page_title: Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli
section_title: Building the Museum
hierarchical_section_title: Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli / Building the Museum
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a picture that shows the Black room of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum before the 1943 bombardment
context_page_description: Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli was an Italian count who gathered art from Italian Renaissance and left Italy one of the first private museum which bears his name, the Museo Poldi Pezzoli.
context_section_description: Gian Giacomo, between 1850 and 1853, had Giuseppe Balzaretto build a new block to his house, twin to his seventeenth-century family mansion in 'the Garden lane' (now Via Manzoni). His repeated stays in Paris allowed him to visit the new Musée des Thermes et de l'Hotel de Cluny, created by Alexandre du Sommerard. A pioneer of the romantic museum design: a collection not only made up of paintings and statues, but with precious furniture and decorative art, also chosen to evoke an artificial atmosphere of home. The resounding success of this new interpretation of the past and concept of museum gave the idea to Poldi Pezzoli of building a house-museum, which would be among the first and most current examples at European level of the house-museum in historic style, and one that was greatly admired by his contemporaries.
  One of the decisive factors for this decision was the meeting with the young painter and a stained glass artist, Giuseppe Bertini. From 1853 to 1879. Bertini designed every room of the house in an historicist style, assisted by the painter Luigi Scrosati, the bronze worker Giuseppe Speluzzi and sculptor Lorenzo Vela. Through this meeting the most beautiful rooms of the museum were born, Dante's Cabinet in the style of Italian fourteenth century, the black room in the Northern Renaissance style, the Hall of stucco rococo, baroque staircase and finally the Golden Room.
  In this way Poldi Pezzoli supported and safeguarded for over two decades the civic arts and crafts. From the Fifties the house Poldi became a construction site where the Milanese contemporary decorative arts promoted a model of Italian excellence in Europe, distinguished by a careful study based on observation of the techniques of the past, whose works progressively enriched the apartment.
  Giacomo Poldi put all his civic passion also in the establishment of a museum dedicated to the ancient Italian art in which stood out paintings of the Tuscan school, Umbria, Veneto, Emilia, Manifesto of a national cultural unity which anticipated the creation of the country.
caption: This picture shows the Black room of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum before the 1943 bombardment
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