Sassoferrato - Marche Region - Italy
+39 0732956257
iat.sassoferrato@happennines.it

The Civic Art Collection

Sassoferrato, a timeless journey in history

The Civic Art Collection includes fine paintings from the 15th century until the end of the 18th century.

The paintings are from churches, monasteries, confraternities and private and local collections, from where these could have been hopelessly lost.

The Collection is now permanently set up in a coherent itinerary inside the renowned location of Palazzo Oliva, built in the 15th  century by the illustrious Cardinal Alessandro Oliva (1407-1463), native of Sassoferrato.

The tour is a brief itinerary on the art from the end of the Middle Ages to the Baroque era.

From the altars of Sassoferrato’s churches the panels carefully reveal the innovations of the early Renaissance: Pietro Paolo Agabiti’s  (1465 or 1470- 1540) works resemble  the venetian paintings , but he  portrays the figures inside rhythmical porches in a wittingly  neo 15th century archaic solution.

The perfect harmony between individuality and universality, nature and culture that characterised Raphael’s art will be crucial for the development of the local school of painting, permeating with classical elements.

The paintings that compose the collection include two Giovanni Battista Salvi’s (Sassoferrato 1609- Roma 1685) paintings, the great painter known worldwide as ‘Il Sassoferrato’, who was also the main character of the European classicism.

Initiated to painting by his father, the great artist native of Sassoferrato , “Il Salvi” , moved to Rome where he was greeted with enthusiasm by the aristocratic commission.

Inspired by the great figures of the Renaissance and the Baroque era, ‘Il Sassoferrato’ shows great ability, if we consider that he improved and corrected them, reducing to the essential the compositions and reaching a perfect execution quality.

His paintings would be so successful such as to become an example, copied many times in the following centuries.

Their diffusion shows the great success of the expressive composition developed by Il Sassoferrato; an incredible universal, classic and understandable on every level’s language, nowadays viewed as ‘global’.

The others paintings of the Collection belong to artists mostly of the school of the Marche region.

 

OPENING HOURS: daily

November - March 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. / 2.30 p.m. - 5.30 p.m.

April-October 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. / 3.30 p.m. - 6.30 p.m.

The entrance ticket to the Civic Art Collection also includes the Collection "Incisori Marchigiani".