Collezione d’arte. From Signorelli to Burri opens to the public on December 12, 2025, in the spaces of Palazzo Montani Leoni in Terni. The Foundation Cassa di Risparmio di Terni e Narni unveils its collection through a curated exhibition drawn from its rich holdings.
From the Foundation’s patrimony, comprising over 1,100 works, a careful selection of the most representative pieces has been made, presented along a chronological journey that highlights stylistic connections among the artists and touches the major epochs of art history from the early 14th to the early 21st century.
The exhibition, Collezione d’arte. Da Signorelli a Burri, curated by Anna Ciccarelli, the Foundation’s director and a driving force behind the project, reflects an eight-century voyage of artistic creativity — from Medieval roots, through the Renaissance, to the innovations of the twentieth century. Through forty-five works, the audience is invited to experience a small “Museum of artistic memory,” a conceptual bridge between the great Renaissance tradition and contemporary research.
The itinerary begins with works from the Trecento and Quattrocento, including pieces from the circle of Taddeo Gaddi, moves through the masters of the Cinquecento with paintings from the workshops of the Umbrian and Tuscan schools, including Luca Signorelli, whose panel in the show reveals his extraordinary plastic sense and the dramatic tension of the figures.
Following are paintings from Italian Baroque and Caravaggism, by Antiveduto Grammatica, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Mattia Preti, and from Flemish school with Sebastian Vrancx, illustrating the transformations of painting between formal elegance and the exploration of new luminous effects.
The Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century sections document a Venetian late-Baroque sensibility with an elegant view of St. Mark’s Square by Francesco Guardi, and then the space dedicated to landscape painters from the Low Countries who honored Umbria with splendid depictions of the Marmore Falls, by Claude Joseph Vernet, Verstappen, and van Bloemen.
The section devoted to the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century traces the evolution of bourgeois taste and the sense of truth, from Romantic painting to realism and Impressionism, up to the ferment of the postwar period. The exhibition features two extraordinary works by Alfred Sisley, celebrated as a master of Impressionist landscapes, and by Camille Pissarro, the “father” of the movement. At the core of the Twentieth Century collection are prominent works by Alberto Burri and Agostino Bonalumi.
The show closes with a section honoring the great Umbrian masters or artists active in the territory in the Twentieth Century: Piero Gauli, Ardengo Soffici, Ugo Castellani, Umberto Prencipe, Amerigo Bartoli, Onero re Metelli, and Aurelio De Felice. Accompanying the exhibition is a small gallery featuring portraits of cardinals and distinguished figures from the XVII–XIX centuries, a splendid bronze clock from the Louis XVI era, sculptures by Vincenzo Gemito, and a contemporary ceramic work by Piero Gauli.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog edited by Anna Ciccarelli. The installation of the show is by Studio Sciveres Guarini. The Collezione d’arte of Fondazione Carit. The collection comprises a rich historical-artistic patrimony, consisting of over 1,100 works distinguished by genesis, divided into two nuclei. The first derives from the conferral of movable assets by Cassa di Risparmio di Terni e Narni in 1992. The second consists of works purchased directly by the Foundation since its inception (July 1992) and continues to grow through acquisitions and donations.
The Amato law — named after its proponent — launched a profound renewal of the Italian banking system in the early 1990s, transforming savings banks and credit institutions into joint-stock companies and giving rise to the Foundations of banking origin, tasked with pursuing social utility and the promotion of economic development.
Within this transformation, Fondazione Carit was formed when the original bank was separated, and it acquired part of the holdings that the Cassa di Risparmio had gathered since the early twentieth century through active patronage. With a few rare exceptions, the collection comprises about sixty paintings by artists mainly active in and around the region, often acquired directly from painters during solo shows or group exhibitions, or identified on the antiquities market or at auctions.
The second nucleus, more substantial in terms of size, variety, and representativeness, consists of more than a thousand works — oils on canvas, panel, and paper; watercolors, drawings, and prints; sculpture in stone and bronze — purchased by the Foundation over the course of its institutional activity from major auction houses or received through donations. The most significant donation is the Guido Mirimao fund, comprised of 932 works donated by the artist’s widow in 2015, for which the Foundation has organized a dedicated exhibition and permanent displays on the second floor of Palazzo Montani Leoni.
Background notes on the show and its curatorial scope, with a robust selection spanning medieval roots to modern and contemporary practice, aim to illuminate the Foundation’s ongoing commitment to preserving and sharing a rich regional and national artistic heritage.
Photo credits: La Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Terni e Narni
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