Anthony Tempesta in Sistine hall

The hall that I consider her is a hall that now isn’t, because between 1860 and 1887 this build was demolished and in this town was built actual station for train of Rome; this hall has had 6 kilometres and it was would for cardinal Peretti, after pope Sixtus 5^th at 1570, bought land for to build this hall, that was finished at 1581 on project of Domenico Fontana, very important Sistine architect(Figs.1-3). In this hall was painted a frieze with allegories of virtues and other, but painters of this frieze are today in majority unknown. Some published photos that I took let me identify very easily both Antonio Tempesta(1555-1630), painter that I have studied very much during my second thesis; usually we think that during Sistine pontificate Tempesta was excluded for commissions but for this frieze we must consider an exception; in fact for Felicitas stabilis, this Stable happiness(Fig.4), Tempesta anticipated some character of his style engravings that were after; we can consider very similarities between painting and engravings, the neck of this allegory is very specular to three figures on engravings of Tempesta(Figs. 5-7), toes are very specular to Europe kidnapped by Jupiter(Fig.6), the face(Fig.7) of this allegory is specular to Europe before mentioned, but she is very similarities to neck of Ciparissus, on other engraving of Tempesta(Fig.8), and last but it isn’t certainly less important than others the cloth, folds of fabrics are very specular to allegory, equally strong and heavy, that we can find both on this painting and on engraves(Figs.9-10); therefore after Geographical Maps Gallery in Vatican certainly Tempesta worked for this hall, and since painters in this Gallery of Tempesta and are very little he was busied to this Gallery for very little time, and he could painted this frieze.

Alessandro Lusana

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