The Milan Modern Art Gallery (Italian: Galleria d’Arte Moderna Milano) is a modern art museum in Milan, in Lombardy in northern Italy. It is housed in the Villa Reale, at Via Palestro 16, opposite the Public Gardens. The collection consists of Italian and European works from the 18th to the 20th centuries.
The museum has works by Francesco Filippini, Giuseppe Ferrari, Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Giovanni Boldini, Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Francesco Hayez, Giovanni Segantini, Giuseppe Pellizza from Volpedo and Antonio Canova, among others. It has received donations from Milanese families including Treves, Ponti, Grassi and Vismara.
History
Villa Belgiojoso was built to a design by Leopoldo Pollack between 1790 and 1796 as the residence of Count Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, returning to Milan after an important career in European diplomacy in the service of the Austrian house. Shortly after it was completed, the Villa passed into the hands of the French, becoming also the residence of the military governor of Milan, Gioacchino Murat, and a sumptuous setting for lunches and dance parties.
In 1804, the Vice President of the Italian Republic, Melzi d’Eril, purchased the Villa from the heirs Belgiojoso to give it to Napoleon, on whose occasion it took the name of “Villa Bonaparte”. In 1806, after having welcomed illustrious guests such as Camillo and Paolina Borghese and Letizia Ramolino, mother of the Emperor, the Villa became the residence of the viceroyal couple formed by Eugene of Beauharnais, adopted son of Napoleon, and by Princess Amalia of Bavaria, who, preferring it to the palace, they promote a great decorative intervention that involves the upper floor.
The story of the Villa, concluded on an artistic level, continues on the historical one parallel to the history of Milan: residence of Marshal Henry of Bellegarde at the dawn of the Restoration; place where the so-called “Peace of Milan” is signed (document with which August 6th 1849 decreed the surrender of the city to Austria in the person of Marshal Radetzky, then governor general of the Lombard kingdom Veneto and in turn inhabitant of the Villa, between 1857 and 1858); residence of Napoleon III. Finally he welcomes Marshal Vaillant, commander of the French army in Italy at the dawn of Unity.
In 1903 the Municipality decided to merge the works donated into a Gallery of Contemporary Art, from 1877 kept in the Salone dei Giardini Pubblici, as an autonomous section, at the Castello Sforzesco. In 1920, when Villa Reale was ceded by the State to the Municipality of Milan, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna found its definitive seat here.
After the Unification the Villa is assigned to the Crown of Italy and enters a long period of relative abandonment. It is only thanks to the transition to the municipal property in 1920 that the important transformation of the historic building began at the headquarters of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan, inaugurated in 1921.
The seat
The Villa Belgiojoso in which the Gallery is located is one of the masterpieces of Neoclassicism in Milan. It was built between 1790 and 1796 as the residence of Count Ludovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso and was designed with elegance and functionality by the Austrian architect Leopoldo Pollack, collaborator of the greatest representative of Lombard Neoclassicism, Giuseppe Piermarini.
When the count died, the large villa was purchased by the government of the Cisalpine Republic to transform it into the Milanese residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was about to become president of the new Italian Republic, of which Milan would be the capital.
Transformed in 1921 into the Milanese modern art collections, Villa Reale offers its visitors an extraordinary experience of continuity between “content” and “container”, reaffirmed after the war by choosing to limit the collection displayed in the villa to the nineteenth century.
Main artists
The value of the exhibited works makes the modern art gallery of Milan internationally known. In its rooms you can admire masterpieces from three main collections: the “Collection of the nineteenth century” by the sculptor Pompeo Marchesi, the “Grassi collection” by Carlo Grassi and the “Vismara Collection” by Giuseppe Vismara. The Grassi and Vismara Collections can be visited thanks to the volunteers for the Cultural Heritage of the Italian Touring Club.
They include works by Andrea Appiani, Francesco Hayez, Francesco Filippini, Giuseppe Amisani, Cherubino Cornienti, Pompeo Marchesi, Tranquillo Cremona, Giovanni Segantini, Federico Faruffini, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Antonio Canova, Daniele Ranzoni, Medardo Rosso, Gaetano Previati, protagonists of Italian and European art history. Masterpieces that, thanks also to twentieth-century collections and donations from other patrons (Gian Giacomo Bolognini, Vittore Grubicy De Dragon), have enriched the Gallery’s artistic heritage over the years.
