Several fresco cycles depicting maps were made in sixteenth-century Italy. One of these cycles is found in the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola, to which Alessandro Ricci and Carlotta Bilardi dedicate their book, Cartografia, arte e potere tra Riforma e Controriforma. Completed in 1575, the cartographic cycle at Caprarola envelops the walls of the reception room, the Sala del Mappamondo (Room of Maps), adjoining the winter apartments on the piano nobile. Initially designed by Antonio da Sangallo and later expanded by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, the pentagon-shaped villa and its decorations were commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, whose political ambition of being elected pope like his grandfather, Paul III, a central figure in the Catholic Reformation, is amply illustrated through a personal and detailed vision of the world—a vision that this interdisciplinary study diligently analyzes.

Organized into seven chapters, the monograph presents the historical, religious, biographical, art historical, and most centrally, geopolitical contexts that motivated the making of the cartographic frescoes at Palazzo Farnese. Supported by a plethora of primary sources and scholarly references, the study captures the multifaceted ways in which the Room of Maps displays an up-to-date image of the world from the perspective of the Renaissance cardinal, reformer, art patron, and benefactor of the Jesuit Order. The authors argue that the Cardinal's worldview reflects the global, political, and evangelical aspirations of the Western Church in the late sixteenth century, when, on the one hand, the Protestant Reformers in the North and the Ottoman Empire in the East weakened the centrality of the papacy, and, on the other hand, the voyages to the New World and the evangelical missions to Africa, Asia, and the Americas buttressed the globalization of the Catholic Church.

The approaches taken in the book complement the current global turn in the humanities and rest on the intricate relationship between art, cartography, and power, articulated in the opening chapter. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the history of medieval and Renaissance maps with a particular focus on the religious wars of the sixteenth century that challenged the status of images and resulted in divergent uses of representational realism central to Renaissance art. While realism became the aesthetic goal of Protestant images, it served as an instrument of Counter-Reformation propaganda, especially when employed by reformers like Cardinal Farnese, who was instructed in the art of diplomacy and church politics by his grandfather, as chronicled in chapter 4.

In the following chapters, the scholars convincingly show that the temporal and political geography of the world in the Room of Maps was devised using contemporary maps and supported by Farnese ancestry, astrology, and diverse iconography, which left Michel de Montaigne in awe when he visited the palazzo in 1581. A network of mythological, religious, and zodiac symbols impart meaning to the planisphere painted on the ceiling and the adjacent walls that feature maps of the globe, Judea, Italy, and the four continents (Europe, Africa, Asia, and America), likely designed by Orazio Trigini de’ Marii and painted by Giovanni Antonio da Varese. The last chapter posits that the astrological and geographical maps, framed by eight personifications and five portraits of European explorers, including Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés, variously attributed to Giovanni de’ Vecchi and Raffaello Motta, intimate that the world was in the hands of Catholic Europe and by extension under the authority of the papacy. Thus, the geopolitical mission of the Catholic Church mapped across the room appears to align with the Cardinal's ambitions, which are predicated on the stars.

Ultimately, the Room of Maps is best understood as “a religious theater of the world” (200). This theater inspired the Galleria delle Carte Geografiche (Gallery of Maps) in the Vatican Palace. According to Ricci and Bilardi, it is no coincidence that Pope Gregory XIII, to whom Cardinal Farnese lost his third bid for the papal seat, ordered the maps to be painted in 1580, only two years after visiting the palazzo in northern Lazio. The proposition that the Farnese worldview inspired the Vatican maps, along with other contributions lining this superb case study, is sure to stimulate further research on these fresco cycles and the history of Renaissance cartography more generally.