Continuing our visit to the museum, you will see that a whole corridor has been set out like an old portrait gallery, similar to those found in noble homes. Even the materials chosen, such as the damask upholstery and the way the portraits have been hung close together make this similar to the galleries of the past. The portraits displayed here were chosen in such a way as to provide a panorama of the development of the portraiture through the centuries, from the oldest in our collection – a portrait of Giuliano della Rovere, religious patron who lived in the late 16th century – to works from the first half of the 1900s. After admiring the very elegant 17th-century Dutch portrait of Maurice, Prince of Orange wearing the Order of the Knights of the Garter, we move on to 18th-century Monza, with portraits of two illustrious protagonists in the city’s history.
The first is Cardinal Angelo Maria Durini, member of an illustrious feudal family who built the villas of Mirabello and Mirabellino, now inside the Park of Monza. The second is the registrar Carlo Antonio Sirtori, member of a family of notable authors of interesting “Annals”, with their rich content of precious information. In both portraits we can see the typical technique of the period in which, to make it easier to identify the subject, they were painted leaning on a shelf of books, letters or documents from which would be possible to deduce their name or position.
Nineteenth-century portraiture is introduced here by one of the museum’s masterpieces, the portrait of a young woman by Francesco Hayez. We are uncertain of the woman’s identity, but the intimate tone of the portrait, the pose of its subject and her direct gaze lead us to think that she may be Carolina Zucchi, loved by the young Francesco during his period in Milan. Alongside this is a portrait of doctor and poet Giovanni Raiberti, a leading figure in the Risorgimento, depicted in a courtly pose that purposefully evokes the famous portrait of Alessandro Manzoni.
The second half of the 19th century again focuses on artists from Monza, valid portrait painters such as Mosè Bianchi, Mariani, and Spreafico. As a reflection of a changing society, the subjects portrayed are not noble or members of the clergy, but industrialists and journalists; the style is faster and more immediate, capturing the changing expressions of the face with flaking touches of colour and light. The same attention is seen in self-portraits by the artists, captured, as in the case of Mariani, who paints himself in a pose like that of Titian, or hints of restlessness as in the face of Monza artist Eugenio Baioni, painter and sculptor, and great friend of Marche artist, Anselmo Bucci, who not by chance concludes the collection with a canvas from 1931.

The painting by Giuseppe Molteni displayed in this room shows us a figure that we all know as the Nun of Monza, immortalised by Alessandro Manzoni in “The Betrothed”. In fact, the events of the novel are based on a real story, which took place between Milan and Monza in the period between the 16th and 17th centuries. Manzoni was familiar with this story, thanks to the Historiae Patriae, written by historian Giuseppe Ripamonti, who reported the terrible plague of 1630, and narrated events when the woman was still alive and exchanging letters with Cardinal Federico Borromeo.
In the actual story, the nun was a noblewoman called Marianna, born in Palazzo Marino, Milan, in 1575. Her mother was in fact Donna Virginia Marino; her father, Don Martino de Leyva, was a member of one of the most influential, respected families in the Spanish nobility, and owner of the fiefdom of Monza. To avoid the breakup of this inheritance, Marianna’s father forced her to take holy orders and in 1589, at just 14 years of age, she was sent to the monastery of Santa Margherita in Monza, where she took the name of Sister Virginia Maria.
Here she became the Mother Superior, with de facto feudal power over Monza, and the love story between Sister Virginia and Gian Paolo Osio, from a neighbouring palazzo, began inside the convent walls. The young lovers, aided by other nuns and some of the townsfolk, were able to remain together, in secret, for many years. During this time they had two children (the oldest one stillborn and a daughter, recognised by her father).
But their love story could not stay hidden forever, and in 1607, the threat of a lay sister to reveal the truth triggered a series of murders and violence that reached the ears of the Governor of Milan and Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Osio fled but his fate was sealed and he was betrayed and killed, but not before helping their accomplice nuns to escape, then trying to kill them. Sister Virginia was imprisoned in a monastery in Milan, where she was put on trial. Between interrogations and torture, they sentenced all those involved: the deeds of the trial – kept secret for many years – reveal the dramatic events in their entirety, through to the sentence. The Mother Superior, abandoned by her family, was sentenced to be closed in a minuscule cell with just a single small opening for food, air and a little light. These were hard years of atonement that in the end led Cardinal Federico to grant her a pardon and the possibility to leave her prison. Sister Virginia lived to a ripe old age for the time. She survived her inhuman imprisonment and the terrible plague of 1630, dying in 1650 in the Milanese convent in which she chose to end her days.

