The Room of Roman Charity was used as an anti-chamber to the reception hall or sometimes as a dining room for less formal occasions. On the vault of this room, Perino del Vaga illustrates the episode of the Roman Charity framed by a garland of leaves and fruit inspired by Raphael’s decorations in the Farnesina Loggia. The scene of the Roman Charity described by the Latin historian, Valerio Massimo, has deep moral significance. The legend tells of an elderly man called Cimon who had been sentenced to death by starvation. His young daughter Pero eludes the soldiers guarding her father and saves him by suckling him through the bars of his cell. Once he is discovered, Cimon is pardoned thanks to the noble gesture of his daughter.
Around the central medallion of the fresco, two small groups depict Love and Venus and scenes of putti and divinities that recall ancient Roman figures. In the Room of Roman Charity there are several valuable works among which a seventeenth century figurehead with the Doria coat of arms; a sixteenth century coffer and five preparatory cartoons of the cycle of tapestries of the Battle of Lepanto, commissioned in 1582 by Giovanni Andrea Doria. The preparatory cartoons depicted figures and scenes that are the same size as the tapestries and were used by the weavers as models.
In the Room of Roman Charity, there is a valuable nineteenth century showcase that contains some interesting pieces.
In particular, on the right, a letter signed by Andrea Doria and the collar of the Golden Fleece conferred in 1767 to Andrea the Fourth, third knight of the dynasty (after Andrea the First and Andrea the Second) to be awarded this important recognition. The Golden Fleece, an order of knights founded in the Fifteenth century by the duke of Burgundy, Phillip the Good, was only conferred to sovereigns, princes, knights and important personalities.