Frescoes
The exterior is simple, bare of any decoration. In contrast, the interior is richly decorated with frescoes by Giovanni Battista Zelotti, who also worked on Villa Foscari and other Palladian villas.
The main series of frescoes in the villa is grouped in an area with scenes featuring Venus, the goddess of love. Zelotti appears to have begun work on the frescoes in 1565. In the Great Room, the events in the frescoes concentrate on humanistic ideals, exemplary scenes such as Virtue portrayed in a scene from the life of Scipio Africanus. The Abstinence of Scipio appears frequently in cycles of frescoes for Venetian villas. For example, the Villa la Porto Colleoni in Thiene and Villa Cordellina in Montecchio Maggiore, built nearly 200 years later, also use this image, fostering ideals which, had in the 15th and 16th centuries, resulted from the renewed discussion of the depravity of town life, in contrast to the tranquility, abundance, and freedom of artistic thought associated with rural existence. Hence, another room in the villa is called the Room of the Arts, featuring frescoes with allegories of individual arts, such as astronomy, poetry or music.
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