Gli affreschi di Lelio Orsi portati alla Galleria Estense dalla Rocca di Novellara

Modena’s Estense Gallery houses a series of frescoes by Lelio Orsi. During Dukes Francesco III and Francesco IV d’Este’s rule over Modena and Reggio, these would originally have been found in the Rocca di Novellara. Given their fragmentary state, it has been difficult to decipher the frescoes and impossible to identify with any certainty their original location or chronology. The paper places them in two distinct categories, classifying the monochrome friezes and the depiction of the Rape of Ganymede as part of a single cycle. This is thought to have been commissioned by Countess Costanza da Correggio and was probably dedicated to the constellation Aquarius. Fresh light is shed on the other frescoes, which portray narratives from the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. These once formed a single piece, possibly from a "camerino" of Alfonso Gonzaga, Count of Novellara and Bagnolo, and the son of Countess Costanza.