Musei/Museums (ENG SUB)

A 2019 production dedicated to the great Italian museums. Audio in Italian with English subtitles. The Italian National Museums contain masterpieces of unparalleled beauty and compose timeless stories and languages. In this episode, Fabrizio Bentivoglio tells us about the Brera art gallery. Episode 1: The Pinacoteca di Brera ("Brera Art Gallery") is the main public gallery for paintings in Milan, Italy. It contains one of the foremost collections of Italian paintings from the 13th to the 20th century, an outgrowth of the cultural program of the Brera Academy, which shares the site in the Palazzo Brera. The Palazzo Brera owes its name to the Germanic braida, indicating a grassy opening in the city structure: compare the Bra of Verona. The convent on the site passed to the Jesuits (1572), then underwent a radical rebuilding by Francesco Maria Richini (1627–28). When the Jesuits were disbanded in 1773, the palazzo remained the seat of the astronomical Observatory and the Braidense National Library founded by the Jesuits. In 1774 the herbarium of the new botanical garden was added. The buildings were extended to designs by Giuseppe Piermarini, who was appointed professor in the Academy when it was formally founded in 1776, with Giuseppe Parini as dean. Piermarini taught at the Academy for 20 years, while he was controller of the city's urbanistic projects, like the public gardens (1787–1788) and piazza Fontana (1780–1782). For the better teaching of architecture, sculpture and the other arts, the Academy initiated by Parini was provided with a collection of casts after the Antique, an essential for inculcating a refined Neoclassicism in the students. Under Parini's successors, the abate Carlo Bianconi (1778–1802) and artist Giuseppe Bossi (1802–1807), the Academy acquired the first paintings of its Pinacoteca during the reassignment of works of Italian art that characterized the Napoleonic era. Raphael's Sposalizio (the Marriage of the Virgin) was the key painting of the early collection, and the Academy increased its cultural scope by taking on associates across the First French Empire: David, Pietro Benvenuti, Vincenzo Camuccini, Canova, Thorvaldsen and the archaeologist Ennio Quirino Visconti. The opening of the new "Reale Pinacoteca" was celebrated on 15 August 1809, Napoleon's birthday. The paintings were displayed in three of the four Napoleonic halls with pavilion vaults. Fundamental paintings by Bellini, Mantegna, Carpaccio, Titian, Veronese and Tintoretto had entered the gallery. The Romantic era witnessed the triumph of academic history painting, guided at the Academy by Francesco Hayez, and the introduction of the landscape as an acceptable academic genre, inspired by Williamo's Davias and his more known cousin Giuseppe Bisi, while the Academy moved towards becoming an institution for teaching the history of art. In 1903, the Pinacoteca opened 19 new rooms that allowed the exhibition of over 100 newly acquired works, such as Bramante's frescoes from the Visconti Panigarola house. The Brera Observatory hosted the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli for four decades, and the Orto Botanico di Brera is a historic botanical garden located behind the Pinacoteca. Episode 2: https://rumble.com/v47uq8q-musei-parco-archeologico-di-ercolano-archeological-site-of-herculaneum-epis.html

Episode 2: The Archeological site of Herculaneum (in Italian: Scavi di Ercolano) is the area south of the town centre of modern Ercolano where the Roman town of Herculaneum has been excavated. Herculaneum was destroyed and buried by lava and mud during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79 together with Pompeii, Stabiae and Oplontis. In 1997 the Herculaneum site was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Although Herculaneum was discovered before Pompeii, the excavation was so difficult that it was repeatedly interrupted in favour of the easier excavation of Pompeii. Herculaneum is smaller and less famous than Pompeii, but better preserved due to the different volcanic materials that covered the town. In Herculaneum there are many wooden remains (doors, furniture, beams) and organic goods (fruit, bread, seeds, rope) that were burnt in Pompeii. Many Herculaneum buildings still retain their upper floors either entirely or in part. The excavated area of Herculaneum consists of only one quarter of