Navigating the Palace Underworld : Recreational Space, Pleasure, and Release at the Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trent

Abstract

This essay examines the material ornamentation and poetic description of garden-adjacent recreational spaces in the Magno Palazzo (main palace) of the Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trent (1528-1536). Guided by instructions from Prince- Bishop Bernardo Cles, a team of sculptors and painters including Dosso Dossi and Girolamo Romanino constructed a complex visual itinerary to orient mobile beholders and choreograph their movement through the newly built palace. Grounded in the precepts of decorum and commensurability, this itinerary was codified in an ekphrastic poem written by Cles’s physician, the naturalist Pietro Andrea Mattioli (published 1539). This essay traces the ways in which words and images prompt psychosensory response, revealing the moral ambivalence associated with marginal and unofficial interior spaces dedicated to refreshment, leisure, and entertainment.