Fresco painted ceiling depicting Apollo and the Muses, by Alessandro Pampurino, Casa Maffi, Cremona, Italy, about 1500. Museum no. 428-1889.
This domed ceiling was originally located in a ground floor room of the Casa Maffi in Cremona, Italy. It was painted in about 1500 by a local artist, Alessandro Pampurino, and is decorated with frescos depicting an old man, a boy and a woman listening to the Muses. Eight smaller lunettes are painted in imitation of bas-relief with heads of Roman emperors and their wives, probably based on ancient coins. Many of the figures, particularly the Muses, bear a marked resemblance to those on contemporary tarot cards.
The Muses were classical goddesses who embodied various branches of the arts and inspired artists: Terpsichore (choral dance and song), Erato (love poetry), Thalia (comedy), Melpomene (tragedy), Euterpe (lyric poetry), Clio (history), Polymnia (sacred poetry), Urania (astronomy) and Calliope (epic poetry). During the medieval and Renaissance periods the Muses came to represent science and learning, and it was thought that by playing their musical instruments they were transmitting the light of divine inspiration from the celestial spheres to the earthly world. The Muses came to represent the celestial spheres, with Apollo as their leader. This is the reason why the ceiling is octagonal: it corresponds to the eight spheres.
It is not known what the room was used for, although the decorative scheme on the ceiling suggests that it might have been a place where people could meet and converse about the arts and perhaps admire antique works of art.
You can listen to a description of the ceiling using the audio bar below. If you then click on the main image you can view a large version of the ceiling while listening to the description.
Female Narrator: Thisvaulted ceiling is decorated with scenes painted in fresco on plaster. The term 'fresco' means that images were painted directly onto fresh plaster. The pigments combined with the plaster, fixing the image. This ceiling once spanned a small square chamber in Cremona, in Northern Italy and was painted in about 1500 by a local artist, Alessandro Pampurino. It is slightly over 4 metres, or 12 feet, in diameter and shaped like an umbrella. It's divided into eight panels, each occupied by a circular medallion containing a painting of one of the female Muses of classical mythology. The Muses are painted to look like classical sculpture.
Each of the eight panels containing the Muses is separated by vertical 'ribs' painted with palmettes: fan-shaped leaves on a blue background with gilded wooden studs. The ribs smooth out towards the centre of the ceiling where there is a focal point, a trompe l'oeil oculus. An oculus is normally a circular opening to the sky in the top of a dome. Here, though, the oculus is painted in realistic colours. An elderly man, a young woman and a small boy peer down as if they were looking into the room from the top of the dome. The woman holds her hand to her ear as if listening to the music of the Muses below her. Above their heads, a white fluffy cloud floats in a blue sky.
Immediately beneath the painting of the woman and child is the panel showing the Muse of Sacred Song, Polyhymnia. Like all the Muses, she's shown as a beautiful young woman with flowing tresses that fall below her knees. She wears a loose, belted shift and carries a set of pan-pipes.
Clockwise from Polyhymnia's panel is Clio, Muse of History, with a swan at her feet; Euterpe, Muse of Music and Lyric Poetry, with her double flute; Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy, playing a curved horn; Thalia, Muse of Comedy, playing a lira de braccia, a stringed instrument resembling a violin; Erato, Muse of Love Poetry, with a tambourine; Terpsichore, Muse of Dance and Song, playing a viol; and finally Urania, Muse of Astronomy. She carries a compass and holds a globe aloft in her left hand.
Semi-circular spaces beneath the panels are filled by ten lunettes: half-moon-shaped panels. Two larger lunettes opposite one another are painted with pictures of Apollo, the god of Poetry and Music, and Calliope, the Muse of Epic Poetry, who blows a long trumpet. The others depict the heads of six Roman emperors and two of their womenfolk, set in pairs facing each other in profile. Their identities, however, are not certain.
