The Vatican Logge and their culminating decorations under Pius IV and Gregory XIII: Decorative innovation and urban planning before Sixtus V

Reflecting the initial challenge of providing a facade for the Apostolic residence, the Vatican Logge inaugurated by Bramante and Raphael present a series of solutions to the perennial question of how most eloquently to relate the papacy to the world beyond the palace walls. Crucial to this purpose, the Logge's panoramic views from the beginning symbolized papal dominion and reflected an Albertian conception of aristocratic architecture and urban planning. This study focuses on the little-known Logge commissions of Pius IV (1560-65) and, particularly, of Gregory XIII (1572-1585), who completed the Logge as a coherent three-wing complex.; Complementing the magisterial prospects, elaborate fresco and stucco decorations embodied the themes of Creation and the terrestrial paradise. By involving three generations of artists in the treatment of these themes, the Logge provided a laboratory for experiments in ornamental naturalism. As the Cinquecento progressed, scientific advances heralded new modes of interpreting and representing nature, while the Council of Trent mandated religious vocations anchored to the realities of parish and diocese. In tandem with these developments, the focus of the Logge's urban panorama shifted from general vistas to an increasingly particularized line of sight, oriented by the new landmarks of religious reform and by a new urban axis, sited between the Vatican and Gregory's Palazzo Quirinale.; The interior decorations similarly shifted from learned visual allegories of the papal vicariate over sublunary Creation to instrumentalist diagrams of papal turf. Gregory XIII's cartographic program for the uppermost (Terza) loggia features the most arresting contributions to these developments. Noteworthy for their modification of the licenza that dominated earlier installments in the Logge's decoration, Gregory's program also introduced a new genre of subject matter. This appears in the ten views of contemporary Roman streets with which Matthew Bril and Antonio Tempesta filled the frieze of the northern Terza Loggia. Arranged with respect to the actual sites they depict, the ten vedute display a pronounced interest in quotidian settings and popolano figures. By introducing the "veduta quotidiana," these cityscapes provided significant precedents for the vedute, Bambocciate, and other Seicento genres often associated with a "Caravaggist" naturalism.