Palazzo Farnese - Interior Decorations

Interior Decorations

Several main rooms were frescoed with elaborate allegorical programs including the Hercules cycle in the Sala d'Ercole or the Hercules Room, and the well known The Loves of the Gods (1597–1608) in the Farnese Gallery, both by the Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci. Other rooms have frescoes by Daniele da Volterra and by other artists.

For generations, the room with Herculean frescoes accommodated the famous Greco-Roman antique sculpture known as the Farnese Hercules. Other works from the family collection of classical sculpture were also housed in the palace.

One of the vault and ceiling fresco by Annibale Carracci is Galleria Farnese, an art gallery. According to Ann Sutherland Harris, "The Galleria frescoes make even more extensive use of ancient sculptural and architectural sources, and in addition take their basic structure from two ceilings by the most prestigious artists of the High Renaissance in Rome, the Loggia of Psyche by Raphael and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling". Carracci adopted the quadri riportati, which the ceiling is divided into units and turned it into a collection of framed paintings, along with the cast masks among the garlands, and carved putti, and sculptures supporting the central scene. This large central scene depicts the triumphal progress of Bacchus and Ariadne. Two smaller paintings are attached to the top and bottom of the central picture, and two vertical pictures on either side, filled with sphinxes, Pan, and two satyrs.