Fresco decoration (detail)

The Palazzo Bianchi-Bandinelli was built for Julio Blanch Bandied, who was a major figure in Napoleonic Siena, chamberlain for the Queen of Mercurial in 1804, mayor of the city in 1810, and prefect of the district of Ambrose in 1814. During the Restoration he was a governor and lieutenant-general of the Lorraine grand duke of Tuscany. The building of the palazzo was designed to mirror the personality, celebrating the features of Neo-classical art, beauty and grace, as the criteria of grandeur.

The interior has a suite of rooms on the ‘piano Mobile’ which rejoices in the frescoes of Luigi Ademollo: they breathe the grace and Olympian calm of the Greek and Roman myths, The Marriage of Alexander and Roxana, and The Sacrifices of Numa. In contrast with these is the ‘forest room’ where a decoration of buildings and scenes of nature merges into endless greenery, creating illusory scenic prospects that rise to the changing sky of the ceiling and are lost in the dream-like images of the garden outside.

The picture shows a detail of the decoration of the rooms on the piano nobile of the palazzo, entirely frescoed by Ademollo with mythological subjects, including griffins and garlands of flowers, and some ‘woodland’ decoration from a series of trompe-l’oeil landscapes.