Loren Partridge

Michelangelo--the Last Judgment : a glorious restoration

Michelangelos The Last Judgment (1534), painted on the rear wall of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, is considered by many to be the artists masterpiece and one of the most important works in the history of art. In this book, the newly cleaned and restored fresco is presented in all its powerful complexity. Richly illustrated with 150 magnificent full-color images- showing the painting both in its entirety and in many close-up details-the book offers an in-depth study of the work itself and of the restoration process. -- CCI=IC

Divinity and Dynasty at Caprarola: Perfect History in the Room of Farnese Deeds

This essay is a formal and iconographical analysis of the Room of Farnese Deeds in the Villa Farnese at Caprarola (Figs. 1–3). In the course of the discussion the known documents and drawings will be presented to establish attributions, dates, and authorship of the programme. Heraldry, devices, and allegorical figures are discussed before the historical scenes, because they provide in abstract and compressed form the general framework of ideas within which the histories are viewed. The deeds of the Farnese are examined in the light of the verbal and visual cues offered by the frescoes as well as by other historical evidence. The organization of the scenes and their visual and thematic links to classical antiquity are considered in detail. I have attempted to identify all of the portraits within the scenes and to assess their dynastic and political significance. The article concludes with a discussion of the historiographical context of the frescoes and the relationship between their content and style.

The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome

The description for this book, The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome. (PMAA-43), will be forthcoming.

Vignola and the Villa Farnese at Caprarola—Part I

Thanks to the excellent studies by GiovannoniI and Lotz2 the general outline of the building history of the Villa Farnese at Caprarola (Fig. 1) has been well established. It is now possible, however, to be much more precise about it as a result of documentation that has recently come to light-documentation which is so extensive that Caprarola is probably the most fully documented Renaissance monument presently known.3 It is the purpose of this article to draw attention to some of the more important new facts which this archival material provides with regard to the architecture.4 On the basis of drawings in the Uffizi, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Baldassare Peruzzi have long been associated with a pentagonal fortress project at Caprarola commissioned probably in the early 1520s by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, later Pope Paul III, which Vignola afterwards incorporated into his masterpiece.5 With regard to this earlier project, the new documentation establishes that the following existed before Vignola began his villa project commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, grandson of Paul III: