The Nineteenth Century Museum, inaugurated in September 2021 in the historic building, now restored, of the former Bank of Italy in Pescara, is a unique museum in Italy, both for the masterpieces it preserves, donated to the city by the Wenceslao spouses and collectors Di Persio and Rosanna Pallotta, both for the structure it has equipped with, capable of competing with the most important international museums. The preserved works do not only document the passion for art, but also the acuity and ingenuity of having imagined a path dedicated to researcha different narrative for the Italian nineteenth century which here, also thanks to the comparison with paintings by important authors of the French school, finds the right scope not always recognized by international art history.
About three hundred works they describe a wide-ranging cross-section from Neapolitan landscape painting to the Posillipo School, from the Neapolitan school to that of Barbizon, punctuating Italian painting in a scientific but also emotional journey which, in the midst of the national Risorgimento, clearly emerges as a moment of very high artistic value, without envying anything from its French counterpart. Among the works of particular beauty are those by the Neapolitan Domenico Morelli and two paintings by Antonio Mancini, «Prevetariello in prayer» (1873) and «Truth» (1873-78), the latter considered by Dario Cecchi to be one of the most beautiful paintings of the Italian nineteenth century. It was a canvas by Antonio Mancini, an artist of Roman origin, Neapolitan by adoption, that was the first purchase of the Di Persio couple in 1987. At the time, he was still a little-known artist, and today he is celebrated in many exhibitions in important European and American museums, not least the one held in Pescara, the first created by the museum, and concluded in March 2024, curated by Fernando Mazzocca, Manuel Carrera, Carlo Sisi and Isabella Valente, in the unprecedented comparison with the sculptor Vincenzo Gemito, which has opened new avenues of research thanks to suggestive comparisons never carried out in such depth. One of the most important rooms of the museum is dedicated to Mancini, which documents the evolution of his pictorial language from his formative years to maturity. This is the most important and complete collection dedicated to him, seventeen of the most beautiful and significant paintings of his career.
The Museum of the Nineteenth Century, on three floors and fifteen rooms, offers a structured setup for schools and trends; at the entrance a group of works offer a broad and detailed look at the landscape painting from the beginning of the century. Pompeii and Herculaneum, Naples and the Amalfi coast are the favorite subjects of these Grand Tour pages painted on canvas, among which one of the most important paintings by the Austrian stands out Joseph Rebell, «The Capuchin monastery on the Amalfi coast» created in 1813 commissioned by Queen Carolina Bonaparte, loaned to the major exhibition dedicated to him in 2022 at the Belvedere in Vienna and re-proposed at the Gallerie d’Italia in Naples in 2023-24, to testimony to the demand for the collection at an international level. Among the most important rooms is the third, dedicated to Domenico Morelli. From the lesson of the Nazarenes to Tuscan Verism, to symbolist atmospheres, Morelli concentrates the truest reading of the second half of the nineteenth century, of an artist who is a master of the greatest painters of the Neapolitan school.
Among the monographic rooms there is also the one dedicated to Michele Cammarano, which allows you to appreciate the refined historical reconstruction carried out by the museum. The light that strikes and passes through his paintings is that of the South, warm, enveloping and sensual, a light that welcomes the innovations introduced by French Realism. Of note are «The Witch», in which the painter tackles the esoteric theme from an international perspective, and the monumental «Encouragement of Vice» of 1868, whose absolutely original composition reveals his particular interpretation of French Realism and his personal bond with Gustave Courbet, of which the museum preserves two landscapes, «Le bords de la Loue» (1862) and «Le ruisseau entre les rochers» (1876), to enrich the room, which collects and documents aspects of the «Barbizon School». A unique cross-section of Italy with the names of the most important protagonists: Théodore Rousseau, Narcisse Virgilio Díaz de la Peña, Constant Troyon, Charles-François Daubigny, just to name a few, together with the painter Rosa Bonheur, a key figure in the beginnings of feminism and who fought hard all her life to have her role as an artist recognized. Finally, it is worth mentioning the frames, carefully selected by Di Persio Pallotta in full harmony with the works, testimony to the artisan excellence of past centuries. The Museum of the Nineteenth Century is a singular example of enlightened private collectinga high-level collection that responds to the orientations and tastes of its patrons, but which is now also a place open to research, to young scholars and to the pleasure of sight, a resource for the community.
