Since 1973, the former convent of San Francesco al Corso, which also houses the famous Tomb of Juliet, has been home to the complex of the "GB Cavalcaselle Museum of Frescoes", with adjoining green spaces and the exhibition of stone fragments and finds.
The arrangement of the external green area dates back to 2004 with the construction of the new boundary wall in tuff and bricks which houses the display of tombstones and sculptural elements and the completion of the external plasterwork which remained undefined in the 1973 works.
During 2012, the restoration and static consolidation works of the eastern convent wing were completed by the Monumental Public Building with the Directorate of Art Museums and Monuments of the Municipality of Verona in collaboration with the architect Valter Rossetto.
At the same time, a new visitor reception area was inaugurated with an adjoining ticket office, a space for the sale of volumes and merchandising, a small refreshment area and new toilets for the public. On the second floor of the northern wing, the offices of the catalogue, of the photographic archive and of the Magagnato archive, the heart of the management of the collections, have been made functional.
In the final phase of the works, attention was paid to the southern wing and to an overall "revision" of the rooms aimed at making the pre-existing spaces homogeneous with the newly set up ones.
In anticipation of the completion of the museum, the Directorate of Art Museums and Monuments has conducted a cataloging and study campaign of the frescoes, sculptures and stone fragments in order to identify, as far as possible, the origin of this huge heritage, with the intention of integrating and perfecting the already existing exhibition. The most chronologically and artistically significant finds have been selected to be presented in the most effective way along a renewed museum itinerary.
In the cloister, to welcome the visitor, the new order foresees six statues, representing the Virtues and the cities of Verona and Vicenza, coming from the enclosure of the Scaliger Arches, inserted in this context in order to create an ideal dialogue with the fourteenth-century pieces exhibited in the upper rooms.
Continuing, through a chronological itinerary, the new opening of the museum allows you to take a journey through the centuries in the painted city. Starting from the year 955, in an evocative environment that recalls the Scarpian sacellum of the Castelvecchio Museum, stone and architectural fragments, inscriptions, capitals, corbels and paterae of great decorative value are exhibited, coming from destroyed religious buildings (the church of San Daniele and that of Tombazosana) coeval with the fresco cycle of the cave of San Nazaro. These very rare paintings whose first layer is dated XNUMX on the occasion of the reopening of the museum, were disassembled and reassembled according to the new restitution studied by Prof. Tiziana Franco of the University of Verona.
In the adjacent hall are exposed the imposing soffits with portraits of Roman emperors, from the Scaliger Palace of Cansignorio frescoed by Altichiero starting from 1364 and detached in 1967. After a careful restoration, carried out by the Restoration Laboratory of the Superintendence for Fine Arts and the Landscape of the provinces of Verona, Rovigo and Vicenza, the sub-arches are presented with a particular suspension system which allows them to be read from below similar to the one that the decorative cycle originally had. Next to the eleven sub-arches, there is a monumental Crucifixion and fourteenth-century frescoes from the cloister of Santa Eufemia, the church of Santa Felicita and other local churches, with stone elements referable to the Scaliger and post-Scaliger period, such as the marble medallions with profiles of Roman emperors, as a humanistic development of the theme chosen by Altichiero.
In the side corridor on the second floor is the long continuous frieze frescoed by Jacopo Ligozzi and workshop (1547-1627) for a room in Palazzo Fumanelli, depicting the Cavalcade of Charles V and Clement VII in Bologna in 1530, detached and donated to the civic museums Verona at the end of the nineteenth century. It is made up of thirteen large fragments which characterize a cycle of approximately thirty linear metres. Ten elements that compose it are presented in the top band of the wall, to recall the ancient location, while three contiguous elements are lowered to the height of the viewer's gaze, to allow a more direct appreciation.
From this point on, the museum itinerary connects with the existing one, taking up the story of the painted city with the frescoes by Bernardino India and Domenico Brusasorzi for Palazzo Fiorio della Seta, and continues with the paintings by Felice Brusasorzi, Anselmo Canera, Paolo Farinati. The latter, commissioned by Pellegrino Ridolfi in 1584, represent three episodes from the life of Moses and were exhibited in Castelvecchio until 1944, when they were damaged by war.
In the same room, 16 small bronzes are exhibited alongside an important early XNUMXth century bronze statue depicting San Rocco, from Michele Sanmicheli's Lazzaretto, previously presented only on sporadic occasions.
The exhibition organization is accompanied by extensive illustrative texts and an adequate graphic-didactic apparatus, integrated by multimedia tools with information related to the history of the city.
The inauguration of the renovated GB Cavalcaselle Museum of Frescoes is set for Saturday 14 November 2015, with free admission from 14.30 pm.
The free entrance will be extended until the whole day of Sunday 15 November.
Info: https://museodegliaffreschi.comune.verona.it
