Museo Civico di Palazzo Cuttica: A Civic Museum in an Eighteenth-Century Palace
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Sardinia
- Site type
- Civic
- Remains
- Palace
On this page14 sections
History
Museo Civico di Palazzo Cuttica is a civic museum in Alessandria, Italy, housed in one wing of Palazzo Cuttica di Cassine, an eighteenth-century urban palace built in a Baroque style with a classicizing character. Luigi Cuttica, the thirteenth Marquis of Cassine, commissioned the palace, which soon became a meeting place for prominent figures in the city’s social and intellectual life.
From aristocratic residence to civic administration
During the Napoleonic period, the palace served first as the residence of the French general François de Chasseloup-Laubat and later of General Hyacinthe François Joseph Despinoy. In 1806, it became the Prefecture of Marengo. After the Municipality of Alessandria acquired the building, it housed the prefecture, the provincial administration, and financial offices, followed later by postal offices and the court.
The palace now contains the Antonio Vivaldi State Conservatory of Music and its associated middle school, while the Museo Civico occupies one of its wings. The museum brings together collections that trace the history of the surrounding area from antiquity through the modern history of Alessandria.
Collections and historical memory
The Di Negro Carpani Collection presents the history of ancient Dertona, the city associated with the area of present-day Tortona, from the Bronze Age through the foundation of the Roman colony and the period of Gothic rule. The museum also preserves material from the transition between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Napoleon Bonaparte’s Italian campaigns and later rule reshaped Alessandria and the surrounding region. Napoleon favored the city because it lay near the site of the Battle of Marengo.
Other displays recall Saint Pius V, the sixteenth-century pope of Alessandrian origin and the only pope of Piedmontese origin, as well as his decision to establish a Dominican convent in his native land. The Risorgimento Room, created for the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, honors the Italian patriots Andrea Vochieri and Cristoforo Moia. Established in 2004, the Cabinet of Ancient and Modern Prints extends the museum’s historical and artistic scope through maps, geographical charts, city views, and modern engravings.
Remains
Palazzo Cuttica di Cassine is an eighteenth-century urban palace whose Baroque architecture has a classicizing character. The museum occupies one wing of the building, alongside the conservatory and its associated school. Its rooms are arranged around archaeological material, religious and civic art, Napoleonic memorabilia, and works on paper.
Early collections and archaeological rooms
Tapestries and celestial globe
The first room contains tapestries made during the second half of the seventeenth century. They depict two episodes from the Acts of the Apostles and came from Santa Maria Domus Magna in Alessandria. The room also holds a celestial globe made by Father Pietro Maria da Vinchio and dated 1750–1751.
Di Negro Carpani Collection
Three archaeological rooms contain the Di Negro Carpani Collection. The first presents vases and urns that originally came from necropolises in the Dertona area. The second contains the largest part of the collection, including marble decoration from aristocratic Roman domus, the urban houses of wealthy Roman families. The final room contains finds from the later history of a Christian city, including a fragment of an archivolt, the curved masonry band framing an arch, with an inscription recalling Bishop Giuseppe and dated 770.
Religious and civic art
Altarpieces
The room devoted to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries contains three altarpieces connected with the artistic history of the Alessandria area of Monferrato. They are the 1497 Annunciation Triptych, attributed to the Master of Saint Guido of Acqui and possibly to Galeotto Nebbia; the Polyptych of the Coronation of the Virgin by Gandolfino da Roreto; and The Immaculate Virgin with Saints Francis and Anthony of Padua by Carlo Francesco Nuvolone, from the Capuchin convent of Tortona. A triptych is an altarpiece of three panels, while a polyptych contains multiple panels.
Saint Pius V rooms
The rooms dedicated to Saint Pius V contain approximately forty choir books made in Rome around 1560 for the convent of Santa Croce at Bosco Marengo. Their pages include illuminated miniatures. The display also includes liturgical vestments, among them a cope whose upper collar panel shows Saint Pius V in embroidery by a Piedmontese embroiderer.
Napoleonic and modern historical collections
Napoleon Room
The Napoleon Room contains historical memorabilia from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Among its works are prints by Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti depicting episodes from the French general’s Italian campaign. The room also preserves a full-scale preparatory drawing for The Apotheosis of Napoleon by Francesco Mensi, who served as director of the picture gallery. Such a drawing, also called a cartoon, is a working design used as the basis for a finished artwork.
Risorgimento Room
The Risorgimento Room contains material commemorating Andrea Vochieri and Cristoforo Moia. Its theme is the Risorgimento, the nineteenth-century movement that led to the political unification of Italy.
Cabinet of Ancient and Modern Prints
The Cabinet of Ancient and Modern Prints contains approximately 2,000 prints. The holdings include maps, antique geographical charts, city views, and especially engravings by contemporary artists. The material is organized in the Villa, Bozzetti, Carbonati, Annone, Sassi, and Pozzi collections.
