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 duties. By testamentary bequest, he wanted the majority of the paintings in his gallery to be preserved in the Patriarchal Seminary of Venice. Most likely, this desire took shape in Marquis Manfredini following the esteem he held for the patriarchs of Venice, Giambattista Ladislao Pyrker and Jacopo Monico. Certainly, the close bond with Don Giannantonio Moschini, a Somascan who joined the secular clergy after the Napoleonic decrees, also played a decisive role. He, a scholar and passionate lover of the arts, continued to reside in the Seminary and to work to protect the historical-artistic heritage of the now disappeared Most Serene Republic.

The Gallery consists of 65 paintings on canvas, wood, and copper; it gathers works from the pictorial school of central Italy, but also from Northern Europe, and ancient copies of famous pieces now kept at the Louvre or the Hermitage.

From 2019, the Pinacoteca Manfrediniana has become the Diocesan Museum of the Patriarchate of Venice. This is a further sign of the centrality that the Salute area has assumed as the heart of the cultural proposal of the Venetian Church.