The Farnese Collection is Back in Rome

Michelangelo Buonarroti was commissioned to redesign the Capitoline Hill, the centrepiece of which was the bronze equestrian statue of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, one of many ancient sculptures to adorn the new piazza Campidoglio. It represents the ideological and artistic attraction to antiquity at the core of Renaissance Italy, as well as the interests of the Farnese family specifically; the latter is the subject of a new exhibition in Rome, fittingly held in the Capitoline Museums.

After introducing Pope Paul III’s contribution to the fabric of the city and the key members of the Farnese family, including a portrait of the heavily bearded Pope by Raphael, the exhibition quickly focuses on what was a vast and renowned collection of ancient sculptures assembled by Alessandro and his descendants.  

The pieces were originally arranged around the courtyard, corridors, and rooms of the family’s seat in Rome, the architectural masterpiece Palazzo Farnese. Through their divisions of the objects, the curators have sought to recreate a sense of these spaces within the exhibition.

The influence of the collection on 16th and 17th century artists, in both subject matter and the depiction of the human body, is illustrated by drawings placed alongside the ancient sculptures. Particular attention is understandably given to Annibale Carracci (1650-1609), who executed the extraordinary 20-meter-long ceiling fresco in the gallery of Palazzo Farnese. The fresco, which depicts the Classical gods and their lovers, is reproduced on a smaller scale in the exhibition, with statues that possibly originally stood in the gallery arranged along the walls, as well as some of Carracci’s chalk sketches, on loan from the Windsor Castle Royal Collection (UK).

The curators have secured some superb examples of ancient sculpture, including a marble Eros entwined by a dolphin, Ganymede sat with Jupiter, the Venus ‘Callipyge’, and a bronze bust thought to be the legendary Roman Servilius Ahala. 

But, the most famous pieces associated with the collection are not here. The Farnese Hercules and Farnese Bull, excavated in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, can instead be found in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

Although ‘Gian Cardinale’ Alessandro (1520-1589), grandson of Pope Paul III, stipulated in his Will that the collection should never leave Rome, his heir transported some pieces to Parma and Piacenza. Then, in the 1780s, Ferdinand IV of Naples, son of the last of the Farnese family, took the rest south to his kingdom, where it remains today. By temporarily returning some of the pieces to Rome, the exhibition inadvertently stirs the thought that perhaps other parts of the collection should be brought back on a more permanent basis. 

I Farnese nella Roma del Cinquecent. Origini e fortuna di una collezione, curated by Chiara Rabbi Bernard and Claudio Parisi Presicce, is at the Capitoline Museums (Villa Caffarelli) from February 12th to May 18th 2025.