Villa decoration
In the finest decorations the Italian villa-owner gave his rooms an exotic, quasi-palatial splendour, with schemes of marble columns tricked out with gilded ornament, glimpses of colonnaded courts receding in both linear and aerial perspective, and grand historical or religious figure-compositions set out on a podium or within a portico. Later, in the 40s and 30s, the architecture tended to become a framework for a central picture, conceived like a window opening upon another world, and occupied by sacred landscapes or mythological figure-scenes. (Boardman, 1986)