Museo Civico e Gipsoteca Bistolfi

In the former convent of Santa Croce, Casale Monferrato's Civic Museum brings together a wide-ranging art collection and the working materials of sculptor Leonardo Bistolfi. The pairing connects the city's long figurative tradition with the methods of a major Italian Symbolist.

Why it matters

The pinacoteca developed from the bequest of Countess Clara Leardi and grew through donations, acquisitions and deposits from the second half of the nineteenth century. Its paintings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles and silver preserve different aspects of Casale's artistic culture. The Bistolfi collections add a complementary view of art in the making, from initial ideas to developed sculptural models.

What to notice

The variety of media is a defining feature of the civic collection, including paintings on glass and mirror as well as canvas and panel. In the Bistolfi material, preparatory drawings, small terracotta and plasticine studies, and plaster models reveal successive stages of composition. Notebooks and archival documents place these objects within the sculptor's working life rather than presenting them only as finished works.

Context and history

The museum occupies the historic Santa Croce complex, including a surviving fifteenth-century cloister. Its collections reflect the growth of civic collecting in Casale. A further Bistolfi collection was presented in the Sala delle Lunette in June 2022, expanding the material available for understanding his art and the cultural world in which he worked.