Daniele da Volterra, Illusionism, and Living Presence at Trinita dei Monti

• In Event: Chapels in Roman Churches between the Cinquecento and the Seicento: Form and Meaning I

Abstract

Focusing primarily on the work of Daniele da Volterra and his collaborators in the Della Rovere chapel at SS Trinità dei Monti, this paper addresses the opportunities offered to 16th-century artists by chapel commissions to experiment and deploy new visual inventions and interactions with the viewer. It traces the development, from Raphael to Carracci, of sixteenth-century decorative painting in Rome in terms of the ways it “anticipates the Baroque invasion of the spectator's motor space” (L. Steinberg). A classic element of ‘illusion’ in these spaces is the presence of portraits; the paper also engages this issue, which was much debated during the Counter-Reformation.

Author

• Chiara Franceschini, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München