Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

The loan of the seventeenth-century work launches the collaboration between the two institutions - Photos of the transfer from the Castle

Milan, July 11 2022 – The famous Settala Automaton, the wooden demon with moving parts kept at the Sforzesco Castle, will be the protagonist of the exhibition "The red corridor", curated by Giovanni Agosti and Jacopo Stoppa, commissioned by Triennale Milano for the 23rd International Exhibition "Unknown unknowns. An introduction to mysteries". The Automaton was transferred in recent days from the Museum of Furniture and Wooden Sculptures of the Sforzesco Castle to the Triennale Milano, where it will remain on loan until the end of October.

The exhibition, with the installation by Margherita Palli and the lighting consultancy by Pasquale Mari, will be inaugurated on 15 July, the start date of the International Exhibition. The Settala Automaton, built in the seventeenth century and belonging to Manfredo Settala, canon of San Nazaro and passionate collector of marvels, was in its time an object of wonder: it was used by its creator to surprise his guests to the point of fright, thanks to a refined mechanism that set the eyes, tongue and head in motion.

The loan of the work is the first step in the ongoing collaboration between the Municipality of Milan, Castello Sforzesco and Triennale Milano, signed with a memorandum of understanding between the institutions, to develop synergistic projects that will be implemented during this year and next neighbor, through public meetings, exchange of works and mutual valorization.

"The partnership with Triennale Milano – declares the Councilor for Culture Tommaso Sacchi – strengthens the ties with an institution very close to the Castello Sforzesco, which sees in its Museum of Decorative Arts a collection that is complementary in many ways to that of the Triennale. A journey , that of the Castle, constantly updated with the contemporary production of decorative art, to be visited together with the Triennale design proposal during the next International Exhibition".

"We are really happy to strengthen the collaboration with the Municipality of Milan – states Stefano Boeri, President of Triennale Milano –, which has always been our reference interlocutor, and with a prestigious institution such as the Castello Sforzesco. Triennale increasingly looks to the city of Milan and its excellences by establishing a synergistic dialogue with its cultural realities with the aim of proposing a widespread offer throughout the city, which allows increasingly wider audiences to discover or rediscover our institutions, and thus create integrated and complementary paths ".