Museo Mazzolini

Bobbio's Museo Mazzolini preserves a substantial collection of twentieth-century art, from Carrà and De Chirico to Fontana and Manzoni. Collector Domenica Rosa Mazzolini donated the collection to the Diocese of Piacenza-Bobbio in 2005.

Why it matters

The museum's story is inseparable from its donor. Domenica Rosa Mazzolini became assistant in 1950 to physician Giovanni Battista Ettore Simonetti and, through that household—including works inherited from the doctor's sister Fede in 1994—assembled a substantial private collection of Italian twentieth-century art. In 2005 she donated 899 works to the Diocese of Piacenza-Bobbio: 872 paintings and graphic works and 27 sculptures. The collection includes Carlo Carrà, Giorgio De Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Mario Sironi, Massimo Campigli, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Enrico Baj and the Pomodoro brothers.

What to notice

The donation spans painting, graphics and sculpture, including Futurism, Metaphysical painting, Informel and postwar avant-gardes. Campigli's painting Simonetta was given to Dr. Simonetti in gratitude for his care, an episode that helps explain how the country doctor's household came to include such artists. The collection occupies a historic abbey setting and forms a modern counterpart to the medieval works associated with San Colombano.

Context and history

The 2005 donation transformed a private collection formed through decades of friendship and inheritance into a diocesan museum within Bobbio's abbey complex. The Museo Mazzolini's twentieth-century works complement the medieval collections associated with the abbey and its museum, linking the city's artistic history across different periods.