Good Vibrations. Mutual Love in Garofalo's Frescoes for Antonio Costabili

In the first decade of the sixteenth century, Garofalo painted the ceiling of a small room in a palace that belonged to one of Renaissance Ferrara's most prominent citizens, its chief magistrate Antonio Costabili. Despite being one of the most widely studied works in Garofalo's ceuvre, the so-called Sala del Tesoro remains not very well understood. This article argues that the grisailles in the lunettes - depicting the story of Eros and his brother Anteros, the god of mutual love - are key to reading the animated balcony scene on the ceiling as a world ruled by Anteros, where (unlikely) opposites are harmoniously united. Garofalo's decorations cast Antonio Costabili as a second Anteros and underscore the essential role of Costabili in the successful governing of Ferrara.