Galleries in Spanish and Austrian Lombardy: spaces of collecting and forms of patronage between artistic literature, iconography and dynastic celebration

The architectural typology of the gallery in Lombardy during the Spanish and Austrian ages is attested by very different examples, for decoration, structure, function, scarcely investigated except for individual cases. The reference model from the second half of the 16th century is offered by the Museum of Paolo Giovio in Borgovico di Como, of which at least three significant replicas are known in Lombardy: The series of portraits in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, founded at the beginning of the 17th century by the cardinal Federico Borromeo, the small “museum” of the Pavese scholar Girolamo Bossi and the great gallery of the Litta castle in Gambolò (Pavia). The latter case is the starting point for a reflection on the forms and functions of the 17th-century gallery in Lombardy, compared to other examples of spaces dedicated to collecting and with other cases of dynastic celebration always linked to the Paolo Giovio’s prototype. In 17th and 18th century the forms of Baroque celebratory rhetoric leave room in favour of scholarly recoveries or refined decorative arrangements, while at the end of the 18th century the patronage will lead to an extreme attempt at the revival of the Paolo Giovio’s Museo in an illuminist key and to a more pronounced sensibility as a connoisseurs.