Bassano’s Civic Museum

Type:

Luoghi della cultura; Ente/Istituzione

Category:

Art museums

Bassano’s Civic Museum is one of the most ancient museums in Veneto. Housed in the former Franciscan monastery, its first collection dated 1840, when the naturalist Giambattista Brocchi donated some natural history collections (herbaria, mineralogical, malacological, entomological) and books. Also, he gave some paintings, from churches and monastery demolited in the Napoleonic period, which had already been placed in the Cloister of San Francesco since 1831. Over time, the entire heritage has been exceptionally enriched and can now be admired in the various sections: the archaeological one (with finds from the Paleo-Venetian, Magno-Greek, Roman and Medieval periods), the picture gallery (with paintings from the 13th to the 20th centuries) and the Cloister ( with lapidary of stones, coats of arms, inscriptions, tombstones and architectural fragments from the 13th century onwards). The Civic Museum houses the largest collection of works by Jacopo Bassanoand his flourishing workshop. Three generations of painters who have marked the history of Italian art and who have made Bassano del Grappa a center of artistic production of excellence at the turn of the sixteenth century. A few meters from these paintings, there's the wing dedicated to Antonio Canovawhere, among the plasters and busts, are the protagonists monochromes, drawings on canvas with few lines and simple backgrounds, the ultimate result of his artistic expression. The archaeological section, the result of donations and important legacies, collects ceramics from the ninth century BC, small sculptures, jewelry, precious stones, coins and objects of use, evidence of local antiquity alongside an archaeology of international value. The Civic Museum also houses the medieval section, where the famous crucifix by Guariento is the undisputed protagonist, and the sections dedicated to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with pieces by authors including Giambattista Tiepolo, Artemisia Gentileschi and Alessandro Magnasco. In the rooms dedicated to the nineteenth century are exposed the small portrait of Francesco Hayez and the beautiful view of the city seen from the river Brenta by Roberto Roberti.