THE DORIA GROTTO

Genoa is amongst the capitals of the sixteenth-century fashion for the artificial grotto, a “marvel” included amongst the delights of the aristocratic garden to render pleasant the leisure of the owner and his guests. Only Rome and Fontainebleau matched it, according to an account of the time. In Genoa this type of structure began to be popular with the Doria grotto, built to the “design” of the Perugian architect Galeazzo Alesi in the middle of the sixteenth century.

It was originally part of the property of the Galleani family, inscribed as the being under the wing (noble associates) of the Doria. In 1603 the whole property was sold to Giovanni Andrea I Doria, and the grotto became part of the gardens to the north of Palazzo del Principe.

The main space was preceded by an atrium which today is largely destroyed, a “portico or small vestibule adorned with niches at its sides”. From this atrium there was access to the octagonal hall, whose vault was originally crowned with a lantern with little windows carrying at the apex the portrayal of the eagle, heraldic symbol of the Doria.

The whole surface of the grotto, except for the floors which were paved in marble, is encrusted with decorations in shells, corals, maiolica tesserae, pebbles, crystals and fragments of natural stalactites: an exceptionally rich mosaic of multiple materials, which “played” on mixing nature and artifice. A Spanish visitor described it as follows: “a spring….the most delicate thing imaginable”, covered with “marbles, corals, mother-of-pearl” and “pebbles the size of half a fingernail”.

The scenes and personages depicted in the mosaics on the whole portray themes linked to water, an element also physically present in the grotto. In fact it flows across surface of the deep niche on the side which faces the entrance, and in antiquity dripped from on high into the basins below in the various minor niches. Water is alluded to by the personifications of the rivers on the walls, Polyphemus on the rocks, Galatea on the shell being drawn by dolphins, the rape of Europa, Neptune on his chariot, Perseus as he kills the sea monster, and marine episodes which prevail in the decorations of the sections of the vault, amongst which we can recognize the monster who threatens Andromeda, Peleus and Thetis, and the rape of Dianira.

A final scene preserves traces of a figure riding a dolphin. Many elements of this composition seem inspired by the decoration of twenty years earlier in the rooms of Palazzo del Principe: for example, Neptune who drives his chariot repeats the motif illustrated by Perin del Vaga in the “Salone del Naufragio”, painted in oil on the wall and today lost. The decided homage to the classical world is evident both in the ground plan of the structure, which recalls important Roman thermal complexes, and in the decoration, which includes elements explicitly all’antica, such as, for instance, the medallions with cameo profiles and the masks.

Up to the nineteenth century the Doria grotto was mentioned and praised by local sources, who shared the judgment given in 1568 by the Florentine Giorgio Vasari in his famous Lives (“a most notable thing”). More recently, the destructive forces which have so damaged the northern gardens of Palazzo del Principe have affected this structure too. Incorporated into a modern block, and subject to heavy alterations in the period 1910-11, it was damaged by the bombardments of the last war and fell for a time into almost complete oblivion.

In the 1980s studies of it were revived, and in 1999 the Doria Pamphilj family bought it back. The grotto has been cleaned, which has restored its brilliant colours, thereby bringing back to life a monument of rare fascination, which in 1845 one of the most impassioned Genoese lovers of art, Federico Alizeri, had described as being “much less famous than it deserves”.