A piece of exceptional value, dating from around 1572, which belongs to the collection of King Carol I in Peleș Castle is the Doria bed.

Giovanni Andrea Doria (1539-1606), the nephew and adopted son of the famous admiral, Andrea Doria, was part of the family of the Doges of Genoa. He led in the Battle of Lepanto (1571), the Christian fleet of the Holy League (Spain, Venice, the Holy See and Genoa) which, under the command of Don Juan de Austria, obtained a brilliant victory against the Turkish fleet, led by Ali - Arab Pasha. This victory, which caused an explosion of joy throughout Christendom, put an end to the legend of Ottoman invincibility.

Admiral Doria's family owned a rich art collection, valuable goldsmith's items, a series of tapestries commissioned through Lazzaro Calvi and Luca Cambiaso, precious frescoes with mythological and allegorical subjects, furniture, etc., in its palaces in Fassolo, Pegli (villa Centurione Doria, today a naval museum) and Grimaldi (Genoa).

The four-poster bed, executed by artisans from northern Italy (probably from Genoa), around 1573 belonged, as a campaign bed, to Admiral GADoria, the work being purchased, in the second half of the 19th century, by the German consul , Felix Bamberg*, and mentioned in the manuscript catalogues, signed and dated 1889. He offers it for purchase to King Charles I, together with a valuable batch of paintings.

The piece was exhibited from the very beginning, in the Peleş Castle. During the First World War, it was transported, together with the other exceptional patrimonial values from Peleş, for protection in Moldova, to the Crown Domain (Dobrovăţ or Zorleni).

In the years 1922, Queen Maria, during the campaign to renovate Bran, transported the bed to the new Salon Doria in the castle.

Brought back and reassembled, the bed can be found in 1933 in the Concert Hall of Peleş Castle. The inventory drawn up in 1948 records the bed in the Marble Gallery, where it was exhibited until 1977, when the operation of transporting and storing the pieces from the castle's heritage began at Posada. (Between 1954 and 1956 it was transferred to the National Art Museum of Romania and later returned). After 1990, the textile material and the embroideries entered a long period of restoration, in the MNPeleş laboratories, laborious work, being completed this year.

The four-poster bed consists of several parts, as follows:

The embroideries seem to come from different workshops and from different periods.

The assembly of the piece was probably carried out during restoration operations in 1877, prior to the purchase by King Carol I. Only the background embroidery and the four wooden pillars of the canopy remain from the original piece.

The background embroidery, mounted on a gray-blue natural silk damask drapery, immortalizes, allegorically, the event of the end of the 16th century - the naval battle at Lepanto.

Rectangular in shape, with a border embroidered with golden metallic thread on a fine linen fabric support, it preserves at the corners decorations with avimorphic motifs (bird sitting on an apple branch), in chromatic tones of brown, green, yellow, beige.

The border on the left side consists of: three oval medallions, embroidered with silk thread representing a pagoda flag (red, yellow, brown, beige), a heraldic composition surmounted by floral motifs (green, blue, yellow, pale green), a fortress embroidered with beige silk thread. The cartouche shows a male figure, painted on the textile fabric, in bluish grays, the bust of a knight in armor, with a Spanish Renaissance collar, collar, profile with a mustache, looking to the left (Miguel Cervantes, hero and participant in the battle of Lepanto, where he loses an arm). Above the portrait is a shield with heraldic insignia. The silhouette of a stylized tree, in bloom, in shades of yellow, green, brown, gives a touch of optimism to the decor.

The border at the top includes: six oval medallions, a border with fine embroidery of silver threads, inside the medallions stylized stars, an allegory of the sun in yellow-orange colors, crescent moon, solar rosette motif, full moon in beige tones , faded blue, yellow. In the center, a Roman fort surrounded by abundant vegetation, the predominant color being green.

The border on the right shows three medallions: an architectural decoration (lighthouse with a roof), a heraldic composition included in a red silk lambrequin, surmounted by floral motifs, in tones of yellow, green, beige. Important is the cartridge with the specification in French “Restaurée en 1877 à Mes……. (town name erased, illegible, probably Messina), and added, Baron Felix et Baronesse Elisabeth de Bamberg. Above this cartouche, a knight in military costume with a sword and the inscription "DIDAustria" (of course, Don Juan de Austria, the son of Charles the Quint, the admiral who was at the head of the Christian fleet at Lepanto).

The border at the bottom, in the middle portion, shows tents on the battlefield.

