The known history of the palace dates back to 1685 when the Counts Bosi or Buosi gave it to the Counts Guicciardi, producers of silks, who had it restored by the architect Giovanni Maria Ferraroni (Reggio Emilia 1662-1755). On the 21 of June 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte visited Reggio, escorted by two hundred dragons, he was housed in the palace and slept on the second floor on the Via Emilia. The building was sold again in 1830 to the Counts Spalletti-Trivelli (producers of fine silks), who entrusted it to the architect Pietro Marchelli (Reggio Emilia 1806-1874) for a careful embellishment and modernization according to late-Neoclassical standards, however, leaving unchanged the eighteenth-century facade. Prospero Minghetti had the commission of an important pictorial cycle in this palace and frescoed the ceiling of the Hall of the Muses, a square room with Euterpe, Calliope, Erato and Clio. The figures are inserted in hexagonal lunettes arranged at the four corners of the room and are interspersed with rectangular squares with other female figures; at the center of the ceiling there is a rather simple rose window in two-tonedrhombus. The overall setting is centered on the muses that emerge thanks to the beautiful workmanship of painting and color rendering. The artist often inserted himself in interventions managed by Marchelli and it seems that this work is a summation of his pictorial skills acquired in the Roman training and experiences: he proposes different themes and stylistic characteristics. The first intervention is the large ceiling with Apollo and the procession of the Hours and Aurora that refers to Roman Reni with a full perspective sky typically of the eighteenth century. Room of Bacchus, the Cupids and that of the Muses. About 1830. These rooms are pictorial supports in which Minghetti takes care of circumscribing the subjects and actions, outlines them with geometric elements, only the most important panels, in the center of ceilings and lunettes, host the true painted scenes, allegories or mythological fables.  We are faced with an evolved capacity of spatial organization transposed to painting. The doors do not have the fruit-growers already seen in other buildings but large vases with sunflower flowers and leaves. Vincenzo Carnevali could be, lacking sure documentation, the one who realized some decorative furnishings, similar to those of Palazzo Trivelli: the proposition of external architectures with Corinthian lodges and trunks of the columns with polychrome marble, The metal balustrade richly worked with a lot of drapes leaning, the sky horizon that gives ample breath to the composition, seen in the distance everything would make you think of an intervention. The palace is home to the Credito Emiliano which has collected in the rooms a valuable collection of Emilian paintings including the Satyr with nymph by Giuseppe Maria Crespi, La Deposizione by Alessandro Tiarini, L'Ecce Homo by Guido Reni and the Sibilla Cimmeria by Guercino. In the foundations there are remains of a Roman building. It is open to the public one day in October.

(by Arch. Rosaria Petrongari, December 2011)