Ferrara, the Schifanoia Museum is now fully open for visits: the Albertian wing reopened

Almost ten years after it was closed due to the 2012 earthquake, the Schifanoia Museum in Ferrara is once again fully open to the public: in June 2020 the Salone dei Mesi was reopened, in May 2012 the Borsian wing had been inaugurated, and now, from October 23, the Albertian wing of the palace, that is, the part of the building built at the end of the 14th century by Alberto d’Este, will be open.

With their reopening, the Albertian rooms will radically change their appearance, both to facilitate the display of the civic collections, which have been completely reorganized, and to tell the story of the evolution of this portion of the building. The Schifanoia Museum is thus intended to be a more modern, larger and more engaging museum: there are now twenty-one rooms to visit, 1400 square meters of exhibition space, and about 250 works on display. There are also several multimedia additions that help to learn about the history of the building, including through the virtual reconstruction of the different construction phases of the building.

The visit is intended to be a journey in stages that starts from the urban context of Schifanoia, read in parallel with the history of collecting that led to the birth of the Civic Museum in the 18th century; it develops around the fundamental theme ofcollecting and excavated ceramics as evidence of the daily life of the Este family in the delizia of via Scandiana, and then meets the figure of Leonello, the refined prince who marked the birth of humanism in Ferrara in the 15th century. After a close look at the fragments of frescoes that decorated the Albertian wing in the first half of the 15th century and an introduction to the civic value of the rediscovery of the Salone dei Mesi, the visit continues to the piano nobile. The grand masterpiece of the Este Renaissance dedicated to the Months, reborn thanks to the new lighting inaugurated last year, welcomes the visitor by introducing him, in the following rooms, to works from the age of Borso, Hercules I and the 16th-century dukes. Descending into the new rooms of the museum, the tour continues with the age of Devolution, Baroque Ferrara and great sacred painting. The visit concludes with the rooms dedicated to Cardinal Gian Maria Riminaldi, the spiritual father of the Civic Museum, who in the 18th century envisioned a “didactic” museum for the city full of objects and evidence of the past. The new Schifanoia Museum ranges from 15th-century miniatures (Matteo de’ Pasti and Guglielmo Giraldi) to 15th-century sculpture (Niccolò Baroncelli, Domenico di Paris, Sperandio Savelli) and of the 18th century(Antonio Canova), from Renaissance Salon painting to naturalistic and Baroque painting (Carlo Bononi, Scarsellino, Giuseppe Caletti), from Este-era graffito ceramics to humanistic medals (Pisanello) to papal coinage and punches. And much more: a story with many voices that tells, through the plurality of artistic techniques and exhibition languages, the beauty and richness of the most important civic museum in the city of Ferrara.

The museographic project was curated by the Museums of Ancient Art (Giovanni Sassu and Maria Teresa Gulinelli), the exhibition design by QB Atelier (Filippo Govoni and Federico Orsini), with the collaboration of the Ferrara Arte Foundation for display methods and techniques, lighting technology and captioning apparatus. The realization was coordinated by the Monumental Heritage Service and benefited from contributions from the Emilia-Romagna Region under Regional Law 18/200.

For info: www.comune.fe.it/schifanoia

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Pictured, Museo Schifanoia, Borsian wing, the Salone dei Mesi (east and north walls)

Ferrara, the Schifanoia Museum is now fully open for visits: the Albertian wing reopened

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