Central. The subject is treated in two registers. The lower register immortalizes the naval confrontation between the Christian fleet and the Muslim one. It would seem that the author of the embroidery was inspired by an allegorical painting by Paolo Veronese, dated 1572, entitled The Battle of Lepanto (Galleria dell'Accademia in Venice). Shown are ships engaged in battle, dolphins in a shore area, on a chromatic background of beige, light blue, shades of red, beige and gold thread embroidery on battleships. The shore is rendered on a background of silk embroidery, in multiple shades of green, buildings, tents, clumps of trees, lake in beige, red, green, blue. The upper register represents an allegory of the divine powers participating in this battle (angels floating on clouds, central in medallion with rays, Madonna blessing the battle, surrounded by angelic troops, in small medallions). From place to place, flowers embroidered with silk thread. The atmosphere is dynamic, the real scene of the fight happily intertwines with the higher plane of the protective deities.

The embroidery, executed in the Western style, was destroyed, having portions erased. The old restoration is highlighted, first of all, by the metal wire, the old one being strongly oxidized and brittle, the new one with a more vivid color and much more resistant. The colors of the old embroidery are vegetable colors.

The roof drapery or "heaven", consisting of embroidery with silk thread, combined with metallic thread on a natural silk damask support, blue-grey (the original damask) has a central medallion, a scroll (symbolizing the messenger of the highest divinity, the sun , also the imperial emblem of Caesar, as well as of other warlords to whom he lends the attributes of power) with spread wings, protecting seven chicks in the nest. Vegetal-floral motifs and swirls surround the scene, in beige, brown and blue-green colors. The border is made up of stylized dragons and vegetal swirls associated with floral motifs.

This embroidery is the only one that preserves the original material support, being 63 cm wide, a width often found in Italian silks from the 16th century. Observations and measurements show that the original material was replaced in two rows with mechanical war fabric, thus changing the widths.

The outer lambrequins preserve a strongly embossed embroidery, with the Brandenburg coat of arms - reminiscent of the Franconian branch of the Zollers - heraldic motif, a page with wide open wings and a surmounted cross, a sign that it was added later, when it was already in the possession of King Charles I, and the thread textile is visibly dyed in chemical colors.

The front lambrequin is interesting because of the upper register that presents eight bouquets of flowers in cups (symbolizing faith in God or the emperor), in red, yellow, blue colors. In the middle, a peacock (in the Christian tradition, the peacock symbolizes the solar disk, a sign of immortality, its tail evoking the starry sky), sure, here the heraldic symbol that recalls the coat of arms of the Wied family.

The side lambrequin, rectangular in shape, shows in the center two birds with open wings, sitting on olive branches, above an open flower corolla, a fountain with a pulley and a bucket, flowers in cups in red, black, yellow, green colors.

The long, rectangular pillow is covered in red-grain silk velvet, with Renaissance motifs, thread galloon and fringes.

The walnut pillars that support the canopy are richly carved in the form of a column. We find several registers carved with: plant motifs, acanthus leaf; pearl girdle; scrollwork and floral motifs; mascheroni, double-headed eagles, griffins, putti heads; angels.

The 16th century means the triumph of sculpture in the field of furniture, when decorative motifs inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity are used (cartouches, medallions, plant wreaths, chimeras, dragons, etc.), along with other elements borrowed from monumental sculpture (columns, garlands, volutes, etc.).

* Felix Bamberg-German publicist and politician was born in Unruhstadt, Germany, on May 17, 1820 and died in Saint-Gratien, near Paris, on February 12, 1893. He studied philosophy and history in Berlin and Paris, became consul in Paris for Prussia and Brunswick in 1851, and for the North German Federation in 1867. In 1870 Bamberg was sent to the headquarters of the German army at Versailles, in charge of the press department. A year later, as a political adviser, he became attached to Manteuffel, then commander-in-chief of the troops occupying France. In 1874, Bamberg became the German consul in Messina, and in the period 1881-1888 he was appointed consul-general in Genoa.

Passionate about art, and possessor of a rich collection, he buys paintings and antiques (rare pieces of furniture, musical instruments, etc.) from European auctions. The art gallery, established by King Charles I, originates, for the most part, from the purchase of a large lot from the Bamberg collection. He offers the Romanian monarch a good part of the famous Spanish Gallery of Louis-Philippe d'Orleans, a gallery that had been in the Louvre and was then sold in London in 1853.