So I know that there are a lot of these illusionistic ceilings that were made during the Baroque period in the 1600s and this looks like a really beautiful one in an early example, right? It isn't an early example. This was begun in the late 1590s and finished in the very early 1600s. It's the Farnese Gallery ceiling by Anibale Karachi, a bull and used painter. And I said illusionistic because that's really what it is. It's like it's entirely an illusion, right? Everything that you see above the moldings on the walls is fresco. It's all paint. There is no nothing three-dimensional. So everything that looks like sculpture, everything that looks like a frame, at all of that is just paint. It's all fresco and we'll see some good details that show you that in a minute. But before we start talking about details, we should situate this within Anibale Karachi's career and in the development of Baroque painting. The Karachi by the end of the 1500s had established themselves in Bologna as the leaders of this new style of painting that was rejection of mannerism. And for various reasons was pointing towards a style that was more naturalistic as well as being more straightforward and dramatic and clear and very, very legible. This is the Baroque style that's going to dominate European art for a century to come. They established themselves in Bologna, but when Anibale Karachi gets called to Rome in the 1590s to work for the Farnese family, this is really his moment to step onto a major stage and to bring his revolution of painting to the center of the art world at the time. So he's sort of gone from doing off Broadway play to now being a big star in Broadway in Rome. Exactly. And right, in Rome for the Farnese family in their main palace, this is a family of dukes and cardinals, incredibly important patrons. And so all of these things make this commission particularly important for him. And can you get into see this today in Rome? You can sometimes, but not all the time because today the Farnese palace is the French Embassy. Those lucky French ambassadors. Well, although it may be inconvenient, we might also be thankful because undoubtedly it being secluded has kept it in good condition. That's true. That's true. So what is the subject of the ceiling? The subject of the ceiling is several different scenes of the loves of the gods from classical mythology. Those are the scenes that we see in the paintings. And it's as if these paintings are framed in either wood-gilded frames or in stone architectural details and then inserted among real people and real sculptures, but of course like we said it's all paint. And this is the subject because it celebrated a marriage in the family. Right. And even though we're in the following, the counter-reformation here, we should keep in mind that this is a very private viewing context and it's also to celebrate a wedding. And so the stories of love and eroticism that we see, we shouldn't think of as being out of place at this time. Okay. So let's have a look at one of them. Here we again see the ceiling in a full view. And as we said, it's as if there are paintings of these love scenes inserted among people and sculptures who are not necessarily related exactly to the subject of the paintings. It's simple to believe that those are not paintings leaning up against the molding. Right. Especially the one at the far end. It looks like it's leaning up against the wall, but it's all fresco. The ceiling is curved, but it's flat to the touch. Amazing. And so artists are really building on what perspective had given them, what Nalesky had given them and being able to do all sorts of kind of tricks with perspective. That becomes a big thing during this period. Very much so, but it starts out initially as an effort on reclaiming naturalistic skills and studying carefully from life and then making your art look as life-like as possible. And so the illusionism that we see here, the fooling you into thinking that you're looking at real three-dimensional things, perspectiveally, is sometimes has very serious weight as well in terms of the revolution that the Karachi are trying to bring. Don't you think it's also a little bit of a desire to sort of involve you emotionally to bring you into it? It is very engaging in that sense as well, absolutely. In the center of the ceiling is the main subject matter. This is the triumphal chariot with Bacchus and Ariadne to the most famous lovers in classical mythology. Wait a second. So this whole thing along the bottom, that's all paint, right? Everything is paint. And you can see that it's curved. Yeah. Again, it's a barrel-valved ceiling, but there is nothing three-dimensional on the surface of the ceiling. Amazing. And you can see here it's a very celebratory tone. It's very fitting towards the celebration of a marriage. You can see also the incredible classicism that Ani Bale Karachi has brought to his painting, much more so in these works than in his earlier work in Bologna. But of course that makes sense not only because of the classical subject matter, but also because now he's in Rome, the heart of classical activity. Here's a really good example to look at where we can see our different levels of reality. In particular scene in the middle, the painting that's fictively inserted in the ceiling is the story of Diana and Andemian. And there are several versions of the story, but basically the story is that Andemian is a hunter who was incredibly beautiful. And he is asleep. And the goddess Diana, the goddess of the moon, is so taken with his beauty that she seduces him while he's sleeping. And so this is one of the love stories that we see in the front, and he's sleeping. It's very sweet, and that the sweetness of it and the seductiveness of it is as in all burrow paintings, no matter what their subject matter, communicated through gestures and facial expressions. And so the way she tenderly caresses his face, the way that the figure of the cupid in the back is saying, because he's sleeping, all of these things. When we say that burrow art uses gestures and dramatic expressions and so on to tell a story, we're not always talking about religious art. Sometimes it can be something like that. And I notice still too that use of a diagonal line and actually we kind of have two intersecting diagonal lines, almost like an x shape to the position, everything also again very close to us. Close to the viewer, also very, very simplified. The whole composition is boiled down to its essentials, nothing confusing, nothing enigmatic, which had been the hallmarks of the mannerist style that has now been rejected. And that's Diana goddess of the moon. Right, and you know it's her because she has her little moon on her headband, and you know that she's a goddess, not just some seductive woman working in the bushes, because you can see she's floating in on a cloud. It's floating on the clouds, right? Right. And I just am amazed by the illusion. I mean, it looks as though these are, you know, stuck-o or sculptures that are lit from below. Well, because of course that's where the windows are, and Annibale Krochi is carefully studied the light sources, the real light sources in the room to then paint these fictive sculptures and people as if they're being lit by the real light entering the space, and that enhances the illusion. This is a especially good detail to look at. The shadows, I mean the shadows are so dark around there. The shoulders of these sort of figures that frame them so that it really looks like they're kind of in high relief there. That's exactly what they're supposed to look like, and I'll draw your attention to the sculpture on the right. His left, the arm on the left, which is his right arm, is broken off. So it looks exactly like a real three-dimensional sculpture that would be broken, but the joke is there's nothing there to break because it's flat, frusky. It's tricky. It is tricky. And fun. There's nothing really playful about it. Which is appropriate for the subject matter again because it's love stories and because it's about celebrating. Several years, beginning in the mid-1590s and finished very early. But he worked with a workshop as most artists did then, right? Most artists had workshops working for them, mixing paints and getting things ready. And obviously the example that he must be looking at is Michelangelo's ceiling. Of course, now the Karachi had been interested in all of the major artists from the high renaissance as inspiration and resources with which to reject the con... What they saw is the convolutions and the strangeness of mannerism, but Michelangelo becomes particularly important when an Ebile Karachi goes to Rome because Michelangelo's is the same as the first one. So this is exactly this. It does exactly the same thing. And if you think about it, the format is very much the same even though the subject matter is very different. Inserted paintings, painted sculpture and architecture around the painted scenes in the center, mixing of those sort of painted images in color with images that look like sculpture. Yeah, and so this is a very good illustration of the idea that in some ways Baroque art is a return to the principles of the high renaissance, but also going even further than what had been done in the high renaissance, increasing the drama, increasing the playfulness, increasing even the illusion that we see. Increasing the emotion. Right, and once... Like the accessibility. Absolutely. And don't forget, like we said before, that an Ebile Karachi really needs to, in a sense, pull out all the stops here because he needs to bring this new style and his skill to Rome where he really likes to make it go back. Right, exactly. That's obvious.