Museum Poldi Pezzoli
Museum hours: 8:30 - 18:30
Duration: two hours
Availability: Tue - Sun
Meeting time: on request
Museum in the former private house of Gian Giacomo
Poldi-Pezzoli, housing not only fine examples of arms and armour from the 14th to the
17th centuries. This remarkable portrait of Florentine woman painted around 1470 by Piero del Pollauiolo
can be seen in Museum. Silhouette of her shapely profile is used as a museum logo.
The founder of the museum, Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli, had a strong vocation for
art collecting which was deeply rooted in his family tradition and XIXth century social environment of Milan.
Gian Giacomo inherited this hobby from his
grandfather, Prince Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, who owned a distinguished collection
of works of art now mainly conserved in the Musei Civici of Milan. After 1846
Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli began to collect art works personally under supervision of handful
counsellors and antiquaries, and his friends art historian Giovanni Morelli and the painter and professor of
the Brera Academy Giuseppe Bertini. He had special sentiment in arms and armour.
The purchasing of XVIIth century sword initiated the beginning of his marvelous collection and later museum.
As time passed his primary passion of collecting arms and ancient
armour was widened up by precious objects, enamels, jewellery, carpets, tapestries, glass and
porcelains, alongside with paintings and sculptures mainly from the Renaissance period
and the Venetian Eighteenth century.
One room in his museum he devoted to works by
Bernardino Luini and the Lombard school of painters.
After Gian Giacomo's death Giuseppe Bertini became the
first director of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum and remarkably increased its collection of painting
and textile collections.
Thanks to generous bequests by private collectors, the museum's collection has
been enriched by the acquisition of paintings, mechanical clocks and sundials,
laces and embroideries.
Want to learn more about history of this museum, join one of our tours.
