Trascrizione
This room was built in about 1579 as a refectory and was originally a loggia overlooking the nearby hanging garden .
Now, however, the room you see reflects work carried out from 1773 to 1775, when Palazzo Ducale’s Corte Vecchia was used as the official residence of the Austrian government. The pergola-style decoration and the representation of allegories of the rivers crossing the Mantua area are the work of Gaetano Crevola and Giorgio Anselmi.
In 1773, Crevola began to paint the architectural and decorative device for the room. In 1775, the figures of the Rivers for the walls and the vault were entrusted to one of the most prominent artists of the time, Verona-born Anselmi, who also provided the decoration of the dome of the basilica of Sant’Andrea in the years immediately after.
On the vault the painter depicted the episode of Phaeton asking his father Apollo for the Chariot of the Sun. The figures of the Hours are set around the central episode and at the bottom Saturn is seen from behind. Both are references to the passage of time.
Two caves are depicted at the ends of the Galleria dei Fiumi. The work near the entrance dates to the early seventeenth century and bears the Gonzaga insignia at the top; the other seems to be a late-eighteenth-century imitation but bears the Napoleonic coat of arms. Both “caves” are dedicated to a theme very dear to sixteenth-century culture – art that imitates nature – and mix fake stalactites with shells and other natural concretions.
Opposite this room you will find the hanging garden, set twelve metres above Piazza Sordello. Its charm was well described in 1588 by Lodovico Arrivabene: “The hanging garden is truly wonderful, filled with grasses and plants, brought from far away countries, (it is) excellent and delightful.”