the entire ancient town because the rest of the site still lies beneath modern Ercolano. The Basilica Pontificia of Santa Maria a Pugliano, in Piazza Pugliano, is the main church of Ercolano and the oldest in town and the area all around Mt. Vesuvius. The Miglio d’Oro is the leg of Corso Resina ( the old Strada Regia per le Calabrie) in Ercolano from the Archeological Site of Herculaneum leading to Torre del Greco where are lined the largest, the finest and the most sumptuous villas designed by the best architects of that time and built in the 18th century by the noble families of the Kingdom of Naples around the Royal Palace of Portici. The most famous are Villa Campolieto, Villa Favorita and Villa Aprile. All the villas had backside gardens and woods, some of them rivaling with the ones of the Royal Palace. Since the time of Roman Herculaneum, the area has attracted famous artists, poets, writers and philosophers. Episode 3: https://rumble.com/v47uv4r-musei-mann-the-national-archaeological-museum-of-naples-episode-3.html

Episode 3: The National Archaeological Museum of Naples (Italian: Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, abbr. MANN) is an important Italian archaeological museum, particularly for ancient Roman remains. Its collection includes works from Greek, Roman and Renaissance times, and especially Roman artifacts from the nearby Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum sites. From 1816 to 1861, it was known as Real Museo Borbonico ("the Royal Bourbon Museum"). The building was built as a cavalry barracks in 1585. From 1616 to 1777 it was the seat of the University of Naples. During the 19th century, after it became a museum, it suffered many changes to the main structure. The museum hosts extensive collections of Greek and Roman antiquities. Their core is from the Farnese Collection, which includes a collection of engraved gems (including the Farnese Cup, a Ptolemaic bowl made of sardonyx agate and the most famous piece in the "Treasure of the Magnificent", and is founded upon gems collected by Cosimo de' Medici and Lorenzo il Magnifico in the 15th century) and the Farnese Marbles. Among the notable works found in the museum are the Menologium Rusticum and the Herculaneum papyri, carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, found after 1752 in Villa of the Papyri. The greater part of the museum's classical sculpture collection largely comes from the Farnese Marbles, important since they include Roman copies of classical Greek sculpture, which are in many cases the only surviving indications of what the lost works by ancient Greek sculptors such as Calamis, Kritios and Nesiotes looked like. A major collection of ancient Roman bronzes from the Villa of the Papyri is housed at the museum. These include the Seated Hermes, a sprawling Drunken Satyr, a bust of Thespis, another variously identified as Seneca or Hesiod, and a pair of exceptionally lively runners. The museum's Mosaic Collection includes a number of important mosaics recovered from the ruins of Pompeii and the other Vesuvian cities. This includes the Alexander Mosaic, dating from c. 100 BC, originally from the House of the Faun in Pompeii. It depicts a battle between the armies of Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia. Another mosaic found is that of the gladiatorial fighter depicted in a mosaic found from the Villa of the Figured Capitals in Pompeii. With 2,500 objects, the museum has one of the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in Italy, smaller only than those in Turin, Florence and Bologna. It is made up primarily of works from two private collections, assembled by Cardinal Stefano Borgia in the second half of the 18th century, and Picchianti in the first years of the 19th. he collection provides an important record of Egyptian civilization from the Old Kingdom (2700-2200 B.C.) up to the Ptolemaic-Roman era. The Secret Cabinet (Gabinetto Segreto) (Gabbinete) or Secret Room is the name the Bourbon Monarchy gave the private rooms in which they held their fairly extensive collection of erotic or sexual items, mostly deriving from excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Access was limited to only persons of mature age and known morals. The rooms were also called Cabinets of matters reserved or obscene or pornographic. After the revolution of 1848, the government of the monarchy even