Museo della Certosa, Art museum in Certosa di Pavia, Italy.
Museo della Certosa is an art museum in the Certosa di Pavia complex and occupies two floors of the Ducal Palace. The collection includes a plaster cast gallery on the ground floor with detailed reproductions and an upper gallery with original paintings and sculptures.
In 1883 Tito Vespasiano Paravicini proposed to the Ministry of Public Education a museum in the Ducal Palace to illustrate the Certosa. Luca Beltrami, director of the Regional Office for the Conservation of Monuments in Lombardy from 1891, created the two-floor museum from 1892, starting with works by Agostino Busti called Il Bambaia, drawings for the facade, the Ecce Homo by Bramantino and casts. It first opened to the public in 1911, then remained closed for more than half a century.
The upper floor keeps Luca Beltrami's 1911 display, with marble reliefs by Agostino Busti known as Il Bambaia and sculptures of about 1480 by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo and Antonio Mantegazza. Room C holds portraits of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, his second wife Caterina and other members of the dynasty. The studiolo is frescoed with a trompe-l'oeil landscape framed by serpent-legged telamons, and its vault shows the Dream of Constantine among grotesques painted on a white ground.
Visitors typically begin on the ground floor with the plaster casts and continue upstairs to see the original artworks. It helps to allow enough time to explore both areas properly and take in the details of each piece.
The museum holds a detailed plaster reproduction of the funerary monument of Ludovico il Moro and Beatrice d'Este. Only one other copy of this reproduction exists in the world, making this version particularly valuable.
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