Since the Renaissance, the search for ancient remains, statues, marbles, and any object that could be sold to collectors in Rome was the order of the day.
By the early 17th century, it had become a business with almost professional seekers, and as the painter and architect Federico Zuccari wrote, it was they who, in 1601, found what would become, for a long time, the most famous and admired Roman fresco preserved from antiquity.
… on the Monte de Santa Maria la Mayor, in the Horti Maecenati, by those diggers who continually scour the ground here and there to find statues, marbles, and figures buried in those ruins, they found a room, in which a piece of wall remained standing, on which was painted a graceful and beautiful fresco with figures inside, about three palms high, colored by an excellent hand, which deserved to be sawed off from that piece of wall and brought to light and placed in the garden of Cardinal Aldobrandini, on Monte Magnanapoli. And it was remarkable that it was so well preserved among those ruins.
Federico Zuccari, L’Idea de pittori, scultori, et architetti (1607)
It appeared near the vanished church of San Giuliano, after the Porta Esquilina and within the perimeter of the current Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele II, where the Horti Maecenatis, the villa of the famous Maecenas, and the Horti Lamiani (Gardens of Lamia) were located in antiquity.
It was painted on one of the walls of an ancient domus, probably located at the top, in the frieze of a fresco-painted wall. It was immediately removed from the stone and presented to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, who acquired it from its discoverers. Hence the name it received, Aldobrandini Wedding, because that is what appears to be represented in the painting.
It dates from the second half of the 1st century B.C. and measures 2.60 meters wide by 1.20 meters high. Although it was long thought to be a copy of a Hellenistic original from the 4th century B.C., today researchers agree that it is an original Roman painting from the time of Augustus.
It depicts ten characters, arranged in three sections on the same line, whose action takes place both indoors and outdoors. In the left and central sections, two adjacent walls joined by a fold on the left clearly indicate that the characters are inside two different environments; in the right section, however, the presence of the sky as a backdrop to the ground indicates a scene that takes place outside the same house, whose threshold is outlined in the lower center, in perspective, at the beginning of the wall that constitutes the background of the central area.
In the central part, a bride is being affectionately embraced by the goddess Venus, while the god of weddings, Hymenaeus, appears seated at the foot of the bed and adorned with a garland, observing the scene.
On the left, Peitho, the goddess of persuasion, leans on a column while pouring essences into a container. On the right, three young women stand around a perfume burner held by a tripod. One of them carries a seven-stringed lyre, another wears a crown of palm leaves, and the third pours essences into the burner, identifying them as three muses.
It is unknown whether the scene represents a specific episode from antiquity or mythology. The ancient art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann thought it was the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the parents of the hero Achilles. Other scholars considered it might represent a moment from the wedding of Alexander the Great and Roxana. In 1994, Franz Müller proposed that the fresco reflects a scene from Euripides’ tragedy Hippolytus.
Beyond mythological interpretations, what is clear is that the fresco represents a universal scene of marriage, focusing on the bride’s anxiety about losing her virginity. The side scenes help contextualize this reading, showing details such as the bridal bath ceremony or the singing of the hymen.
For two centuries, the fresco was in the Aldobrandini collection at their villa in Rome. Then, in 1814, it was a few years in the hands of the collector Vincenzo Nelli until, in 1818, Pope Pius VII bought it for 10,000 scudi to incorporate it into the Vatican Museums, where it remains today.
From the moment of its discovery, the Aldobrandini Wedding aroused great admiration among artists, writers, and collectors. Many painters like Rubens and Van Dyck were impressed, and later, it would be a source of inspiration for Poussin, David, and other neoclassicists.
Its fame transcended borders and was reproduced and copied by numerous artists who spread it throughout Europe, becoming a reference for ancient Roman art. For many years, it was considered the pinnacle of Roman painting until the discovery of the spectacular frescoes of Pompeii relegated it to the background.
Over the centuries, it has undergone three significant restorations, with the first carried out by the painter Federico Zuccari between 1605 and 1609 at the request of the Aldobrandini.
And I, who by chance was one of the first to see it and wash it and carefully clean it with my own hand, saw it so well preserved and so fresh as if it had just been painted, so it gave me great delight and was the reason it had been brought to light.
Federico Zuccari, L’Idea de pittori, scultori, et architetti (1607)
Between 1814 and 1818, while in Nelli’s collection, it was restored again by the painter Domenico del Frate. And finally, in 1962.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on December 20, 2023. Puedes leer la versión en español en Las Bodas Aldobrandinas, el fresco romano más famoso y admirado hasta que se descubrió Pompeya
Sources
Cappelletti, F., & Volpi, C. (1993). New Documents concerning the Discovery and Early History of the Nozze Aldobrandini. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 56, 274–280. doi.org/10.2307/751377 | Ross Stuart Kilpatrick. (2002). The Early Augustan “Aldobrandini Wedding” Fresco: A Quatercentenary Reappraisal (1601-2001). Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 47, 19–32. doi.org/10.2307/4238790 | Karen K. Hersch, The Roman Wedding: Ritual and Meaning in Antiquity | Aldobrandini Wedding (Museos Vaticanos) | Wikipedia
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