The core of paintings in this collection, one of the greatest expressions of Arcadian culture, which was extremely popular in 1700s Milan, became part of the Archbishopric collections in 1783, on the death of Cardinal Giuseppe Pozzobonelli (1696-1783). In his will he requested that the collection not be split up, since it can be considered unitary for date and iconography: the works all depict Arcadian subjects, landscapes and views with figures, in Roman, Veneto, Lombard, and, to a lesser extent, Tuscan, Neapolitan and Flemish, scenarios, all datable late 1600s-1770s.