The chamber was added to the main body of the building in the years immediately following 1507 when the palace’s longitudinal body was finished. Leaning on the patrol path below and on the perimeter walls of the 16th century city, it overlooked the lake panorama that surrounded the Te island at the time. It takes its name from the Gonzaga emblem – the Brevi – painted in the centre of the pavilion vault resting on lunettes and corbels. A breve was understood to be a letter or, more frequently, a note, a strip of paper or parchment that could bear writings.
An eye of heaven is painted in the centre of the vault, where a deck of loose cards are thrown into the chamber, swirling around showing alternately a yellow and a blue side. The emblem of the Brevi, or Polizze, as also evidenced by the heraldic colours, yellow and blue of the Este family, belonging to Isabella d’Este, an element that supports the hypothesis that the room was decorated, together with the adjacent room of the Arrows, after the death of Francesco II in 1519.
