Villa Muti is a villa in

Frascati Frascati () is a city and in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital in the Lazio region of central Italy. It is located south-east of Rome, on the Alban Hills close to the ancient city of Tusculum. Frascati is closely associated with science, ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, now in the communal territory of

Grottaferrata Grottaferrata () is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, situated on the lower slopes of the Alban Hills, southeast of Rome. It has grown up around the Abbey of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata, founded in 1004. N ...

History

Initial construction on the site was started in 1579 by Ludovico Cerasoli.Wells, Clara L.
The Alban Hills: Vol. I. Frascati
'. Barbera, 1878. 117. The locale was then acquired in 1595 by the soon to be Cardinal, Pompeo Arrigoni and then divided into two parts and given to relatives including his nephew Cardinal Ciriaco Rocci. Later the villa was modified by different owners including Cesarini and the Amadei. The Muti family, who had obtained the property in the 1900s sold it at the end of World War II to the "Comune di Grottaferrata".

Features

Inside there are frescoes by two major High

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

artists:

Giovanni Lanfranco Giovanni Lanfranco (26 January 1582 – 30 November 1647) was an Italian Baroque painter. Biography Giovanni Gaspare Lanfranco was born in Parma, the third son of Stefano and Cornelia Lanfranchi, and was placed as a page in the household of Coun ...

(''Meeting of Judah and Tamar'', ''Joseph and his Brothers'' and ''Susanna Surprised While Bathing'') and

Pietro da Cortona Pietro da Cortona (; 1 November 1596 or 159716 May 1669) was an Italian Baroque painter and architect. Along with his contemporaries and rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, he was one of the key figures in the emergence of Roman ...

(''Daniel in the Lion's Den'' and ''Story of Habbakuk''). Frescoes of ''History of Agar'' are by the artist Ludovico Cigoli and of ''Moses on the Mount'' by Domenico Passignano are in the first-floor rooms. The villa has also elegant formal/English gardens of the villa with scenographic effects characterized by fantastic sculptures typical of Roman

Mannerism Mannerism is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style largely replaced it ...

; it is structured on various levels of different historical stratification of landscape created around 1850. Presently the villa is not open to the public and the gardens lack upkeep.

Sources

''Villas of the Castelli Romani''

References

{{reflist Houses completed in the 16th century Villas in Grottaferrata Ville Tuscolane