Autumn Room in the Palace of Caserta

On June 23, 2021 I found myself wandering the grand halls of the Reggia di Caserta, in Italy. Can you guess which rooms were my favorite? The seasonal ones, specifically the Autumn Room! I fell in love with these frescoes as I’m totally satyr obsessed! I adore these nymphs and happy satyrs surrounded by all of autumn’s bounty; the grape garlands, the gorgeous verdure, the putti, the leopards. In short, I loved all of it.

The writer in me kept wondering if the people who inhabited this opulent labyrinth ever felt as happy as the mythological figures painted on their ceiling. I wager that the walls of this palace saw more tears and worry than laughter and joy. Such is the way of power and circumstance. Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps the room behind the “audience room” was a place where people could let their hair down and frolic.

The Acadian lovers are joyous for all time and now they give people from all over the world pleasure. Little did the Bourbon kings know that their masterful palace would one day serve to delight those they would consider beneath them. This room truly made my day…as did the gardens, more on that in the next post.

The ceiling of the Autumn Room, defined in the inventory notes as the “room behind the audience room”, was painted by Antonio de Dominicis (1734-1794) with The meeting between Bacchus and Ariadne. The painted lintels and decoration above the mirrors were painted by Gaetano Starace (second half of the eighteenth century) and depict, from the left: Ceres, Allegory of Diana, Vulcan, Allegory of Saturn, Juno, Allegory of Apollo, Neptune and Allegory of Mars. The furnishings comprise four large mirrors and three consoles with tops in Vitulano marble. The engraving work and the wooden and lead paneling which frames the walls of the room were created by Gennaro Fiore (second half of the eighteenth century), whilst the gilding and the painting of the ends were done by Bartolomeo di Natale (documented in Caserta in the 1880s).

The central medallion depicts the scene of the meeting between Bacchus, god of wine, and Ariadne, daughter of Minos, King of Crete. With the legendary ball of thread, Ariadne saved Theseus from the Minotaur in the labyrinth of Crete, but subsequently, abandoned by Theseus on the island of Naxos, she became the wife of Bacchus. In the lower part of the ceiling are scenes of Arcadian love between satyrs and maenads. The decoration in the form of garlands and tendrils that links them is the work of Giacomo Funaro (active in the royal apartments between 1780 and 1781).