proposed the destruction of objects, fearful of the implications of their ownership, which would tarnish the monarchy with lasciviousness. The then director of the Royal Bourbon Museum instead had access to the collection terminated, and the entrance door was provided with three different locks, whose keys were held respectively by the Director of the Museum, the Museum Controller, and the Palace Butler. The highlight of the censorship occurred in 1851 when even nude Venus statues were locked up, and the entrance walled up in the hope that the collection would vanish from memory. In September 1860, when the forces of Garibaldi occupied Naples, he ordered that the collection be made available for the general public to view. Since the Royal Butler was no longer available, they broke into the collection. Limiting viewership and censorship have always been part of the history of the collection. Censorship was restored during the era of the Kingdom of Italy, and peaked during the Fascist period, when visitors to the rooms needed the permission of the Minister of National Education in Rome. Censorship persisted in the postwar period up to 1967, abating only after 1971 when the Ministry was given the new rules to regulate requests for visits and access to the section. Completely rebuilt a few years ago with all of the new criteria, the collection was finally opened to the public in April 2000. Visitors under the age of 14 can tour the exhibit only with an adult. Episode 4: https://rumble.com/v47v1co-musei-musei-del-barghello-national-museum-of-barghello-episode-4.html

Episode 4: The Bargello, also known as the Palazzo del Bargello or Palazzo del Popolo ("Palace of the People"), is a former barracks and prison in Florence, Italy. Since 1865, it has housed the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, a national art museum. Construction began in 1255. The palace was built to house first the Capitano del Popolo and later, in 1261, the 'podestà', the highest magistrate of the Florence City Council. This Palazzo del Podestà, as it was originally called, is the oldest public building in Florence. This austere crenellated building served as model for the construction of the Palazzo Vecchio. In 1574, the Medici dispensed with the function of the Podestà and housed the bargello, the police chief of Florence, in this building, hence its name. It was employed as a prison; executions took place in the Bargello's yard until they were abolished by Grand Duke Peter Leopold in 1786, but it remained the headquarters of the Florentine police until 1859. When Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor Peter Leopold was exiled, the makeshift Governor of Tuscany decided that the Bargello should no longer be a jail, and it then became a national museum. The original two-story structure was built alongside the Volognana Tower in 1256. The third storey, which can be identified by the smaller blocks used to construct it, was added after the fire of 1323. The building is designed around an open courtyard with an external staircase leading to the second floor. An open well is found in the centre of the courtyard. The Bargello opened as a national museum (Museo Nazionale del Bargello) in 1865, displaying the largest Italian collection of Gothic and Renaissance sculptures (14–17th century). The museum houses masterpieces by Michelangelo, such as his Bacchus, Pitti Tondo (or Madonna and Child), Brutus and David-Apollo. Its collection includes Donatello's David, Amore-Attis and St. George Tabernacle, Vincenzo Gemito's Pescatore ("fisherboy"), Jacopo Sansovino's Bacchus, Giambologna's Architecture and his Mercury and many works from the Della Robbia family. Benvenuto Cellini is represented with his bronze bust of Cosimo I. There are a few works from the Baroque period, notably Gian Lorenzo Bernini's 1636-7 Bust of Costanza Bonarelli. The museum also has a fine collection of ceramics (maiolica), textile, tapestries, ivory, silver, armour and coins. The formerly lost right-hand panel of the Franks Casket is held by the museum. It also features the competing designs for The Sacrifice of Isaac (Sacrificio di Isacco) that were made by Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi to win the contest for the second set of doors of the Florence Baptistery (1401). Honolulu Hale's interior courtyard, staircase, and open ceiling were modeled after the Bargello.

