Among the most charming rooms of the entire “villa of delights” in Desio is certainly the Neo-Gothic Hall located on the ground floor. This is reached through the Neo-Rococò room. The tapestry, wood engravings and frescoes contribute to re-creating the dreamy medieval atmosphere, making up the room’s clearly eclectic features found in the complex and which most reflected the demands and tastes of the Traversi couple, who used it as a private, family dining room.
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The room is small, but is made warm and cosy with woodworks and tapestries in dark red silk, that highlight the white, grey and brown geometric wefts on the marble chip mosaic floor. The décor works were entrusted in the fourth decade of the 19th century to highly talented artists like the glass master Giuseppe Bertini and the mosaic artist Baldassare Macchi while there is no information regarding the craftsman who did the wooden panel works that ended in the first months o f 1845.
The documents kept in the “Fondo Antona Traversi” archives of Meda note that the assignement for the pictorial decoration of the vault was entrusted later, around 1850 to the painter Mauro Conconi, uncle of the more famed architect, and engraver and dissolute painter, Luigi Conconi.
The room was carefully renovated after 1990, and is adorned with sculpted motifs in wood inspired by the vocabulary of Gothic art. False ogival windows following the style of the old cathedral windows, thin columns and pilasters and bands of three-lobed rose-windows, enhance the decorations of the walls and ceiling. The architectonic neo-Gothic elements are enlivened by fantastic add-ons like the sculptures of mice running along the cornices. Great part of the ceiling is crossed by the branching out of pilasters in wood, running across the upper part of the walls, fanning out in the corners and designing elaborate and geometric gothic cornices against a golden background, on the rest of the ceiling surface. Some cornices, in fact, define the spaces in which allegories of the four Seasons are painted, achieved with clear references to the romantic style. They are depicted as four female figures, respectively intent on gathering flowers (Spring), plucking a grape berry on the vine (Autumn) and warming herself at a fire (Winter).
The central medallion instead presents a mythological entity, highly shortened and seen from below, almost as if it were a real hole poking through the Olympic clouds: the scene depicts the god Mercury who is delivering a child, the little Dionysius-Bacchus, to his future tutor, Silenus, son of the god Pan, surrounded by the wood nymphs.
In the room moreover, are airy blue backgrounds and ulterior painted medallions depicting angels and cupids holding doves in their hands some attributes typical of the four elements (Earth, Air, Water and Fire). Originally, the hall contained also the precious glass panes of Giuseppe Bertini depicting great poets of Italian medieval literature like Dante, Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura. After the transfer of the villa to the municipality, these panes were inserted in the collections of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli and are today still kept in the House-Museum at Manzoni St. in Milan. On the left wall of the room, one would not miss seeing the heating system with the outlet grid for the diffusion of hot air, coming from a centralised boiler underground. The heating system not only served to heat up the house but also the greenhouses that cultivated exotic plants.
The documents kept in the “Fondo Antona Traversi” archives of Meda note that the assignement for the pictorial decoration of the vault was entrusted later, around 1850 to the painter Mauro Conconi, uncle of the more famed architect, and engraver and dissolute painter, Luigi Conconi.
The room was carefully renovated after 1990, and is adorned with sculpted motifs in wood inspired by the vocabulary of Gothic art. False ogival windows following the style of the old cathedral windows, thin columns and pilasters and bands of three-lobed rose-windows, enhance the decorations of the walls and ceiling. The architectonic neo-Gothic elements are enlivened by fantastic add-ons like the sculptures of mice running along the cornices. Great part of the ceiling is crossed by the branching out of pilasters in wood, running across the upper part of the walls, fanning out in the corners and designing elaborate and geometric gothic cornices against a golden background, on the rest of the ceiling surface. Some cornices, in fact, define the spaces in which allegories of the four Seasons are painted, achieved with clear references to the romantic style. They are depicted as four female figures, respectively intent on gathering flowers (Spring), plucking a grape berry on the vine (Autumn) and warming herself at a fire (Winter).
The central medallion instead presents a mythological entity, highly shortened and seen from below, almost as if it were a real hole poking through the Olympic clouds: the scene depicts the god Mercury who is delivering a child, the little Dionysius-Bacchus, to his future tutor, Silenus, son of the god Pan, surrounded by the wood nymphs.
In the room moreover, are airy blue backgrounds and ulterior painted medallions depicting angels and cupids holding doves in their hands some attributes typical of the four elements (Earth, Air, Water and Fire). Originally, the hall contained also the precious glass panes of Giuseppe Bertini depicting great poets of Italian medieval literature like Dante, Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura. After the transfer of the villa to the municipality, these panes were inserted in the collections of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli and are today still kept in the House-Museum at Manzoni St. in Milan. On the left wall of the room, one would not miss seeing the heating system with the outlet grid for the diffusion of hot air, coming from a centralised boiler underground. The heating system not only served to heat up the house but also the greenhouses that cultivated exotic plants.