The Accademia Carrara is an art gallery located in Bergamo. Inside it has an exhibition itinerary, organized on two floors and developed in 28 rooms, which consists of over six hundred works that cover a chronological span of five centuries, from the beginning of the fifteenth century until the end of the nineteenth century, touching the main schools Italian paintings and the painting of Flanders and Holland.
Accademia Carrara History
The Carrara Academy was founded at the end of the eighteenth century thanks to the generosity of the bequest of Count Giacomo Carrara, whose very rich collection of paintings, drawings and prints forms the primary nucleus of the current art gallery.
Next to the Gallery, the count also instituted the School, with the intention of creating a singular union that would allow students to combine study and practice with the observation of the models present in the adjacent art gallery.
The building where the museum still stands today was built by Simone Elia and initially also housed the school, then moved to the rear courtyard between 1912 and 1914.
The Academy has seen its assets grow significantly thanks to a dense series of donations and bequests, which testify to an uninterrupted tradition of patronage started by the generous gesture of Count Carrara. The museum is therefore affectionately referred to as the 'Museum of Collecting'. This tradition was then sealed, in 1958, by the placing of the Municipality of Bergamo in the ownership of the institution, which in this way became in all respects a civic museum.
The most significant collection is that of the paintings, which spans a wide chronological period, from the Renaissance to the end of the nineteenth century. The sculptures are a numerically limited group, but of great interest, especially those of the Baroque age.
To paintings and sculptures, protagonists of the visit, there is a rich collection of drawings and prints and precious nuclei of decorative arts: bronzes, medals, fans, porcelain, silver and goldsmiths.
The ancient funds of the archive and the historical library complete the museum heritage.
After seven years of closure, necessary to carry out restoration works, the Carrara Academy reopens to the public in April 2015.