Project

Palazzo Mosca - Civic Museums is home to significant art collections and its exhibition path, completely renovated in 2013, gives full visibility to the city’s rich and multifaceted heritage. On display in the former house of the noble Mosca family, the museum collection starts with a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance: Giovanni Bellini’s Coronation of the Virgin. The altarpiece was produced by the Venetian painter around 1475 and was originally located in the San Francesco church in Pesaro. Other paintings and detached frescoes from the 14th and 15th centuries, which once decorated Pesaro’s churches and cloisters, also represent significant examples of the local figurative heritage. The museums also display magnificent ceramic pieces, including the 19th-century collection of Knight Domenico Mazza, which is a selection of the most representative istoriato works manufactured in the Renaissance centres of the ancient Duchy of Urbino, among which are Urbino, Casteldurante (Urbania), Pesaro, Gubbio and Deruta’s metal lustre pieces. Maiolica pieces are exhibited in a sort of “Wunderkammer” along with masterpieces of decorative and applied arts dating to different periods, of different materials and techniques, including caskets, cabinets, mirrors, clocks, and sculptures, which were part of Marquise Vittoria Toschi Mosca’s legacy. Along the exhibition path, an impressive display case is also dedicated to 18th-century floral ceramics with the typical decoration “alla rosa” (rose decorations), donated by Giorgio Ugolini. As for the paintings, the museums boast the magnificent piece The Fall of the Giants (1640-42) by Guido Reni, from the Hercolani-Rossini collection - which was bequeathed to the city by the composer. The Civic Museums also house paintings by Simone Cantarini from Pesaro, especially the pendant made up of Penitent Mary Magdalene and Penitent Saint Joseph (1644-46). It is worth mentioning that the exhibition includes still lives dating to the 17th and 18th centuries, which range from the vibrant colours and decorations of Christian Berentz and Franz Werner Von Tamm to the perspective illusions of ‘trompe-l’oeil’ effects. Additionally, the Civic Museums showcase Neoclassical paintings by Giannandrea Lazzarini, a painter, architect, ceramics expert, and one of the most prominent figures in Pesaro in the 18th century. Since 1960 the hall of Palazzo Toschi Mosca has exhibited another gem of the city’s collections: the impressive tondo in polychrome maiolica depicting the dreadful gorgon Medusa as a touching self-portrait of the versatile maiolica artist Ferruccio Mengaroni from Pesaro (Pesaro, 1875 - Monza, 1925).