The Magnani Rocca Foundation was established in 1977, according to the wish of Luigi Magnani (1906-1984), assisted with care and passion by the previous ‘Cassa di Risparmio di Parma’ bank today known as ‘Cariparma-Crédit Agricole’, to honour the memory of his father Giuseppe and mother Donna Eugenia Rocca, with the aim of favouring and developing cultural activities with a specific bent for art, music and literature.
In the first place, Luigi Magnani gave to the Foundation the Mamiano Villa which was inaugurated as a museum in 1990 with an art collection which includes, among others, works by Gentile da Fabriano, Filippo Lippi, Carpaccio, Dürer, Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya, and contemporary artists such as Monet, Renoir, Cézanne up to de Chirico, de Pisis, 50 works by Morandi, Burri, in addition to sculptures by Canova and Bartolini.
The famous painting The Family of the Infante Don Luis, a masterpiece of Francisco Goya, is the emblem of a collection which finds its leitmotiv in an extremely high quality.
In order to preserve the sensation of a ‘lived’ house, the arrangement of furniture pieces were kept unaltered: here, in fact, we can find precious furniture and items of the Empire period, among which the large cup in malachite by Thomire, a gift of Czar Alexander I to Napoleon, and furniture pieces by Jacob. The restoration and transformation works of the Villa into a museum have followed the most internationally advanced principles to guarantee a perfect preservation of artworks and those specific features that make the Museum the ideal place to hold high-level temporary art exhibitions.
The Magnani Rocca Foundation aims at becoming a cultural centre not only for figurative arts but also for musical and literary ones according to the spirit of its Founder Luigi Magnani, who was always extremely careful to the connection between different artistic forms of expression.
The mission of the Foundation is to promote the dissemination of culture and art intended as tools for the growth of civil society.