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The most important brotherhood in Rome was that of the Gonfalone. It had its newly constructed oratory frescoed from 1569 to 1576, with many artists participating in the project. With the help of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, patron of the Oratory, the members of the brotherhood were able to win over Jacopo Zanguidi, known as Il Bertoia, for the design of the decorative system. Painted Solomonic columns articulated a narrative cycle and supported an elaborate entablature, above which, in an upper zone of the wall, prophets and sibyls sit with scrolls, Old Testament kings, and virtues. The design of the walls and the history scenes has clearly been theatricalized. The ceiling has a wooden countertop carved by Ambrogio Bonazzini, one of the greatest specialists of the time, in 1568. It shows the Virgin Mary and Sts Peter and Paul. Cardinal Farnese's coat of arms is located on the wooden ceiling.
The fresco cycle, made by the main masters of Roman Mannerism, is dedicated to the Passion of Christ. It is divided into twelve episodes: it begins with the Entry into Jerusalem (by Bertoia), continues with the Last Supper (by Livio Agresti da Forlí), the Prayer in the Garden (by Domenico da Modena, perhaps identifiable with the Modenese Domenico Carnevali), the Capture of Christ (by Marcantonio del Forno), Christ before Caiaphas (by Raffaellino da Reggio), the Flagellation (by Federico Zuccari), the Crowning with Thorns (by Cesare Nebbia), the Ecce Homo (by Cesare Nebbia), the Way to Calvary (by Livio Agresti da Forlí), the Crucifixion (by Guidonio Guelfi del Borgo, a collaborator of Livio Agresti), the Deposition from Cross (by several hands)the and ends with the Resurrection (by Marco Pino).
Emphatic understanding of the Passion was one of the goals of the brotherhood; they arranged penitential processions and Passion plays, and members flagellated themselves. Thus it is appropriate that the two scenes in which the depiction of Christ's physical pain is particularly striking are located on the entrance wall, on the left Federico Zuccaro's Flagellation of Christ, and on the right Cesare Nebbia's Christ Crowned with Thorns.
The Oratory is nicknamed the "Sistine Chapel of Mannerism", since between 1569 and 1576 some of the best known Mannerist artists of the epoch were commissioned to paint frescoes depicting scenes of the passion. After the restoration in 1999-2000, the frescoes are characterized by extremely vivid colours.
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