Description of the attraction
The Tosio Martinengo Art Gallery, known as the Pinacoteca, is located in the Palazzo Martinengo da Barco building in Piazza Moretto in Brescia. The gallery was created in 1908 by combining two earlier collections, the legacy of Count Paolo Tosio and Count Francesco Leopardo Martinengo. To these collections were later added other acquisitions - purchased or bequeathed to the gallery, as well as works of art from secularized churches and demolished old buildings.
The 25 exhibition halls house a collection of works dating from the 13th and 18th centuries, in which you can see the masterpieces that have made the Brescia school of painting internationally famous. It is here that incomparable paintings by Raffaello Sanzio and Lorenzo Lotto are exhibited. It also houses numerous works by Vincenzo Fopp, a leading 15th-century Lombard painter, and by the masters of the Brescian Renaissance, Savoldo, Romanino and Moretto.
16th century portraiture is represented by works by Tintoretto and Sofonisba Anjussola. The 17th-18th century collection also exhibits paintings by some major artists from other regions, such as Andrea Celesti and Palma the Younger. Noteworthy are the Brescian realists - Antonio Cifrondi and Giacomo Ceruti, known as Pitocchetto.
The collection of graphic art, which Cardinal Angelo Maria Querini began to collect back in the 18th century, and which was significantly expanded in the following centuries, cannot be ignored. The most important part consists of approximately three thousand works that illustrate the development of printing production through various techniques of engraving, etching, woodcut and lithography - from the 15th century to the present day. It also displays early examples of German engraving - the work of Martin Schongauer and an almost complete collection of works by Albrecht Dürer. Italian masters are represented by Parmigianino, Annibale and Lodovico Carracci, while Dutch masters are represented by the creations of Luca di Leida and the famous masterpieces of Rembrandt. Other painters whose work can be seen in the Pinacoteca of Tosio Martinengo are Guido Reni, Canaletto, Tiepolo, Piranesi and Morandi.
