Art History: The fresco series in Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara - Essay Example

Painted primarily by Cosme Tura, Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de’Roberti, the frescoes divide the walls into 12 sections, one for each month and three horizontal bands representing the world of the gods, the confluence of eastern and western Zodiacs and the world of men in descending order. Although some of the frescoes have been lost to time (October through February), the remaining months provide a great deal of revealing detail not only about the Ferrarese court and what they held as important, but also about the general and unique painting styles of the artists themselves.

To illustrate this, the months of April, August and September will be examined for traces of symbolism and style observable in the panels. “Venus, like the other deities, assumes the attributes given to her in the medieval mythographic tradition. Swans draw her float and doves flutter near her. She wears contemporary dress, her head is encircled by red and white roses, and she holds a shell in one hand, flowers in the other. At her feet kneels Mars, tamed and in chains” (Meiss, 1970).

Other symbols include the pomegranates held by the three muses, symbols of fertility (Plumb, 1961: 309), and, not so subtly, the figures of couples embracing. “In Cossa’s Love Garden for the month of April at the Palazzo Schifanoia, an amorous young courtier reaches under the dress of a willing girl. There is no allegorization, and no fault-finding … Cossa’s fresco is an idealized record of the licentious behavior of the Ferrarese upper classes” (Manca, 1991: 70-71). Not only demonstrating the importance of the mystic and symbolic in the early Italian Renaissance, but also illustrating how it was blended to meet with contemporary ideals, both Venus and Mars are dressed in chivalric fashion rather than appearing in the nude or mostly nude style of their more classic contemporaries, the