We continue into the next room, with its large “Annunciation” by Andrea Michieli, mannerist painter from Veneto. That concludes our journey into old paintings. From here, we take a dive into the 19th century, with the splendid painting of the “Nun of Monza” by Giuseppe Molteni, inspired by the pages of “The Betrothed”. It is a work with a genuine romantic flavour, with the young woman captured with an expression of pain, and tears running down her face.
Moving into the latter part of the 19th century, we meet the painters from Monza who gave rise to a very fruitful season for Lombard art in the period. Under Mosè Bianchi – Monza’s most important painter – the artists open a view onto the most important events in contemporary art, both at style level and in terms of content choice, in particular with inspiration from the new ideas arriving from France. It was Bianchi – represented here by the bronze portrait, created as a tribute to the painter, who died in 1904 – who shifted the attention from subjects with a romantic and literary feel to contemporary themes, where the protagonists are people captured during the simpler moments in daily life.
This line influences the production of Eugenio Spreafico, with a good deal of focus on the dimension of the work – in particular, feminine – and on a poetic view of Monza as it changes from rural village to an industrial city, renowned for its hat factories. We can admire his “Return from the spinning mill”, reminiscent of the famous “Fourth state”, shown in female terms but with a poetic, nostalgic tone, free from hints of social protests; on the wall opposite, “Pains. The Festival of the Dead” is displayed, a painting set near the old cemetery of San Gregorio, which no longer exists today. Spreafico is also responsible for the guardians of geese or turkeys moving across a background of the pre-Alps in the countryside around the city, paintings that can be seen on the panels to the right. Mosè Bianchi’s nephew, Emilio Borsa, is the painter of the charming view of a part of Monza that has since disappeared, with the large painting dedicated to the mill on the River Lambro, characterised by masterful use of light and colour.
As well as Borsa, Mosè had another artist nephew, Pompeo Mariani. Out of all the Monza artists, Pompeo was the most worldly and cosmopolitan, travelling to Egypt at the end of the 19th century in search of the exotic subjects that were quite fashionable at the time. The results of this journey are the many sketches and drawings that the artist used for finished paintings, such as the “View of the Nile near Cairo”.
Carlo Fossati, perhaps the least well-known of Monza’s painters in the period, was also a traveller. He left Italy for South America where he died very young. Before leaving, the painter completed the large piece entitled “Dragonflies”, that evokes a Piedmontese landscape and childhood games.
As you continue the visit, you will come to an area where you will see the “Desert” by Pompeo Mariani, a memory of his journey to Egypt, while on the wall over the stair, there is a large cartoon by Mosè Bianchi. This was created in preparation for the ceiling decoration in the Saletta Reale, the waiting room prepared at Monza’s railway station in the 1880s for the king and queen – Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy – who used the train to travel to Monza and their summer palace. Perhaps one of the last great fresco artists, Bianchi created a composition to celebrate the royal family, with symbols of the house of Savoy and a triumph of cherubs.

