Education and travels
Giacomo Carrara was born in Bergamo in 1714, the eldest child of Carlo Carrara and Anna Passi. His mother came from an aristocratic family of Bergamo, while his father was a landowner in the wool trade, who in 1690 had purchased the palazzo in Via Pignolo where Giacomo would spend his life.
Giacomo and his brother Francesco, who both attended the Collegio Mariano in Bergamo, went their separate ways, the former devoting himself to erudite studies, with a particular passion for art, while the latter chose a career in the Church in Rome, where he became a cardinal in 1785.
In 1755, the death of his father Carlo meant that Giacomo received his share of the inheritance, and he left for a long educational journey to Parma, Bologna, Rome, Naples, Florence, and Pisa. This gave him an opportunity to meet artists and scholars with whom he would stay in contact for the rest of his life, but also to start expanding his family’s art collection. When he returned, he married his cousin Marianna Passi, who always supported her husband’s studies and his insatiable passion for collecting.
The Pinacoteca and the School of Painting
Two closely related projects accompanied Giacomo throughout his life: the founding of a School of Painting and of a picture gallery for his art collection, which he would open to connoisseurs.
To achieve these aims, in 1766 he bought an old building in Via della Noca in Bergamo, which he radically transformed. This was the original neoclassical body of the building designed by Simone Elia that is now home to the Accademia Carrara.
When Carrara died in 1796, the catalogue drafted by Bartolomeo Borsetti recorded 1,275 paintings, as well as a significant but unquantified number of other paintings in the gallery and in the palazzo in Via Pignolo.
Of the paintings currently in the Museum, only 407 are known with certainty to have come from the Carrara Collection, and indeed in 1835, many of the paintings bequeathed by Giacomo were sold at auction. The whereabouts of only a few of the works sold are now known – in particular those that entered the collection of Guglielmo Lochis.
The Aesthetic Preferences of a Collector
The Pinacoteca reflected Carrara’s erudite tastes and offered a sophisticated overview of the Italian schools of painting, and in particular those of Lombardy and Veneto, ranging from the Renaissance to the artists of his day.
The paintings were displayed in eleven galleries, some of them along thematic lines, such as those devoted to writers, painters, historians, and poets. They were arranged in rows at various heights on the walls, with the works placed up against each other, and separated simply by a thin, gilded strip. The paintings were generally arranged by genre, but the main necessity was to show as many works as possible, as was commonly the practice when setting up a picture gallery.
More Than a Collector
Giacomo Carrara is best known as a collector. Less well known, but equally important, was his work as a client, patron, and champion of the arts, and especially his commitment as a scholar and as a man of culture. Giacomo gave Francesco Maria Tassi a lot of information, only some of which ended up in the drafting of the Vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti bergamaschi (1793), and he also worked with Giovanni Gaetano Bottari on the Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scoltura ed architettura (1754-73) and with Francesco Bartoli on the first art guide to Bergamo (1774).
Other collectors
Guglielmo Lochis
Bergamo, 1789 – 1859
Nominato nel 1835 membro della Commissaría dell’Accademia Carrara, organo di gestione voluto dal fondatore per amministrare la Pinacoteca e la Scuola di Pittura, Lochis ne divenne presidente pochi anni dopo, nel 1838. Il conte rivestì un ruolo fondamentale nelle scelte adottate dal consiglio, come nel 1835, in occasione della vendita all’asta di molti dipinti della collezione Carrara e probabilmente anche di parte di quelli acquistati dal museo nel 1804 da Salvatore Orsetti a Venezia.
Giovanni Morelli
Verona, 1816 – Milano, 1891
Giovanni Morelli costituì la sua raccolta seguendo il proprio gusto e i suoi interessi di studioso, ma senza uno specifico programma.
La raccolta, completata intorno al 1874, arredava le stanze dell’abitazione di via Pontaccio 14 a Milano, dove rimase sino alla scomparsa di Morelli nel 1891. L’anno seguente per volontà testamentaria giunse all’Accademia Carrara, che si arricchì della collezione di uno dei più grandi storici dell’arte dell’Ottocento.
Federico Zeri
Roma, 1921 – Mentana, 1998
Il rapporto di Zeri con l’Accademia Carrara risale all’inizio degli anni Cinquanta, quando negli articoli dello studioso compaiono i primi riferimenti a opere del museo bergamasco.
L’ultimo episodio della lunga amicizia di Zeri con il museo fu la decisione, già maturata alla fine degli anni Ottanta, ma espressa ufficialmente nel testamento, di donare all’Accademia Carrara la propria raccolta di sculture, che veniva a colmare una lacuna nel patrimonio dell’istituzione bergamasca.
Mario Scaglia
Bergamo, 1934
Mario Scaglia, ingegnere, proviene da una famiglia di industriali dediti, in principio, alla produzione di bottoni e spolette, poi convertiti all’ingegneria meccanica di precisione, ed è proprio la dimensione tecnica che lo fa appassionare a medaglie e placchette, oggetti d’arte di piccolo formato, frutto di grande perizia nel campo della metallurgia, che costituiscono il cuore della sua collezione d’arte.
Altri donatori
Accanto alle cinque donazioni più consistenti (provenienti dalle collezioni di Giacomo Carrara, Guglielmo Lochis, Giovanni Morelli, Federico Zeri e Mario Scaglia), nel corso di più di due secoli oltre 240 enti e privati si sono affidati all’Accademia Carrara per custodire le proprie opere. Di seguito, secondo un ordine cronologico, riportiamo l’elenco dei numerosi donatori, dei rari acquisti ottocenteschi e dei depositi.