mappamuseo

Room of the Valtellinese Stove

This room is the first visitors encounter in the suite of Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi and his wife, Carolina Borromeo. It was used as a sitting room, and owes its name to the wooden wall paneling once gracing a room with a heating stove in a centuries-old house in Sondrio. Above the room’s fireplace, an inscription in Latin paraphrasing St. Augustine warns those present against taking advantage of sitting in front of the fire to indulge in gossip: ‘he who speaks badly of those not present, may he know that this fireside is forbidden to him’.

Latin mottos

QUISQUIS AMAT DICTIS ABSENT(I)UM RODERE VITAM HANC FLAM(M)AM VETITAM NOVERIT ESSE SIBI

Whoever loves to talk badly about (people) who are not present, know that this fireside is forbidden to you.

(It’s a variation on a poetic couplet present in Possidius’s life of St. Augustine; instead of “flammam” [at the fireside], there is “mensam” [at the table] in the original because the writer was referring to gossip at a table where meals were eaten)

ON THE MANTELPIECE OF THE FIREPLACE

Audio guide codes

10 - Room of the Valtellina Stove

109 - Antique mirror

105 - Shell, ivory-handled Instruments