The count’s cultural project is framed in the lively debate on the educational function of the museum sustained by Enlightenment-type instances and a strong civic sense that saw the emergence, between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, of fine arts ‘establishments’ or ‘institutes’ of private origin: the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (1795), the Pinacoteca di Paolo Tosio in Brescia (1832), the Stabilimento di belle arti Malaspina in Pavia (1833), and the Istituto Ala Ponzone in Cremona (1842), which are at the origin of the present Lombard museum system.
Of these, the Academy is the only one to have kept the collections, library and historical archives united in their original location, and this, together with the happy landscape location on the lake, gives it a unique charm.
Count Tadini frequented Lovere with his family as a holiday resort.
After the tragic death of his son Faustino, swept away in a building collapse in 1799, he was long absent from the city, where he returned in 1818 with the intention of building a palace to house his own rich art collections.
The task was entrusted to Sebastiano Salimbeni, an amateur architect, who designed around the chapel consecrated to the memory of Faustino Tadini (celebrated by a Stele sculpted by Antonio Canova) a palace that would serve both for the display of the collections and as the seat of the drawing and music schools, an important point of reference for the Sebino-Camuno area.
The new building, built between 1821 and 1824, could already accommodate in 1827 the art collections, which until then had been displayed in the ten rooms of the count’s private residence in Crema.
The Tadini Academy of Fine Arts, formally established in 1829 upon the death of its founder, is among the oldest museums in Lombardy, a faithful witness to the taste of the neoclassical age.
Still active today is the Music School with a regular school year and master classes in the summer for violinists, cellists and opera singers.
The Concert Hall has hosted a prestigious season of chamber music concerts with world-class performers every year since 1927 in April and May.
Exhibition criteria – Visiting itinerary
The solemn palace overlooking the lake has retained the charm of the old museum.
The collection collected by Count Luigi Tadini reflects the variety of interests of an aristocrat who grew up in the climate of the Lombard Enlightenment and collected works of literature, philosophy, history, and science in his library.
Indeed, his interests were directed toward the most varied expressions of art, technology, and nature: alongside paintings, sculptures, drawings, and engravings he collected porcelain, and then minerals, fossils, and animals.
A summary of his thought seems to be expressed in the simple dedicatory epigraph he dictated, placed on the entrance staircase: A. MDCCCXXVI / LITTERIS ARTIBUS NATURAE / DICATUM.
The heart of the collection are the works of Antonio Canova, who had constant friendly relations with the family: the Religion, a rare terracotta sketch for the monument to Clement XIII, and the Tadini Stele, consecrated to the memory of Faustino, the count’s son, in the silence of the chapel, which is among the great sculptor’s last masterpieces.
The Gallery, which is accessed by a wide three-flight staircase, is arranged along 23 interconnecting rooms that reproduce the old layout: the Archaeological Cabinet is among the few in Lombardy to have retained its 19th-century furnishings, and all the rooms show ceilings painted by Trevigliese Luigi Dell’Era (1826).
The itinerary includes a fine selection of art objects of neoclassical taste including a significant collection of porcelain from the most important Italian and European manufactures: Meissen, Sevres, the Royal Factory of Naples.
Masterpieces not to be missed include Jacopo Bellini’s Madonna and Child, a St. Anthony of Padua by Antonio and Bartolomeo Vivarini, a fine altarpiece by Paris Bordon, a Portrait of a Man in the Costume of an Innkeeper by Giacomo Ceruti known as il Pitocchetto, three important paintings by Francesco Hayez (Ecce Homo, Self-Portrait, Madonna) a section designed to display, in rotation, significant examples of modern and contemporary art acquired over time.
Subsequent acquisitions, after exhibitions held at Tadini’s Atelier, gradually formed the fund of the modern and contemporary art section.
Particularly important in this regard was the Europars exhibition, due to the high level of the artists presented.
Various 16th-century frescoes, detached at different times from the exteriors of houses in Lovere, and collected in the Lecture Hall, document the Academy’s commitment to the protection and enhancement of the area.
Entrance fee.
Discounts provided.
Visiting Information – It is possible to arrange guided tours for groups and activities aimed at schools, by reservation and for a fee, even during the closed period by contacting the Museum’s educational services at the following cell phone number 349.4118779 or by e-mail at didattica@accademiatadini.it
Bookshop – Offers a selection of catalogs of exhibitions organized by the Academy, publications pertaining to neoclassical culture, and postcards.