Galleria d'Arte Antica

The Galleria d’Arte Antica occupies the piano nobile of Udine Castle and traces painting and sculpture from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth century. Its collections were formed from civic commissions, church holdings, donations and bequests.

Why it matters

The Museo Civico was founded in 1866 at Palazzo Bartolini and moved to the castle in 1906. Twelve rooms present the collection chronologically, followed by a room for temporary projects. Four major acquisitions shaped the gallery: the Cernazai collection in 1900, the Joppi collection in 1906, the Mauroner bequest in 1919 and the Ciceri bequest in 2000. The collection records the history of painting and sculpture in Friuli and the Veneto, as well as the history of civic collecting in Udine.

What to notice

Early rooms include fourteenth-century fresco fragments and views of medieval and Venetian Udine, including a city plan attributed to Joseph Heintz the Younger. Renaissance works include Vittore Carpaccio’s altarpiece with the Blood of Christ, Pellegrino da San Daniele’s Annunciation, Andrea Bellunello’s Crucifixion (1476) and Giovanni Antonio de’ Sacchis—Pordenone—with the Madonna della Loggia (1516). Palma il Giovane’s Dedizione di Udine a Venezia is among the Venetian-period works. Later rooms include paintings by Bernardo Strozzi, Giambattista Langetti and Antonio Carneo, as well as Pietro Longhi’s portrait of Ludovico Manin and works by Giambattista Tiepolo, including altarpieces of the Angel Custode and San Francesco di Sales. A Saint Francis receiving the stigmata, attributed to Caravaggio, entered the collection in 1911. The Salone del Parlamento contains frescoes by Pomponio Amalteo and later painters, with a frieze and pairs of putti by Tiepolo.

Context and history

The gallery opened in 1866 at Palazzo Bartolini, now the civic library, and moved to Udine Castle in 1906. Its collection grew through public commissions, acquisitions from suppressed churches, donations and bequests. The Mauroner bequest of about seventy paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages to the Baroque strengthened the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century holdings. The present arrangement follows two strands: the history of art in Friuli and the Veneto, and the history of collecting in Udine.