Astraea at Lepanto: Lattanzio Gambara’s frescoes in Palazzo Lalatta, Parma

Abstract

This study examines the so-called Allegory of the Battle of Lepanto painted by Lattanzio Gambara in Palazzo Lalatta in Parma. In the context of the artistic celebration of the Christian victory, the large fresco is a paradigmatic case study as far as the practice of transforming the battle into an événement is concerned. The research focuses on the iconographic aspects of the artwork. Therefore, the essay identifies the motifs employed by the artist and investigates their semantic function within the symbolic repertoire of Western rhetoric against the Ottoman Empire. Thus, this study advances a hypothesis about the fresco’s meaning in the context of the battle of Lepanto, and, in a wider perspective, the cultural clash between East and West. So, the analysis leads to consider the fresco a representation of the idea that the apotheosis of Justice, painted in the centre of the vault, coincides with (or depends on) the defeat of the Turks and the deadly sins, whose personifications are represented around the Justice. Moreover, the research suggests that the triumph of Justice (on vice) implies a reference to the Astraea myth, frequently used as a political allegory in relation to the Ottoman threat, for that myth entails the idea of the universal renovatio, which is traditionally connected to the defeat and conversion of the “Infidels” in Western thought.

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