Titans Room

The “Sala Titani” (Hall of the Titans) was known as the “Sala del gioco del matto” (Hall of the Madman’s Game), due to the presence, during the eighteenth century, of a game table similar to billiards, called precisely “del matto.” This room is also known as the “Hall of the Giants,” because of the pictorial decoration in the medallion at the center of the vault, too damaged for critics to agree on attributing it to Giuseppe Nuvolone (1619-1793) or Ercole Procaccini the Younger (1605-1677), both painters highly appreciated by Bartolomeo III Arese and active in the decoration of other rooms in the palace.
This painting depicts a mythological subject with strong political significance: the “Assault of the Giants on Olympus.” The lower part of the scene is occupied by the fury of the Giants, enormous beings armed with clubs and with their gaze distorted by violence. In contrast, in the upper part of the painting, is the host of the Olympian gods, who retreat behind the clouds, seemingly intimidated. Only Minerva-Athena resolutely throws herself against the attackers to repel them, depicted with her lance raised and her protective shield adorned with the head of Medusa.

In some texts, the painted scene is also identified as Titanomachy, with a clear reference to another mythological episode of attack on Olympus slightly preceding the Gigantomachy. In several epic poems, it is narrated how the war between the gods led by Zeus and the Titans, primordial children of Uranus and Gaia, lasted for over ten years until the intervention of the Cyclops and the Hecatoncheires (giants with a hundred arms) in favor of the gods, who imprisoned their enemies in Tartarus. Gaia, the Earth, however, did not forgive Zeus for the victory over her children and incited her other creatures, the Giants, against Olympus, who were also eventually defeated and driven back into the depths of the earth, under Etna, with the help of Hercules, who appears here seated among the clouds in the upper left corner, above the figure of the god Mercury in flight.
Regardless of the iconographic uncertainties, the meaning of the painting remains the same and takes up a theme repeatedly represented in the halls of this same palace: the wisdom of the advisors, combined with their war capabilities, as the only opportunity for the Spanish monarchy to return to its former glory and overcome the conflicts caused by the Franco-Spanish conflict. The goddess Minerva, therefore, in this fresco would coincide with the figure of Bartolomeo III Arese, a member of the Council of Sixty Decurions of Milan from 1627 and, from 1641, a member of the Secret Council and, subsequently, honorary regent in the Supreme Council of Italy. Philip IV of Habsburg, also known as Philip the Great and the “Planet King,” would instead be represented by Jupiter-Zeus engaged in the Thirty Years’ War.

The decorations of the vault, the pendentives, and the lunettes, characterized by an elegant floral decoration and delicate monochrome paintings depicting landscape scenes, in which classical and medieval ruins alternate, date back to the late eighteenth century. Previously, the lunettes housed a series of octagonal paintings depicting floral compositions.