Manfrediniana Picture Gallery - Diocesan Museum of Venice

The Pinacoteca Manfrediniana owes its name to the Marquis Federico Manfredini (Rovigo 1743 - Campoverardo 1829) who assembled the collection during his laborious existence in the service of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany and in the rest of the Venetian countryside where he retired once discharged from his post. As a bequest, he wanted most of the paintings in his gallery to be kept in the Patriarchal Seminary of Venice. Most likely this will took shape in the Marquis Manfredini following the esteem he placed in the patriarchs of Venice, Giambattista Ladislao Pyrker and Jacopo Monico. And certainly the close relationship with Don Giannantonio Moschini, a Somascan who passed to the secular clergy after the Napoleonic decrees, also played a decisive role. He, an erudite and passionate lover of the arts, continued to reside in the seminary and to do his utmost to protect the historical-artistic heritage of the now vanished Serenissima Republic.

The Gallery consists of 65 paintings on canvas, wood and copper; collects works of the pictorial school of central Italy, but also of northern Europe, and ancient copies of famous specimens now kept in the Louvre or the Hermitage.

Since 2019 the Manfrediniana Art Gallery has become the Diocesan Museum of the Patriarchate of Venice. This is a further sign of the centrality that the “health center” has taken on as the heart of the cultural proposal of the Venetian Church.