Although small, the room this ceiling adorned was clearly important. With its fashionable decoration and its references to the arts, it was used by a select few for private, intellectual pursuits: reading, discussion and perhaps the performance of music.
Supported by The BAND Trust.
Conservation and installation of the Cremona ceiling
The V&A's Sculpture Conservation Team and Museum Technical Services describe how the Cremona ceiling was conserved and prepared for installation in the Medieval & Renaissance Galleries.
Dismantling the ceiling Victor Borges: The museum has a tremendous Italian Medieval and Renaissance collection. At the moment we are working on one of the biggest scale objects - in this case a fresco painting that originally was in a building in Cremona. The fresco painting was removed from the wall and attached to a wooden structure so it could be transported and installed in a new venue as in this case the V&A. So the first step was to remove the ceiling from its gallery where it was installed. That implied many different challenges. One of the challenges was to deal with the structure of the wall painting - it was quite complex to dismantle the wall painting in its different parts. And the other challenge was to protect the wall painting and be able to complete the whole operation without damaging the painting itself. One of the first steps was to look closely at the surface of the wall painting and diagnose the different alterations and the different problems that the painting would be suffering in situ. And we start thinking about the consolidation of the surface and then preparation of the surface towards de-installation. Well that involves protecting the surface mainly, which for that we decided to use a method using Japanese tissue with a specific kind of facing material consolidant.
Protection of the ceiling Victor Borges: Some solvents did affect the surface so we had to think of other options and finally we decided to use a material that is basically a mixture of resin and paraffin that could be easily removed with white spirit - and white spirit doesn't affect, doesn't disturb the surface of the painting. The process of applying this tissue, was, once we found the method, was laborious because you have to cut the different parts of the different pieces of tissue by hand to avoid having very sharp edges which can leave marks on the painting - and then applying it with a brush. It took our whole team and we took probably around two weeks to complete the facing of the whole surface of the painting.
Reinstallation of the ceiling Jonathan Kemp: This object, the frame that you see is probably from the 19th century as the original stucco of which the fresco is made from is a two-part lime stucco, relined when it was removed and brought to the museum - relined with gypsum and chicken wire and this wooden structure, which, when we came to de-install it last August, we didn't worry about whether we should be screwing directly our fixings, our pulley system that my colleague Phil James devised for its removal and subsequent re-installation. The framework itself has a lot of fixings from the previous installations. And we decided, well, in fact, practically we had to use this framework because there was no other, there was nothing else that you could secure to - clamping mechanisms would have been too laborious and probably impractical. So we have used it and it's worked well. And we'll remove our fixings from our installation and leave those other iron fixings on.
Phil James: We had to devise methods to dismantle it and transport it for storage and conservation unti it was re-installed here. So esentially we've followed the methods we used for de-installing it in reverse, which has worked efficiently and considering the stage it's at now, has gone really surprisingly quickly. But then I think that's because we had the confidence in that we'd gained in the de-installation in handling the parts now and understanding how the construction worked and how we could handle each part to get it in position and move it to make it fit with the next one. The most difficult part actually I think is getting the roundel in, because we're not sure exactly how or where it's going to fit best, and the museum want's to change it's position because there's a different understanding about its historical context in the ceiling. The next stage in the process, once we've got the roundel in, will be to have sections made for the frame so they can all be bolted ridgedly together. Then we can have the scaffold taken away, the ceiling will self-support, and once it's suspended from the four points on the ceiling from the sides of the frame, then the supports can come out from underneath.
Removal of the tissue protection Victor Borges: Right now we are at the stage when the wall paintings are all to be installed again in the new space in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries. So what we are doing right now is precisely to remove this protective layer of tissue and for that we are basically just using white spirit. So what we are trying here is to reactivate again this mixture of resin and paraffin that we applied through the tissue that is fixing the tissue in place. The white spirit is dissolving this resin and is allowing us to remove the tissue again.
Filling joints and losses [No commentary: The conservation team is shown filling and colouring the joints and losses on the ceiling]
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