Hall of the Firmament ...
"Phaethon driving the chariot of the sun and Diana that of the moon" ...
(Above the entrance portal in the middle of the portico there is a plaque that recalls that the Chiericati family hosted Pope Pius VI here in 1782.
From the vestibule, on the left, you reach the south wing, built in the 16th century, whose rooms still retain the decorations from 1557-58, clearly inspired by the cycles that adorn the Palazzo Tè in Mantua, built by Giulio Romano.
The white and gold stuccoes on the vaults of all the rooms in this wing are the work of Bartolomeo Ridolfi.)
The first, larger, rectangular room is called the Hall of the Firmament and is decorated with frescoes by Domenico Brusasorzi.
The central section contains the image "Phaethon driving the chariot of the sun and Diana that of the moon", which is surrounded by
a complex polygonal structure framed by Eliodoro Forbicini's grotesques:
The larger multi-colored fields contain images of the constellations known in the 16th century, which were derived from engravings by Dürer.
The smaller monochromatic sections contain classical figures inspired by ancient coins.
Note the liberal depictions of the 16th century, which are based on antiquity... I will add one more detail so that Phaeton and Diana can be better recognized (as I do here) ...
Phaethon (mythology)
Phaeton is also important as a namesake in science and technology.
Phaeton's Fall - Roman sarcophagus (1st century AD)
Phaethon, also Phaeton or Phaëthon (ancient Greek Φαέθων Phaéthōn, German 'the radiant one', from φαίνειν phaínein, German 'shine'), is in Greek mythology according to Hesiod the son of Cephalos and the goddess Eos, the sister of the sun god Helios. Since Euripides (5th century BC) Phaethon is the son of Helios and Clymene or Rhode, i.e. a nephew of Eos.
Phaethon, the son of Helios, is mentioned, for example, in Plato's Timaeus. The best-known versions of the myth come from Hesiod and Ovid, who in his Metamorphoses 1,747–2,400[3] developed the most detailed and to this day canonical reading of the story.
Ovid's portrayal
When Phaethon grew up, Epaphos, the son of Io and Jupiter, denied him divine descent from Sol. His mother Clymene assured Phaethon that he was the son of the sun god and advised him to visit his father in the sun palace and demand proof of his paternity. Sol, the sun god, who welcomed him into the palace and recognized him as his son, swears an oath to grant his son a gift of his choosing.
Phaethon now asks to be allowed to drive the sun chariot for a day. Sol tries to dissuade his son from this plan - but in vain. As the night draws to a close, Phaethon climbs into his father's precious and richly decorated sun chariot. The four-horse team races off and soon gets out of control. Phaethon leaves the daily route between heaven and earth and triggers a catastrophe of universal proportions.
Ovid reports:
"Wherever the earth is at its highest, it is seized by fire, develops cracks and fissures and dries out because its sap is drained. The grass turns grey, the tree burns with its leaves, and the dry field feeds its own destruction [...] Great cities collapse with their walls, and the fire reduces entire countries and their peoples to ashes."
Ovid explains the dark skin color of the "Ethiopians" by saying that the sun chariot raced close over them, causing their "blood to rise" and they turned black. This is also how the desert in Libya, the Sahara, came into being.
Only Jupiter, called for help by the "alma Tellus" (which means Mother Earth), puts an end to the impending destruction of the world and hurls a lightning bolt. The chariot is destroyed and the charioteer Phaethon falls into the depths, where he ends up dead in the river Eridanus.
His sisters, the Heliades, weep for him and are transformed into poplars on the bank, from which tears drip in the form of the plant resin known as amber. The Ligurian king Cycnus, a relative of Phaethon and his lover, also rushes over inconsolably. Out of pity, Apollo turns him into a swan (Latin cycnus and cygnus).
The inscription on the gravestone reads according to Ovid:
"Here rests Phaethon, the driver of his father's chariot; he could not master it, but died after having dared something great.”
According to Siegmar Döpp, it is striking that Ovid omits the Katasterismos, the transformation of Phaethon into a star, which is told in other ancient texts such as the Dionysiaka of Nonnos of Panopolis (5th century). In his opinion, this is due to the composition of the work:
Ovid describes the creation of the world from chaos and its destruction in the Deucalion flood as transformations in the first book of the Metamorphoses.
The Phaethon myth, which is told at the end of the first and in the first third of the second book, also represents a metamorphosis in Döpp's opinion: not that of the namesake, but the retransformation of the entire world in fire, which was once again prevented by divine intervention.
