Giuseppe Acerbi Egyptian Collection, Palazzo Te

On permanent display at Palazzo Te, the Egyptian Collection comprises over 500 pieces brought to Italy by the distinguished Mantuan Giuseppe Acerbi, Austrian Consul General in Egypt from1826 to 1834.

The collection also includes Acerbi’s travel notes, two other pieces already in the Accademia di Scienze e Belle Lettere at the end of the 18th century, and the sarcophagus of Ankhekhonsu from Bergamo Archaeological Museum, on temporary loan.

Thanks to clear explanations of the pieces and their historical context the display caters for a wide public.

Of particular interest among the wide range of items collected by Acerbi is the large bronze head of queen Arsinoe, various amulets of animals and deities, shuebte – small figurines that served to replace the deceased person and do their work in the kingdom of the dead, Canopic alabaster vases and a bronze statue of a cat which is one of the finest and best proportioned in existence.

The wooden Ankhekhonsu sarcophagus was intended for an Amon priest from ancient Thebes.

Stylistically typical of the Third Intermediary Period (1178-715BC), the inscriptions on the cover are dedicated to various deities and include a plea for funerary offerings on behalf of the deceased.

The Egypt of Giovanni Acerbi
The Giovanni Acerbi (Castelgoffredo 1773, Castelgoffredo 1846) collection is one of the most important Egyptian collections in Italy. Acerbi was a man of many interests who lived an adventurous life: his political career lead him to become Consul of Austria in Lisbon; his literary career to become director of the periodical “Biblioteca Italiana”. However his main passion was traveling: as a young man he visited the Scandinavian regions, where he reached North Cape. Most of his life was however centered around Egypt: in this ancient land he was appointed Austrian consulate in 1862. He took the opportunity to develop his passion for archaeology and to study the ancient culture of the Pharaohs, by collecting materials and traveling through northern Egypt, journeys he documented in travel journals that are still accessible. Today his finds are kept in various museums, in Milan, Florence, Pavia, Padua.

The main section of the Giovanni Acerbi collection was donated to the Civic Museum of Mantua in 1840. Already at the end of the eighteenth century this museum possessed two Egyptian statues. The donated works became part of the permanent collection in 1925 and were displayed in the halls of Palazzo Ducale; in more recent times they formed the core of the collection belonging to the Museum in Palazzo Te. This beautiful sculpture of a cat is one of the most important items of the collection for its artistic value. Thirty-six centimetres in height, it was shaped with great attention and realism, giving particular emphasis to the musculature and to the noble pose of the head. The cat was a sacred animal in ancient Egypt, and was linked to the goddess Bastet. The work of art dates to the twenty-fifth dynasty, in the Third Intermediate Period after the New Kingdom, characterized by the rule of Nubian sovereigns, descendants of the priests of Amon who had been driven out of Thebes centuries before.

Feminine head
A beautiful bronze head from the Hellenistic era. According to some experts it is the head of Queen Arsinoe the Third, who married her brother Ptolemy the Fourth. According to others, this is the goddess Aphrodite, and the work dates to the years just before the advent of Christ, a hypothesis that is supported mostly by the shape of the hair. The face is very beautiful, also, the missing eyes – glass pearls or gems once filled the sockets – contribute to the overall intensity of the work.

Statue of hawk
This coloured statuette was part of a set of funerary object dating to the New Kingdom of Egypt. It was part of the complex Egyptian religion to surround dead people with a rich ensemble of sacred images that would protect the deceased during their afterlife voyage. The falcon symbolizes the Egyptian god Horus, associated to the sun, son of of Isis and Osiris. Here the eye of the falcon is represented like the sun.

Jar lid
Duamutef was one of the four powerful sons of Horus, the god protecting one of the canopic vases in which the viscera of the dead person were preserved, while the body would have been mummified. This cover represents Duamutef’s head, with the face of a jackal, while the other divinities have falcon, baboon and human features. Traces of black colour are still visible on the artifact.

Palazzo Te
The Palazzo Te is a historic and monumental building in Mantua. a fine example of the mannerist style of architecture, Built between 1524 and 1534 on commission by Federico II Gonzaga, it is the most famous work of the Italian architect Giulio Romano. The complex is now home to the civic museum and, since 1990, the International Center for Art and Culture of Palazzo Te which organizes exhibitions of ancient and modern art and architecture.