Villa Badoer - Interiors and Decoration

Interiors and Decoration

The piano nobile retains its original fresco decoration. All the rooms are covered by flat ceilings and on the walls a certain "Giallo Fiorentino" designed complex combinations of allegorical figures, whose significance remains partially obscure. Palladio himself referred to these frescoes as being "grottesche di bellissima inventione" by a certain Giallo Fiorentino, whose real identity has remained uncertain. Milanesi's identification as Jacopo Giallo, a Florentine illuminator to whom some manuscript work has been assigned, was eliminated by Lionello Puppi's archival discovery that Jacopo Giallo was dead by 1545, thirteen years before the villa was built; Puppi offered instead a certain fresco painter "Giallo Fiorentino", an assistant to Giuseppe Salviati for exterior frescoes at Palazzo Loredan at S. Stefano. Recently Pier Francesco di Jacopo Foschi has been suggested.

Architectural critics such as Witold Rybczynski think that the interior is relatively small and unimpressive, compared to the grandiose exterior.

• Fresco by Giallo Fiorentino

• Grotesque

• Grotesque

• Fresco by Giallo Fiorentino