The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea was founded in 1883 on the initiative of the then Minister Guido Baccelli and is dedicated to modern and contemporary art.
The present building, the Palazzo delle Belle Arti (Palace of Fine Arts) was designed by prominent Italian architect Cesare Bazzani. It was completed between 1911 and 1915. The facade features exterior architectural friezes by sculptors Ermenegildo Luppi, Adolfo Laurenti, and Giovanni Prini, with four figures of Fame holding bronze wreaths, sculpted by Adolfo Pantaresi and Albino Candoni. The museum was expanded by Bazzani in 1934, and again in 2000.
The museum displays about 1100 paintings and sculptures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, of which it has the largest collection in Italy. Among the Italian artists represented are Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Alberto Burri, Antonio Canova, Giorgio de Chirico, Lucio Fontana, Amedeo Modigliani, Giacomo Manzù, Vittorio Matteo Corcos, and Giorgio Morandi.
The museum also holds some works by foreign artists, among them Braque, Calder, Cézanne, Degas, Duchamp, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Monet, Jackson Pollock, Rodin, and Van Gogh.
References:Rosenborg Palace was built in the period 1606-34 as Christian IV’s summerhouse just outside the ramparts of Copenhagen. Christian IV was very fond of the palace and often stayed at the castle when he resided in Copenhagen, and it was here that he died in 1648. After his death, the palace passed to his son King Frederik III, who together with his queen, Sophie Amalie, carried out several types of modernisation.
The last king who used the place as a residence was Frederik IV, and around 1720, Rosenborg was abandoned in favor of Frederiksborg Palace.Through the 1700s, considerable art treasures were collected at Rosenborg Castle, among other things items from the estates of deceased royalty and from Christiansborg after the fire there in 1794.
Soon the idea of a museum arose, and that was realised in 1833, which is The Royal Danish Collection’s official year of establishment.