The Farnese circular courtyard at Caprarola: God, geopolitics, genealogy, and gender

About thirty miles north of Rome, within the former state of Ronciglione, the Villa Farnese dominates the village of Caprarola, situated on a steep lava ridge just over the rim to the southeast of the volcanic crater forming the Lago di Vico (Figs. 1-3). Caprarola was originally approachable only from a branch off the main Ronciglione-to-Viterbo road running along the eastern crest of the crater. But the villa's principal architect, Giacomo Vignola (1507-1573), designed a more direct route from Monterosi through present-day Trenta Miglia to Caprarola (Fig. 2). This sixteen-mile road linked up with Caprarola's long, steep, straight main street--one of the most important urbanistic projects of the Renaissance--that Vignola rammed through the core of the medieval village to provide an axial approach focused on the center of the villa's facade. (1)

The main street ends at a pair of semicircular horse ramps, which embrace a rusticated loggia and (originally) a fishpond and lead up to the large trapezoidal piazza in front of the villa (Fig. 4) (2) From the piazza a double-ramp staircase gives access to the villa's ground floor. Alternatively, carriages could enter through the archway in the double-ramp staircase and disembark passengers in a basement entrance room before proceeding to the circular carriage turnaround under the courtyard.

The villa's distinctive pentagonal shape framed by arrowhead bastions makes it one of the most memorable monuments of the late Roman Renaissance. It is also one of the period's most important for the high quality, unique character, and excellent preservation of its architecture, gardens, fountains, and extensive interior fresco decoration. Most remarkably, a single patron, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589), personally supervised the entire project from beginning to end for over thirty years. The villa and its decoration, therefore, offer a unique window through which to understand the beliefs and concerns of one of the most influential ecclesiastics in the Roman Church who enjoyed a fifty-four-year career as cardinal and vice chancellor. (3) The villa, in short, survives today as one of the most complete barometers of Catholic Counter-Reformation ideology.

The Villa Farnese has the distinction of containing within its core the first completely finished circular courtyard in the history of architecture (Figs. 5, 6). The significance of this unusually shaped cortile, heretofore not fully understood, is the topic of this article. First I will discuss the courtyard's documentary history and offer a detailed visual analysis. Next, the development and significance of previous examples of circular, mostly peripteral, courtyards are traced as a control for the expressive content of the courtyard at Caprarola deduced from its style and form. We will then see that the iconographic meaning shared by all circular courtyards dovetails closely with the concerns and worldviews of their various patrons. A detailed comparison of the Villa Farnese's courtyard with its precedents, however, reveals unique features expressive of the special interests and situation of its patron, Cardinal Farnese. Our understanding of his personal anxieties and aspirations, particularly his family's genealogical relationship to world history, is considerably enlarged by a careful consideration of the fresco and sculptural decoration of the courtyard's porticoes. A concluding reflection on the symbolic significance of the central cistern leads to an understanding--at a deep structural level--of the courtyard's phallic and colpic symbolism. By the essay's end I hope to have demonstrated that the courtyard was intended as the focus and culmination of the villa's entire decorative program. (4)

Documentary Evidence and Stylistic Analysis

Vignola's design for the Villa Farnese's circular courtyard with its two superimposed, annular-vaulted porticoes dates to about 1556-58 (Figs. 5, 6). (5) The inscription on Vignola's ground plan--the first visual record of the courtyard's design--states that the area in wash, which includes four pairs of courtyard piers, was under construction by May 31, 1559 (Fig. 7). (6) Built of uniformly gray, granular volcanic tufa, or peperino, the courtyard was completed by 1579, as recorded in the building documents. (7) Within a wall-to-wall space about 140 palmi (approximately 102 feet 8 inches, or 31.3 meters) in diameter, the ten pairs of interconnected rectangular piers carrying the ten arches of the lower portico define a pier-to-pier open space about 92 palmi (approximately 67 feet 3 inches, or 20.5 meters) in diameter. (8)

The three lowest horizontal bands of the lower portico's elegantly rusticated facade frame ten light and ventilation shafts for the basement, a flat keystone resting above each of the nearly square openings. The next higher eight horizontal courses of the smooth, crisp rustication on each paired-pier unit surround rectangular openings--each capped by two voussoirs and a keystone--that give light to the portico. The keystone overlaps a narrow stringcourse on which sits a deep niche and from which the flanking arches spring. The final seven rusticated bands are precisely linked to the voussoirs and keystones that define the arches and the niches, the latter exactly the same height as the rectangular openings below. The keystones of the arches cut across the continuous cornice that terminates the carefully calculated and strongly horizontal rustication. This cornice serves as a base for the more refined and vertical articulation of the upper portico.