In his palace in Bologna, Cardinal Giovanni Poggi (1493-1556) had the halls of the piano nobile painted by Niccolò dell'Abate, Prospero Fontana, and others. They painted friezes with landscapes and grotesques, as well as numerous episodes from the Old Testament. In the ground floor, the twenty-three-year-old Pellegrino Tibaldi created the Odysseus frescoes, a major work that he would never again equal.

The Odysseus frescoes adorn the vaults of two rooms. From the entry corridor of the palace one walks first into a large hall (Sala di Ulisse), where the cycle begins. One finds the continuation and conclusion in a smaller room directly adjoining the hall (Stanza di Ulisse). The ceiling articulation and the arrangement of the paintings in both rooms are oriented along the lines of a famous Roman model, Raphael's Logge in the Vatican Palace. The scenes are inserted as 'quadri riportati' (framed paintings that are seen in a normal perspective and painted into a fresco). Between the fields of the painted histories, illusionistic views open onto colonnades that seem to reach up to the heaven. The framings are executed in stucco.

With their various decorative systems, each of the two rooms achieves a wholly individual character, one corresponding to its respective size and position. The ceilings in the Sala di Ulisse and Stanza di Ulisse contain five and four scenes from the Adventures of Odysseus, respectively.

Preview	Picture Data	Info
	View of the ceiling vault 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	The Blinding of Polyphemus (scene 1) 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	The Blinding of Polyphemus (detail) 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	The Blinding of Polyphemus (detail) 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	The Blinding of Polyphemus (detail) 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Polyphemus and the Flight of the Greeks (scene 2) 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Aelos Gives Odysseus the Bag of Winds (scene 3) 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Neptune and the Ship of Odysseus (scene 4) 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Odysseus and Circe (scene 5) 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Ignudo 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Ignudo 1550-51 Fresco Sala di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	View of the ceiling vault 1550-51 Fresco Stanza di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Theft of the Cattle of Helios (scene 6) 1550-51 Fresco Stanza di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Shipwreck (scene 7) 1550-51 Fresco Stanza di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Odysseus and Ino Leucothea (scene 8) 1550-51 Fresco Stanza di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna
	Odysseus at the Court of the Phaeacians (scene 9) 1550-51 Fresco Stanza di Ulisse, Palazzo Poggi, Bologna