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Diotti Museum

Diotti Museum

The Diotti Museum is a civic art museum located in Casalmaggiore, in the province of Cremona.

Open to the public since 2007, the museum is located in an ancient palace that was owned by the painter Giuseppe Diotti (1779-1846).
Respecting the wishes of its illustrious inhabitant and restoring the appearance of a private home, the museum is proposed not only as a 19th-century picture gallery but also as a house museum aimed at reconstructing the image of the atelier and didactically restoring the artist's work method. The museological project was curated by Valter Rosa.

Giuseppe Diotti's home-atelier occupies eight rooms on the piano nobile, with themes covering every aspect of the painter's activity, from his years of study in Rome, through the preparatory drawings for various frescoes showing the painter's attention to the study of the human figure, to his mature works. In addition to Diotti, there are artists such as Marcantonio Ghislina, Francesco Antonio Chiozzi, Paolo Araldi, Luigi Quarenghi, Carlo Cerati, Paolo Troubetzkoy, Tommaso Aroldi and Amedeo Bocchi.

The tour continues with the Gallery of Modern Art, which contains significant works by local and Lombard artists of the 20th century. Some of these artists (Mario Beltrami, Goliardo Padova, Gianfranco Manara and Tino Aroldi) devoted themselves largely to landscape painting, while others privileged themes of a political-social and existential nature (Guerreschi, Vaglieri, Ceretti, Romagnoni, Ossola, Pozzan and Dobrzansky). The absence of explicit figuration and the hybridisation of languages are instead the prevalent aspect of the works of contemporary artists.

A special feature of the museum is the attention paid to the artists' ateliers: the working environments of various painters (Goliardo Padova, Tino Aroldi, Palmiro Vezzoni) and the sculptor Ercole Priori have been reconstructed here.

Along the exhibition route, there are some multimedia stations through which Giuseppe Diotti in-person welcomes visitors to his house, tells about his life and the subsequent developments of art in Casalmaggiore.

The museum has a rich educational programme for schools and families, regularly organises events and temporary exhibitions and during the summer hosts a film festival in the garden.

Download the guide to the exhibition

How to reach us

Via Aldo Formis, 17 - 26041 Casalmaggiore (CR)