Sala delle Asse, detail of Monochrome

In a letter dated 21st April 1498, the secretary Gualtiero da Bascapè informed the duke Ludovico maria Sforza called il Moro that Leonardo da Vinci had promised to complete by the following September the decoration of the Sala delle Asse, a large room in the north-east corner of the Castle, at the feet of the Falconiere tower. Leonardo’s decorative design, on which collaborators may have assisted, was for a great pergola of mulberries, starting from large trees painted along the walls that grew upwards to the vault in a close tangle of branches and golden cords, woven in complicated knots of great elegance. On the vault are cartouches bearing inscriptions that record, in chronological order, the marriage (1493-94) of Ludovico il Moro’s niece, Bianca Maria Sforza, to the Emperor Maximilian, the investiture of Ludovico as duke (1495) and, lastly, his journey (1496) with Beatrice to request help from Maximilian in the war against Charles VIII. The fourth cartouche, now illegible, recorded the victory of Louis XII, king of France, over Ludovico il Moro. In the centre is a shield quartered with the arms of the Sforza and Este families. On the room’s northern walls is a large area of preparatory drawing known as the Monochrome, depicting the powerful roots of a mulberry tree working their way into the ground and, with overwhelming strength, breaking up the square-shaped rocks and boulders. This illusionistic composition framed the mouth of the great fireplace that existed in the room in Ludovico il Moro’s day. The monochrome drawing covers not only the north-east wall, but also in part the adjoining north-west one, showing the depiction of a fascinating architectural structure with arches, perhaps a side view of a bridge. When the French arrived and the dukedom of Milan was conquered in 1499, Leonardo had to flee the city, probably leaving this work unfinished.
The surprising choice of the mulberry tree, in Italian moro or, in Lombard dialect morone, to decorate Ludovico’s reception hall was a clear reference to his nickname of il Moro, and recalled his role in encouraging the plantation of mulberries, on which Lombardy’s flourishing silk production was based. Also, from a symbolical viewpoint, this tree, defined as sapientissima omnium arborum, was used to celebrate Ludovico’s wise policies and the stability of the dukedom under his governance.
A letter dated 1498 specified that “Lunedì si desarmerà la camera grande da le asse coè da la tore.”– that is to say that the wooden planks on the walls, often used at the time to insulate rooms against cold and damp, would be removed. Based on this element, architect Luca Beltrami, who supervised the complete restoration of Sforza Castle at the end of the nineteenth century and the discovery of Leonard’s decoration, rechristened it the "Sala delle Asse (Room of Planks)". In actual fact, in Ludovico’s time the room was known as la camera detta de’moroni (the mulberry room), as recorded in chapter 20 of Luca Pacioli’s Divina Proporzione (1509).
Over the years, the Sala delle Asse was put to a variety of uses and the decoration was covered over several times with white limewash, often used in the past to disinfect buildings. The polychrome decoration, together with some fragments of the monochrome one, was discovered in the late nineteenth century, during restoration work by Luca Beltrami, also thanks to the important research and stratigraphic investigations carried out by the art historian Paul Müller-Walde. Under Beltrami’s direction, between 1893 and 1902 the painter and restorer Ernesto Rusca completely redid the polychrome decoration of the vault and the lunettes, faithfully following the traces of paintwork found. During restoration work in the 1950s, the restorer Ottemi della Rotta did not entirely remove Rusca’s repainting, but just lightened it. In that period, the Monochrome was completely uncovered and, with its new layout designed by architects’ studio BBPR, was opened for public viewing.
For some time the Monochrome, like the rest of the room’s decoration, had been in a very poor state that not only threatened conservation of the artwork, but also made it difficult to decipher. From 2012, therefore, the 1950s exhibition layout of wooden planks was removed and an important programme began to investigate and analyse the artwork with a view to better understanding and restoring it, in collaboration with the Opificio delle Pietre Dure (a restoration institute in Florence) and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. This led to the urgent restoration of the Monochrome, completed in 2015.