Feltre, recovered the ancient Palazzo dei Vescovi: it will house the new Diocesan Museum, on as many as 27 rooms

In Feltre (province of Belluno), the very old Palazzo dei Vescovi, located at the top of Via del Paradiso, in the historic center of the so-called “vertical city,” has been totally recovered. The Palace will house the headquarters of the brand new Diocesan Museum, composed of twenty-seven rooms in which the Diocese of Feltre and Belluno has decided to arrange its art treasures, amalgamating them in a container that, with its frescoes and architecture, testifies to the stratification of a centuries-old history. “The evocative setting,” reads a note, “has succeeded in creating a perfect symbiosis between the ancient stones, the precious wall frescoes that have survived the ravages of centuries and men, and the treasures that have been concentrated here, from the many convents, monasteries, Carthusian monasteries and churches of the Feltre and Belluno valleys. Treasures that are often examples of the highly refined art of stone, metal and especially woodworking that distinguished these territories in past centuries. Remarkable, for example, is the collection of wooden sculptures of the new Diocesan, which includes, among many others, the exciting ’parade’ of the 12 Apostles or an intense mourning or even a childlike St. George and the dragon.” The date for the opening of the museum is set for May 12, 2018.

The Palace-Castle of the Bishops of Feltre was built in the mid-13th century, outside what was then the city walls, in an area identified as safe. Enlarged and remodeled over the centuries, the building took on the conformation of an elegant Venetian palace in the fifteenth century, except when it was renovated in the following century due to fire and destruction during the war of the League of Cambrai at the beginning of the century. Beginning in the nineteenth century, when it was occupied first by the Austrians, then by the French, and then again by the Austrians, who made it into a military hospital, it experienced a period of decay, which continued after the war. Only at the beginning of the 2000s was it possible to proceed with restoration, and since 2007 some rooms of the palace have housed the Diocesan Museum of Feltre, which, with the end of the works that allowed the full recovery of the building, was therefore able to expand considerably.

The tour will begin from the entrance hall, which displays a 1504 fresco by the school of Andrea Mantegna. Next door, it will be possible to enter the multimedia room to learn more about the history of the palace, the diocese, and the works on display in the museum. In the palace’s cellars, carved into the rock, are rooms housing early medieval stone artifacts of early Christian iconography. Climbing the grand staircase, where the public encounters seventeenth-century armigers who welcome them in the Baroque theatrical style, one arrives at the mezzanine, where the neoclassical hall houses works by Michele Fanoli (Cittadella, 1807 - Milan, 1876), a Nativity by Sebastiano Ricci (Belluno, 1659 - Venice, May 15, 1734) and an Escape to Egypt by Federico Bencovich (Dalmatia, 1677 - Gorizia, 1753), all works from private chapels in the area. The Gradenigo Hall houses four more masterpieces by Sebastiano Ricci, and a Crucifixion by Francesco Frigimelica (c. 1560 - Belluno, after 1649). The Gera chapel, on the other hand, displays the museum’s treasures, including the silver Chalice of Deacon Orso (the oldest known Eucharistic chalice in the West: according to some scholars, it dates back to the mid-6th century), a 12th-century portable altarpiece, a Gothic alabaster Madonna, the 1497 bust-reliquary of St. Sylvester, and the 1542 post-Byzantine boxwood cross.

Going up to the second floor, one can visit the palace’s former prisons, where rooms housing liturgical goldsmithing pieces have been set up. To the left of the Gradenigo Hall, on the other hand, begins the path of wooden sculpture, over four rooms: much of it is dedicated to the figure of Andrea Brustolon (Belluno, 1662 - 1732), the “Michelangelo of wooden sculpture,” as Honoré de Balzac called him. His are the Madonna Assunta and the Four Evangelists, works among the most successful of the great Belluno artist. Then there are rooms dedicated to liturgical vestments and a picture gallery that houses paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries by top-notch artists. Among the works are the Madonna and Child between Saints Victor and Nicholas of Bari by Tintoretto (Venice, 1519 - 1594), a work signed “tentor” and coming from the church of Ognissanti in Feltre, for which it was made in 1545; Luca Giordano ’s Saint Jerome (Naples, 1634 - 1705); and Nicola Grassi ’s Madonna of the Girdle (Formeaso, 1682 - Venice, 1748). A space is also reserved for Domenico Corvi (Viterbo, 1721 - Rome, 1803), present with four works from the Certosa di Vedana. The visit then continues with rooms housing liturgical objects and paintings on wood panels from the 15th and 16th centuries, and then descends again to the ground floor where it continues in the rooms of ancient icons (many of them from the Russian school, others still from the Cretan school) and votive offerings. The tour ends with the rooms devoted to contemporary art, where the works of Augusto Murer (Falcade, 1922 - Padua, 1985), Ugolino da Belluno (Belluno, 1919 - Rome, 2002), Mimmo Paladino (Paduli, 1948) and Arnaldo Pomodoro (Morciano di Romagna, 1926), and with a visit to the thirteenth-century tower around which the first nucleus of the bishop’s palace arose and where seven stone capitals from the Feltre convents suppressed between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been arranged.

The new Diocesan Museum of Feltre, directed by Monsignor Giacomo Mazzorana, is the result of the collaboration between the Diocese of Belluno-Feltre, the Veneto Region, the Unione Montana Feltrina, the Superintendencies for Artistic and Historical Heritage, for Architectural and Environmental Heritage and for Archaeological Heritage of the Veneto Region, with the fundamental contribution of Fondazione Cariverona. Information is available by calling 0439 844082 or visiting www.museodiocesanobellunofeltre.it.

Feltre, recovered the ancient Palazzo dei Vescovi: it will house the new Diocesan Museum, on as many as 27 rooms

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