Jupiter and Antiope Room

This room and the two preceding ones originally formed a single space, which was then split up by the architect Antonio Asprucci (1723-1808) to make it symmetrical with the other wing of the villa.
The ceiling is dominated by the quadro riportato (1787) by Bénigne Gagneraux (1756-1795), which portrays the episode of the Ovidian myth of Jupiter and Antiope in which, in the guise of a satyr, the god approaches the nymph. Displayed to the public before being installed on the ceiling, it was immediately a critical success.
The decorations around the painting – the eight canephores and the eight panels with ovals that allude to the central scene – were executed by Vincenzo Berrettini (eighteenth century).
On display in the little room are Flemish and Italian paintings of the seventeenth century, including several masterpieces of Roman Baroque portraiture, such as the portraits of Marcello and Giulio Sacchetti (the latter just recently - 2016 - donated by the Fondazione Giulio e Giovanna Sacchetti), respectively banker and cardinal and great collectors of Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669), and the Portrait of Monsignor Clemente Merlini, executed around 1630 by Andrea Sacchi (1599-1661).
On display in the room are also two paintings executed during his first stay in Rome (1601-2) by Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640): the Lamentation over the Dead Christ and Susanna and the Elders.