The Papacy and the Art of Reform in Sixteenth-Century Rome

From his election in 1572 to his death in 1585, Pope Gregory XIII schooled in the upheavals in the Catholic Church that marked the preceding violent decades, spent a great deal of money on the building and restoration of Rome’s streets, churches and public monuments. One major, unknown and unstudied monument, the three-story apartment rising up from the Vatican Palace called the Tower of the Winds, was built and painted to celebrate the most famous achievement of Gregory’s papacy, the calendar reform. The program of the entire tower proclaimed with assurance not only Gregory’s political and religious authority over the capital, but also Gregory’s domination of nature, time, and past and present cultures. Its innovations in architecture and decoration, efflorescent Flemish landscapes in all of its seven rooms and its wider religious and political purpose in the culture of Gregorian Rome and the Counter-Reformation, are all subjects of the book.

• Explores how change in calendar was connected to devotional and religious reform, and how it took artistic shape • Rare inter-disciplinary investigation of Rome’s art, culture and ideological rule during critical time of post-Reformation Europe • Includes never before translated On the Winds by Egnatio Danti and never before seen views of Rome

Part I. Imagery of Counter-Reformation Rome, the Vatican, and the Papacy Under Gregory XIII: 1. Reformed Rome and the person of the pope; 2. The Tower of the Winds and calendar reform; Part II. 3. Architecture unifying imagery of rule and retreat; 4. The meridian room: art of time, cosmos, and the counter reformation; 5. Cycles: rooms of old testament patriarchs, apostles, Tobias, and old testament women views: room with topographical views; room of imaginary views; 6. Conclusion.

Salembini Prize 2003 - Honourable mention

‘This is a handsome book, well illustrated and with enough colour plates to give the reader a thorough understanding of this import, but hitherto neglected, project.‘ Art Newspaper

‘Hendrik‘s book makes it clear once more that the brothers paved the way for many later generations of landscape painters. This lavishly illustrated volume is indispensable for anyone interested in the incunabula of landscape painting in Rome.‘ Burlington Magazine