Decorative grotesques

Scenes of farming and handicraft set in the middle of grotesques, in the place of motifs in a more traditional antique style, were frequently used for decoration at the end of the sixteenth century. They can be found in particular in the decoration of the Uffizi, on the ceilings of the rooms of the Armoury, painted in 1588 in a military and technological vein. This is modestly foreshadowed in some details of the ceiling of the Stanza dei Lanifici at Caprarola.

The Stanza dei Lanifici (Room of Woolmaking) of the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola is one of the more than thirty frescoed rooms decorated with allegorical, mythological, historical and topographical scenes by several painters (Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro, Giacomo Vignola, Jacopo Bertoia, Giovanni de' Vecchi, Raffaellino da Reggio between 1561 and 1579.