The Farnese in the Rome of the sixteenth century. Origins and luck of a collection on display at Villa Caffarelli-Musei Capitolini of Rome-Carlo Franza’s blog

Hosted to Capitoline museums, Villa Caffarelli, until 18 May 2025, The exhibition “The Farnese in the Rome of the sixteenth century. Origins and luck of a collection”, Edited by Claudio Parisi Presicce And Chiara Rabbi Bernardconstitutes one of the top events organized by the Capitoline Superintendency within the “#AMANOTESA” (PNRR CAPUT MUNDI) intervention, aimed at encourage social inclusion through the increase in cultural offer.

For the high value of the exhibition project and for its relevance within the jubilee year, the inauguration of the exhibition at the Capitoline Museums, Palazzo dei Conservatori, took place at theExadra del Marcus Aurelioideal connection between the figure of Paul III, the Farnese collection and the Capitoline Museums. Present for institutional greetings the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtierithe Councilor for Culture, Massimiliano SmeriglioIf the ambassador of France in Italy, Martin BriensProf. Massimo OsannaGeneral manager

of the museums of the Ministry of Culture.
The Capitoline superintendent, Claudio Parisi Presiccehe started the work with a general classification on Paolo III Farnese and Roma renewed on the eve of the Jubilee of 1550 and an introduction to the exhibition, curated together with Chiara Rabbi Bernard. Then the intervention of the professor Carlo Gasparri (Prof. Emeritus – University of Naples Federico II), who has dedicated many of his studies to the Farnese collection of antiquity, and whose presentation will focus on the sculptures once owned by Farnese, kept since the end of the eighteenth century in Naples. Some of the works of the Farnese collection, a point of reference since the sixteenth century for artists and scholars, protagonists of a further study by Dr. Adriano Aymonino (University of Buckingham) and Dr. Eloisa Dodero (Capitoline museums). To close the event the professor Salvatore Settis (Prof. Emeritus – Normal School Superior of Pisa), around the bronzes donated to the Roman people by Pope Sixtus IV – from 2020 collected in a new preparation in the essra of Marcus Aurelio – and the future of the archeology collections in contemporary museums. The exhibition project is dedicated to the moment of profound urban transformation of the city of Rome, promoted by Paolo III Farnese (r. 1534-1549). In the aftermath of the tragic bag of 1527, the city finds itself faced with the need for Uquick and vigorous rebirth. To the impulse of Pope Farnese, some grandiose interventions are due, including the monumentalization of the Piazza del Campidoglio, entrusted to the genius of Michelangelo; The famous Bronze Equestrian Statue by Marco AuRelio, transferred in 1538, by the will of the Pope, from the Lateran square, becomes the center of the Capitoline hill; Around, symbol of the grandiose past of Rome, Michelangelo designs a scenic and monumental fifth.
Paul III also starts the most important collection of art and antiquity of the sixteenth century Rome. He dates back to 1545-1546 the discovery in the Terme di Caracalla of some marble giants, including theHerculesThe Bull and the Flora Farnese. The statues are immediately transferred to the courtyard of the Farnese Palace in the field of the Fiori. Heir of the Pope’s death is his nephew Alessandro (1520-1589), which transforms Palazzo Farnese into a very refined residence, a supreme expression of the Farnesian power in Rome, in which sculptures, inscriptions and ancient gems coexist, precious elements of furniture, drawings , engravings, paintings and frescoes of the major artists of the time, including Titian and the Carracci brothers.
If the Campidoglio monumentalized by Michelangelo constitutes the maximum manifestation of the “public” incisiveness of the Farnese, the palace in the field of the flowers represents its private power. Hosting an exhibition on the Farnese collection at the Capitoline Museums (Villa Caffarelli), therefore, becomes a precious opportunity to present and explain this public/private dynamics in a only apparently remote moment, the central years of the sixteenth century, but in reality much closer to us of what we can imagine. As in the 1940s, on the eve of the Jubilee called by Paul III, even today Rome is renewed, driven by the need to change and transform, among many conflicts and many uncertainties.

Articulated in six sections, the exhibition, hosted in the exhibition spaces of Villa Caffarelli, is the result of a complex loan campaign that involved numerous Italian and foreign museums. The exhibition itinerary starts with the presentation, through planimetries and engravings, of the transformation interventions of the city to Eve of the Jubilee of 1550. The comparison between the Camillo In bronze of the Capitoline collections, part of the nucleus of the Lateran Bronzes donated to the “Roman people” by Sixtus IV in 1471, and his bronze copy made by Guglielmo della Porta for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in the sixties of the sixteenth century, offers the starting point for a first reflection on the relationship between public collection and private collection.
A precious gallery of portraits of the protagonists of the collection in the years of its greater splendor follows, from Pope Paul III to the grandchildren Alessandro and Ottavio (1524-1586). The large marbles found in the Terme di Caracalla, among the first ancient sculptures to find a place in the courtyard of Palazzo Farnese in Campo de ‘Fiori, are evoked by precious bronze, drawings and engravings, in the section, entitled “The Farnese and the passion for the ‘Antiquity ”.
The visitor is then invited to “enter” the original setting of the ancient collection of Palazzo Farnese, along the “Sala dei Philosopi”, characterized in the sixteenth century by the presence of statues, such as the famous Venus Callpigia of the Archaeological Museum of Naples, and the splendid gallery frescoed by the Carracci, evoked here by important preparatory designs of the frescoes and some of the most important sculptures exhibited in the large representation environment, now preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Naples, which return to be visible to Rome after their transfer during the last decade of the eighteenth century. The virtual route inside the building resumes through the reconstruction of the “dressing room” and the gallery of the paintings of Palazzo Farnese. The exhibition ends with a room dedicated to a comparison between two collections, that of the Farnese and the Orsini, which belonged to the famous antiquarian near the noble family, both united by a common fate of dispersion.

Carlo Franza