Villa Litta Modignani, Milan

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The Villa Litta Modignani is a 17th-century rural palace and park located on Via Taccioli in the north suburbs of Milan, in the Province of Milan, Lombardy, Italy.

History[]

Built as a rural villa in 1687 by , secretary of the Chancellor Segreta. Corbell had been named that year Marquis of Affori. It was in this villa that Pietro married Barbara Melzi. The building's exterior is simple; but the interiors were luxuriously decorated in a rococo-style. Marianna, the granddaughter of Pietro, only daughter of Carlo Corbello, died at the age of twenty-two and the property passed to her young husband, Francesco d'Adda. He remarried Teresa, the daughter of Marquis Pompeo Litta. She in turn widowed and married the . After some iterations, the family died out in 1836, and the villa was acquired by the Taccioli family, merchants of Milan.[1]

After the mid-1850s under the patronage of the Count Girolamo Trivulzio and his daughter of the Princess Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso, the villa became a locus for writers and artists including Alessandro Manzoni and Francesco Hayez.[2]

In 1905, the villa became property of a Litta-Modignani, who had married a grandson of . The property was acquired by the province and in 1927, by the comune of Milan.[3]

The stairwell opens to the right of the access atrium, and had a fresco depicting the Life of Diana painted by Giuseppe Nuvolone.[4] The Salons also have landscapes by Rosa da Tivoli and a large ball-room with high wooden ceilings and quadrature.[5]

In the 1850s, the formal gardens were recast as the looser "English Garden" by the Count Ercole Silva. The gardens were restored after 1958 by . They are presently a public park. The villa is closed to visitors. While it retains some of the frescoes, it has lost nearly all the movable artworks, which once included a Madonna and Child by Bernardino Luini.[6]

References[]

  1. ^ Ville e castelli d'Italia: Lombardia e laghi, second edition, by Luca Beltrami; Editors of Tecnografica, Milan, (1907), page 601-605.
  2. ^ Comune of Milan Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Villa Litta park.
  3. ^ Comune of Milan Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Villa Litta park.
  4. ^ Luca Beltrami, page 602.
  5. ^ Luca Beltrami, page 603.
  6. ^ Lombardia Beni Culturali.

Coordinates: 45°31′00″N 9°10′04″E / 45.5167°N 9.1677°E / 45.5167; 9.1677

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