“The most beautiful Italian provincial museum” (Amedeo Maiuri)
The passion for the arts transmitted in the family had been able to cultivate and refine it since they were children.
And as adults they had not neglected to visit museums around Europe and to continue to enrich the already important collections put together by generations of Correales, counts of Terranova. Therefore, when in 1877 Naples had hosted the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, the brothers Alfredo and Pompeo, known in the city for their cultural interests and rather prone to social life, had not failed to participate in the event.
It was on that occasion that they developed the idea of leaving their beautiful holiday villa on the peninsula, with all its precious contents, to the municipality of Sorrento, to create a museum in their name. Bachelor Pompeo, married to Angelica De' Medici Alfredo, neither of them had children and, therefore, the bequest to the city of which their family was originally from was the only way to avoid the dispersion of the conspicuous artistic heritage. In fact, it was handed down from one generation to another of the Correale family for some centuries.
Pompeo died in 1900 and his brother followed in 1902, the year in which the Correale da Terranova Foundationwas created, later transformed into the autonomous body that manages the Correale legacy: Villa alla Rota, a treasure trove of art and beauty, together to the surrounding garden and land from which to draw funds for the maintenance of the museum. Which was inaugurated on May 10, 1924.
Villa alla Rota
It is a prestigious historic residence, the one donated by the Correale brothers. Built in the eighteenth century in a central area of Sorrento and in a panoramic position, it has three floors plus an attic. With a rectangular plan, on the main façade it has two advanced lateral bodies and a central building characterized by two rows of superimposed arches, each with three bays with listed arches. The Correale coat of arms is highlighted on the keystone of the central arch. Inside, it has twenty-four rooms, all intended for museum space. The original furniture, works of art and collections of the counts of Terranova have remained, but over time the exhibition has been enriched with other art objects, thanks to further donations. Ten thousand pieces, with many rarities and important archaeological finds.
On the ground floor
On the ground floor, the Sala dei Fondatori displays the portraits of Alfredo, his wife Angelica and Pompeo, with the genealogical tree of the family, originally from Scala, on the Amalfi Coast and present in Sorrento since the 13th century. In the same room, two autographed manuscripts by Torquato Tasso and ancient editions of Gerusalemme Liberata are on display. Torquato's aunt, Ippolita De' Rossi, sister of his beloved mother Porzia, was in fact part of the family, having married Ippolito Correale in 1535. The furnishings offer very valuable pieces of the Neapolitan seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and inlaid in Flemish style. The small noble chapel houses a 15th century Annunciation on wood from the Flemish school.
The second room is the realm of the renowned Sorrento marquetry. It was the knight Silvio Salvatore Gargiulowho donated his vast collection of inlaid furniture from the 19th and early 20th centuries to the museum in 1937. There is also a collection of very rare 19th-century photographic equipment and a series of oil paintings taken from 19th-century prints depicting ancient Sorrento.
The other rooms house the archaeological evidence of the most ancient history of the Peninsula: from prehistoric bronzes to Attic vases, from objects from the necropolis to numerous finds from the imperial age. Among these a marble altar carved on the sides with episodes of the inauguration of the temple of Vesta on the Palatine, in the center of which a statue of Augustus and other valuable marble statues must have been placed. Fragments of plutei, ambos carved with pegasi, griffins and eagles from the 9th-12th century belong to the medieval period, coming from the ancient cathedral of Sorrento.
To access the upper floors there is the grand staircase, located on the left side of the atrium, designed in the eighteenth century by the Royal engineer Giovanni Battista Nauclerio, with piperno balustrades decorated with volutes to close off the balconies.
The art gallery
On the first floor there is an interesting art gallery, with works from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Noteworthy are the four canvases with the Heads of Apostles by Giovanni Lanfranco and The penitent Magdaleneattributed to Artemisia Gentileschi. Then the Blessing of Isaac and Supper at Emmaus by Alfonso Rodriguez, the Deposition by Andrea Vaccaro, The fair and the evening port by Micco Spadaro, specialized in depictions of life in Naples. And more works by Paolo De Matteis, Giacomo del Po, Giuseppe Bonito, Belisario Corenzio, Giuseppe Pascaletti, Francesco De Mura. Other finely crafted furniture and objets d'art are displayed in the various rooms, including a collection of 18th-century Chinese porcelain. The Sala delle Specchiere, which takes its name from the furniture with mirrors found there, presents Correale's series of portraits of various generations. The curious Sala del Biribisso is dedicated to gambling popular among the nobles in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The last room offers a fine selection of Flemish authors: from the Interior of the Cathedral of Antwerp by Abel Grimmer from 1584 to a Study of heads attributed to Anton Van Dyck and then Sweerts and Van Kassel.
The second floor is largely reserved for pictorial art. Meanwhile, at the entrance there is the reproduction of a characteristic eighteenth-century Neapolitan pharmacy furniture. The first rooms welcome paintings between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries: the still lifes of Giovan Battista Ruoppolo, Tommaso Realfonso Aniello Ascione, Giovan Battista Casissa, and Gaetano Cusati. The entire Room 16 is dedicated to the seventeenth-century musician and stage designer Andrea Belvedere. Of notable interest are the collections of Murano glassand Bohemian crystal and eighteenth-century silver. The following rooms are the triumph of "vedutismo" between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries with paintings by Gaspar Dughet, Simon Denis, Frans Vervloet.
Room 19 is entirely dedicated to the School of Posillipo: Anton Sminck Pitloo first of all and then Filippo Palizzi, Raffaele Carelli and Michele Cammarano and Théodore Duclère, drawing teacher of the Correale brothers as well as Giacinto Gigante, whose works are the protagonists in Room 20. This is followed by the Clock Room with a rich collection of antique clocks and pendulum clocks along with other collections. Of considerable value is that of shepherds of the Nativity scenes, with figurines of the major architects of the eighteenth century in Naples, including Giuseppe Sammartino.
The third floor houses a magnificent collection of Capodimonte porcelain and other 18th century Italian and European factories. And the latest addition to the museum's collections is that of fans from the 18th to the 20th from various origins and of various styles.
The library and the historical garden
Also not to be missed is the 1918 library on the ground floor, opened in March 1924, with its six thousandvolumes and four hundred manuscripts from the 1600s on literature, botany, Sorrento history, medicine and archeology of Campania. Tasso's death mask is also kept there.
Around the villa, the garden is no less interesting. The original plant includes historical specimens of Araucaria excelsea and Choriza speciosa, a grove of various species of camellias, the citrus grove. An avenue of plane trees leads to the belvedere terrace overlooking the dream panorama of the Gulf of Naples.
