Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, Art museum in Palazzo Madama, Turin, Italy.
The Museo Civico d'Arte Antica occupies Palazzo Madama and the Casaforte degli Acaja on Piazza Castello in Turin. Its 35 rooms are spread over four floors linked by a lift, plus a panoramic level: medieval art in the basement, Gothic and Renaissance art on the ground floor, Baroque works on the piano nobile, decorative arts on the second floor. The 15th-century Torre dei Tesori holds the Trivulzio Portrait by Antonello da Messina and the Turin–Milan Hours.
The museum's ancient-art collections were moved to Palazzo Madama in 1934 by director Vittorio Viale, heir to the Pinacoteca Regia and Galleria Reale founded there by King Charles Albert of Savoy in 1832. A civic museum had been created in 1860, and in 1898 its ancient and modern art were separated. The Asian collection, including Gandhara pieces from IsMEO's excavations at Butkara Stupa, moved to Turin's Museum of Oriental Art in 2008.
The museum's name, Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, marks it as Turin's civic collection of ancient art, separated from the modern art holdings in 1898. Since 2010 an annual journal, "Palazzo Madama. Studi e notizie", documents its activity. Among the objects on show are the Trivulzio Portrait by Antonello da Messina and the Turin–Milan Hours, an illuminated manuscript also called the Très belles Heures de Notre Dame de Jean de Berry.
The museum occupies 35 rooms across four floors of Palazzo Madama, linked by a lift, with a further panoramic level above. The underground floor holds medieval works, the ground floor Gothic and Renaissance art, the first floor Baroque painting, the second floor decorative arts. Enter from Piazza Castello in central Turin.
The 15th-century Torre dei Tesori holds the museum's best-known pieces: Antonello da Messina's Trivulzio Portrait, the Turin–Milan Hours, and objects from Charles Emmanuel I's cabinet of curiosities. The tower also displays sculptures on the theme of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ.
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