Antechamber

Similar in its spatial layout and decorative structure to the adjacent “Salone delle Colonne” (Hall of Columns), this small room, known as the “Anticamera” (Anteroom), features a significant example of frescoed architectural painting on its walls. The restrained scenographic design is based on two Doric pilasters topped by a tall, two-tiered frieze – the lower tier decorated with tongue motifs and the upper one with floral volutes.

Each pilaster supports a small bracket decorated with lion head protomes and frames a series of painted panels depicting landscapes. In reality, there is only a single painted landscape, which unfolds across the entire length of the room, framed and interrupted by the pilasters, appearing as a series of wide openings looking out onto the exterior scene. This landscape features castles, woods, small villages, and a vast lake, set against a cloudy sky where various species of birds are in flight. According to some historians, the scene might refer to the estates held by the Borromeo family on Lake Maggiore (Verbano). However, the landscape details are too generic to confirm this iconographic hypothesis, which would also need to account for the presence of the Arese family crest, located on an overdoor and dating from the time the frescoes were executed.

Regarding the authorship of the paintings, art critics suggest distinguishing between two different artists: one responsible for the architectural perspectives (quadratura) and another for the landscape scenes. It is likely that the painted architecture, like most of the quadratura on the main floor (piano nobile), was executed by the Milanese painter Giovanni Ghisolfi (1623-1683), who trained in Rome in his youth. However, it is not unlikely that he collaborated with numerous other painters, possibly including members of the well-known Mariani dynasty of Lombard quadratura specialists, who were active in other properties belonging to branches of Bartolomeo III Arese’s family. The large painted landscape, on the other hand, shows a typical taste for ruins and is characterized by a certain realistic precision, although its symbolic or allegorical function remains unclear.