Art and Architecture
The façade features a portcullis and a Madonna with Child, a terracotta by Niccolò dell'Arca (1478) in the upper section. Over the portal is a large bronze statue of the Bolognese Pope Gregory XIII (1580). A bronze statue of Pope Boniface VIII is now in Medieval Museum.
The Hall of the Communal Council, on the first floor, is where the Bolognese Senators met, and contains a frescoed gallery ceiling by Angelo Michele Colonna and Gioacchino Pizzoli (1675–1677). The quadratura ceiling depicts in four parts,: 1) Minerva (goddess of knowledge) and Mars (god of war) convince Fame to trumpet the town's virtues. 2) Cybele (Magna Mater Goddess) pointing to the glory of Olympus, which could also be seen as a metaphor of Papal Power. 3) Bacchus, Pomona and Caeres are symbols of the fertile harvests of the surrounding farmland.
The Farnese Hall, on the second floor, was rebuilt in 1665 by Cardinal Girolamo Farnese: it was previously known as "Royal Hall", and here was crowned Charles V in 1530, as King of Italy with the Iron Crown (the imperial coronation instead took place in the Basilica of San Petronio). It has fresco decoration by pupils of Francesco Albani. The Chapel has frescoes by Prospero Fontana (1562). The Hall is decorated with stories of the city from the Middle Ages to the 17th century.
Read more about this topic: Palazzo D'Accursio
Famous quotes containing the words art and, art and/or architecture:
“American thinking, when it concerns itself with beautiful letters as when it concerns itself with religious dogma or political theory, is extraordinarily timid and superficial ... [I]t evades the genuinely serious problems of art and life as if they were stringently taboo ... [T]he outward virtues it undoubtedly shows are always the virtues, not of profundity, not of courage, not of originality, but merely those of an emasculated and often very trashy dilettantism.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The well-educated young woman of 1950 will blend art and sciences in a way we do not dream of; the science will steady the art and the art will give charm to the science. This young woman will marry—yes, indeed, but she will take her pick of men, who will by that time have begun to realize what sort of men it behooves them to be.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“I don’t think of form as a kind of architecture. The architecture is the result of the forming. It is the kinesthetic and visual sense of position and wholeness that puts the thing into the realm of art.”
—Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)