Gallery of the Liberal Arts

The entire southern side overlooking the courtyard on the palace’s first floor is dominated by a single room that connects the “Southwest Grand Staircase” to the area designated for the private apartments of Bartolomeo III Arese. About halfway up, it opens onto a compact series of rooms that constituted the apartments of his heir, Giulio II. The cultural significance expressed in the room’s rich wall frescoes is evident; it must have once also been populated by many statues and sculptures of various sizes, likely both ancient and modern.
Marked by precise architectural framing enriched with elegant floral decorative motifs, real windows face painted false windows on both sides of the room, seemingly opening onto a hypothetical rustic courtyard.

The spaces between both types of windows are occupied by gilded monochrome figures representing the Liberal Arts and (opposite) the figures who excelled in these disciplines: Grammar/Aristarchus; Rhetoric/Cicero; Logic/Zeno of Elea; Poetry/Homer; Painting/Zeuxis; Music/Arion; Arithmetic/Pythagoras. Above the door on the western wall sits the half-bust figure of Aristotle, the quintessential intellectual, flanked by the figure of Study, depicted with the features of the young Giulio II Arese. On the opposite side, the eastern door is surmounted by the bust of Gaius Julius Caesar, flanked by the allegory of Ingenuity. Thus, the room’s path of wisdom is complete: study and Aristotelian methodology will lead the young pupil Arese to master all sciences and arts, following the example of the great philosophers and scholars of the past, but also developing the ability to combine his innate intelligence with the practical skills Caesar possessed. Unlike the other rooms, finally, the “Gallery of Statues” is the only space on the main floor (*piano nobile*) where the ceiling coffers are also painted, featuring, in the center, a series of putti bearing the emblems of the arts and sciences, and, in the corners, the family crests of the palace owners.
A painted inscription on the access door leading to the “Southern Grand Staircase” bears the date 1663, understood as the year the room’s decoration began, in honour of the studies undertaken by the young count. His sudden death in 1665, however, led to a series of modifications in the last two bays of the room, particularly on the ceiling, where the putti are shown dropping the Wings emblem of the Arese family, and their associated crests are replaced with those of the Borromeo family, Bartolomeo III’s new heirs.
Regarding the authorship of this complex painted structure, critics have drawn from eighteenth-century inventories references to different hands, later identified as those of the painter Antonio Busca (1625-1686), probable author of the vault decorations; the artist Giovanni Ghisolfi (1623-1683), for the underlying architectural perspective painting (*quadratura*); and the brothers Giovanni Stefano (1612-1690) and Giuseppe Doneda (c. 1609-1680), known as the Montalto brothers, for the creation of the allegorical figures.