Villa Litta Modignani, Milan
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[]
- ^ Ville e castelli d'Italia: Lombardia e laghi, second edition, by Luca Beltrami; Editors of Tecnografica, Milan, (1907), page 601-605.
- ^ Comune of Milan Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Villa Litta park.
- ^ Comune of Milan Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, Villa Litta park.
- ^ Luca Beltrami, page 602.
- ^ Luca Beltrami, page 603.
- ^ Lombardia Beni Culturali.
- Villas in Lombardy
- Gardens in Milan
- Buildings and structures in Milan
- 1687 establishments in Italy
- Tourist attractions in Milan