| |
"... THE INTENTION WAS NOT to produce a museum or a collection
but to reconstruct an elegant dwelling-place of round the mid-1500s containing
all sorts of 15th- and 16th-century objects: pictures, tapestries, carpets,
furniture, arms, ceramics, bronzes, glasswares, jewellery, ironwares and
domestic utensils of varying quality, gathered together with meticulous care.
And these pieces were put into everyday use once again".
THIS IS HOW Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi qualified his description of
the rich assortment of artworks and artefacts he had collected with his brother
Fausto. In their house,
Renaissance paintings like the Christ the Redeemer by Giampietrino
or the Madonna and Child by Ambrogio Bevilacqua were hung beside beautifully
crafted furnishings: 15th-century cassoni and trunks fashioned from punched
leather, Flemish tapestries, cabinets of various shapes and sizes, wooden
tables and chairs with intarsia or intaglio decorations.
THE RICHNESS and variety of the collections is revealed in each and
every room. Gilded pastiglia boxes, maiolica wares from the most prestigious
Italian factories, 16/17th-century Venetian crystal glasswares, sundials
carved from ivory, antique musical instruments are just some of the pieces
distributed throughout the palazzo.
|
|