Episode 5: The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica or National Gallery of Ancient Art is an art museum in Rome, Italy. It is the principal national collection of older paintings in Rome – mostly from before 1800; it does not hold any antiquities. It has two sites: the Palazzo Barberini and the Palazzo Corsini. The Palazzo Barberini was designed for Pope Urban VIII, a member of the Barberini family, by the sixteenth-century architect Carlo Maderno on the old location of Villa Sforza. Its central salon ceiling was decorated by Pietro da Cortona with the visual panegyric of the Allegory of Divine Providence and Barberini Power. The Palazzo Corsini, formerly known as Palazzo Riario, is a fifteenth-century palace, rebuilt in the eighteenth century by the architect Ferdinando Fuga for Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini. The National Galleries of Ancient Art are a museum and two galleries: Palazzo Barberini and the Corsini Gallery which preserve over 5000 works of art including paintings, sculptures, sketches, decorative arts from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. The heritage of the National Galleries was formed in 1883 with the donation to the State of the Corsini collection, then located in Palazzo Corsini. The collection was soon enriched with works from prestigious Roman collections, so much so that in 1949 the Italian State purchased Palazzo Barberini to open the new headquarters of the National Gallery in 1953. The Corsini Gallery today only displays works from the Corsini collection and constitutes the only eighteenth-century collection remaining in Rome in its original context: the palace purchased by the family in 1736, under the pontificate of Clement XII Corsini. The building, famous for having hosted Queen Christina of Sweden in the seventeenth century, was transformed into a real palace by the architect Ferdinando Fuga. The recent layout of the museum has relocated the paintings exactly as they had been arranged by Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, the first and main creator of the collection, on the basis of the 1771 inventory of the rooms. By visiting the Gallery it is therefore possible to enter the apartments of an eighteenth-century cardinal, including the famous Alcove of Christina of Sweden, and admire masterpieces such as Caravaggio's Saint John the Baptist, Salvator Rosa's Prometheus, Rubens' Saint Sebastian or the mysterious Throne Corsini. ​ The gallery's collection includes works by Bernini, lla galleria comprende lavori di Bernini, Caravaggio, van Dyck, Holbein, Beato Angelico, Lippi, Lotto, Preti, Poussin, El Greco, Raffaello, Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Rubens, Murillo, Ribera e Tiziano.

Episode 6: The Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria is housed in the Palazzo dei Priori, Perugia, in central Italy. Located on the upper floors of the Palazzo dei Priori, the exhibition spaces occupy two floors and the collection comprises the greatest representation of the Umbrian School of painting, ranging from the 13th to the 19th century, strongest in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. The collection is presented in 40 exhibition rooms in the Palazzo. The collection's origins lie in the foundation of the Perugian Accademia del Disegno in the mid-16th century. The Academy was originally based in the Convento degli Olivetani at Montemorcino, where it began to assemble a collection of paintings and drawings. The town became part of the French department of Trasimène in 1798 and its religious houses were suppressed. This suppression was repeated by the united Kingdom of Italy from the 1860s onwards - both suppressions shifted a large number of paintings and artworks from church to state ownership. In 1863, the civic paintings collection was formally named after Pietro Vannucci, but the problem of establishing an appropriate site to house the collection was not solved until 1878, when it moved into the third floor of the Palazzo dei Priori in the town centre. With the addition of acquisitions, donations and bequests, the pinacoteca became the Regia Galleria Vannucci in 1918, under the patronage of the king. The name was later changed to Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Over the years the entire complex of Palazzo dei Priori has been repeatedly affected by renovations and functional adaptation. The museum path, inaugurated in its current form in 2006, occupies an area of 4000 square meters on two floors. Chronologically ordered, the permanent collection has Renaissance and Medieval paintings and sculptures from Italian artists such as Arnolfo di Cambio, Nicola Pisano, Giovanni Pisano, Duccio, Gentile da Fabriano, Fra Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli, Giovanni Boccati and Piero della Francesca. The particular attention of the collection is given to the Umbrian masters; Benedetto Bonfigli, Bartolomeo Caporali, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Perugino, Pintoricchio and their students and followers.

