One of the Coolest Collections of Things I’ve Ever Seen. Museo Poldi Pezzoli - Milan, Italy
Museo Poldi Pezzoli is one of the coolest collections of things I've ever seen. There are a few factors.
The building itself is part of the experience. Mural-painted ceilings, ornate fireplaces and the most beautiful extravagant door hinges I've ever seen attached to carved solid wood doors.
We had visited the British Museum in London less than a week prior, which is hard to compete in a 'look at all this stuff' competition, but the experience was overall more enjoyable.
The guy on the desk was extremely polite and helpful, speaking great English. Which does make things easier. We wangled our way through Italian the rest of our trip. I have yet to get past Duolingo teaching me animals and I didn't see any mice or elephants anywhere. We put our bags in the lockers and watched one of the guards feed the tiny koi in the fountain at the bottom of the stairs. The food was kept in one of the wooden pews that wrapped around the fountain. The seat lifted.
It's also one of the most respected I've felt as a viewer in front of expensive items. Many of the paintings and sculptures are without glass or barriers. There was an appropriate amount of suited security walking around just making sure no one was being silly.
We had the place practically to ourselves. We saw maybe 5 or 6 other groups while we were there, possibly 40 people in total, we outstayed most.
My enjoyment of Renaissance and religious art has grown over the last few years. I stood in front of these two for a while, they felt familiar and I saw my recent paintings in them. They're narrative but without a stage for the actors. Depict scenes from a book that everyone read at the time. I have yet to, but I know there are lots of symbolic references laced throughout the artworks.
The Mother and the Child she is carrying are dead-locked with the viewer. Their faces were as if they were moulded from clay. Two figures seemingly getting rowdy in the back.
This second painting was appealing to me for its addition of these two scenes in panels, making the central main body of the painting a cross. The child with the rosary on his lap doing the Father, Son and Holy spirit hand pose. Both these paintings are of the Virgin Mother and Jesus.
There were plenty of other impressive paintings, including a bunch of scene paintings. Still great, they just don’t do as much for me. Nor do I normally enjoy paintings primarily based on how the paint was handled, but this one stood out against the layered glazed approach of its surroundings.
I know about Pietra Dura from Harrison’s work. Hard stones are cut to perfectly match with use of their appropriate colour. It makes most mosaics look like finger painting… I know it is different, there are some equally impressive finger paintings out there.
This section felt most like a house, an ornate fireplace with this glorious stained glass (this panel was my favourite) and this splendorous gold ceiling. From what I can gather from the Museo Poldi Pezzoli website this room is called ‘DANTE'S STUDY’ - read more of this here https://museopoldipezzoli.it/la-casa/
We then moved on to the glass cabinet collections. This guy had so many compasses. We were joking that every time he went out he forgot his compass and had to get a new one, his wife reminding him of how many he had at home, he'd just shout I'm a billionaire! Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli, the owner and curator of this collection, inherited extreme wealth. Read more about his story here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Giacomo_Poldi_Pezzoli
Rings and other jewellery. Ornaments. I'm not as enamoured as some are by watches and clocks, this whole room was devoted to them. This spherical one was my favourite.
This ornamental blue cow-looking thing. Harrison told me about the technique of how it was made - ‘Cloisonné’. Coloured glass sectioned off with metal and the whole piece fired at once. There was some coloured Roman glass in one of the other rooms. We were looking at these styles when we were blowing glass earlier this year. Again it does heighten the appreciation.
The final room was back downstairs. A darkened room full of armour and weaponry. We did spend a long time in here, making sure to look at each piece. There was a lot in here, it was on the brink of being slightly overwhelming if we were to try and take in the whole room at once. Each cabinet was an individual experience. I photographed as many individual pieces as I could so Harrison could reference them in his future works. Here are a selected few. The duelling pistols reminded us of the ones in Dishonoured, which has one of the best world creations. The art book for Dishonoured 2 is constantly out at home and gets flicked through at least once a week.
There’s lots of history to read up on: from the family, the artists and craftspeople and the building - a lot was destroyed in 1943. The best place to start is probably the website https://museopoldipezzoli.it/, it’s intrigued me enough to do more reading on its past.
All the photographs taken by me.
