The rejected Museum. The Palazzo Venezia 1916-1930
The paper reconstructs the history of the Museo del Palazzo di Venezia according to the projects of its superintendent Federico Hermanin, from its foundation in 1916, down to the completion of the work of restoration of the building, destined to become a ceremonial seat of the Fascist regime (1929). The research is based on an examination of the documents in the archives of the Museum and of the Direzione Generale dell’Antichità e Belle Arti, in large part still unpublished: letters, reports, inventories, together with preparatory drawings, graphic projects and plans, and photographs.
The study is subdivided into four parts. The first part investigates the cultural premises of the project for the Museo del Palazzo di Venezia, whose origins are traced back to the formation of a national museological culture in the liberal period, revolving round the question of the foundation of a shared cultural identity. In particular, attention is focused on the role played by Adolfo Venturi not only in promoting a national history of art, but also in launching a far-reaching reform of the national museum structures. In the early years of the twentieth century the project of establishing a Museum of Medieval and Renaissance Art took shape; it was to be installed in the Palazzo Venezia, according to the precise intentions of the Director General of Antiquities and Fine Arts Corrado Ricci.
The second part traces the biographical and intellectual profile of Federico Hermanin, his philological training, his meeting with Adolfo Venturi, his introduction to art-historical studies, and his embarking on a prolific scholarly output, in which particular significance was assumed by the question of the origins of the history of Italian art, which he identified in the Roman Middle Ages, a period that remained a central theme also for his later interventions in the museological field. The study particularly concentrates on Hermanin’s career in the administration of the Fine Arts, in relation to the growth of the role of the State in the safeguard of the nation’s heritage of art: from his debut as inspector at the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe (1898), to his appointment as Director of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica at Palazzo Corsini (1908), down to his posting as Superintendent of the Galleries and Museums of Lazio and the Abruzzi in 1913, and Director of the Museo di Palazzo Venezia (1916).
The third part reconstructs the history of Hermanin’s individual museum projects and their links with museums in the Twenties that attempted to recreate “period” ambience. Hermanin responded to the need to give rise to a museum whose rooms would re-evoke the ambience of a Renaissance residence and give the appearance of being actually “lived in”. The first partial fitting out of the rooms, dating to 1919 and 1921, is reconstructed. It were obstructed by the political authorities, reflecting the dramatic crisis of the liberal State.
The fourth part traces the events surrounding the restoration of the Palazzo Venezia, in preparation for Mussolini’s transfer thither, directed by the Committee for the execution of the work of restoring the Palazzo Venezia, chaired by Giuseppe Volpi, with the active participation of the architects Luigi Marangoni and Armando Brasini and the painters and restorers Giovanni Costantini and Pietro de Prai. In the same years the work of fitting out the rooms of the Appartamento Barbo as a museum also accelerated. Mussolini’s occupation of the palace in 1929 forced a suspension of the plans for the museum, and the substantial rejection of Federico Hermanin’s original project.
