NEBBIA, Cesare

(b. ~1536 Orvieto, d. 1614 ?)

Italian Mannerist painter, pupil of Girolamo Muziano. He worked with his master on the decoration of the Orvieto Cathedral in the 1560s. (The remaining works in Orvieto are now in the Museo del Duomo.) Nebbia and Muziano became active in many late 16th-century projects in Rome. They, together with other Mannerist painters, decorated the Gregorian Chapel in the St Peter’s Basilica during the administration of Gregory XIII (1572-1585).

During the papacy of Pope Sixtus V (1585-1590), Nebbia and Giovanni Guerra, another assistant to Muziano, together managed the two major fresco decorations commissioned by the pope: the construction and decoration of the Capella Sistina at Santa Maria Maggiore and the refurbishment of the Scala Santa and the chapel of St Lawrence found adjacent to the Lateran palace and San Giovanni in Laterano. Numerous preliminary drawings by Nebbia exist for these frescoes.

In the project at Santa Maria Maggiore starting in 1586, the following painters are traditionally listed who were active in the fresco decoration: Hendrick van den Broek, Angelo from Orvieto, Ercolino from Bologna, Salvatore Fontana, Lattanzio Mainardi, Ferdinando Sermei, Giacomo Stella, Giovanni Battista Pozzo, and Paris Nogari. The decoration aptly for the church and a chapel which held the relic of the Nativity (the original Presepe or manger crib) focused on scenes of the life of the Virgin.

In 1603-1604, he moved to Milan where he worked for Federico Borromeo painting a series of frescoes on the life of the Blessed Carlo Borromeo for various sites, including the Collegio Borromeo in Pavia, the Collegiata di Arona, and the Palazzo Borromeo on Isola Bella.

Christ Crowned with Thorns

The most important brotherhood in Rome was that of the Gonfalone. It had its newly constructed oratory frescoed from 1568 to 1577, with many artists participating in the project. With the help of their cardinal protector, Alessandro Farnese, the members of the brotherhood were able to win over Jacopo Zanguidi, known as Il Bertoia, for the design of the decorative system. Painted Solomonic columns articulated a history cycle and supported an elaborate entablature, above which, in an upper zone of the wall, prophets and sibyls sit with scrolls, Old Testament kings, and virtues. The narratives of the paintings depict the Passion of Christ from the entry into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. The entrance wall emphasizes two scenes in which the depiction of Christ’s physical pain is particularly striking: on the left Federico Zuccaro’s Flagellation of Christ, and on the right Cesare Nebbia’s Christ Crowned with Thorns.

Send Postcard Learn More

The Dome of the Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel in the Santa Maria Maggiore (not to be confused with the more famous Vatican counterpart, the Sistine Chapel) is on a Greek cross plan, faced with marble and topped by a dome decorated with Mannerist paintings by a group of artists, directed by the best known of them, Cesare Nebbia.

Send Postcard Learn More