Pope Julius III Restoring the Duchy of Parma to Ottavio Farnese. Verso: Marriage of Orazio Farnese and Diane de Valois; Paul III Creating Pierluigi Farnese Captain-General of the Church

The studies on both sides of the sheet are for frescoes in the Sala dei Fatti Farnesiani (or Room of the Farnese Deeds) on the piano nobile at the Villa Farnese at Caprarola. The frescoes for that room were designed by Taddeo around 1562-63 and executed in the summer of 1563. The two verso studies are close to the final paintings, whereas the recto features a larger and more elaborate composition than in the corresponding fresco. The latter fresco composition has been simplified by omitting some of the components of the Morgan sketch, such as the standing onlookers at the far left and the altar to the right of the window. In the fresco, as John Gere noted, the seated figures at left and the principal figures on the dais run together to form a continuous band.¹

Until a late stage, Taddeo must have envisaged this more extended composition with the additional group of figures in the left foreground, as is demonstrated by the squared modello in the Louvre, which corresponds to the Morgan sketch and not to the fresco.² The Morgan recto is not a rough, preliminary sketch like those on the verso, but a compositional draft for the modello in the Louvre, to which it corresponds exactly. Copies after the modello are now at the Morgan, the Louvre, the Uffizi and in a private collection in Belgium.³ Another drawing in the Uffizi studies the mace bearer who appears in the left foreground of the Morgan study, but not in the final fresco.⁴

Footnotes:

1. Gere 1969, 181.
2. Louvre, Paris, inv. RF 73; Gere 1969, 181.
3. Morgan Library & Museum, New York, inv. I, 23; Louvre, Paris, inv. 10308; Uffizi, Florence, inv. 435S.
4. Uffizi, Florence, inv. 782S; Gere 1969, 143, no. 40.