GALLERIA SABAUDA

The first collection of antique paintings in Piedmont, the Galleria Sabauda is a veritable treasure trove. The brilliant museography allows a grandiose approach to more than six centuries of European painting. The tour follows a chronological order, from the Middle Ages to the 18th century, which develops on three levels.

Ground floor, rooms 1-7. The quality of the collection can be seen from the first rooms on the ground floor with four great artists : Van Eyck with The Stigmata of St. Francis, Beato Angelico with a Virgin and Child, Hans Memling and The Passion of Christ and Three Archangels by Filippino Lippi. This is followed by a 15th century face-off between Italy and Flanders with beautiful paintings by Piedmontese Gaudenzio Ferrari.

First floor, rooms 8-30. The grand staircase and panoramic elevators lead to the first floor and the 16th century. We find Gaudenzio Ferrari with an almost theatrical staging in his Crucifixion. All the grandiloquence of Venetian colourism is continued in Veronese's The Last Supper at Simon the Pharisee and in the monumental paintings of the Bassano brothers (rooms 17 to 22). The route continues in the 17th century between classicism and the Caravaggesque current with Guercin, Valentin de Boulogne, Guido Reni and Francesco Albani. Special mention for a remarkable Annunciation (1623) by Orazio Gentileschi, among the museum's masterpieces. Room 29: five very beautiful paintings from the 17th century Flemish period, including two Rubens Déjanire tempted by the Fury and Hercules in the Garden of the Eperides and three sumptuous portraits by Van Dyck, including the Equestrian Portrait of Prince Thomas Francis of Savoia Carignano.

Second floor, rooms 31-53. Honour to 17th century Dutch painting with the virtuoso Portrait of an Old Man asleep by Rembrandt. An entire room is dedicated to the battle scenes commissioned to Jan Van Huctenburg by Prince Eugene of Savoy Soissons, a general in the service of the Emperor of Austria at the beginning of the 18th century. To the great classicist compositions of Francesco Solimena, Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo respond the small formats of the trio of Venetian vedutisti Guardi, Bellotto and Canaletto.

Third floor, Gualino collection. The top floor of the palace is reserved for the warehouses, the restoration laboratory and the works of the Piedmontese industrialist Gualino, who donated it to the Galleria in 1929. An interesting bourgeois collection where you can admire some beautiful altarpieces by Duccio da Buoninsegna and some Veronese