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.