# View of the ceiling vault [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [PERINO DEL VAGA]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Fresco ## Commentary Between 1542 and 1548 Pope Paul III transformed a series of rooms on the two upper levels of the Castel Sant'Angelo into a comfortable and at the same time impressive apartment. Time and again this castle had provided protection to popes against the incursions of secular powers, and it continued to have a military function. His predecessors had commissioned various decorations, although these have been lost. The newly decorated rooms were to provide leisure and spiritual rest - the typical purpose of a country house or villa. The mythological subjects with which some of the rooms were painted thus correspond to what one would expect in a villa, but hardly in papal apartments. The largest room of these apartments, the great hall today called the Sala Paolina after the pope who commissioned it, surprises the visitor with its festive exuberance. Most important is the impression of the whole which presents itself to the eye and aims to overpower visitors to the room with the sheer display of riches, splendour, and bounty. This impression is the result of the decorative system designed by Perino del Vaga. The seemingly plastic organization of the walls features bronze chiaroscuri framed in stone; round-headed niches flanked by columns, with "living" figures of the Virtues; overdoor paintings with female personifications; and pairs of putti holding bronze tondi. The plastic organization of the walls enters into competition with the fully plastic, partially gilded stucco of the ceiling and its colourful paintings. The six ceiling paintings and the large wall areas were reserved for scenes from the life of Alexander the Great, while the act of Apostle Paul - from his conversion to martyrdom - were depicted in the six tondi above the doors of the room. The selection of these two protagonists was clearly intended to play on the two names of the pope \(Alessandro Farnese having become Paul III\). Perino del Vaga painted just a part of the frescoes, the other parts being done by collaborators following his cartoons. Marco Pino from Siena, a student of Beccafumi, <a onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/p/pino/paolina1.html'\)" href="/html/p/pino/paolina1.html">painted the six Alexander scenes</a> on the vault. ## Related artworks - [Adoration of the Child]() - [Alexander the Great Battles the Indian King Porus]() - [Ceiling decoration]() - [General view]() - [Hope, Venus, and the Martyrdom of St Paul]() - [Jupiter Handing a Newborn Boy to Diana]() - [Lamentation]() - [North Façade of the Villa Doria]() - [Shipwreck of Aeneas]() - [Sketch for St John the Baptist Preaching]() - [Sketch for the Feast of Herod]() - [Sketch for The Visitation]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()