Hall of Roman Splendors

Once called the “Great Hall” or “Hall above the Door towards the Theater, all painted,” the “Hall of Roman Splendors” is one of the main rooms of Palazzo Arese Borromeo, originally intended for music and ballroom dancing.
Plan-wise, it is developed as a rectangular room decorated with simple terracotta flooring and a faux coffered ceiling. Its value lies in the grandeur and importance of the parietal pictorial cycles, magnificently harmonized with the architectural elements, such as windows, doors, and balconies. They constitute a unicum in the context of seventeenth-century Lombard painting due to the multiple interpretations they lend themselves to, which once aimed to illustrate the prestige achieved by the Arese family and to legitimize their political-administrative choices.

The pictorial layout of the four walls is based on the division into two registers, with articulated faux colonnaded architectures that support a balcony animated by festive polychrome figures and colorful musicians. In the backdrops and panels that overlook the doors and windows, allegorical scenes related to the history of Rome are depicted, from its origins to Augustus, according to a development that unfolds clockwise from the northwest wall. The historical plot, interrupted by sacred allegories and cartouches in elegiac distichs, recounts the eight centuries from the monarchy to the Republic to the Empire, placing many references to themes of great relevance for the Arese family, such as the connection between religion and the protection of the State, the primacy of the public good over family affections, the central role of the Senate (especially in the years when Arese presided over the Milanese one), the love for culture, the transience of military glory, and the importance of peace.

Despite the fact that the “Hall of Roman Splendors” has been extensively studied, the definition of a chronology of execution and its attribution remains uncertain. Critics have in fact assigned some panels to Ercole Procaccini the Younger (1596-1676), Giovanni Stefano Doneda known as il Montalto (1608-1690), and Antonio Busca (1625-1686). It is also evident that the entire hall cannot be the work of a single artist and that numerous workers have followed one another over time for its realization. Obvious, for example, are the influences of the work of the painter Giovanni Ghisolfi (1623-1683), which is reflected in the “Roman-style” organization of architectural spaces and which shifts the dating of the paintings to a period after 1661, when Ghisolfi returned to Lombardy after his Roman sojourn. It is therefore likely that a large part of the decorative system was completed by 1674, the year of the death of Bartolomeo III Arese, to whom numerous heraldic coats of arms and iconographic references are directly linked. The presence of the coats of arms and mottos that refer to the Borromeo family, on the other hand, suggest that these decorations are subsequent not only to 1652, the year in which Renato II Arese married Giulia Borromeo, but also to March 31, 1665, the date of the death of Giulio II Arese and the consequent origin of the Arese-Borromeo hereditary line. It is therefore likely that the entire cycle was completed between 1665 and 1674.

A dating that is in continuity with the period of artistic development of the palace. This room, in particular, reflects the rise of the Arese family who, in the second half of the 17th century, felt the urgency to possess a sumptuous extra-urban palace that would rival the great buildings of the European nobility in splendor.