The rooms of the Villa are also home to works by Paul Cézanne, Giovanni Fattori, Vincent van Gogh, Silvestro Lega, Giovanni Boldini, Édouard Manet, Giacomo Balla, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Umberto Boccioni and other exponents of the twentieth century Italian.
Collection
What makes Milan’s Modern Art Gallery of international stature is the value and quality of the works on display and housed here: Francesco Hayez, Pompeo Marchesi, Andrea Appiani, Tranquillo Cremona, Giovanni Segantini, Federico Faruffini, Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, Antonio Canova, Daniele Ranzoni, Medardo Rosso, Gaetano Previati are some of the important artists present, as they are undisputed protagonists of Art History for both Milan and Italy. Their works represent art as it unfolded from the 18th to 19th centuries, in particular the current that originated in the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and slowly took hold even beyond national borders. Thanks to 20th-century art collectors and donations by some prominent families (Treves, Ponti, Grassi, Vismara, for example), over the years these masterpieces have enriched the Gallery’s art heritage and confirmed its fundamental mission of perpetuating the diffusion of culture. Visitors can admire in the Villa’s halls works by Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Giovanni Boldini, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and other key players on Italy’s 20th-century art scene.
Nineteenth-century Collection
This collection began to take shape in 1861, when lawyer Fogliani – executor for the sculptor Pompeo Marchesi’s will – wished to donate to the City of Milan this artist’s collection made up of celebrated works from Canova to Marchesi himself. This was the first of many donations that would enrich the Municipality with art that, in 1903, would be gathered together in a Contemporary Art Gallery. In fact, starting in 1865 – with Count Gian Giacomo Bolognini’s endowment – up to an important addition in 1902 with works by professors and students from the Brera Fine Arts Academy and Picture Gallery, the modern art collection grew to such an extent it was separated from the ancient art collections. Inaugurated in 1877 in the Public Gardens Hall, the works remained here until 1903 when, with the addition of the National Archeological Museum, a new venue was found in the Sforzesco Castle: the Modern Art Gallery was born that year, as an independent section.
Right from the start, the Gallery, intended for the City, has hosted and enhanced local works and masterpieces thanks to endowments and donations. This bears witness to the expectations and recognition of this Museum on the part of citizens, who are also associated with other institutions: the Society for Fine Arts which, from 1843, purchased on a regular basis from art exhibitions, especially those at Brera. These works were subsequently divided among members and donated to the Gallery.
In 1920, when the State gave Villa Reale to the City of Milan, the Modern Art Gallery found its definitive location. That same year, the collection grew thanks to a donation by Vittore Grubicy De Dragon (with works by Giacomo Campi, Giovanni Carnovali, Giovanni Costa, Tranquillo Cremona, Federico Faruffini, Silvestro Lega, Filippo Palizzi, Gaetano Previati, Daniele Ranzoni, Giovanni Segantini) and, in 1921, with sale by public tender, The Fourth Estate by Pellizza da Volpedo entered the Gallery’s collections.
If for decades Villa Reale co-existed with other institutions (for example, the Naval Museum or as a venue for civil weddings), which limited the growth of its collections, since 2006 it has been the sole and exclusive showcase for the Modern Art Gallery and its activities.
Grassi Collection
This important collection was born from Carlo Grassi’s passion for art and the generous donation to the City of Milan on behalf of his widow, Nedda Mieli, in 1956 with the agreement that the works be displayed in memory of their son Gino, who had died as a volunteer in El-Alamein at the age of eighteen. Carlo Grassi (1886–1950) was an Italian entrepreneur. He was born in Greece and then moved to Cairo in the late 1800s, where he became one of the most well-known producers and traders of tobacco.
He spent long periods in Italy where, besides his homes in Rome and Milan, he had a large villa at Lora, outside Como. When he moved to Italy with his wife in the late 1930s, this would become the main showcase for his impressive art collection. In addition to some refined Asian art objects and paintings from the 14th to 18th centuries, the Grassi Collection boasts an important core of Italian 19th-century works – by Fattori, De Nittis, Boldini, the Milanese Scapigliati, just to name a few – and of Divisionism – by Previati, Segantini, Pellizza da Volpedo. But the collection also presents a vast array of international artists, which was quite uncommon at the time among critics and art dealers who preferred traditional art.
