Iconography and Stylistic Features of the Paintings of the Oratorio del Gonfalone in Rome

This paper analyzes the factors that influenced the visual appearance of the Oratory del Gonfalone in Rome. It is an remarkable example of late Mannerist monumental painting on which many of the major painters of the period participated. The second half of the 16th century is generally considered a period of artistic crisis after several centuries of prosperity. We propose to consider this time as a stage when the artistic process is not at a standstill, but rather seeks to comprehend and revise the accumulated artistic and intellectual experience. The murals of Oratory del Gonfalone are an artistic precedent, whose style was influenced not by some generally accepted artistic system, but by the private experience of the masters involved in the creation of the monument. It is impossible to define a single stylistic criterion for such works, we should only analyze all the factors that potentially influenced the visual appearance of the monument.