The hall of games

While Alfonso II, who succeded his father Ercole in 1559, was promoting the Castle conversion from fortress to residential palace, a frightening earthquake (1570) forced him to undertake new restoration and recontruction works, among which the replacing of the brick structure sustaining the loft in the three halls of honour with a lighter and more flexible wooden support. The decoration should date after 1570, the pictorial surface having not been damaged.
The authors of the frescoes - whose authorship of the ceiling decoration is now almost hunanimously unquestioned - were Sebastiano Filippi called Bastianino Ferrara 1532 ca.-1602), Ludovico Settevecchi (Modena 1520?-Ferrara 1590) and Leonardo da Brescia (active since 1556 and dead in 1598), with the exception of the scene depicting The Throwing of the Discus, which challenges a definite interpretation owing to a subsequent intervention, was assigned to a lesser personality.