Adjacent to the frescoed “Small mosaic gallery”, the room called “Room near the mosaic courtyard” was purposely built to collect and show off to the most illustrious guests and friends, a collection of antique and modern statues owned by the Arese Borromeo family. From the inventories taken during that time, it contained four small tables made of marble and dark wood, probably ebony, which served as a base for trophies and sculptures in marble and terracotta.
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In contrast to the previous room of the Nymph, this is one of the four rooms in the palace that contains a woodland painting decoration, unfortunately not in perfect condition, because of the considerable and dull wall covering probably completed in the 18th century.
What remains of the paintings depict a woodland landscape in the foreground with hills and mountains in the background. One of them is portrayed with a deer, an animal painted in another woodland landscape on the main floor, therefore suggesting that both landscapes were painted by the same hand which critics indicate as Giovanni Ghisolfi (1623-1683), a painter from Milan. Trained in Rome and part of the circle of Salvator Rosa, he specialized in “ruins” and was therefore chosen by Bartolomeo Arese himself for his capacity in representing the new language from the papal city and for his originality in painting urban landscapes with ruins or ancient monuments and landscapes, to be read as a modern adherence to classical tradition.
