Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

History

According to 18th-century Italian art historian Luigi Crespi, it was cardinal Prospero Lambertini, who would later become Pope Benedict XIV, the one who planned a Gallery for altarpieces in the churches of the city.

The gallery's first nucleus of works came from the acquisition in 1762 by monsignor Francesco Zambeccari of eight early 15th-century altarpieces, salvaged from the demolition of Saint Mary Magdalene's church. Bought for the Istituto delle Scienze, the art pieces were to be preserved by the Accademia Clementina, the Institute's artistic section. In 1776 a dozen of 13th-century altarpieces and Byzantine icons, which came from Urbano Savorgnan's legacy and formerly located at the Saint Philip Neri's Oratory, were also bought for the Accademia.

Another Bolognese conservation pole was the Appartamento del Gonfaloniere at the Palazzo Pubblico. From the late 16th century onwards, the Appartamento had been housing paintings from artists such as Vitale da Bologna, Raphael (The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia), Cima da Conegliano (Madonna and Child), Lorenzo Costa, Francesco Francia, Pietro Perugino (Madonna in Glory with Saints) and Annibale Carracci (Madonna and Child with Saints), alongside works like the Pala del Voto by Guido Reni, preserved there for their high civic significance (another painting by Reni in the museum is the Massacre of the Innocents, 1611.

By 1796-1797, the Napoleonic occupation of Bologna and its incorporation into the Cispadane Republic led to the suppression of many convents, churches, and all the guilds. Paintings from many of these institutions were appropriated by the authorities. Some were looted and exported to other cities. The Bolognese senate decided to merge the suppressed churches' and convents' paintings and Accademia delle Scienze's holdings into one single collection, gathering almost one thousand works, organized first at the former Convent of St Vitalis, then in 1802 at the former Jesuit novitiate of Saint Ignatius in the Borgo della Paglia, now called via delle Belle Arti 56, made by Alfonso Torreggiani in 1726 to house the newly created gallery of National Academy of Fine Arts. …