Museo Paparella Treccia Devlet

Villa Urania in central Pescara houses the Museo Paparella Treccia Devlet, whose collection includes 151 examples of Castelli maiolica dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Raffaele Paparella Treccia assembled the collection over four decades and donated it with the villa to a foundation named for himself and his wife, Margherita Devlet, in 1997.

Why it matters

Castelli, a village at the foot of the Gran Sasso, was an important centre of artistic ceramics. The collection presents the development of its maiolica from the restrained compendiario style to istoriato narrative scenes and later Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical work.

What to notice

Works by the Grue family—Francesco Grue, his son Carlo Antonio and grandson Francesco Antonio Saverio—anchor the collection, alongside pieces by Gesualdo Fuina, Carmine Gentili, Candeloro Cappelletti and Silvio De Martinis. Painted plates depict religious, historical and mythological subjects. The museum also displays paintings, including a fifteenth-century Nativity and an eighteenth-century self-portrait by Pietro Santi Bambocci.

Context and history

Paparella Treccia, an orthopaedic surgeon, collected Castelli ceramics for forty years before donating the collection and Villa Urania to the foundation in 1997. The museum's holdings range from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries and document the changing styles and makers of Castelli maiolica.