The Council of Gods

This fresco in the Villa Borghese, housing the Galleria Borghese, decorates the ceiling of a large room, called Sala della Loggia. Originally the room was a loggia opening onto the park of the villa, hence its name.

Lanfranco created a wholly new typology for the depiction of Olympus with his painting of the loggia of Casino Borghese. He treated the ceiling centre and the vault as a unified illusionistic space, one in which the divine hierarchy and the formal arrangement are brought into harmony. Thanks to the perspective painted architecture, the secondary pictorial features - grisaille medallions, telamones, river gods and vases - are casually subordinated to the centre ceiling with its assembly of gods.