The wooden ceiling that now adorns the Pinacoteca di Faenza’s Manfredi Room is divided into three bays by the presence of two long beams resting on carved corbels. A series of rafters perpendicular to the two large beams and resting on them supports the pannelling. The space between the rafters is occupied by sixty-six brightly painted panels, while the pannelling is fitted with a perpendicular network of laths also decorated with geometrical motifs.
The panels display a vast repertoire of images on solid colour grounds embellished with sinuous, threadlike decorations. The images show a number of coats-of-arms associated with the lordship of Faenza, some of them borne by pairs of putti. They include the Manfredi family arms (quarter or and azure) as well as the escutcheon with a flowering palm tree that was Galeotto’s own heraldic device, and the red saw on a gold ground that was the device of the Bentivoglio family of Bologna. This latter coat-of-arms alludes to the marriage of Galeotto Manfredi to Francesca Bentivoglio in 1482, a marriage that ended tragically in 1488 when Galeotto was assassinated in a plot devised by a group of conspirators that included his own wife. In the view of Anna Tambini (2009, p. 223), the ceiling should therefore be dated to a moment falling between those two years. Another allusion to the figure of Galeotto is his personal Latin motto “IUSTUS UT PALMA FLOREBIT” depicted in a scroll (ibid.), along with other mottoes that can also be associated with him (the Saxon words “WAN ICH MACH” and its Italian translation “FARO’ QUANTO PUR SPERO”, ibid.). Equally worthy of note is the singular presence of the christological monogram IHS, popularised in the 15th century by the sermons of St. Bernardino of Siena, who was accustomed to displaying an escutcheon bearing those letters for the veneration of his listeners (ibid. p. 224). The Latin motto “PAX [H]UIC DOMUI”, or “Peace upon this household” (ibid.) is also of a religious nature.
The most striking aspect, however, is the multifarious bestiary depicted on the majority of the panels, which includes real animals (lions, dolphins, hounds hunting stags or hares), monsters (turtle-men, dragons, grotesque masks with horns of plenty issuing from their mouths) and mythological creatures (centaurs). In addition to these, there are also putti riding on dolphins or playing horns, and in more than one instance we see pairs of lovers in profile elegantly attired in late 15th century costume.
Before entering the Pinacoteca in 1921 and being installed in the Manfredi Room on the instructions of Francesco Malaguzzi Valeri (Casadei 1991), the ceiling graced a house in Corso Saffi in Faenza (Tambini 2009, p. 231, n. 17). A number of additions and alterations were made during reassembly (Casadei 1991; Tambini 2009, p. 231, n. 17). Tambini has suggested that the house from which the ceiling came may well have been the home and workshop recorded in the Parish of Santa Maria in Broilo that a deed tells us Galeotto Manfredi purchased in 1486 before offering it as a gift to his barber Jacopo da Ferrara. If this is true, Tambini argues, it would explain the presence of so many heraldic symbols and devices alluding to Galeotto and his family. She also remarks that some of the panels bear a crest bearing the letters “AN” surmounted by a cross. This kind of emblem, she reminds us (ibid. p. 224), referred to individuals and was often used by notaries and members of the mechant classes. Unfortunately, in this particular instance, scholars have not yet been able with any certainty to associate the letters with a name, which might help to shed further light on the circumstances surrounding the ceiling’s commission.
The custom of having the wooden ceilings of aristocratic homes decorated with figured panels appears to have begun in southern France in the 14th century (R. Aglio, I soffitti di Viadana: storie di animali e iconografie lontane, “Vitelliana”, 8, 2013, p. 18; E. Moench-Scherer, Dalle fantasticherie di Clemente VI ai discorsi di potere dei mercanti. Soffitti dipinti in Provenza nel Trecento e nel Quattrocento, in Soffitti lignei. Convegno internazionale di studi, ed. L. Giordano, Pisa 2005, pp. 161-176). The custom began to spread to northern Italy at the turn of that century, proving particularly popular in Lombardy (of crucial importance in this respect is the study by W. Terni de Gregory entitled Pittura artigiana lombarda del Rinascimento, Milan 1981), in the Piedmont (see L. Lavriani, Le tavolette da soffitto nell’Alessandrino: Acqui Terme, Alessandria, Casale, Tortona, Cassine, Castelnuovo Scrivia, Alessandria 2008) and in Friuli-Venezia Giulia (see F. Fratta de Tomas, Soffitti lignei in Friuli fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, Cinisello Balsamo 2019). Though less numerous, several examples are also known in Emilia-Romagna (reviewed by G. Milanesi in Tavolette da soffitto in Emilia: prime riflessioni sui modelli, in Cieli dipinti. Soffitti lignei nell’Europa meridionale fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, international conference proceedings ed. M. d’Arcano Grattoni and F. Fratta de Tomas, Cinisello Balsamo 2022, pp. 59-64), from Reggio Emilia (Palazzo dei Canonici) to Bologna (Museo di Santo Stefano and Museo Civico Medievale), Ferrara (Casa Romei) and Rimini (Museo della città). Anna Tambini (2009, pp. 214-228) has shown that a number of 15th century homes and palazzi in Faenza also possessed such ceilings. In particular, she has discovered analogies between the figures on the ceiling in the Manfredi Room and those on the panels in the lofts of Casa Ragnoli and Casa Bertolazzi, which are also decorated with heraldic symbols and a multifarious bestiary still in a Late Gothic style and close to the bestiaries populating the majolica floors and illuminated books of the time (ibid. pp. 214-222). In certain figures, especially the pair of lovers facing one another, Tambini has also noted an echo of late 15th century painting in Ferrara and Bologna (ibid. pp. 224-225).
It is not known who painted the images on the ceiling now in the Pinacoteca. Decorations of this kind were painted in the workshops of specialist painter-decorators of whom, as we have seen, there can certainly have been no dearth in 15th century Faenza. These workshops dipped freely both into tried and tested iconographical repertoires (such as Late Gothic bestiaries) and into coeval figurative models. The patron commissioning the work unquestionably had a major say in the choice of images, steering the decorators in their stylistic inclinations and ordering specific symbologies designed to impart prestige to such residences and to their owners.
