Venus disarms Mars: The Flemish and the Villa of Maecenas in Tivoli

The exhibition at the Sanctuary of Hercules Victor in Tivoli, organized by the Autonomous Institute of Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este – VILLÆ and curated by Andrea Bruciati, Director of the Institute, investigates the relationship between Tivoli and foreign artists, especially Flemish painters, who at the end of the 16th century chose it as an ideal destination and an obligatory stop for the rising fortune of the Grand Tour, driven by admiration for its imposing and magnificent ruins and the presence of natural elements, first and foremost water.

After the construction of Villa d’Este (1550-1572), in fact, the ancient Tibur and the sacred architectural complex built in Roman times, dedicated to Hercules and then believed to be the Villa of Maecenas, constituted a wonderful synthesis of archaeological and natural elements. For this reason, the Tiburtine acropolis has always exerted a special attractive force in the development of landscape design between the 16th and 17th centuries and foreign artists, so numerous in Rome, often went to Tivoli where they found an ideal context in which the ruins were inserted in a suggestive and fascinating way into the natural environment. On the side of the Villa of Maecenas, the site was also enriched in terms of landscape by the artificial waterfalls on the Aniene, created by the canalization of the river following the construction of Villa d'Este; not to mention that already at the end of the 16th century, via Tecta hosted metallurgical workshops that contributed to the representation of an ideal primordial place in which the four elements of nature, water, fire, air and earth, mixed in a perfect balance.

The works presented in the exhibition are by Flemish painters such as Paul Bril (Antwerp, 1554 – Rome, 1626), Jan Brueghel (Brussels, 1568 – Antwerp, 1625), Frederik van Valckenborch (Antwerp, 1566 – 1623) Bernard Rantwyck (known 1573 – before 1596), Johan König (Nuremberg 1586 – Augsburg 1642) and Abel Grimmer (Antwerp, 1570 – Antwerp, 1619), who were particularly assiduous in Tivoli in those years.

We would like to point out in particular Landscape with Classical Temple and Hunter, attributed to Paul Bril, a work from the Borghese Gallery, which captures the Tiburtine landscape in an unmistakable scenography: the same one taken up by Frederik van Valckenborch in his works such as Fantastic Landscape, from 1595-96, (already attributed to Paul Bril) and Landscape with Saint Jerome from around 1595-1605, (also already attributed to Paul Bril), also from the Borghese Gallery, which tell the story of the views that were later spread throughout Flanders by the works of Paul Bril and Jan Brueghel, who transformed the Tiburtine monuments and the surrounding landscape into a true figurative topos. Coming from the Uffizi Galleries are the panels of The Seven Wonders of the World (1611) by Bernard Rantwyck, where the Roman and Tiburtine landscape is the backdrop to the monumental architecture. Finally, from the Spannocchi collection of the Pinacoteca di Siena, we recall The Tower of Babel, from the circle of Abel Grimmer, The Day or Christ Tempted in the Desert and The Sunset or Christ in Emmaus, both by Johan König, in which the Tiburtine landscape is populated with stories taken from the Bible and the Gospel.

Photo credits: official poster of the exhibition