Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa

The Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa is one of the oldest museums in Veneto. Built in 1828 following the legacy of the naturalist Giambattista Brocchi, the museum found its current location in the former convent of San Francesco in 1840. From this date onwards, natural history collections (herbaria, geopaleontological, mineralogical, malacological, entomological collections) and books left by Brocchi were hosted there as well as paintings from churches and convents suppressed in the Napoleonic age, already deposited in the rooms adjacent to the Cloister. of San Francesco since 1831. The entire heritage over time has been exceptionally enriched so that today it is possible to admire and study only a part of it, set up in the archaeological sections (finds from the Paleovenetian, Magna Graecia, Roman and medieval ages), in the art gallery (paintings from 13th to 20th century) and in the cloister (lapidary of cippi, coats of arms, inscriptions, tombstones and architectural fragments from the 13th century).

In the Civic Museum there is the largest collection of works by Jacopo Dal Ponte, known as Jacopo Bassano , and his thriving workshop. Three generations of painters who have marked the history of Italian art and who have made Bassano del Grappa a center of artistic production of excellence in the sixteenth century. A few meters from these paintings is the wing dedicated to Antonio Canova where, among plaster casts and busts, the protagonists are monochromes, drawings on canvas with few lines and simple backgrounds, the maximum result of his artistic expressiveness. The archaeological section, the result of donations and important bequests, collects ceramics from the 9th century BC, small sculptures, jewels, precious stones, coins and objects of use, testimony of local antiquity alongside an archeology of international value. The Civic Museum also houses the medieval section, where the famous Guariento crucifix is the undisputed work, and the sections dedicated to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with pieces by authors including Giambattista Tiepolo, Artemisia Gentileschi and Alessandro Magnasco. In the rooms dedicated to the nineteenth century, the small portrait of Francesco Hayez and the wonderful panorama of the city seen from the river Brenta by Roberto Roberti are exhibited.