Palazzo Farnese in the context of "List of palaces in Italy"

The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead.

In European literature and art, the unicorn has for the last thousand years or so been depicted as a white horse- or goat-like animal with a long straight horn with spiraling grooves, cloven hooves, and sometimes a goat's beard. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could be captured only by a virgin. In encyclopedias, its horn was described as having the power to render poisoned water potable and to heal sickness. In medieval and Renaissance times, the tusk of the narwhal was sometimes sold as a unicorn horn.

A Virgin with a Unicorn (Fanciulla e l'unicorno) is a fresco painting by the Italian Baroque artist Domenichino, completed between c. 1604 and 1605. It is in the collection of the Palazzo Farnese, in Rome.

Annibale Carracci (/kəˈrɑːtʃi/ kə-RAH-chee, UK also /kəˈrætʃi/ kə-RATCH-ee, Italian: [anˈniːbale karˈrattʃi]; November 3, 1560 – July 15, 1609) was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother Agostino and cousin Ludovico (with whom he also worked collectively), Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of the Baroque style, borrowing from styles from both north and south of their native city, and aspiring for a return to classical monumentality, but adding a more vital dynamism. Painters working under Annibale at the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese would be highly influential in Roman painting for decades.

Caprarola is a town and comune in the province of Viterbo, in the Lazio region of central Italy. The village is situated in a range of volcanic hills known as the Cimini Mounts.

The town is home to the large Renaissance mansion or villa which dominates the surrounding country-side, Villa Farnese (or Villa Caprarola). Not to be confused with the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, it was initially built as a fortress, as the town and the surrounding area was a feud of the House of Farnese, by the cardinal Alessandro Farnese senio in 1530, according to a project of the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. After only four years the project came to a halt when the cardinal was elected pope in 1534 under the name Paul III.

Paul Veyne (French: [pɔl vɛn]; 13 June 1930 – 29 September 2022) was a French historian and a specialist of Ancient Rome. A student of the prestigious École Normale Supérieure (ENS Ulm) in Paris and member of the École française de Rome in the Palazzo Farnese (1955-1957), he was honorary professor at the Collège de France.

The Bolognese school of painting, also known as the school of Bologna, flourished between the 16th and 17th centuries in Bologna, which rivalled Florence and Rome as the center of painting in Italy. Its most important representatives include the Carracci family, including Ludovico Carracci and his two cousins, the brothers Agostino and Annibale Carracci. Later, it included other Baroque painters: Domenichino and Lanfranco, active mostly in Rome, eventually Guercino and Guido Reni, and Accademia degli Incamminati in Bologna, which was run by Lodovico Carracci. Certain artistic conventions, which over time became traditionalist, had been developed in Rome during the first decades of the 16th century. As time passed, some artists sought new approaches to their work that no longer reflected only the Roman manner. The Carracci studio sought innovation or invention, seeking new ways to break away from traditional modes of painting while continuing to look for inspiration from their literary contemporaries; the studio formulated a style that was distinguished from the recognized manners of art in their time. This style was seen as both systematic and imitative, borrowing particular motifs from the past Roman schools of art and innovating a modernistic approach.

The Loves of the Gods is a monumental fresco cycle, completed by the Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci and his studio, in the Farnese Gallery which is located in the west wing of the Palazzo Farnese, now the French Embassy, in Rome. The frescoes were greatly admired at the time, and were later considered to reflect a significant change in painting style away from sixteenth century Mannerism in anticipation of the development of Baroque and Classicism in Rome during the seventeenth century.