Grassi collected paintings by Manet, Van Gogh, Cézanne, and today these are the only works by these masters found in Milan’s museums. Especially after his move back to Italy, Grassi became quite interested in contemporary Italian painting: also present are avant-garde works – in particular by Boccioni and Balla – and art from between the World Wars – Morandi, De Pisis, Tosi, and many others. The exhibition design by architect Ignazio Gardella is an important example of 1950s Italian museography and was restored in 2014, when the entire itinerary was changed to host, within this space, the Vismara Collection, which had previously been on display on the Gallery’s ground floor.
Vismara Collection
This collection – a small treasure of around forty works – was donated to the Municipality of Milan in 1975, by the wife of the collector, who had recently passed away. Giuseppe Vismara (1903–1975) was one of the numerous businessmen in Milan who resumed and continued, after World War II, the tradition of collecting modern art which had characterized the middle classes of Milan between the wars and which today enriches, thanks to generous donations and bequeaths, some key civic museums.
His passion for art quickly grew, and he was able to visit, during his work trips, many European museums. In 1939, he had a decisive encounter with the art dealer Gino Ghiringhelli, who was in charge of the prestigious Galleria del Milione along with his brother, Peppino. This gallery, located in Brera, in the heart of Milan, was, starting in the 1930s, the focus of avant-garde research and had the most fertile exchange with European art. Besides being his advisor and dealer, Ghiringhelli was helpful in exposing Vismara to new friends among the art crowd. In fact, Vismara often bought their works directly in their studios.
This collection reflects attentive and never banal choices. It is especially unique for some international artists – Modigliani, Dufy, Matisse, and Picasso, among others. As regards Italy, Vismara’s choices were influenced by the criteria of modernity and were informed by international art. Special attention (quite uncommon for a Milanese collector) was given to artists from the so-called Ca’ Pesaro group, with quite rare presences for collections of the time, like Gino Rossi and Pio Semeghini. Other choices by Vismara are also in line with this and were often in contrast with much Italian art at the time, which was more related to tradition: this is how we may interpret the works of Filippo De Pisis, Giorgio Morandi, and the late paintings of Mario Sironi. The selection of Italian artists finally culminates with another “irregular” artist – Arturo Tosi, Giuseppe Vismara’s close friend.
Since 2014, the Vismara Collection has been on display on the second floor of Villa Reale, alongside the Grassi Collection, the installation of which was designed in the 1950s by the architect Ignazio Gardella and is today totally restored. Both collections, similar in their preference for international artists and avant-garde choices, can be admired in a space that heightens their modernity and elegance.
Main works
Pictorial works
Francesco Hayez
Penitent Magdalene, 1833
Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni, 1841
Portrait of Matilde Juva Branca, 1851
Portrait of the Countess Antonietta Negroni Prati Morosini girl, 1858
Giovanni Segantini
The two mothers, 1889
The angel of life, 1894
Love at the Source of Life, 1896
Giacomo Balla
Expansion by speed (Car speed), 1913-14
Softness of spring, 1918
Giuseppe De Nittis
Breakfast at Posillipo, 1878
La femme aux pompons, 1879
Francesco Fidanza
Fire in a sea port, 1798
A snowfall, 1817
Umberto Boccioni
The mother, 1907
Pablo Picasso
Tête de femme (La Mediterranée), 1957
Paul Gauguin
Vaches à l’abreuvoir, 1885
Women of Tahiti, 1891
Vincent van Gogh
Breton women, 1888
Édouard Manet
Mr. Arnaud on horseback, 1875
Francesco Filippini
La Grande Marina, 1875
Paul Cézanne
The thieves and the donkey, 1869
Andreas Achenbach
Marina agitated under a stormy sky, 1853
Sunset after a storm in Porto Venere in the Gulf of La Spezia, 1857
Sculptural works
Camillo Pacetti, Minerva infuses the soul with the automaton of Prometheus, 1806
Bertel Thorvaldsen, Cenotaph to the Countess Anna Maria Porro Lambertenghi, 1818
Antonio Canova, Erma di Vestale, 1818
Innocenzo Fraccaroli, wounded Achilles, 1842
Giovanni Strazza, Ismaele abandoned in the desert, 1844
Giovanni Maria Benzoni, Amore e Psiche, 1845
Pompeo Marchesi, Venere, 1855
Alessandro Puttinati, Masaniello, (1846)
Francesco Barzaghi, Frine, circa 1863
Filippo Biganzoli, Laudomia, 1865
Vincenzo Vela, Flora, 1882
Adolfo Wildt, Vir Temporis Acti (Ancient Man), 1914
Architecture
The Villa, designed by Leopoldo Pollack, is a three-storey building with two lower advanced wings that define a court of honor. This is screened on via Palestro by a wall covered with protruding bosses, elegantly marked by access arches and niches.
