Musei - Galleria Nazionale Dell'Umbria | National Gallery of Umbria (Episode 6)

Episode 6: The Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria is housed in the Palazzo dei Priori, Perugia, in central Italy. Located on the upper floors of the Palazzo dei Priori, the exhibition spaces occupy two floors and the collection comprises the greatest representation of the Umbrian School of painting, ranging from the 13th to the 19th century, strongest in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. The collection is presented in 40 exhibition rooms in the Palazzo.

The collection's origins lie in the foundation of the Perugian Accademia del Disegno in the mid-16th century. The Academy was originally based in the Convento degli Olivetani at Montemorcino, where it began to assemble a collection of paintings and drawings. The town became part of the French department of Trasimène in 1798 and its religious houses were suppressed. This suppression was repeated by the united Kingdom of Italy from the 1860s onwards - both suppressions shifted a large number of paintings and artworks from church to state ownership.

In 1863, the civic paintings collection was formally named after Pietro Vannucci, but the problem of establishing an appropriate site to house the collection was not solved until 1878, when it moved into the third floor of the Palazzo dei Priori in the town centre. With the addition of acquisitions, donations and bequests, the pinacoteca became the Regia Galleria Vannucci in 1918, under the patronage of the king. The name was later changed to Galleria Nazionale dell'Umbria. Over the years the entire complex of Palazzo dei Priori has been repeatedly affected by renovations and functional adaptation. The museum path, inaugurated in its current form in 2006, occupies an area of 4000 square meters on two floors.

Chronologically ordered, the permanent collection has Renaissance and Medieval paintings and sculptures from Italian artists such as Arnolfo di Cambio, Nicola Pisano, Giovanni Pisano, Duccio, Gentile da Fabriano, Fra Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli, Giovanni Boccati and Piero della Francesca. The particular attention of the collection is given to the Umbrian masters; Benedetto Bonfigli, Bartolomeo Caporali, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, Perugino, Pintoricchio and their students and followers.