Sala dei Cento Giorni  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 14:00, 11 February 2012

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In March 1546, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, at the suggestion of Paolo Giovio, commissions Giorgio Vasari and his assistants to paint al fresco the hail of the chancery in the Palace of S. Giorgio, today known as Palazzo della Cancelleria. The purpose is to celebrate the life of Pope Paul Ill, the uncle of Alessandro Farnese (1534—1549). In his Vita, Vasari is explicit in his description of this work and the circumstances of its execution. Because of its rapid completion, the hail receives the name of the Sala dei Cento Giorni.

Even at the time of its completion this room is severely criticized for its poor artistic quality by Michelangelo, Giovio and particularly by Vasari, who himself realized that he has sacrificed quality. When Michelangelo saw the completed room, he comments: “si vede!” (“it shows!”).

Paolo Giovio reports to Cardinal Farnese that the portraits displeased him. Today, the condition of the paintings is mediocre, even though they were restored several times after a 1940 fire.

In the Sala dei Cento Giorni, Vasari and his assistants work in an elaborate and fanciful manner. The narrative unfolds within a most unusual illusionist space created by an overabundance of allegorical ornamentation and further by numerous figures in painted architecture surrounded by simulated sculpture. The gestures, expressions and motions of the figures are extravagant and exaggerated in a courtly manner, according to the Maniera style of the mid-Cinquecento.

The decoration in this room exemplifies the third type of wall decoration: it is stylistically related to the Chamber of Fortune in the Casa Vasari. The room of the Sala dei Cento Giorni is rectangular. Its flat wooden ceiling is composed of recessed coffered shapes. These squares are created by the intersection of wooden beams. A corbel resting on the upper par of the wall supports the end of each beam. The east wall contains six large windows on the lower zone and six small ones in the upper zone. The north and south walls each contain only one bay, while the west wall contains two. The treatment of the wall decoration is geometric and architectonic. The wall is not considered as a painted two-dimensional surface, but rather as a plastic, architectural structure in which imaginary and real space can expand and contract as one.

The wall, which treated in a frieze-like style, is divided into two horizontal zones, each in turn divided into three vertical parts. The upper part contains at each end a portrait bust of an ancient emperor framed by winged Ignudi or allegories of Victory. A Latin motto is inscribed in a scroll above this composition. In the center of this upper zone, seated female figures framed by the wooden corbels present an escutcheon. They can he identified by the attributes they hold and by the Latin inscription on the scroll at their feet. Variations of grotesque motifs added to the overall decoration of this zone.

The lower and upper parts are separated by two broken pediments at the ends of the wall (where the ancient busts rest) and by the architrave running between them. This architrave supports an elaborate mask and festoon motifs. In the lower part of the wall are two painted tabernacles supporting the broken pediments described above. The tabernacle motif contains an open area, or niche, from which a standing female figure protrudes toward the viewer: a motif deriving from Vasari’s Michelangelesque studies of the Medici Chapel. In the center of the lower part, Doric columns frame depictions of an istoria.

The use of painted architecture to frame a narrative scene, commonly seen in antiquity, is elaborated in the Quatirocento, as in the Salone dei Mesi of the Schifanoia Palace at Ferrara, later adapted in the Cinquecento as in the Sala di Constantino in the Vatican. The istorie are filled with stylistic quotations from past and present art. The dado (zoccolo or basamento) of the wall has been either transformed or eliminated. Vasari creates a new, large-scale device by using illusionistically painted steps extending from the center of the lower zone to the actual physical floor. It seems as if the viewer could step up into the painted scene and participate in the events occurring in narrative istoria. According to Freedberg, the steps motif is a transformation of Michelangelo’s riceno (vestibule) in the Biblioteca Laurenziana. Other important sources for Vasari’s step-motif are their exedra of Cortile del Belvedere at the Vatican and the Nymphaeum fresco in the window embrasure of the Sala di Constantino, also in the Vatican.

In the Sala dei Cento Giorni, the Vasarian decorative scheme is systematized. The concept of quadro riportato is found in the depiction of the istoria, which takes place in elaborate landscape and architectural settings. The quadro riportato is framed by flanking tabernacles containing allegorical figures that symbolize moral or aesthetic virtues. And the overall design is fused by classical and grotesque motifs. The execution of the Sala dei Cento Giorni is invaluable for Vasari. It is, in fact, the beginning of a formalized, complex, painting program that is to undergo further elaboration in the decorative cycles of the Palazzo Vecchio.