar to those worn by women in antiquity. Her central position and spectacular pose underline the drama of the event, as recounted in Virgil’s Aeneid, whereby she became separated from her husband, father-in-law and young son. In his representation of this calamitous event, Genga took the opportunity to convey different atmospheric effects, such as the smoke-laden city of Troy in the background and the reflection of moonlight on the domed roof of a temple on the left.

The scene depicted in the recently restored painting is quite rare. It takes place in an interior laid out in precise perspective, with an all’antica baptismal font in its central axis. The naked figures move in the space vigorously. The viewer is particularly struck by the powerful musculature of the nudes disrobing in the foreground. Antecedents for this can already be found in the work of Masaccio and then Piero della Francesca, but here this approach clearly mingles with the influences of Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s first Stanze in the Vatican.

In the foreground are Christ’s three favourite disciples who had accompany him to important events: Peter, James, and John. They became the pillars of the Early Church: Peter, the head of the church; James, the first to be martyred; and John, the guardian of theology.

This complex, Mannerist composition, representing the Virgin and Child with various saints and the Doctors of the Church, shows the influence of Raphael.