Palazzo Fava

Palazzo Fava preserves the fresco cycle in which the three Carracci—Ludovico, Annibale and Agostino—announced a new direction in painting. Restored by the Carisbo Foundation and reopened in 2011, the palace combines Renaissance fresco rooms with exhibition spaces.

Why it matters

In 1584 Filippo Fava hired three young painters, Ludovico, Annibale and Agostino Carracci, to decorate the salon and the piano nobile rooms of his family palace. The operator's own history page frames this as the brothers' first major commission and their public demonstration of artistic intent. The fresco cycle they produced, centred on the story of Jason and Medea, broke the decorative conventions of the age: multiple actions unfold inside single frames, with a naturalism that the art historian Roberto Longhi celebrated as a "historical novel" escaping mannerist shallows. One panel, the Night Spells of Medea, was judged by Andrea Emiliani the first modern nude in the history of art. The fresco rooms survived changing tastes, the extinction of the family line and the building's conversion into a hotel, leaving a monument of the Counter-Reformation within an exhibition palace.

What to notice

The piano nobile salon carries the Jason and Medea cycle. Within each gilded frame, the Carracci depict several narrative moments, an innovation in fresco composition. One panel shows Medea purifying herself in a stream under moonlight. Other rooms hold scenes from the Aeneid, painted by Ludovico Carracci with assistants and collaborators including Francesco Albani and Bartolomeo Cesi. Because the palace also functions as an exhibition hall, show installations may alter how the frescoed rooms are presented.

Context and history

The building has medieval origins and took its present form after the Fava family, among the oldest lineages of the city, acquired it in 1546. The 1584 Carracci commission came from Filippo Fava; after the Fava-Ghisilieri line died out, the palace passed to the Medici family and later housed the Grand Hotel Baglioni, today's Grand Hotel Majestic. In 2005 the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna bought the entire complex, restored it comprehensively, and returned it to the city in 2011 as the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. It forms part of Genus Bononiae, the foundation's group of city museums, alongside Santa Maria della Vita, San Colombano and the San Giorgio in Poggiale library. The palace's terrace overlooks a stretch of portico inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.