After passing through a long row of rooms, a typical ancien rêgime layout, the visitor is amazed by the unexpected change of the Sala Boschereccia.
When it was created, it would have been known as a stanza paese (village room) or stanza deliziosa (room of delights), a delightful place that recreates a natural setting. This decoration is typical of rooms created in Bologna between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries.
In the past, interior decoration had often used nature as a stylistic motif, inventing open-air settings in closed spaces: Leonardo’s innovative Sala delle Asse inside the Castello Sforzesco, the airy arbor created by Correggio for the Sala di San Paolo in Parma - which inspired Parmigianino at Fontanellato - and Raphael’s loggia at the Villa Farnesina in Rome.
However, these were isolated cases, not expressions of a widespread taste which became fashionable at the end of the 18th century, especially in Bologna’s patrician residences, as well as the galleria or the monumental staircase. Among the most important stanze paese are those in Palazzo Hercolani and in Palazzo Aldini Sanguinetti in Strada Maggiore (the seat of Bologna’s International Music Museum). In these cases, the rooms open onto outside gardens, creating an even more powerful illusion.
The present room was decorated by Vincenzo Martinelli (Bologna, 1737-1807), who painted the landscapes and Giuseppe Valiani (Pistoia, 1735-1800), who executed the figures. The room was completed at the end of the 18th-century, perhaps as part of a restoration project when the former private apartments of the Cardinal Legate were made into the seat of the new Directory (1797).
The space is enclosed by an airy arbor of intertwined climbing plants, which form a cupola held up by light partitions with banisters all around. Views of the countryside alternate among spaces with fountains, branches, garlands and vine-shoots.
This mix of green plants and rococo incrustations recall the look of an English garden. The combining of different styles was unavoidable in this period of transition from traditional baroque decoration to newer fashions. In later decades, baroque decorative elements such as the flying figures in the vault were gradually substituted with more realistic tromp l’oeil statues.
The vault houses the figures of Zephyrus and Flora, an allusion to the season of spring and to the rebirth of nature. Small winged boys dance about on the frames, holding wreaths of flowers or blowing bubbles, a reference to the fleeting nature of the season and of life. Even the original floor, which has now been replaced, helped to harmonize the overall decorative scheme.
