GROTTESQUES. – Wall decorations in stucco or fresco, depicting plant forms, human figures or animals often of strange shapes, and anthropomorphic beings, arranged in graceful and fanciful ways.
The earliest decorations, found in Rome in the underground chambers of Nero’s Domus Aurea (grotte), gave their name to this type of ornament and served as models for later designs and colour schemes. The first grotesques date to the late 15th century: the Borgia apartment in the Vatican and the Piccolomini Library in Siena offer examples by the hand of Pinturicchio. Luca Signorelli painted grotesques, with scenes from the *Divine Comedy*, in the cathedral of Orvieto; Filippino Lippi did likewise in Rome and Florence.
Grosseto, diocese of – Baptismal font. Work by Antonio di Ser Ghino (1474) – Cathedral.
Gold and vivid hues are the essential elements of grotesques, which, with their cheerful and elegant motifs, enrich architectural forms, reaching their peak of elegance and preciosity in the 16th century, modelled on the ornamentation of the ancient “grotte.” A consummate practitioner was Giovanni da Udine, a good pupil of Raphael, who left harmonious works, especially in the stucco decorations of the villa that once belonged to the Medici and later became the Farnesina in Rome. Other examples of grotesque decoration were produced by Poccetti, Cristoforo Gherardi, Simone Mosca, Benedetto da Rovezzano, Allori, Feltrini, Cosini and Vasari. As time went on, grotesques underwent notable changes; the decoration became predominantly architectural, losing much of that colouristic quality so characteristic of earlier examples. Despite later attempts at revival – asserted in the 18th century with a rather naturalistic character – that refined style and chromatic brilliance peculiar to the 15th and 16th centuries was never again attained.