Collezione Cerruti

Behind the long gallery wing of the Castello di Rivoli stands a villa shaped by one collector's interests. Francesco Federico Cerruti assembled about a thousand works spanning seven centuries in a Provençal-style house, with rooms designed around the art.

Why it matters

The Collezione Cerruti is a broad private collection of northern Italy: Bernardo Daddi, Agnolo Gaddi, Sassetta and Pontormo on gold grounds; Guercino, Ribera and Batoni from the baroque; Renoir, Modigliani, Pellizza da Volpedo, Casorati, de Chirico and Morandi from the modern age; then Klee, Balla, Max Ernst, Magritte, Kandinsky and Picasso; and finally Burri, Fontana, Bacon, Warhol and Giulio Paolini. Cerruti assembled it from the late 1960s until 2014, and the Fondazione that bears his name preserves and studies the collection in a domestic setting rather than a neutral gallery.

What to notice

Rooms including the Study, Music Room, Dining Room, Fontana Room, Circular and Rectangular Rooms, Tower Room and Billiard Room were shaped to receive specific works. The villa was built from 1961 on land behind the Manica Lunga, when the castle was in ruins. The collection brings together works from different centuries, including Renaissance panels and modern abstraction, alongside furniture, carpets and a library with incunabula and illuminated manuscripts. A Safavid "Polonese" carpet is among the collection's notable objects. The garden forms part of the villa's setting below the castle.

Context and history

Cerruti's buying career tracked the post-war boom in Italian collecting, but with an uncommon through-line: he bought across the whole history of art rather than specialising, and he built architecture to fit the acquisitions instead of the reverse. The villa, finished in the late 1960s with later renovation in the 1980s, remained a private, almost secret place during his lifetime. After his death, the Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti per l'Arte took on conservation of the collection. The villa is associated with the Castello di Rivoli, which stands on the same hillside.