San Paolo's room
The Apartment of the Abbess
A new itinerary, following previous restoration, includes the rooms of the private apartment of the Abbess Giovanna da Piacenza, inside the walls of the Benedictine Convent in the centre of the city. Not a monastic cell, but a true apartment, within the walls of which the young and, we imagine, cultured and alluring noble woman invited friends, guests, relatives and intellectuals to celebrate with her the splendours and the rites of a privileged society, of humanist culture, of sophisticated living. To welcome them in style and for luxurious living, were employed the best architects for the renovations, artisan craftsmen for the furniture, and of course the finest artists for the decoration of those noble rooms. Initially, in 1514, a renowned Parmesan artist, Alessandro Araldi, who painted on the vault of one room a thick arabesque of winged monsters and writhing snakes among which he sets moral tales taken from The Holy Scripture. Then Giovanna decided to employ an emergent artist, Antonio Allegri from Correggio. Maybe he’s just arrived from Rome, influenced by the cosmopolitan aura of a metropolis, maybe he’s been in Milan to admire the masterpieces of Leonardo, but what is certain is that he has already worked in Correggio and Mantua, where he studied the work of Mantegna and is under the protection of Veronica Gambara, princess and poetess, friend of Isabella d’Este. Antonio starts from an umbrella-shaped vault and transforms it into a green pergola set on a bamboo trellis, fresh in summer; it is functional, hospitable and comfortable, it leads into a long series of white linen sheets stretched between ram’s heads which support shining metal table ornaments. Then he dresses the room with sublime illusionary marmoreal lunettes. Behind, in front and throughout the pergola, a little army of laughing putti lead by Diana with bow and arrows in her hands. She stands on a chariot pulled by hinds to a hunt: the ritual beating that opens the hunting and harvest season, a great propitious hymn, deeply confident and happily pagan.
