View of the central hall in the foresteria

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Cesare Alessandri, a wealthy Venetian merchant had a wing erected to the side of his villa, to be used as foresteria (guest quarters). Decorations embellish three rooms on the second floor; the paintings in the central hall and in the northwest room are attributed to Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. The fresco cycles in these two rooms constitute the first private fresco commission given to Pellegrini after his return to Venice from Rome. His stay in Rome had been beneficial to his development, enabling him to incorporate into his own visual repertory the language of Luca Giordano and Baciccio.

In the central hall, within faux-stucco frames, are depictions of mythological scenes inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The frescoes are located within vertical compartments of various sizes on the walls of the hall, which, because of its elongated shape, seems almost like a gallery. The light is diffused through three large, arched windows. The windowed wall contains the paintings Apollo and Daphne, Sleeping Endymion, Salmacis and the Hermaphrodite, and Cadmus Sowing the Dragons Teeth. The two short walls have the Rape of Deianira and Narcissus at the Spring on one side, and the Rape of Europa and on the other. Mercury and Argus. The entrance wall has the representations Danaë and the Shower of Gold, Venus Weeping over the Death of Adonis, and Pan and Syrinx.

Above, a painted frieze of interwoven laurel leaves circle the perimeter of the room. Perched atop the frieze, are child musicians, parrots, squirrels, and little monkeys. The decorative program is completed on the curvature of the ceiling, where eight inserts depict putti and little satyrs at play. On the vault are three coffers in which the frescoes for the most part faded away.