The Garden Room Frescoes of Livia's Villa at Prima Porta

The Augusta Livia, wife of Augustus, had a summer villa at the Porta Prima, or first gate of Rome at the intersection of the Via Flaminia and the Via Tiberina, about seven miles north of Rome. It was known as the House of the White Hens, the Villa ad Gallinas Albas, because legend has it that an eagle dropped a white hen into Livia lap here, a sign to her that she should keep white hens at her villa. In the semisubmerged triclinium where Livia entertained her guests, she created the famous Garden Room, with floor to ceiling frescoes of a garden.. This was a “continuous garden painting” populated with most of the known species of plant and bird. Look closely to find oak, cypress, bay laurel, pomegranate, oleander, holm oak, quince and viburnum, all miraculously in bloom and flowering at the same time. Birds flutter all about, some in cages.Perspective is achieved with blurring of the plants toward the back. Cane pailings and a marble balustrade are in the foreground. Tendrils flow over the wall. The sky is a beautiful Egyptian blue.

The villa was abandoned when the barbarians came in the fifth century, to be rediscovered almost nineteen hundred years later in 1863.The frescoes were removed to the Palazzo Massimo Museum. Found at the same time was the marble statue of Augustus of Prima Porta, now at the Braccio Nuovo at the Vatican.He had been buried for safety.