The Museum of the Miniscalchi-Erizzo Foundation represents a peculiar testimony of an ancient noble residence transformed, thanks to the munificence of Count Mario, into a museum "accessible to the visit of scholars and the public" (art. 2 of the Statute).
The main and oldest nucleus of the collections on display is represented by the many objects that belonged to the home museum of Ludovico Moscardo (1611-1681), collector and scholar from Verona, which was received following the marriage between Marcantonio Miniscalchi and Teresa Moscardo (1785). There are also other nuclei of origin that refer to families that historically were linked in kinship with the Miniscalchi, such as the Erizzo and the Pullè.
The visit begins in the large atrium, rich in evidence of the original structure of the fifteenth-century building. Through the neoclassical staircase, enriched by numerous paintings and two suits of armour, you reach the noble floor where the collections that have merged into the Miniscalchi family over the span of over three centuries are exhibited in fifteen rooms.
Each room is characterized by the presence of specific collections: precious bronzes and plaques of the Renaissance, archaeological collections, weapons and armour from the mid-fifteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century, paintings, sacred art, Russian icons, Venetian eighteenth-century furnishings, ivories, majolica, the dining room with set table and refined French porcelain from the Napoleonic period, the chapel, the ancient library and the reconstituted Wunderkammer by Ludovico Moscardo.
All the collections are set in such a way as to respect of the stately home that was inhabited by the Miniscalchi family for five centuries, until 1977.
Thanks to the generous donations received over the years and the recent acquisitions of paintings by the Foundation, the Miniscalchi-Erizzo Museum can now boast a unique collection of art in the panorama of international museums.
