Description of the attraction
The City Museum "Ala Ponzone" is located in the building of the Palazzo Affaitati in Cremona, in particular, the city art gallery is located here. The palace was built at the beginning of the 16th century, and today its elegant rooms contain a collection of paintings by the Ponzone family, donated to the city in 1842 by the Marquis Giuseppe Sigismondo Ala Ponzone. In the following years, the collection was replenished with works of art from the closed churches of Cremona. Today, the museum has collected over two thousand exhibits - paintings and sculptures, only some of which are exhibited to the public.
The first hall of the gallery is dedicated to the Middle Ages and the 15th century - here you can see sculptures, fragments of ancient frescoes and a collection of works by the Bembo family. The art of the 16th century is represented by the works of local artists who worked in the Art Nouveau style - Boccaccino, Pedro Fernandez, Alene Galeazzo Campi, as well as paintings in the Renaissance style, which anticipated the work of the great Caravaggio. In the San Domenico room, you can see a number of works of art from the eponymous church that was destroyed, which reflect the Milanese contribution to the local culture of the 17th century (works by Cerano, Nuvolone, Procaccini). And in other exhibition halls are collected still lifes, including the famous "Gardener" by Giuseppe Arcimboldi, portraits of members of the Ponzone family, paintings by Genovessio of the 17th century, the first creations in the styles of neoclassicism (Diotti) and romanticism (Piccio). Finally, the last two rooms are dedicated to applied arts - porcelain dishes, clay, majolica, enamel and ivory products are exhibited here.
On the second floor of Palazzo Affaitati, visitors can find a section of Cremona iconography, a collection of paintings by Lombard and Cremona artists of the 19th (Gorra, Colombi Bordet) and 20th centuries (Vittori, Rizzi). The third floor is the kingdom of sketches and prints. The graphic collection of the museum has over two thousand six thousand exhibits! Some of them date back to the 15-16th centuries.
