From December 12, 2025 to March 8, 2026, the Museo Eremitani in Padua will host the Centanini Collection, part of the artistic heritage of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo, on the occasion of the exhibition Collecting Beauty. Works from the Centanini Collection, curated by Alessia Vedova with the scientific collaboration of Elisabetta Vanzelli and promoted by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo and the Musei Civici di Padova - Assessorato alla Cultura del Comune di Padova.
For the first time in the Venetian city, the public will be able to see seventy works from the collection donated to the Foundation in 2015 by lawyer Pietro Centanini, which includes both the works collected over time by his family, of Venetian origin who later moved to Stanghella (Padua), and the acquisitions made by Centanini himself since the years when he was studying law in Padua.
Alongside the historical core of the collection, consisting of paintings made between the 17th and early 19th centuries, the lawyer developed a growing interest in modern art. The first works he purchased belonged to contemporary Veneto artists bound to tradition, such as Bergamini, Dinon, Farina, and Barbisan, or moderately innovative, such as Breddo. However, the sensibility matured through the family heritage also led him to appreciate ancient painting of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as works the Madonna attributed to Guercino, a landscape of Salvatorian taste, and a small painting by Maggiotto.
Beginning in the 1980s, his choices were consistently oriented toward the Italian nineteenth century, achieving outstanding results with works by artists such as Palizzi, De Nittis, Milesi, Lega, Signorini and Zandomeneghi. At the same time, the collection was also enriched with works by protagonists of the twentieth century, including Guidi, Guttuso, Utrillo, Soffici, Chagall, Carrà, De Chirico, De Pisis and Sironi.
From this set of contributions comes a collection that reflects a solid artistic culture combined with an up-to-date and knowledgeable taste. It is an exemplary collection, especially with regard to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in which the preferences of Centanini and his wife, both art enthusiasts, and their choice to avail themselves of the advice of the most authoritative experts and dealers active in Italy in those years, stand out.
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| 70 works from the Centanini Collection on display at Padua's Museo degli Eremitani |
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