Episode 7: Galleria Borghese is an art gallery in Rome, Italy, housed in the former Villa Borghese Pinciana. At the outset, the gallery building was integrated with its gardens, but nowadays the Villa Borghese gardens are considered a separate tourist attraction. The Galleria Borghese houses a substantial part of the Borghese Collection of paintings, sculpture and antiquities, begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, the nephew of Pope Paul V (reign 1605–1621). The building was constructed by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, developing sketches by Scipione Borghese himself, who used it as a villa suburbana, a country villa at the edge of Rome. Scipione Borghese was an early patron of Bernini and an avid collector of works by Caravaggio, who is well represented in the collection by his Boy with a Basket of Fruit, St Jerome Writing, Sick Bacchus and others. Additional paintings of note include Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, Raphael's Entombment of Christ and works by Peter Paul Rubens and Federico Barocci. In 1808, Prince Camillo Borghese, Napoleon's brother-in-law, was forced to sell the Borghese Roman sculptures and antiquities to the Emperor. The result is that the Borghese Gladiator, renowned since the 1620s as the most admired single sculpture in Villa Borghese, must now be appreciated in the Musée du Louvre. The "Borghese Hermaphroditus" is also now in the Louvre. The Borghese villa was modified and extended down the years, eventually being sold to the Italian government in 1902, along with the entire Borghese estate and surrounding gardens and parkland. Galleria Borghese includes twenty rooms across two floors. The main floor is mostly devoted to classical antiquities of the 1st–3rd centuries AD (including a famous 320–30 AD mosaic of gladiators found on the Borghese estate at Torrenova, on the Via Casilina outside Rome, in 1834), and classical and neo-classical sculpture such as the Venus Victrix. The main floor's main large room, called the Salone, has a large trompe-l'œil ceiling fresco in the first room by the Sicilian artist Mariano Rossi makes such good use of foreshortening that it appears almost three-dimensional. The fresco depicts Marcus Furius Camillus relieving the siege of the Capitoline Hill by the Gauls. The grotteschi decorations were painted by Pietro Rotari, and the animal decorations by Venceslaus Peter Boemo. The first room off the Salone, is the Camera di Cerere, with marble vase depicting Oedipus and the Sphinx. The second room has a ceiling frescoed by Francesco Caccianiga with the Fall of Phaeton. The third room houses Bernini's Apollo and Daphne. Many of the sculptures are displayed in the spaces for which they were intended, including many works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which comprise a significant percentage of his output of secular sculpture, starting with early works such as the Goat Amalthea with Infant Jupiter and Faun (1615) and Aeneas, Anchises & Ascanius (1618–19) to his dynamic Rape of Proserpine (1621–22), Apollo and Daphne (1622–25) and David (1623) which are considered seminal works of baroque sculpture. Also in Villa Borghese gardens or nearby are the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, which specialises in 19th- and 20th-century Italian art, and Museo Nazionale Etrusco, a collection of pre-Roman objects, mostly Etruscan, excavated around Rome.

Episode 8: The Palazzo della Pilotta is a vaste complex of edifices located between Piazzale della Pace and the Lungoparma in the historical centre of Parma, region of Emilia Romagna, Italy. Its name derives from the game of pelota played at one time by Spanish soldiers stationed in Parma. La Pilotta, an imposing palace symbol of the Farnese ducal power, historical and civil center of the city of Parma, is today a unique monumental complex. Originally conceived as a container for the services of the Farnesian court capable of integrating the system of ducal residences, the construction of the monumental Palazzo della Pilotta probably began around 1583, during the last years of the duchy of Ottavio Farnese (1547-1586) based on a project of Francesco Paciotto from Urbino. The long corridors were arranged orthogonally to delimit a real "citadel", connected with the destroyed Ducal Palace and with that of the Garden, located on the other bank of the Parma Torrent. Its system of internal courtyards and the rustic brick wall were intended to contain warehouses, stables, barracks, as well as a grandiose armory room later transformed into a court theatre. The complex derives its name from the noble game of "pelota" which was played in its courtyards on special occasions of representation. Already home to a selected ducal picture gallery and a book collection in the Farnesian era, the Pilotta, during the duchy of Don Filippo di Borbone (1748-1765), hosted the Academy of Fine Arts with its artistic collection, from which it would then have originates the National Gallery, the Palatine Library, the Archaeological Museum and the Bodonian Museum. The existing complex includes three courts: the Cortile di San Pietro Martire (now best known as Cortile della Pilotta), Cortile del Guazzatoio (originally della pelota) and the Cortile della Racchetta. The Pilotta was to house a large hall, later turned into the Teatro Farnese, the stables and the grooms' residences, the Academy Hall and other rooms. After the end of the Farnese family rule of Parma, much of the movable assets of the palace were removed by then Duke Charles I, later King of Spain, and taken to Naples in the 1730s. The Biblioteca Palatina was established here by 1769. Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain, was born here in 1692. By 2015, the building spaces had been taken up by a number of cultural institutions and museums, including in addition to the library: - National Archaeological Museum - Liceo artistico statale Paolo Toschi (an art school named after Paolo Toschi) - Museo Bodoniano (a museum dedicated to Giambattista Bodoni) - Teatro Farnese - Galleria Nazionale di Parma

A 2019 production dedicated to the great Italian museums, narrated by Lella Costa. Audio in Italian with English subtitles. Episode 1: The Royal Palace of Caserta (Italian: Reggia di Caserta), is a former royal residence in Caserta, Campania, 35km north of Naples in southern Italy, constructed by the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies as their main residence as kings of Naples. Located 35 km north of the historic centre of Naples, Italy, the complex is the largest palace erected in Europe during the 18th century. In 1997, the palace was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site; its nomination described it as "the swan song of the spectacular art of the Baroque, from which it adopted all the features needed to create the illusions of multidirectional space". The Royal Palace of Caserta is the largest former royal residence in the world, over 2 million m3 in volume and covering an area of 47,000 m2 and a floorspace of 138,000 square metres is distributed in the five stories of the building. In April 1945, the palace was the site of the signing of the unconditional surrender of German and Italian RSI forces in Italy. During World War II, the soldiers of the US Fifth Army recovered here in a "rest center." The palace continued as Allied Force Headquarters in 1946 under Britain's Gen. Sir William Duthie Morgan and in 1947 under American Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee, each serving as Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theater of Operations. The palace was damaged by U.S. bombers in 1943, and was virtually emptied of furnishings during the war by looters. The Italian government took great pains to restore the building and return or replace decorations in keeping with the original pieces. In 1998, the palace was a filming location for Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, specifically as the interior of the Theed City Naboo Palace. It was used as a location for four days after it had been closed to visitors. Scenes with explosions were filmed on replica sets in Leavesden Studios in England to avoid damaging the actual palace. In addition, scenes from Attack of The Clones were also filmed at the palace, specifically in the Upper Vestibule. The Royal Palace of Caserta has also been the site of other notable movies, such as The Great, Mission: Impossible III, Angels & Demons, Ferdinando and Carolina, among others. Episode 2: https://rumble.com/v5x7xen-musei-series-ii-palazzo-pitti-and-boboli-gardens-episode-2.html

Episode 2: The Pitti Palace (Italian: Palazzo Pitti,) is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker. The palace was bought by the Medici family in 1549 and became the chief residence of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It grew as a great treasure house as later generations amassed paintings, plates, jewelry and luxurious possessions. The Medici added the Boboli Gardens to the palace estate. In the late 18th century, the palazzo was used as a power base by Napoleon and later served for a brief period as the principal royal palace of the newly united Italy. The palace and its contents were donated to the Italian people by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919. The palazzo is now the largest museum complex in Florence. The principal palazzo block, often in a building of this design known as the corps de logis, is 32,000 square metres. It is divided into several principal galleries or museums detailed below. The Boboli Gardens (Italian: Giardino di Boboli) is a historical park of the city of Florence that was opened to the public in 1766. Originally designed for the Medici, it represents one of the first and most important examples of the Italian garden, which later served as inspiration for many European courts. Statues of various styles and periods, ancient and Renaissance, dot the garden. It also has large fountains and artificial caves, notably a grotto built by the artist, architect, and sculptor Bernardo Buontalenti between 1536 and 1608. Episode 3: https://rumble.com/v5x8108-musei-series-ii-the-ducal-palace-of-urbino-the-national-gallery-of-marche-e.html