Museo Civico e Gipsoteca Bistolfi

The Museo Civico di Casale Monferrato was established on 25 February 1910. Over the following decades the collections were enriched through new donations, bequests, and acquisitions by the Municipality of Casale Monferrato. Since 1995 the heterogeneous civic collections have been displayed in the rooms of the former Augustinian convent of Santa Croce: the first floor houses the picture gallery, the ground floor the Gipsoteca Bistolfi, recently enriched by an important bequest from the sculptor’s last heirs, and finally, in a hypogean room, the ethnographic collection of Count Carlo Vidua is preserved. The numerous objects and finds of various kinds he gathered are to be considered unique on the national and international level for the rarity and variety of the materials. More specifically, the American collection consists of the material gathered by Carlo Vidua during his second journey in the North American and Mesoamerican regions. At his death in 1830, it first passed into the hands of his father and later of his sister, who, before dying in 1838, designated Count Luigi Leardi Angelieri di Terzo as universal heir. He too, however, died prematurely, and it was therefore Carla Leardi, Luigi’s mother and Vidua’s cousin, who donated the collection to the Museum in 1854.

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