Nocivelli room

The Nocivelli room is a very special room because the furnishings are decidedly different from the style of the other rooms. The room is dedicated to Luigi Nocivelli, a Brescia entrepreneur, one of the most important at our time, knight at the Legion of Honor. In the last ten years of his life he made an exceptional collection of books with over 150 works from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries dedicated to architecture, antiques and archeology.

They are very important books, all richly illustrated with precious bindings and with illustrious formal owners. Besides the incunabulum of Leon Battista Alberti dedicated to architecture, the Nocivelli collection is remarkable for the exceptional presence of five complete editions of Giovanbattista Piranesi, also and above all for the "Description de l'Egypte" the first modern work of Egyptology, commissioned and sponsored by Napoleone Bonaparte. Bonaparte took with him during the campaign in Egypt numerous artists, who were the producers of the illustrations to accompany this monumental book which record not only the monuments of Egypt but also its culture, vegetation and anthropology. The large bronze sculpture by Francesco Messina, was also a part of Luigi Nocivelli’s collection.

On the table we find the bronze sculpture of the water seller by Vincenzo Gemito.