Apartment of the Princess

Despite the fact that Genoa was a Republic, for everybody Andrea Doria was the unquestioned Prince. Therefor when in 1527 a descendant of Pope Innocenzo VIII Cybo married him the city saluted his first and only princess. Her name was Peretta Usodimare. In the western wing of the villa an entire apartment was granted to her and her personal court. Perin del Vaga decided that all the rooms would be decorated with feminine themes, mostly inspired from Ovidio’s Metamorphosis. This is how the apartment became the serenity island in the villa of the warrior Prince, in which a woman reigned on all things. Enter and admire it with your own eyes.

Hall of Neptune
The decoration on the vault of the eastern hall was the first deed undertook in the villa by Perin del Vaga: he debuted representing on the ceiling, Neptune pacifying the storm after Enea’s shipwreck,. The artist wanted to use the unusual technique of oil painting on the walls. This granted the effectiveness of the light force but caused a deterioration of the decoration, completely lost in XVIII century. In 1845 Annibale Angelini painted an architectural and illusionary background centering the Doria Pamphiji stem and the personification of the two rivers Tevere and Eridano: This vast prospective experience, by now heavily darkened, today characterizes the vault of Neptune’s Hall. On the lateral walls are conserved the tapestries of the battle of Lepanto, in the same position for which they were conceived for the last years of 1500, and at the center of the hall, a table with the surface inserted with hard stones.
Hall of Psiche
Similar in structure and size of the vault to the Hall of Arcane, this room was heavily hit by the bombings of 1944, that destroyed major part of the ceiling. In the fan lights, that were just recovered with an important restoration service,are recounted, by Aputelio, are depicted the adventures of Love and Psyche,interpreted in the Renaissance as a neo platonic allegory of love. According to the myth, Psyche, a beautiful but mortal girl, was loved by Eros, without the license to look at him; when the girl brightens the dark night with a lantern, a drop of oil falls on the shoulder of the god that wakes up and abandons her. Undertaking the cruel deeds of Venus, Psyche exceeds every obstacle and, made immortal, can finally unite with her lover for eternity. In the hall are exhibited the portraits of Andrea Doria in the vests of the sea god, and in the display cabinet , majolica dishes manufactured in Montelupo in Tuscany and in Viterbo.
Hall of Aracne
In the fanlights of the hall is represented the tale, drawn on Ovidio’s Metamorphosis,of Aracne who, proud of her weaving ability, dared to challenge Minerva, and once lost the competition, was transformed in a spider, condemned to weave her web perpetually. In the texture created in the competition Aracne had illustrated the loves of Zeus, here painted in a section of the fanlights. In the plumes are visible twelve allegories of the arts. The Vault was restored in 1998. The original drafting was realized not as a fresco but with a dry technique that consists in two overlapping pictorial layer: this is a significant example of the variety of solutions undertook by Perin del Vaga. In the Hall you can admire a number of paintings- the portrait of Francesco II Sforza, by Tiziano, the portrait of the Unfaithful Bishop Ferdinando D’Asburgo, by Ruben’s workshop-and important furniture such as a canterano from the seventeenth century.
Hall of Filemone
In the small room, recamera(smaller room annexed to a bed room and with a wardrobe purpose) of the hall of Psyche, the sixteenth cenntury decoration has mostly disappeared covered by later on paintings. In the vault’s fanlights, on the northern side two episodes of the story of Filemone and Bauci have been recognized. The hospitable couple of elderly people greeted Zeus and Mercury in their house without having recognized them. As a reward a wish was granted to Filemone who asked to be given a chance to die with his wife. Zeus granted his wish and turned the old couple into trees. The fanlights hold landscape representations. The furniture is composed by a consistent ensemble composed by two sheep tables and a double bodied piece of furniture with ivory insertions manufactured in Naples in seventeenth century.
Hall of Fetonte
The fanlights of this room, “recamera” of the hall of Aracne, show the illustration of the myth of Fetonte, famous example of punished pride. Son of Apollo, Fetonte was granted permission from his father to drive the Sun Wagon, but proved to be too weak to tame the hot-blooded horses that conduced the wagon too close to earth running the risk of setting it in fire. Zeus stroked the youngster and plunged him in the Eridano river (the Po) turning his sisters into poplars and their tears into amber. This is one of the most complete cycles dedicated to this myth, this probably due to the fortune that this iconography had around the city of Genoa. The vault of the room has a grotesque decoration. At the moment the hall is set as a bedroom.
Hall of the Tribute
In 1599 Marcello Sparzo was paid for the decoration of two great halls in the east wing of the villa, the two halls next to the eastern Lodge; his activities in the villa though covered every setting of the late sixteenth century in the noble floor: four halls in the eastern wing, two halls the gallery and the chapel in the western one. The Hall of the Tribute is the first setting that shows episodes of the events of Furio Camillo: In the year 390 b.C. the general returned from exile after the conquer of Rome by Gallic hand, and shut off the ransom negotiations for the city, which implied the payment of a tribute to the winner, with a famous statement: “Your home land should be saved with iron, not with gold” and defeated the enemy with military force, fighting them of from Rome. In the present setting the two tapestry of the eighteenth century representing May and December appear particularly valuable.
Hall of the Triumph
The first two halls of the eastern apartments hold episodes of the events of Furio Camillo, focusing the attention in the southern setting on the humiliating moment of the payment of the tribute, and subsequently, on the vault of the northern hall, on the triumphant epilogue of the happening with the glorification of the roman hero to celebrate his victory over the Gallic. Choosing this theme, Giovanni Andrea I, admiral and member of the state council of Filippo II, repeated his fidelity to the political guideline introduced from Andrea Doria in 1528 which was always in opposition with the French party. In the Hall of the Triumph are exposed three paintings: The portrait of the Bishop Giorgio Doria, ascribed to Lucia Casilini Torrelli, painter from Bologna, the portrait of the Bishop Giuseppe Doria painted by Filippo Sannari and lastly a complex composition ascribed to Antonio Concioli representing the self portrait of the artist wile painting the portrait of the Bishop Giuseppe Doria.
Hall of Prometheus’s happenings
The iconography of the decorative apparatus of the rooms of the eastern wing is aimed to celebrate the virtues of the historical or mythological hero, that saves his people or the entire humanity. The two setting facing the eastern Lodge- the last ones to be finished- to whom is referred the payment of 1599, show episodes of Prometheus’s story. In the vault of the southern hall is located the illustration of the Story of Prometheus: Marcello Sparzo represented here the episodes of the Creation of Mankind, of the Theft of Fire and at last Prometheus that Breaths Life to Mankind. From the room the small oratory of Donna Zenobia is visible; With two scenes of The Passion executed as fresco by the Genoese painter Lazzaro Calvi, who in youth had spent time as a disciple of Perin del Vaga and to whom Giovanni Andrea I had commissioned the decorations of vast areas of the ground floor of the household of Fassolo.
Hall of the Punishment
Prometheus, the titan that according to tradition, created the first man, to allow mankind to survive donated them the knowledge of the arts and most of all, moving against Zeus’s will, donated them the use of fire. Therefore the lord of the gods had him chained on the summit of the Caucasus by Mercuric, were every day en eagle would plunge on him and devour his liver, for eternity. On the vault of this hall Marcello Sparzo represents in the central stucco the punishment inflicted to Prometheus: The mythological hero with a completely positive interpretation, in contrast with the moralistic one that in some occasions considered him guilty of the sin of haughtiness, is presented in all his greatness as an example of generosity lead until the supreme sacrifice. At the moment the hall is set as a dining room.