museum of pIetrO canonica in
villa
borghese
( Museo Pietro
Canonica a Villa Borghese )
The
Museum is housed in the building called "Fortezzuola"
which means small fort.
It was established at the
end of the eighteenth century during restoration
work in Villa Borghese which had been commissioned
by Prince Marcantonio I.
As a result of the passing
of the Villa to the City of Rome at the beginning of
the twentieth century, the building was given in
concession in 1926 to sculptor, painter and
musician Pietro Canonica (Moncalieri 1869 -
Rome
1959), who made it his own home-study: the ground
floor was expanded to accommodate the laboratory,
while the upper floor was furnished with valuable
pieces of furniture, Flemish tapestries and
paintings.
At the time of his death, the artist
gave the City all the works gathered over the years,
so that a museum named after him could be built: in
1960 the artist's collection of sculptures was thus
opened to the public (originals in marble and
bronze, sketches in plaster and terracotta,
life-size models in plaster) mostly inspired by the porta it genre, the favorite field of the artist,
and partly by the commemorative genre with works in
memory of the fallen of the Great Warand funeral
monuments .
Among the many works by the artist
exhibited in the seven rooms of the museum, there
are also the models for the monuments dedicated to
tsars Alexander I and Nicholas 11, these are
particularly interesting in that the originals were
destroyed during the revolution of 1917, the marble
bust of Donna Franca Florio and the
portrait of princess Emily Doria Pamphili, the plaster model of
the equestrian monument to Simon Bolivar.
For
Tours information
– private guided tours – special entrances, no waiting in
line - VIP services
www.tourinrome.com
www.vaticanmuseuminformation.com
www.vaticanmuseumticket.com
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