Building Family Identity

Paolo Alei received his DPhil from Oxford University and is now Adjunct Professor of Art History at the University of California, Rome. His research focuses on the relationship between art, architecture and rhetoric from the Quattrocento to the Seicento. He has published on Raphael and Titian and is currently writing on Caravaggio and energeia. He lives in the town of Calcata, in the heart of Tuscia, one of the many possessions of the Orsini family.Max Grossman is a specialist in medieval and Renaissance architecture and urbanism in Italy and the architecture of the American Southwest. He conducted research in Tuscany for many years before receiving his PhD from Columbia University. He is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Texas at El Paso and Director of its study abroad program in Rome. He is currently writing books on the civic architecture of the Sienese Republic and the architecture of the Texas Borderlands region.

• CONTENTS: Part I: Arma et Litterae: The Castle of Bracciano in the Quattrocento – Paolo Alei: Building with Magnificenza: The Orsini Castle of Bracciano – Stefania Camilli: The State of the Condottiero: Bracciano in the System of the Italian States in the Age of Gentil Virginio Orsini – Paul Gwynne: The Poets and the Prince: Silius Italicus, Johannes Michael Nagonius and Gentil Virginio Orsini, Lord of Bracciano – Max Grossman: Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Gentil Virginio Orsini and the Defence of Bracciano – Anna Cavallaro: Renaissance Paintings in the Castle of Bracciano: The Celebration of Gentil Virginio Orsini and the Pastimes of Courtly Women – Part II: Locus Amoeunus: The Transformation of the Castle of Bracciano in the Cinquecento – Elisabetta Mori: Isabella de’ Medici and Vittoria Accoramboni: The History and Legend of the Two Wives of the Duke of Bracciano – Maria Giulia Aurigemma: Palatium sive forticium: Sixteenth-century Architecture of the Palazzo-Castello of Bracciano – Claudia Daniotti: Stories of Valour and Love for a Wedding: The Sala di Alessandro Magno and Sala di Psiche in the Castle of Bracciano – Paolo Alei and Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings: Astrological Fashioning in the Castle of Bracciano: The Frescoes of the Sala Papalina by the Zuccari Brothers and the Celebration of Duke Paolo Giordano Orsini – Barbara Furlotti: Living between Rome and Bracciano: Art, Cultural Interests and Social Behaviour at the Orsini Court in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries – Part III: Beyond the Castle Walls: The Orsini of Bracciano in the Seicento – Guendalina Ajello Mahler: Paolo Giordano II Orsini, Orazio Torriani and the Remaking of Bracciano – Eleonora Chinappi: The Orsini Portraits in the Castle of Bracciano – Eric Nicholson: Sweet Roman Hands and Actors: The Orsini as Theatrical Performers in Early Seventeenth-century English Drama