Mar

The civic art gallery's first collection was formed in 1829, with the acquisition of works coming from supressed religious orders, leading to the institution of the Gallery of the Academy. During the course of the century, the collection was further enriched thanks to contributions made by citizens, which helped to increase the public patrimony through bequests and deposits. This took place in a vibrant atmosphere of civic competition that aimed to make the public collection more prestigious. The Gallery, which was reorganized by Corrado Ricci, contains more than 300 works, including paintings and sculptures dating back to a chronological period extending from the 14th to the 19th century. An extensive display of small plates from the 14th and 15th centuries, intended mostly for monastic cells, provide evidence of the Town's relationships with the most important centres of production, from Veneto and Padua to Emilia Romagna or, more precisely, Bologna and Ferrara, to Tuscany and Marche. Small mixed-line carpentry plates and small altarpieces from this period are kept here and can be attributed to the Maestro del Coro Scrovegni, Guglielmo Veneziano, Matteo di Giovanni, Lorenzo Monaco, Taddeo di Bartolo and Antonio Vivarini.
Very important in understanding the artistic events that developed in Romagna in the era of transition between the noble courts and papal domination, is a significant collection of works dating back to the period between the end of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries: included in this collection are the paintings of Baldassarre Carrari, Marco Palmezzano, Nicolò Rondinelli, Francesco and Bernardino Zaganelli, along with the protagonists of the “Raffaelism” season in Romagna, Bartolomeo Ramenghi, known as Bagnacavallo, Girolamo Marchesi da Cotignola, Luca Longhi and his son Francesco and daughter Barbara.
From the same period, there are works documenting the continuous relationship with Veneto, even in a period that goes beyond that of Venetian domination. Of the authors, the following can be mentioned: Bartolomeo Montagna, Marco Bello, Luca Antonio Busati, Cima da Conegliano, Pietro degli Ingannati, Francesco Rizzo from Santacroce and his circle and Paris Bordon. Of great importance for the Town's patrimony is the funeral monument of Guidarello Guidarelli, created by Tullio Lombardo in 1525 and made particularly famous by the literature of D'Annunzio, which made it a legend.
A fundamental element in the development of the language of art in Romagna during the Mannerism period, is a painting by Giorgio Vasari, dated 1548, the Compianto su Cristo deposto dalla Croce (Mourning of Christ taken down from the Cross), commissioned by the Monastery of Classe. This was a very fortunate iconographic archetype. The relationships with circles in Ferrara are documented by the valuable works of Dosso Dossi, Bastianino and Bastarolo. The works of Jacopo Ligozzi, Camillo Procaccini and Matteo Ingoli date back to the latter part of the Counter-Reformation Period.
A fundamental work in the iconography of Saint Romualdo is a large painting of Guercino, created for the Abbey of Classe, one of the most important patrons of the city. As well as the Guercino painting, there are others from the workshops of Gennari, Alessandro Tiarini and Cecco Bravo. Dating back to the second half of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century are the works of Carlo Cignani, Marcantonio Franceschini, Giovan Gioseffo Dal Sole, Luigi Crespi and Archangelo Resani.
Some pictorial texts by Andrea and Domenico Barbiani are the few remaining examples of the extremely prolific activity of a workshop that was very important in Ravenna, as a result of its constant presence in the town for nearly five hundred years, from the early 17th century.

During the nineteenth century, there was new momentum in acquisitions, with various forms of deposit, testamentary bequests, donations and purchases, which took place thanks to contributions of paintings from private sources. This period marks the important presence of works by Giambattista Bassi, Antonio Ciseri, Telemaco Signorini, Giuseppe Abbati, Arturo Moradei, Angelo Torchi, Luigi Serra, Ettore Tito and Domenico Miserocchi.

The works created between the middle of the 16th century and the 17th, preserved by the Art Museum of Ravenna and exhibited here, bear witness to the intense cultural, political and economic relationship that characterised the Emilia-Romagna, Veneto and Tuscany areas in those years, without excluding the extensive influence of the Papal State, as can be seen from the devotional character of the works themselves. The works on display come from the collections formed by the suppression of religious corporations and are enriched by numerous donations, bequests, deposits and by the extraordinary artistic intuitions of people from Ravenna such as Enrico Pazzi and Corrado Ricci, who entrusted the Academy of Fine Arts of Ravenna and the Municipal Art Gallery—the origin of the Museum we see today—with the fruit of their patient and careful acquisitions of archaeological, artistic and archival assets as well as entire libraries, offering an interesting insight into the plurality of cultural references of this period. The exhibition begins with the works Adoration of the Shepherds with Saints Jerome and Bonaventure and Crucifixion with Saints Anthony Abbot and Francis by Francesco Zaganelli da Cotignola, an artist considered by Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century to be able to take over from the artistic hegemony of the recently deceased Nicolò Rondinelli. Testimonies of Venetian painting, instead, are Christ the Redeemer by Paris Bordon, an artist who worked together with Titian; The Cenacle with Saint Apollinaire and the Blessed Lorenzo Giustiniani by Matteo Ingoli coming from the Venetian church of Sant’Aponal; Saint Benedict of Norcia (?) by Filippo da Verona; The Annunciation and Saint Apollinaire, diptych by an unknown author. The itinerary continues, almost in an artistic dialogue with Venetian painting, still witnessed by the Martyrdom of the Four Crowned Saints, a large altarpiece by Jacopo Ligozzi, a Veronese painter (Tuscan by adoption) who worked for over twenty years at the Medici court, with the Martyrdom of Saints James the Lesser and Philip by Camillo Procaccini that leads the way to Bolognese painting, together with Saint Jerome and Saint Sebastian from the Reni area and Mary Magdalene in Meditation from the Emilian area. The Allegory of Abundance, attributed to the Master of Flora, and Apollo and Daphne, a Baroque masterpiece by Cecco Bravo, constitute two unique elements for the quality of the profane pictorial representation. In the last room, the group of large altarpieces from the Church of Saint Romuald of the Monastery of Classe has been reassembled. In a central position is the main altarpiece by Guercino with Saint Romuald accompanied by Saint Benedict by Carlo Cignani and Saints Bartholomew and Severus in Glory by Marcantonio Franceschini. In reference to Guercino’s painting we find Alessandro Tiarini’s Saint John the Evangelist which, when it was delivered to the museum, was considered to be the work of the author of Saint Romuald. The itinerary closes with the Crucifixion with Saints Vitale and Apollinaire by Arcangelo Resani, a work that, while still maintaining ties with 17th-century Bolognese and Venetian figurative models, looks towards the 18th century.