In the Villa there are two main facades, of which, however, the second one is hidden from view because facing the rear garden, which is the most important from the artistic and figurative point of view. On the ground floor, the first façade hosts three ashlar arches (repeated on all four sides of the courtyard) surmounted by four columns that continue visually into the four sculptures of the balustrade. The columns of the facade on the garden are instead supported, like a base, by an entirely rusticated ground floor. A balustrade, surmounted by statues of classical divinities, runs along the whole attic, between the large tympanums of the two lateral overhanging bodies. On all the windows on the first floor and on some of the ground floor there is the large figurative mythological cycle designed by Giuseppe Parini.
The rational and modular scanning of the surfaces, the very small overhang of the architectural scores and the presence of bas-reliefs give the Villa its unmistakable elegant and controlled character, mindful of Piermaran wisdom and well representative of the neoclassical aesthetic. Illustrative works of this cultural age besides the Villa are the Greppi, Belgiojoso and Serbelloni palaces, the rebuilding of the Royal Palace, Villa Reale in Monza and the Teatro alla Scala.
The design rationality that characterizes the exterior of the Villa Reale is reflected in the modernity of the interiors, distributed in a functional way and responding to the most up-to-date needs of social life, including air heating and an elegant bathroom with English-style toilets, mentioned even in the diary of the Marchioness Margherita Sparapani Gentili Boccapaduli, cultured traveling companion of Alessandro Verri.
Decorative apparatus
Completed at the building level between 1790 and 1793, Villa Belgiojoso is interested for another three years by the realization of a complex decorative cycle, which regards both its facades and its rooms.
The two fronts of the Villa are embellished by a large number of statues and reliefs of mythological subject, designed by the neoclassical poet Giuseppe Parini and sculpted by the same workers of the facade of the Cathedral. At the same time, the rooms on the ground floor are decorated with the imaginative ornamental motifs of Giocondo Albertolli, former collaborator of Piermarini in the decorative projects of Palazzo Reale and Villa Reale in Monza.
The interior decoration of the first floor dates back to the following decade, expressive of the change of taste in the era of Napoleonic Neoclassicism and culminating in the famous fresco by Andrea Appiani, the Parnassus.
The luxurious image of Villa Reale is completed by precious period furnishings that underline its scenic value.
Exterior decoration
On all the windows of the main floor of the facade dominating the garden, as well as on some of the ground floor and on the three central façades on the courtyard, there is the figurative cycle of bas-reliefs conceived, at both a content and formal level, by Giuseppe Parini.
The poet, one of the first spokespersons of Neoclassicism, is called by the client to create an iconographic program of mythological character that underlines its nobility, generosity and conviviality (see below the list of reliefs).
For the translation of the contents into images it is very probable that Parini made use of the painter Giuliano Traballesi, in the role of coordinator of the team of sculptors already engaged in the prestigious building site of the façade of the Duomo: Donato Carabelli, Cesare Ribossi, Andrea da Casareggio, Grazioso Rusca, Carlo Pozzi and Angelo Pizzi.
