Marcantonio Colonna

A Renaissance condottiere steps out of Scipione Pulzone's portrait and onto the walls of the historic centre.

Marcantonio Colonna is a mural commissioned by the Comune di Fiuggi and created by artist Neve in 2021 in the historic centre of Fiuggi, as part of the Lazio Street Art 2020 project.

On the façade adjacent to Palazzo Colonna in the historic centre of Fiuggi, Neve depicts Marcantonio Colonna — the most illustrious member of the noble family and one of the decisive commanders at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), at the time prince of many lands around Anticoli. The artist draws directly from the celebrated portrait painted by Scipione Pulzone in the second half of the sixteenth century, transposing its formal rigour — the armoured figure, the elaborate ruff collar, the austere gaze — into the scale and immediacy of the public wall. The work is part of "Anticoli – Fiuggi Zero Km", a project by the Comune di Fiuggi and winner of the first call of the Regione Lazio's "Lazio Street Art 2020" initiative, which funded the renewal of abandoned or degraded walls in the historic and thermal centre of Fiuggi with murals illustrating the history, traditions and figures of the territory. The project was inaugurated in June 2021. In Neve's characteristic language — hyperrealist figuration on a deep black ground, Caravaggesque chiaroscuro — the portrait of Colonna becomes a meditation on memory, identity and local history, anchored to the very site where the Colonna family exercised its power for centuries.