Farnese Gallery
 Smarthistory - Carracci's Ceiling of the Farnese Palace
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The Loves of the Gods is a monumental fresco cycle, completed by the Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci and his studio, in the Farnese Gallery which is located in the west wing of the Palazzo Farnese, now the French Embassy, in Rome, Italy. The frescoes were greatly admired at the time, and were later considered to reflect a significant change in painting style away from sixteenth century Mannerism to anticipation of the development of Baroque and Classicism in Rome during the seventeenth century.
Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, Pope Paul III's nephew, commissioned Annibale Carracci and his workshop to decorate the barrel-vaulted gallery on the piano nobile of the family palace. Work was started in 1597 and was not entirely finished until 1608, one year before Annibale's death.
His brother Agostino joined him from 1597–1600, and other artists in the workshop included Giovanni Lanfranco, Francesco Albani, Domenichino and Sisto Badalocchio. The Farnese Gallery consists of profusely decorated quadratura and framed mythological scenes.
Annibale Carracci had first decorated a small room, the Camerino (1595-7), in the Palazzo Farnese with scenes from the life of Hercules; the theme was probably selected because of the famous ancient Roman statue, known as the Farnese Hercules, which at that time was also in the Palazzo Farnese. Thomas Hoving, later director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, wrote his PhD on the cycle, pointing out many correspondences between the frescoes and items in the famous Farnese collection of Roman sculpture, much of which was then housed in the Gallery and now at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. His suggestion that many details of the frescoes were designed to complement the marbles below has been generally accepted.
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