Museo di Roma

Museo di Roma

Palazzo Braschi, home of the museum
Location within Rome
Established 1930 (1930)
Location Piazza di S. Pantaleo 10, 00186 Roma 00186
Coordinates 41°53′50″N 12°28′22″E / 41.8973°N 12.4729°E / 41.8973; 12.4729Coordinates: 41°53′50″N 12°28′22″E / 41.8973°N 12.4729°E / 41.8973; 12.4729
Type Art museum
Website museodiroma.it

The Museo di Roma is a museum in Rome, Italy, part of the network of Roman civic museums. The museum was founded in the Fascist era with the aim of documenting the local history and traditions of the "old Rome" that was rapidly disappearing, but following many donations and acquisitions of works of art is now principally an art museum. The collections included originally 120 water-colours by the nineteenth-century painter Ettore Roesler Franz of Roma sparita, "vanished Rome",[1] now hosted at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere.[2]

History

Façade of the Pastificio Pantanella, former home of the museum, on Piazza Bocca della Verità

The museum was founded by the then director of the Antichità e Belle Arti ("antiquities and fine arts department") of the government of Rome, the art historian Antonio Muñoz. It was the first civic museum of the city.[3]:190 It was initially housed in the Pastificio Pantanella in Piazza Bocca della Verità, a large former pasta factory overlooking the Circo Massimo in the via dei Cerchi, in the Ripa rione of the city. The factory building also housed the Museo dell'Impero Romano, and was renamed "Palazzo dei Musei". The Museo di Roma opened on 21 April 1930; Muñoz was its first director.[4] When the Second World War began in 1939, the museum closed.[1]

The museum re-opened only in 1952, in a new political climate and in a new location at Palazzo Braschi, a Neoclassical palace near Piazza Navona, built in the early years of the nineteenth century by Luigi Braschi Onesti, which since 1949 had already housed the new Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna.[5][6]:210

Collections

The collection of the museum was at first intended only to illustrate and document the past.[6]:209 Thanks to numerous bequests, donations and acquisitions – among them a collection of some 5000 drawings, engravings and old illustrated books belonging to Antonio Muñoz – the holdings of the museum now include many works of art, and it has become primarily an art museum. Artists represented include Felice Giani, Pompeo Batoni, Antonio Canova, Francesco Mochi, Giuseppe Bottani, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari, Joshua Reynolds, Giuseppe Ceracchi, Pietro Labruzzi, Lievin Cruyl, Nicola Salvi (designer of the Trevi Fountain), Bartolomeo Pinelli, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Ippolito Caffi.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Storia del Museo (in Italian). Museo di Roma. Accessed January 2016.
  2. La Collezione (in Italian). Museo di Roma in Trastevere. Accessed January 2016.
  3. Joshua Arthurs (2009). Roma Sparita: Local identity and Fascist Modernity at the Museo di Roma. In: Donatella Calabi, Paola Marini, Carlo M. Travaglini (2009). I musei della città. Roma: Università Roma Tre. Città e storia 3 (1/2). ISBN 9788883681066. p. 189–200.
  4. Raffaella Catini (2012). Muñoz, Antonio (in Italian). Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, volume 77. Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana. Accessed January 2016.
  5. Storia del museo (in Italian). Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna. Accessed January 2016.
  6. 1 2 Mihaela Ilie, Carlo M. Travaglini (2009). Per un museo-laboratorio della città a Roma: Note su una vicenda incompiuta (in Italian). In: Donatella Calabi, Paola Marini, Carlo M. Travaglini (2009). I musei della città. Roma: Università Roma Tre. Città e storia 3 (1/2). ISBN 9788883681066. p. 201–224.

Media related to Museo di Roma a Palazzo Braschi at Wikimedia Commons

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, January 18, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.