Palazzo Attems Petzenstein - Pinacoteca

Palazzo Attems Petzenstein, seat of the Pinacoteca of the Provincial Museums of Gorizia, was completed in its Rococo guise in 1750 on commission of Count Sigismondo d'Attems Petzenstein. The two rooms frescoed by Francesco Chiarottini from Cividale (1748-1796) should instead date back to 1780, among which the archaeological inventions painted in the Room of the Metamorphoses by Ovid so called for the subject of the stuccoes that adorn the ceiling are distinguished. The palace also houses an Italian garden that houses the lapidary and in the center the Fountain of Hercules built after 1769 to a design by Nicolò Pacassi (1716-1790), court architect of Maria Theresa of Habsburg.
The palace has been the seat of the Provincial Museums of Gorizia since 1900 and today houses spaces dedicated to temporary exhibitions and the Pinacoteca. The rooms host almost one hundred pieces including paintings, drawings, engravings and sculptures that unfold in a chronological path from the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The hall of honor, over which the Gods of Olympus reign by Antonio Paroli, also houses the monumental Pala Attems (1758) by Giambettino Cignaroli (1706-1770) from Verona, also commissioned by Count Sigismondo. An important collection of works by Giuseppe Tominz (1790-1866), the most famous and celebrated portraitist from Gorizia, of which the museums preserve the Self-portrait with his brother Francesco (1818 ca.), a true manifesto of Tominzian poetics. The Pinacoteca also boasts a permanent collection of Josef Maria Auchentaller (1865-1949), a versatile artist and designer, representative of the Viennese Secession and a companion of Klimt, who at the beginning of the twentieth century left Vienna for Grado, following the entrepreneurial ambitions of his wife Emma Scheid. The signatures of the artists of the first half of the twentieth century are also of considerable interest: Italico Brass, Gino de Finetti and Edoardo Del Neri, Luigi Spazzapan, Veno Pilon and Ivan Čargo, the futurists Soforonio Pocarini, Tullio Crali, Raoul Cenisi and Rudolf Saxida, by Avgust Cernigoj, by Vittorio Bolaffio, by Giannino Marchig, by the sculptors Marcello Mascherini, Ferruccio Patuna, Mario Sartori, Ugo Carrà and France Gorše, by Giorgio Carmelich and Arturo Nathan up to Anton Zoran Music, an artist from Gorizia known worldwide for his Cavallini Dalmati and the cycle We are not the last.

The Pinacoteca is managed by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region through the ERPAC - Regional Body for Cultural Heritage.