Cool moon and blazing sun: daytime or daylight moon seen through Renaissance stone arch bearing Jesuit emblem with IHS Jesus Christogram and three crucifixion nails within a radiant sun. The arch lies below the Palazzo Orsini, a ducal palace built in the 1500s at Bomarzo, Lazio, Italy. The Orsini were influential within the Roman Catholic church, producing five popes and 34 cardinals.
Bomarzo, Lazio, Italy: a daylight or daytime moon hangs in a clear light blue sky in this view through a stone Renaissance archway bearing a Jesuit blazing sun, IHS Christogram and three crucifixion nails emblem below the grand ducal palace built in the 1500s for the wealthy Orsini family. The Roman Catholic Jesuit order, the Society of Jesus, was founded in 1540 while the town’s hilltop medieval castle was being converted into the Palazzo Orsini for the Dukes of Bomarzo. The Orsini were among the most influential princely families in medieval Italy and Renaissance Rome. They were a powerful force within the Catholic church, producing five popes and no fewer than 34 cardinals. The palace was created over several decades. Its first architect was the Sienese painter Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536) with later work carried out for the military leader, intellectual and humanist arts patron, Pier Francesco Orsini (1523-1583), known in his lifetime as Vicino Orsini. Other architects and artists who worked here included sculptor Francesco Moschino and followers of Baroque painter Pietro da Cortona. Vicino expressed his love for his wife, Giulia Farnese, by creating a terraced garden, The Villa of the Wonders, below the palace and then dedicating it to her memory after her death in the 1560s. The terraces host enigmatic larger-than-life statues and grotesque Mannerist artworks by architect and painter Pirro Ligorio (c. 1512-1583). They include the face of an ogre with a walk-in open mouth, wrestling giants, war elephants and the Casa Storta or Twisted House, built to lean backwards and with sloping floors. The Orsini sold the palace in 1645 and in 1836, it passed to the Borghese family. It now belongs to the Bomarzo municipality.
Size: 2758px × 4152px
Location: Bomarzo, Lazio, Italy
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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