a bold and resolute
master. Entering within the portal, one finds over the vestibule a vault
covered with stucco-work, varied scenes, and grotesques, and little
arches in each of which are scenes of war and various kinds of battles,
some fighting on foot and others on horseback, and all wrought with
truly extraordinary diligence and art. On the left one finds the
staircase, which has decorations of little grotesques after the antique
that could not be richer or more beautiful, with various scenes and
little figures, masks, children, animals, and other things of fancy,
executed with that invention and judgment that always marked his work,
insomuch that of their kind they may well be called divine. Having
ascended the staircase, one comes into a most beautiful loggia, which
has at each end a very handsome door of stone; and over each of these
doors, in the pediment, are painted two figures, one male and the other
female, represented in directly opposite attitudes, one showing the
front view and the other the back. The vaulting has five arches, and is
wrought superbly in stucco, and it is also divided by pictures in
certain ovals, containing scenes executed with the most perfect beauty
that could be achieved; and the walls are painted down to the floor with
many seated figures of captains in armour, some drawn from life and some
from imagination, and representing all the ancient and modern captains
of the house of Doria, and above them are large letters of gold, which
run thus--"Magni viri, maximi duces, optima fecere pro patria." In the
first hall, which opens into the loggia and is entered by one of the two
doors, that on the left hand, there are most beautiful ornaments of
stucco on the corners of the vaulting, and in the centre there is a
large scene of the Shipwreck of AEneas in the sea, in which are nude
figures, living and dead, in attitudes of infinite variety, besides a
good number of ships and galleys, some sound and some shattered by the
fury of the tempest; not without beautiful considerations in the figures
of the living, who are striving to save themselves, and expressions of
terror that are produced in their features by the struggle with the
waves, the danger of death, and all the emotions aroused by the perils
of the sea. This was the first scene and the first work that Perino
began for the Prince. It is said that when he arrived in Genoa, Girolamo
da Treviso had already appeared there in advance of him in o