In addition to the reliefs, interspersed with the Ionic columns that mark the two facades, the cycle includes thirty statues of classical divinities, which stand out on the balustrades of the attic in correspondence of the columns themselves. Chrono, Cybele, Vesta and Pluto are visible from the entrance to the court of honor. On the side of the garden, from the center to the left, one can see Juno, Apollo, Neptune, Minerva, Bacchus, Ganymede, Iris, Pomona, Pan, Naiad, Silenus, Bacchante and Sleep, and from the center to the right, Jupiter, Venus, Cupid, Amphitrite, Mars, Ceres, Mercury, Hebe, Flora, Zefiro, Silvano, Amore and Cefalo. The balustrade runs between the two large gables of the lateral bodies, in turn decorated with the motifs of the Chariot of the Day and the Chariot of the Night.
Ground floor decoration
The stucco decoration of the rooms on the ground floor is made by Giocondo Albertolli in 1796, an extraordinary originator and spokesman for the taste of the Austrian aristocracy. Its elegant decorative motifs, enhanced by delicate color contrasts, alternate elements of pure adorned with figurative inserts such as griffins, eagles and sphinxes, in addition to the emblems of Belgiojoso. The creative wisdom of the Albertolli rests on a solid knowledge, filtered by French culture, of refined sixteenth-century masters like Giulio Romano and Polidoro da Caravaggio. Reference to classical culture is also the choice to stick to the principles of Vitruvian rationalism, which establishes the relationship of subordination of the ornament to architecture and the function of the environments.
First floor decoration
Designed in the Napoleonic period, the interiors of the upper floor are made with pomp and celebratory intent opposed to the sobriety of the aesthetics of Villa Belgiojoso.
In the Ballroom and in the Dining Room (rooms XV and XVII of the Museum) carved doors, chimneys surmounted by mirrors, crystal chandeliers and walls filled with white and gilded ornamental elements mark the turning point towards the emphatic taste of Napoleonic Neoclassicism. The stuccoes with mythological scenes by Grazioso Rusca, already author of the facades, can also be seen on the tops of the Sala da Ballo and in the large lunettes of the Dining Room.
The center of the ceiling of the Dining Room is dominated by the famous fresco by Andrea Appiani. Painted in 1811 to complete the Napoleonic decorative cycle, the Parnassus depicts Apollo surrounded by the Melpomene, Urania, Talia, Erato, Euterpe, Tersicore, Clio, Polimnia and Calliope muses. This work allows Appiani, with the iconographic support of the Greek scholar Luigi Lamberti, to confront himself with the theme already dealt with by Raphael in the sixteenth century and reinterpreted in the eighteenth century by Anton Raphael Mengs. Characterized in terms of style by smooth effects, velvety colors, abundance of chiaroscuro and minute details, the fresco contrasts the very idea of “fresco” painting, generally linked to a greater abstraction imposed by the speed of execution on the plaster.
Furnishings
Moved largely in France and replaced with furniture and services of the Villa di Monza, the furnishings of Villa Belgiojoso dating back to the Austrian period are now almost completely absent, except for some consoles and sumptuous chandeliers, personally desired by Count Belgiojoso.
Valuable furniture and furnishings in Empire Style, including clocks, carpets, large mirrors, silverware and high-quality pottery, are purchased by the Viceroy Eugenio di Beauharnais and his wife Amalia, in the logic of completing the decoration of the building. An early nineteenth-century travel journal attests to the presence in the Villa of some highly modern objects such as a musical sofa and a secrétaire, ingeniously designed to defend the precious objects preserved in it. The acquisition continues also after the Unification of Italy with the Savoys, new owners and protagonists of a conspicuous campaign of purchase of antique furniture: about two hundred pieces of neoclassical taste, in full respect of the style of the rooms.
After the end of the First World War, when the Villa was ceded to the State Property Office, the furniture was partly used for the Milan Museum of Applied Arts and partly dispersed among various public bodies.
Garden
The English garden of the Villa, the first in Milan, is one of the reasons for greater admiration and novelty for contemporary visitors to its realization. Designed by commission of Count Belgiojoso by architect Leopoldo Pollack with the collaboration of Count Ercole Silva, the garden recreates a natural landscape where the vegetation, reclaiming the vestiges of history, reveals ancient ruins.
In the center the pond is designed so as to never allow its unified vision, so as to influence the observer’s imagination, while the natural and romantic forms of the garden are perfectly integrated with the classic and rational character of the building exalting each other.