“Fantasies so Varied and Bizarre”: The Domus Aurea, the Renaissance, and the “Grotesque”

Abstract

To explain the importance of the Domus Aurea and its imagery during the Renaissance, the chapter proceeds in four interrelated stages. It begins by summarizing when, where, and how Nero's palace came to be discovered in the late 1400s. It then proceeds to investigate the immediate reception in Rome. Next, the chapter turns to the atelier of Raphael, and in particular Raphael's Loggia in the Vatican, in an attempt to unpack the visual, cultural, and intellectual thinking behind the widespread replication of this new decorative mode. A brief conclusion then ties these different threads together, relating the rediscovery of the Domus Aurea to much grander debates about iconicity and representation. The importance of the grotesque lies in its (re-) negotiating of the boundaries between the figurable and the non-figurable: artists appropriated the imagery of the Domus Aurea to probe the very limits of visual representation itself.

Cite this

Michael Squire (2013). “Fantasies so Varied and Bizarre”: The Domus Aurea, the Renaissance, and the “Grotesque”. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118316771.ch25

@article{michael2013fantasies,
  title  = {“Fantasies so Varied and Bizarre”: The Domus Aurea, the Renaissance, and the “Grotesque”},
  author = {Squire, Michael},
  year   = {2013},
  doi    = {10.1002/9781118316771.ch25}
}

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