Prometheus in the Palazzo del Principe

Abstract

In the rich 16th-century decoration of Palazzo del Principe in Genoa, scenes from the myth of Prometheus – a complex narrative shaped and disseminated by a number of different sources and mediation texts – are represented. In the context of the decoration campaign committed by Andrea Doria to Perino del Vaga and his équipe (1528-1533), the theft of fire and the gift of it to mankind, with the Titan’s punishment in the background, were depicted in the marble bas-relief of a monumental fireplace’s tondo, the earliest testimony of Promethean images in Genoa. In the 1590s, Giovanni Andrea Doria, Andrea’s heir, had two of the rooms he added to the palace decorated with plaster bas-reliefs on the ceilings, representing Prometheus’ deeds (the creation of man, the theft of the fire from the Sun’s chariot’s wheel, the animation of man) and his punishment, through the intervention of Mercury who is portrayed chaining him to the Caucasus rock. This paper aims to present and analyse the iconographies of these works, connecting them to the characters and purposes of Andrea Dorias’ strategy of images (closely related to his political role in the Genoese state), consistently continued by his successor.