ROME – Over eight hundred works of art including important paintings by Canaletto will be on display near Brescia from Feb 5, when the Casa Museo of the Paolo and Carolina Zani Foundation for Art and Culture opens in Cellatica.

 The art collection – also featuring paintings by Longhi, Tiepolo, Guardi, Boucher and by Filippo Parodi from Genoa and by Della Porta from Rome – will be displayed alongside precious baroque and rococo furnishings (mostly French and Venetian) and extraordinary applied art from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

 Guided tours will take visitors through the exceptional collection, the result of over thirty years of intensive search by the businessman Paolo Zani from Brescia.

 The aims of the recently established Foundation are the conservation, preservation and promotion of the Casa Museo, in addition to supporting culture through the donation of contributions for the training of young people, establishing awards and scholarships.

 As reported by the President, Claudia Zola:

 “Today this house becomes a museum that wishes to dialogue with his Foundation, a lofty idea that I wish to support as though he were still here with us. And if today collecting art has become practically synonymous with collecting contemporary art, opening this treasure trove reveals another special thing about Paolo, that he loved—he who was so reserved and shy—the splendors of the eighteenth century, elegant in France, explosive in Rome, refined in Venice.”

Guided tours are available through reservation on the Foundation site: www.fondazionezani.com

Opening hours: Tuesday-Friday: 9 am-13 am; Saturday-Sunday: 10 am-5 pm

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