Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza hosts an illuminating exhibition, “Sibille. Voci oltre il tempo, oltre la pietra” (Sibyls. Voices Beyond Time and Stone), running from December 5, 2025, to May 3, 2026, curated by Antonio Iommelli, Director of the Civic Museums of Palazzo Farnese. The show offers a sophisticated and multi-layered meditation on the feminine prophetic figure of the Sibyl, designed to elevate their role in the history of art while underscoring their inseparable bond with the city’s artistic heritage.
A highlight loan from Rome’s Galleria Borghese anchors the exhibition: Domenico Zampieri, known as Il Domenichino,’s Sibilla cumana (The Cumaean Sibyl), a masterpiece from the 17th century that embodies a classical and vibrant interpretation of the prophetess. This work serves as the centerpiece of the display and as the fulcrum of a tightly woven temporal dialogue with contemporary art, brought to life by eight Sibylline sculptures by Piacenza-born artist Christian Zucconi.
The project emerges from a deliberate intention to foreground the Sibyls’ significance within Piacenza’s own cultural fabric, especially in relation to the fresco cycle of Giovan Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino. Between 1626 and 1627, Guercino left a pivotal trace in Piacenza’s cathedral, where he painted the cycle of the Prophets and inserted pairs of Sibyls into the lunettes of the drum. This act, completing the commission begun by Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli, called Morazzone, testifies to the equal importance accorded to these prophetic figures in the era’s cultural milieu, making Piacenza a natural stage for an exhibition devoted to this theme. The Sibyls appear not only in the cathedral’s context but also in two other city landmarks: the 16th-century cupola of Santa Maria di Campagna, frescoed by Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis, known as Il Pordenone, and in the Basilica of San Francesco, where Giovan Battista Trotti, known as Il Malosso, placed them at the culmination of the Coronation and Genealogy of the Virgin Mary.
The curatorial strategy juxtaposes 17th-century painting with contemporary sculptural works to forge a temporal link that reinforces the sense of continuity, physicality, and the immediacy of the Sibylline myth—both in local artistic production and in a broader, universal dialogue with time, myth, and perception.
At the heart of the exhibition lies the Sibilla cumana by Il Domenichino (dated 1617, per a payment receipt from Scipione Borghese that is thought to have influenced the iconography). The Sibyl is depicted wearing a turban, with a viola da gamba slung over her shoulder. Her serene face reveals clear ties to the Bolognese school and the gaze characteristic of Guido Reni’s leading figures. Behind her, the landscape offers symbolic references, such as the laurel, a sacred tree associated with Apollo, god of the arts, and the vine, alluding to Bacchus, the god of wine and poetic inspiration, but also to Christ, whose coming was foretold by a Sibyl according to Virgil’s interpretation.
The pairing with Christian Zucconi’s Sibylline sculptures—crafted in Persian red travertine and iron—transforms the encounter into a living, dynamic reinterpretation of myth through a sculptural vocabulary that probes psychological and symbolic dimensions. Zucconi has conceived and executed the installation in full, handling design, display, lighting, and the sound artwork Versi sibillini (Sibylline Verses). The audio piece, with words by Zucconi, Greta di Lorenzo providing voice and ambient sounds, and Gian Luca Capelli on percussion, guides visitors through a circular sequence of events and sounds, offering a continual re-signification that extends prophecy and time beyond the visual, completing the dialogue between sculpture, myth, and modernity.
Together, these works knit a cohesive itinerary that begins in Piacenza and travels through Pordenone, Malosso, Guercino, and Domenichino, before arriving at the contemporary sculpture and soundscape of Zucconi. The show demonstrates the Sibylline myth’s vitality and resonance as a universal prophetic archetype that continues to reverberate through the ages.
Accompanying the exhibition is a scholarly text that expands on the Sibylline theme from antiquity through the first half of the 17th century. Titled Sibille: mito, iconografia e visione profetica (Sibyls: Myth, Iconography, and Prophetic Vision), the volume by Antonio Iommelli will be published by Nomos Edizioni and will be presented in February 2026.
Photo credits: Palazzo Farnese, Piacenza
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