Palladio's Villa Barbaro at Maser Italy Frescoed by Paolo Veronese
The plane barrel vaulted ceiling fresco in the north salon has a beautiful representation of the geocentric Solar System but showing the inner planets separated by the sun, earth and moon from the outer planets. This division is particularly interesting because this fresco was painted only ten years after Copernicus's death and fifteen years before Galileo was born. Further, the distribution of the small (black) signs of the Zodiac around the perimeter (its depth is an illusion) were noted not to be in order. Ebony Dungeon has learned from Universal ring member Abraxas2 that this was an astrological convention where the twelve houses of the Zodiac were each associated with one of the seven known planets. The classical deities representing the heavenly bodies are superbly rendered although it is a puzzle why Earth (Gaea) is astride a dragon. No reference to this had been found when this page was first posted in August 1998 until March 2002. An explanation to this mystery was sought at the Ebony Dungeon and finally uncovered in The New Century Handbook of Classical Geography edited by C. B. Avery (1972): "Gaea set the serpent Pytho to guard the chasm at Delphi whence the prophetic vapors emanated." Much later, when Apollo took over at Delphi, "he went to the chasm and slew the dragon that guarded the oracle."
An exterior view of this (best of all) Pallidian villa was taken while the sun shone on its front (about 1 PM) before opening time at mid-summer. Shortly after opening the dials were in the shade.
At either end of the villa are wings originally designed as dove cotes (pigeon lofts for squab) and bearing two different vertical sundials: the hour dial at the left end and the monthly (lines of declination) dial on the right. Clearly a declining dial to the south east - drawings and calculations are still in preparation and will also be added here.
