Treasures

Housed in the prestigious rooms of the Santa Giulia Museum, the festival celebrates the bicentenary of the birth of the Brescia Civic Museums, presenting an extraordinary collection of over 100 works usually kept in storage and often never exhibited to the public. Curated by Stefano Karadjov e Roberta D'Adda, the exhibition reflects the Enlightenment ambition to bring to life a universal museum, ranging from the’ancient at contemporary and weaving the’aesthetics with the science and the industrial techniques.

The exhibition is divided into five thematic sections – archaeology, visual arts, nature, history e the elsewhere – and brings together a diverse range of artefacts: from the earliest finds excavated at the Capitolium and the drawings by Luigi Basiletti, a Etruscan vases, Egyptian artefacts, cameos, engravings of Dürer e Rembrandt, right up to an extremely rare Byzantine astrolabe and modern artworks by artists such as Francis Hayez, Gerardo Dottori e David LaChapelle.

Alongside the objects, the exhibition places human memory and the Collectors in Brescia, retracing the stories of well-known patrons and ordinary citizens one would least expect – including a watchmaker, one Red Cross nurse, a riding instructor and a captain of the Alpini – captured in the illustrator’s portraits Elisa Macellari. The initiative, organised by the Municipality of Brescia and the Brescia Musei Foundation in collaboration with the Natural History Museum and the Queriniana Library, also offers a network of city walks which link the exhibition to the city’s permanent exhibitions and iconic landmarks.