Lovers of the Gods (c1600). The Loves of the Gods is a monumental fresco cycle, completed by the Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci and his studio, in the Farnese Gallery which is located in the west wing of the Palazzo Farnese, now the French Embassy, in Rome. The frescoes were greatly admired at the time, and were later considered to reflect a significant change in painting style away from sixteenth century Mannerism in anticipation of the development of Baroque and Classicism in Rome during the seventeenth century. Cardinal Odoardo Farnese, Pope Paul III's nephew, commissioned Annibale Carracci and his workshop to decorate the barrel-vaulted gallery on the piano nobile of the family palace. Work was started in 1597 and was not entirely finished until 1608, one year before Annibale's death. His brother Agostino joined him from 1597 to 1600, and other artists in the workshop included Giovanni Lanfranco, Francesco Albani, Domenichino, and Sisto Badalocchio. Annibale Carracci had first decorated a small room, the Camerino, with scenes from the life of Hercules. The Herculean theme was probably selected because the Farnese Hercules was standing at the time in the Palazzo Farnese. This concept of art imitating ancient art seems to have been carried over to the large Gallery. While performing graduate research on the Gallery, Thomas Hoving, later director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, pointed out many correspondences between the frescoes and items in the famous Farnese Collection of Roman sculpture. Much of the collection is now housed in the Capodimonte Museum and National Archaeological Museum in Naples but, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was arranged according to themes within the Palazzo Farnese. Hoving's suggestion that many details of the frescoes were designed to complement the marbles below has been generally accepted. In 1597, Carracci began to decorate the Gallery with scenes depicting the loves of the gods set within frames and faux bronze medallions painted on an illusionistic architectural framework referred to as quadratura. Ignudi, putti, satyrs, grotesques, and standing Atlas figures help support the painted framework. Gian Pietro Bellori, a biographer of seventeenth-century artists and Platonic apologist, called the cycle Human Love Governed by Celestial Love. This observation was based principally on Carracci's depiction of putti representing Cupid and Anteros found at the four corners of the vault. For example, Bellori writes: The painter wished to represent with various symbols the war and peace between heavenly and common love formulated by Plato. On one side he painted Heavenly Love wrestling with Common Love and pulling him by the hair: this is the philosophy and most sacred law that removes the soul from vice, raising it on high. Accordingly, a crown of immortal laurel is resplendent overhead amid brilliant light, demonstrating that victory over the irrational appetites raises men up to heaven. Hoving saw it differently. In his memoir, he writes: My lucky discovery destroyed the accepted interpretation of Annibale's fresco cycle as a Neo-Platonic visual essay about celestial love's supremacy over physical passion. The paintings were actually both an entertaining celebration of a bunch of randy Olympians hitting on each other and also an up-scale mind game paying homage to Odoardo's fine antiquities collection. In addition to the putti shown at the four corners, The Loves of the Gods are depicted on the vault in thirteen narrative scenes. Complementing them, there are twelve medallions painted to appear as bronze reliefs. These medallions portray additional stories of love, abduction, and tragedy. The scenes are arranged as follows: Central row: Pan and Diana, The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, and Mercury and Paris. Beginning in the lower left and proceeding counter-clockwise around the vault, the remaining scenes are: West side: Jupiter and Juno, Marine scene, and Diana and Endymion. Medallions on the west side: Apollo and Marsyas, Boreas and Orithyia, Orpheus and Euridice, and The Rape of Europa. South side: Apollo and Hyacinth above Polyphemus and Galatea. Medallions on the south side: Possible scene of abduction and Jason and the Golden Fleece. East side: Hercules and Iole, Aurora and Cephalus, and Venus and Anchises. Medallions on the east side: Hero and Leander, Pan and Syrinx, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, and Cupid and Pan. North side: The Rape of Ganymede above Polyphemus and Acis. Medallions on the north side: Judgement of Paris and Pan and Apollo.