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Palamedes Room - Click 'Details' for more information
PALAMEDES' ROOM:
In this room is located one of the most famous masterpieces of Antonio Canova. Palamedes, king Nauplio's son, inventor of chess and dice games and of some letters of the Greek alphabet, was able to discover the false madness of Ulysses, obliging him to leave his island, Itaca, and go fighting in the Troy war. Ulysses never forgave him and had his revenge by making Palamedes condemned to death with false accusations. In this subject - the cultivated and betrayed hero - Sommariva, after loosing his political power, recognised part of his personal history. He commissioned this sculpture to Canova, but in 1805, when it was still in the Canova's atelier in Rome, the statue felt down, because of a flood of the Tevere river, and broke in many pieces. Canova personally restored it, between 1806 and 1808. The sculpture arrived in Tremezzo in 1819; in the villa it was located in a room with mirrors on the walls in order to show up its formal perfection.