The Dining Room
This is unquestionably one of the most distinctive rooms in the entire villa in terms of interior decoration. The woodwork of large panelling produced by Giulio Ometto for Cerruti’s family residence on Via Enrico Cialdini in Turin was installed here during the refurbishment in the 1980s. The original Provençal style of the dining room, still visible in the small kitchen to the rear, thus gave way to a look more in line with the new 18th-century appearance assumed by the villa as a whole.
It is on the mirrored walls, which reflect light from the outside to expand the space illusionistically, that most of the paintings by Giorgio de Chirico are displayed. Built up over the years, not least through the advice of Cerruti’s friend the art historian Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, this extraordinary collection consists of ten drawings and paintings. Eight of these are in the dining room, which is the only part of the entire villa devoted to the work of a single artist.
Esoteric juxtapositions are to be found here too. It is probably not by chance that the Autoritratto con la propria ombra (Self-Portrait with one’s own Shadow, c. 1920), one of the paintings in which occult overtones are most readily discernible, should be placed above one of the two late 18th-century console tables inspired by Piranesi and previously owned by the medium and painter Gustavo Rol, another friend of the collector.
The wall to the right presents three Metaphysical interiors from De Chirico’s Ferrara period – Composizione metafisica (Metaphysical Composition, 1916), Interno metafisico (con dolci ferraresi) (Metaphysical Interior – with Ferrarese cakes), 1917) and Interno metafisico (con faro) (Metaphysical Interior – with Lighthouse), 1918) – and a version of the Trovatore (The Troubadour) dated 1922. Hanging opposite them are Muse metafisiche (Metaphysical Muses, 1918), the Autoritratto con la propria ombra, Il saluto degli argonauti partenti (Greetings of the Departing Argonauts, 1920) and Due cavalli (Two Horses, 1927).
