The History
FROM HOUSE TO MUSEUM
The Museo Bagatti Valsecchi is a Neo-Renaissance house museum located in the heart of Milan’s Quadrilatero della Moda. It was created in the late nineteenth century by the brothers Fausto and Giuseppe Bagatti Valsecchi, who fulfilled their dream of living in a residence furnished with paintings, furniture, and decorative arts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Their project brought together art and design in a way that was remarkably innovative for its time, combining a Renaissance-inspired setting with modern comforts such as central heating, running water and electric lighting.
Today, the collection is still displayed according to the original arrangement conceived by the two founders. Visitors can admire elegantly decorated rooms and remarkable collections of inlaid furniture, ivory and gilded wrought iron objects, maiolica ceramics, sixteenth-century parade armours, glassware, fine textiles, and outstanding paintings, including works by Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, Giampietrino, and Zenale.
The house remained the family home until 1974, when the Fondazione Bagatti Valsecchi was established and entrusted with much of the historical and artistic heritage. After an extensive restoration by the Lombardy Region, which had become the owner of the palace, the Museo Bagatti Valsecchi opened to the public in 1994.
Today it is considered one of the best-preserved house museums in Europe and an early and remarkable example of Milanese design.
Fausto and Giuseppe, the odd couple
Fausto and Giuseppe committed to the restyling of the Renaissance inspired Palazzo. They graduated in Law studies but they never used their title professionally: they dedicated their time and resources to the renovation of the family house, to its decoration and to collecting art instead.
Their predilection for the Renaissance period was, at the time, aligned with the cultural program published by the Savoia monarchy, in the aftermath of the Italian unification. The Renaissance, as a matter of fact, was indicated as the appropriate time to devise a new national art: an essential ingredient of the reinforcement of the national identity still too weak during the unification.
Fausto and Giuseppe were very close, although they got two very different personalities: Fausto was a socialite and brilliant man, while Giuseppe was more reserved and inclined to domestic peace. And Giuseppe indeed got the task to give continuity to the family line, thanks to his marriage with Carolina Borromeo, celebrated in 1882, and their five children.
Their life, apart from the renovation project to which they committed with passion, was marked by the typical activities and duties reserved to the noblemen of the late 19th century. Besides the administration of their properties, they were dedicated to charity, the lively Milanese social life, wondrous travels around Italy and abroad, horseback riding among other sports, such as hot-air ballooning and velocipede rides.
After Fausto and Giuseppe passed away, their heirs continued to live in the house, until the seventy-year-old Pasino Bagatti Valsecchi, son of Giuseppe, decided to establish the Bagatti Valsecchi Foundation and to donate the entire art collection to it.