Insights

• The Lady of Monza

This exhibition route continues on the first floor, where you will be greeted by a large room containing a collection of paintings that date back from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The museum’s display criteria offers the opportunity to explore a broad range of subjects, from religious art to mythological themes and still life, with works mainly from the Emilia, Rome and Lombardy areas, and some important names from painting in the period. Many of these works come from a bequest from Eva Galbesi Segrè, the collector who left her art to the Municipality of Monza in 1923. Other pieces were donated later, following the opening of the museum in 1935.
The first part of this room is dedicated to the life of Jesus. Important pieces on display include a “St Joseph with Sleeping Christ”, a very popular subject in the 17th century on account of its intimate, family dimension, and here attributed to a painter from the circle of Guido Reni. The “Infant St John with the Lamb” is by Montalto, an important protagonist of Lombard Baroque painting. The next piece is also from Lombardy’ s “Baptism of Christ” in the style of Leonardo, close to the methods of Marco d’Oggiono. Continuing our visit, you will note an interesting painting illustrating the “Healing of the Blind Man” from the Tuscan school. It is populated by curious personages including one wearing glasses. The “Denial of Peter” has a feel of Caravaggio, with its compelling use of light and shade. The succession of works takes us towards the narration of the Passion of the Christ, on to the particular wooden inlays, a copy of “The Dead Christ Mourned” by Annibale Carracci, now in the National Gallery in London.
The section continues with two examples of subjects about the lives of the saints, with the dramatic “Martyrdom of St Lawrence” attributed to Daniele Crespi, great Lombard artist who died of plague in 1630, and the “Death of St Francis Xavier”, comforted by the Virgin and saints in the last moments of his life, alone and abandoned on an eastern island, where he had been a missionary.
Now move to the opposite side of the room and continue the route from left to right, starting with the two lovely 17th-century canvases with subjects taken from mythology – the “Rape of Ganymede” and the “Hercules at Rest” – based on Carracci’s frescoes in Palazzo Farnese, Rome, and the “Prometheus” by Piacenza artist Gaspare Landi, dating back to 1782. The pose is inspired by the famous group of sculptures, Laocoön and His Sons, which the painter was able to admire during his period in Rome.
The visit continues with subjects from a genre that was much loved between the 17th and 18th centuries, like the very elegant figure of “Astrology” who is measuring a terrestrial sphere with a compass; the “Flautist” attributed to Venetian artist Giuseppe Angeli, and some still life works.
You should note the “Trompe l’oeil”, thought to be the work of Filippo Abbiati and dating back to the late 17th century, an example of a popular art form widely used in the period and which aimed to reproduce real life scenes with extraordinary mimicking effects, and painstaking attention to detail, to “fool the eye” and disorientate the onlooker, who is forced to wonder what is painted and what is real. Here the artist plays with the effect of the painting within a painting, thanks to the hanging prints, and has fun with surprising touches such as the painted fly on a wooden panel.

The permanent exhibition layout in the museum is set out over two floors in the building, where you can admire more than 140 works in 13 sections. Our visit begins on the ground floor, in the cloister, which is home to Roman relics, displayed in the form of a lapidarium. Archaeological finds tell us that Monza existed in ancient times, but it was with the Romans that the village saw the greatest development: an imposing bridge was built to pass over the River Lambro, through the centre and make travel to the Alps easier. The community of Monza is documented by the numerous burial stones that have come to light in the form of re-purposed materials in many city buildings. Inscriptions on these relics – mainly from cemeteries or votive altars – tell us about veteran legionnaires, freedmen, and families devoted to the divinities of Olympus.
A Corinthian half capital from a very large building (now lost) stands out among the pieces displayed in the cloister, together with the lid to a sarcophagus from the late Roman period, but re-used in the Middle Ages, as shown by the carved inscription.
Before you go into the museum, pause a moment to look at the mediaeval measure, a stone of notable size used by the Municipality to guarantee official measurements of weight, length and width for tiles and bricks, for example.
Now enter the museum and walk into the oval room on the left of the ticket office, where you will see the “Ara dei Modiciates”. This is the top part of a votive altar dedicated to Hercules by the young people of Monza – the Modiciates. The inscription is the oldest proof of the city’s original name, Modicia, which would go on to become Modoetia in the mediaeval period and finally, Monza. This stone was donated by Count Carlo Ghirlanda Silva in 1874. It was found in the English-style garden of the family villa in Cinisello Balsamo, where it had been placed as an ornamental feature. The donation in fact led to the creation of the art collections owned by the municipality and intended for display in the museum. It was given by the owner in the hope that a public museum would be established.
Further proof of Monza’s ancient origins can be seen in a display case containing fragments of swords and pins dating back to the Bronze Age, found in the city at the end of the 19th century. This room also contains different relics from the Middle Ages, like the bronze bushel used for official measurement and the decorative architectural features from buildings long-since demolished. In the centre of the wall is a detached fresco of the “Deposition of Christ”, dating back to the latter half of the 16th century. The fresco decorated a room in the Casa degli Umiliati when it was still inhabited by members of the order.
The route through the ground floor continues with a distinct time shift, from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period. Come out of the oval room and continue to the right. The next room contains works by award-winning young artists from the Biennali Giovani Monza, important occasions to explore developments in expressive techniques in the 21st century. The works on display here feature a wide variety of techniques and materials, ranging from sculpture to painting and photography, which showcase the creative freedom of young generations of artists.