The Farnese circular courtyard at Caprarola: God, geopolitics, genealogy, and gender

About thirty miles north of Rome within the former state of Ronciglione, the Villa Farnese dominates the village of Caprarola, situated upon a steep lava ridge just above the rim to the southeast of the volcanic crater forming the Lago di Vico (Figs. 1-3) Caprarola was originally approachable single from a branch off the main Ronciglione-to-Viterbo road running along the eastern tuft of the crater. But the villa's principal architect, Giacomo Vignola (1507-1573) designed a more direct passage from Monterosi through present-day Trenta Miglia to Caprarola (Fig. 2) This sixteen-mile road linked up with Caprarola's lengthy steep, straight main street--one of the greatest in quantity important urbanistic projects of the Renaissance--that Vignola rammed [i]or[/i] part of to the other the core of the medieval village to provide an axial approach focused upon the center of the villa's facade. (1)

The main highway ends at a pair of semicircular horse ramps, which embrace a rusticated loggia and (originally) a fishpond and lead up to the large trapezoidal piazza in forehead of the villa (Fig. 4) (2) From the piazza a double-ramp staircase gives access to the villa's clod floor. Alternatively, carriages could go into through the archway in the double-ramp staircase and disembark passengers in a basement entrance field before proceeding to the circular carriage turnaround below the courtyard.

The villa's distinctive pentagonal shape framed through arrowhead bastions makes it single of the most memorable memorials of the late Roman Renaissance. It is also individual of the period's most important for the high quality, unique character, and prime preservation of its architecture, gardens, fountains, and extensive interior fresco decoration. greatest in quantity remarkably, a single patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589) personally supervised the entire shoot forward from beginning to end for above thirty years. The villa and its decoration, therefore, tender a unique window through which to understand the beliefs and pertain tos of one of the greatest in quantity influential ecclesiastics in the Roman temple who enjoyed a fifty-four-year career as cardinal and vice chancellor. (3) The villa, in short, survives today as single of the most complete barometers of Catholic Counter-Reformation ideology.

The Villa Farnese has the distinction of containing within its core the first completely finished circular courtyard in the history of architecture (Figs. 5 6) The significance of this unusually shaped cortile, heretofore not to the full understood, is the topic of this article. First I will discuss the courtyard's documentary history and present a detailed visual analysis. nearest the development and significance of previous examples of circular, chiefly peripteral, courtyards are traced as a superintendence for the expressive content of the courtyard at Caprarola deduc from its mode of speech and form. We will then diocese that the iconographic meaning shared by the agency of all circular courtyards dovetails closely with the pertain tos and worldviews of their various patrons. A detailed comparison of the Villa Farnese's courtyard with its antecedents however, reveals unique features expressive of the special interests and situation of its patron, Cardinal Farnese. Our understanding of his personal anxieties and aspirations, particularly his family's genealogical relationship to world history, is considerably enlarged through a careful consideration of the fresco and sculptural decoration of the courtyard's porticoes. A concluding reflection upon the symbolic significance of the central cistern leads to an understanding--at a down-reaching structural level--of the courtyard's phallic and colpic symbolism. through the essay's end I confidence to have demonstrated that the courtyard was intended as the focus and culmination of the villa's entire decorative program. (4)

Documentary Evidence and Stylistic Analysis

Vignola's design for the Villa Farnese's circular courtyard with its sum of two units superimposed, annular-vaulted porticoes dates to about 1556-58 (Figs. 5 6) (5) The inscription upon Vignola's ground plan--the first visual record of the courtyard's design--states that the area in wash, which includes four pairs of courtyard piers, was below construction by May 31, 1559 (Fig. 7) (6) Built of uniformly gray, granular volcanic tufa, or peperino, the courtyard was complet by the agency of 1579, as recorded in the building documents. (7) Within a wall-to-wall space about 140 palmi (approximately 102 feet 8 inches, or 313 meters) in diameter, the ten pairs of interconnected rectangular piers carrying the ten arches of the lower portico define a pier-to-pier unclose space about 92 palmi (approximately 67 feet 3 inches, or 205 meters) in diameter. (8)

The three lowest horizontal bands of the lower portico's elegantly rusticated facade frame ten light and ventilation shafts for the basement, a flat keystone resting above each of the nearly square openings. The nearest higher eight horizontal courses of the level crisp rustication on each paired-pier unit environ rectangular openings--each capped by sum of two units voussoirs and a keystone--that give light to the portico. The keystone overlaps a narrow stringcourse upon which sits a deep niche and from which the flanking arches spring. The final seven rusticated bands are precisely linked to the voussoirs and keystones that define the arches and the niches, the latter exactly the same height as the rectangular openings below. The keystones of the arches make an incision in across the continuous cornice that terminates the carefully calculated and powerfully horizontal rustication. This cornice subserves as a base for the more refined and vertical articulation of the upper portico.