Palace Camossi Delai

Characteristic architectural elements of the XV-XVI-XVII centuries that are found along the buildings in the historical center of one of the town of the Magnifica Patria Riviera

Palace Camossi Delai: (XVII century) The beautiful house is enclosed between a lemon garden, the lake, the Garda road that passes high on an embankment and a wall towards the small port; in the wall there is a strangely rusticated arch that gives access to the too tree-lined adjacency in front of the building. All that green hides the interesting sixteenth-century facade individually organized; on the ground floor there is a central door with a dark stone ashlar frame flanked by two windows with the same frame and then, by two low porticoes with three lights and rusticated pillars. Then follow four orders of alternating windows, that is, in the first and third windows with a light rusticated frame are of normal size, in the second and fourth (the attic) are squashed, rectangular, but also equally framed. Between the windows of the flat ultramodern, very elegant detail, under the open roof runs a pictorial decoration of cherubs with festoons of flowers (it is certainly not as modern as it may seem, but must have been very restored at the end of the last century). Upstream of the building a staircase leads to a long, characteristic lemon garden. In the central hall on the ground floor there is a beautiful light-colored stone fireplace from the 15th century. XVI. From under the portico there is a low doorway that leads to the three-ramped staircase which is completely closed between walls and immediately to the left, on the upper floor, you enter the large room magnificently decorated with walls covered by large and small paintings by Celesti. “There are about twenty canvases of the most different sizes, connected in unity by a succession of sumptuous frames that serve to mark the overlays, the over windows, the long and narrow divisions between the panels. In this hall we can say gathered a large part of the master’s work”. So rightly they express the dott. Mucchi and the dott. Of the Cross in their complete work on the Celestial. This work can be referred to for a more detailed examination of individual paintings; here we will give only the list of works, not without pointing out, however, that of the profane works of the Celestial this seems to us the most complete to give a judgment on his maturity; that in which all the experiments, the first of them the Caravaggio, are fully manifested, and in which the mannerism, although appearing here and there, gives way to a real impressionism. Look, for example, “Agar in the desert” and “the passage of the Red Sea” to see how much frankness there is spontaneity in the brush of this seventeenth-century painter. In the southern part, the entrance part, from the left there is “Tobiolo and the Angel” long and narrow between the corner and the window; above this “Agar in the desert”; in the wall “the wife of Putifarre” and “Giuditta”; above the door “Solomon with the concubines”. In the west wall (to the left of who enters) there is in the center the large “Banquet of Baldassarre” which on the left has a door with “The burning bush” on the side, “Women with musical instruments” on the right, another door with “Jacob’s dream” above and next to “David with the head of Goliath”. In the north wall, in front of the entrance, where there is a stone fireplace, the attention is attracted by the most extensive (and beautiful) canvas of the “Passage of the Red Sea” under which there are four small paintings: Adam , Eva, Giaele and Sisara, Samson and Delilah. The canvas that was used to close the fireplace and which represents “Lot and the daughters” was very damaged. Where the windows overlooking the lake are, in the eastern wall, three canvases above the windows represent “the sacrifice of Abraham”, “the sacrifice of Jephthah” and “Cain and Abel”; between the windows inivece “the abduction of Dina” and “Amone and Tamar”. The frame all the same as lanceolate leaves of gold completes the richness of these walls that are a real enjoyment for the eyes. In the ceiling there is a heavy column decoration, balustrades with carpets, strange architectures (almost in the middle a folder with the date 1689) but the perspectiveist is not traceable between the Bresciani of the time; perhaps it must be sought in the Trentino area. At the center there is a panel on canvas, a not very happy work by Celesti, perhaps a workshop, which represents the Immaculate Virgin with an Angel beside her holding an open book on which is written: QUASI AURORA CONSURGE – PULCHRA UT LUNA ELECTA UT SOL – INCIPIUNT CANTICA SALOMONIA. Among the decorations in the center of the wall in the evening, above the paintings, there is the emblem of this family of industrial origins, which is typically Brescian, and it is a true shield which dwarfs together four arrows with the motto FRATRES IN UNUM; on the other hand, the heraldic coat of arms is silver with three bandages of red with the lion rampant in gold, crowned by the same and a silver sword in the paw. Continuing beyond the door opposite the entrance, there are, always overlooking the lake, three very well decorated rooms. In the first on the flat ceiling there is a large round fresco with the allegory enhancing the fine arts, in the second a similar fresco with the allegory of the new ideas that illuminate the old lake of Garda, similar to a Neptune, while the obscurantism precipitates down. They are good paintings of the late eighteenth century, a bit ‘deteriorated that I believe I can attribute to the brescian Santo Cattaneo. The outsiders represent the four seasons painted in unpleasant brown tones. In the last room there is a very elegant decoration of white stucco and on the doors the medallions carry ovals with beautiful cherubs (reminiscent of those in the celestial hall of Palazzo Cigola in Brescia).tano le quattro stagioni dipinte con toni bruni non sgradevoli. Nell’ultima sala vi è tutta una decorazione molto elegante di stucco bianco e sulle porte i medaglioni portano degli ovali con bellissimi putti (ricordano quelli della sala celeste di palazzo Cigola in Brescia).

Palace Camossi Delai – Fonti Fausto Lechi, “Dimore Bresciane, in cinque secoli di storia”