The Aldobrandini Wedding

Book excerpt: One of the most intriguing works of art which have come down to us from antiquity is the Roman fresco known as 'The Aldobrandini Wedding'. As in the first two volumes of his iconological studies, the author's critical review of previous interpretations reveals that none of them will stand up to scrutiny. By applying a modern art-historical method, he arrives at a fundamentally new interpretation which accounts for the many iconographical details which are a distinctive feature of 'The Aldobrandini Wedding'. The painting turns out to be an idiosyncratic variant of a mythological theme that frequently crops up elsewhere in Roman art.