Overall view of the Gate of the entrance Court (ISAL Photo Archive)
The gate frames in cast iron closes the Villa’s courtyard from the street. A masterpiece of technical skill, elegance and complex design, it is laid out with eight support columns in Carrara marble, depicting the various activities of man in dialogue with the statues representing Olympic divinities, on the northern façade of the Villa.
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The contemporary celebration of human work and the presence of the divine thus render a tribute to the new owner of the Villa, the lawyer Giovanni Traversi, blessed from above for his professional merits. The author of the gate’s design was the Bolognese architect and painter, Pelagio Palagi, author of the last renovations of the interior and exterior of the Villa, in a neoclassicism rich with eclectic integrations. An affirmed artist, who worked in Bologna and Turin, in Rome Palagi had studied Roman classicism under the influence of Antonio Canova and Andrea Appiani. When he moved to Milan in 1815 to teach painting at the Brera Academy, he met the painter, Francesco Hayez who inspired in him a firm adhesion to Romanticism and cultural historicism. After Desio and thanks to the fame of the works he undertook and completed, he received other important assignments, particularly his nomination by Carlo Alberto as the court architect of the House of Savoy.
