The Staircase

In 1880, commissioned by the Miniscalchi-Erizzo family, the architect Gustavo Strauss designed the majestic three-story classical palace and courtyard, which today forms part of the museum itinerary.

Majestic evidence of the new building is the staircase, consisting of three flights of stairs with white stone balustrade above which opens a lantern skylight. 

Alternating at the corners are the coats of arms of Miniscalchi and Erizzo carved inside white stone shields. On the walls are eighteen different paintings of subjects and epochs embedded in stucco frames. The set-up is completed by the following works: the painting "Torquato Tasso reading his verses at Eleonora,” by Cesare Mussini in the first half of the 19th century; the statue “Clizia in love with the Sun,” made in 1838 by the Veronese sculptor Innocenzo Fraccaroli; and two ornamental armours forged in the 19th century in imitation of 16th century models.

Clizia in love with the sun

Recently acquired, the sculpture was made in 1838 by the Veronese sculptor Innocenzo Fraccaroli (1805-1882), an important exponent of Italian Neoclassicism. The work was probably commissioned by the Miniscalchi-Erizzo family. Displayed in the front of the base is, in fact, the coat of arms of the family.

The nymph Clizia is represented as a young girl, half-naked, her lower extremities wrapped in soft drapery, with her hand held high to cover her eyes so as not to be blinded by the Sun, with whom she is in love, despite being betrayed by him. She spends her days following the path of the Sun chariot, until the moment when, consumed by pain, she turns into a sunflower, or more precisely into a heliotrope, a plant already known at the time of the ancient Greeks.