Bicocca degli Arcimboldi, Renaissance villa in Bicocca district, Milan, Italy.
The Bicocca degli Arcimboldi is a Renaissance villa in Milan's Bicocca district characterized by balanced proportions and classical facade elements. The building displays the typical floor plan layout of that period, with rooms organized around a central courtyard.
The Arcimboldi of Parma built this country villa in the second half of the 15th century, about five kilometres north of Milan; two reference dates, 1464 and 1488, frame its construction and the portico decoration commissioned by Guido Antonio Arcimboldi. After the family died out in 1732 the villa passed to the Arconati, Busca and Sormani. Pirelli acquired it in 1918, and from the 1950s it served as the company's reception rooms.
The name "bicocca" referred to a modest stronghold, not a family: the Arcimboldi of Parma built this country villa about five kilometres north of Milan in the second half of the 15th century. Guido Antonio Arcimboldi commissioned the portico decoration to mark his 1488 mission to the court of Matthias Corvinus in Hungary; later graffiti now cover it.
The villa stands at Viale Sarca in the Bicocca district, about five kilometres north of central Milan, in a fully built-up area. It is a Pirelli representative office, not a museum, so the halls and the frescoed ladies' room are not open on a casual visit; view the 40-metre façade and the five-arch portico from outside.
In the sala delle dame, discovered during the early-20th-century restoration, 15th-century frescoes show the lady of the house waking to music, playing chess and preparing the nuptial bed, framed within pavilions. Between the windows of the altana, restorers also found a preparatory drawing of a knight in armour in International Gothic style.
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