Nymphaeum

The “Galarietta fatta a Mosaico” (Mosaic Galarietta) is one of the most significant areas of the Nymphaeum, richly decorated with paintings and mosaics in black and white river pebbles with geometric-floral motifs, among which stands out the heraldic emblem of the Arese wings surmounted by a crown.
This room is characterized by the presence, on the vault, of three frescoes depicting virtues and allegories, with the lateral panels enclosed in octagonal frames. The latter were executed by Giovanni Stefano Doneda, known as Montalto (1608-1690), while the central painting, inserted in an oval frame, is the work of Giuseppe Nuvolone (1619-1703).

In the central medallion, “Charity Moderated by Temperance” is painted, represented as a disheveled woman who is letting milk flow from her breast, while a woman dressed in white pours water into a cup. This representation is very close to the Baroque taste for oxymoron: in fact, charity is par excellence a virtue that should have no limit and that here, instead, is restrained by the typically classical idea of moderation, expressed through the gesture of pouring water from one container to another, mixing the cold with the hot to obtain lukewarm water (hence the Latin term “temperantia”) and by the horses’ bits that the woman holds in her left hand. Critics have proposed a further interpretation of this scene, replacing the figure of Charity with that of Nature which, receiving nourishment from Temperance, is able to be satisfied with little and therefore represents an explicit invitation not to exaggerate with pleasures, to moderate appetites. This modification stems from the study of the Latin inscription present in the painting, currently meaningless due to incorrect repainting, which, according to critics, could originally have been “NATVRA PAVCIS CONTENTA” (= Nature is content with few things), taken from the work of the philosopher Severino Boezio “De Consolatio Philosophiae”. This new hypothesis of reading, however, still needs to be supported by new documentation.

In the first medallion, instead, is depicted the “Wise Man who, having recovered time by distancing himself from passions thanks to Solitude, dedicates himself to Culture”: an old and bearded man, painted according to the traditional iconography of the philosopher with a book in his hand on which he is writing and with an hourglass next to him to represent the awareness of the passage of time, who is approached by the female personification of Solitude. The latter, flanked by images of a rabbit and a sparrow, both solitary animals, is dressed in white and from her feet unfolds a cartouche with a quote from Cicero’s “De Republica” (book I, 27), which recalls how Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Major considered happy only those who could say that they were “never less alone than when they were alone.”
In the third medallion, finally, is depicted the “Ingenuity Favored by Quiet,” as also reported in the Latin cartouche painted in it. Here the female personification of Quiet, seminude with her left arm resting on a marble cube, is painted next to a young man in a golden robe who holds in his left hand a scepter, on whose crowned head burns the fire of Ingenuity. The latter probably depicts Giulio Arese, who is endowed with a scepter and crown because whoever acquires dominion over intelligence and calm is the king of himself.

The subjects depicted in the three paintings constitute the different representations of a single iconographic theme aimed at indicating learned leisure as the possibility for man to regain contact with himself. The cave of the Nymphaeum thus becomes the place of voluntary exile of Bartolomeo III Arese, who could discreetly dedicate himself to alchemical studies and the Kabbalistic tradition, feeling like a new Cicero, in perpetual balance between sharpness of mind and openness to mystery, a man of a rational century and at the same time a priest of ancient rites. This room is therefore a place of mediation between religious and mythological themes and as an environment with multifaceted uses: a humanistic cenacle, a place of meditation and an exhibition space, in which to show some of the works collected by the Arese Borromeo family. In past centuries, in fact, all the rooms of the Nymphaeum possessed a rich sculptural apparatus, of which only documentary evidence and the basic elements remain today.