Palazzo Sampieri frescoes

The scheme was commissioned by Astorre Sampieri, young abbot of Santa Lucia di Roffeno, member of a powerful family which had been promoted to senatorial rank in 1590.

[1] The reasons for this choice are unknown - Astore Sampieri may have wanted something different from the norm or the low rooms may simply not have lent themselves to friezes.

They also drew heavily on Pellegrino Tibaldi's mid 16th-century frescoes at Palazzo Poggi in Bologna, rare if not unique examples of "sottinsù",[2] with his Dance of the Genii in a small room next to his better known Life of Ulysses cycle proving the Carraci's main reference point.

[3] No sources or documents directly date the frescoes, though a 1595 print of Annibale's Christ and the Samaritan Woman by Francesco Brizio or a very young Guido Reni (British Museum) provides a terminus ante quem.

At the bottom is the Latin inscription "GLORIA PERPETUUM LUCET MANSURA PER ÆVUM", referring to the perpetual memory guaranteed by glory and thus to the immortality Hercules earned by his heroic deeds, which gained him entry to Olympus from Jupiter.