The Museum of the Biellese Territory was inaugurated in 2001 in the current location of the former Convent of San Sebastiano.
The construction of the Complex of San Sebastiano, including the church and the adjacent convent of the Lateran Canons, dates back to the early 16th century, initiated by Sebastiano Ferrero.
An important figure, serving the Savoy court as a State Councillor and General Treasurer, and later as the General of Finance for the King of France for the Duchy of Milan, he began his career as a clerk in Biella in 1476 and soon acquired substantial fortunes and numerous feudal properties in Biella and beyond.
Well integrated into the Milanese court environment, deeply influenced by the presence of Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci, Sebastiano Ferrero acted as a conduit to bring to Biella the architectural and artistic updates that are evident in the choice of craftsmen for the construction of the San Sebastiano complex and the internal decoration of the Church.
The Museum houses civic collections that, starting from the second half of the 19th century, during the post-unification period, under the guidance of figures like Quintino Sella and later Alessandro Roccavilla, have been enriched up to the present day through discoveries in the area, donations, bequests, and deposits.
The heterogeneous museum heritage has allowed for the articulation of the visit path through the Egyptian sections, Pre-Columbian, Paleontological, Archaeological, and Historical-artistic.
The Egyptian room documents how the birth of the first civic museum in Biella is linked to private collecting, particularly the early 20th-century donation of a collection of statuettes and idols by Corradino Sella. In the 1950s, loans from the Egyptian Museum were added, also in relation to the figure of Ernesto Schiaparelli, a native of Biella and the first director of the Museum and the Italian excavation mission: the Ptolemaic mummy Taaset with painted sarcophagus, the funerary stele of the priestess Titeniset, and some specific finds from the workers’ village of El-Gebelein, established for the construction of the pyramids in the Valley of the Queens.
The recent room of Pre-Columbian Cultures is also a result of Biella’s collecting efforts, offering, through statuettes, fine textiles, and pottery, a complete and fascinating panorama of the pre-Hispanic peoples of the Americas, from Mesoamerica to the Andean territories, before the arrival of the Conquistadores.
The museum also proposes a continuous historical path of the territory, from the periods before the appearance of man to the late medieval age.
The Paleontological section illustrates life when Biella, starting from the Pleistocene era, was a sea populated by tropical fauna and flora, with a wide sampling of animal and plant fossils recovered in areas near the streams, especially the Cervo.
The large archaeological hall introduces the early ages that see the appearance of man and then to prehistory and protohistory with finds from the pile-dwelling village that arose on Lake Viverone, now a UNESCO heritage site and a witness to particular aspects of the material culture of the Bronze Age, in addition to the hill settlement of Bric Burcina, with its peculiar documents related to the history of spinning in Biella.
The transformation of the territory through the cultural contributions of the Romanization period (3rd-1st century BC) is well documented by finds from the Roman mine investigated on the Bessa plateau and the nearby village of Cerrione, first Celtic and then Roman, known through the particular necropolis that has yielded exceptional epigraphic documents.
The widespread Roman settlement in Biella is evidenced by finds from the area of present-day Salussola, an ancient agricultural center, and the hub of a larger district, as well as testimonies of what later sources would call Bugella, a village corresponding to present-day Biella, through the rich grave goods of the Biella necropolis on Via Cavour: ceramics, glass, ornamental objects, and everyday items allow us to approach the daily practices related to life and religion between the 1st and 4th centuries AD. The room “Traveling in the Ancient World,” dedicated to the canoe of Bertignano and the waters of Biella, completes the vision of the territory through the analysis of ancient routes and their relationship with the trade of raw or luxury materials, as well as with the spread, through waterways and land routes, of customs, beliefs, and material cultures.
The archaeological path concludes with the medieval section, which delves into the era of Christianization, featuring inscriptions and artifacts from the important early Christian church in the current center of Dorzano, leading to the phenomenon of settlement in castles and the use of the mountains, thanks to finds related to the story of Fra’ Dolcino in the Biellese Alps. Special attention is given to more urban documents related to discoveries in the current Piazza Duomo and the noble residences of Piazzo. The exhibition finally presents documents that, thanks to archaeological excavations in the complex housing the museum, attest to the life of the monks of the cloister of San Sebastiano at the beginning of the 16th century AD and introduce the next section.
The historical-artistic section displays works covering a time span from the 12th to the 19th century. Alongside the oldest works from the territory, which testify to the evolution of local figurative culture, the museum path continues into the 20th century, presenting collector nuclei resulting from donations the Museum has received over time from private citizens.
The journey begins by entering a large hall, where frescoes detached from the Church of Santa Maria di Castelvecchio di Mongrando are displayed, and continues with other works that express a strong connection to the territory: examples include the frescoes torn from the Church of SS. Fabiano and Sebastiano in Ponderano and the two stylophore lions carved from local stone, which, like the capitals and the analogous fragment of the sculpted archivolt, come from the ancient pleban church of Santo Stefano. The path then continues with the large altarpiece painted by an anonymous master, known as the Polyptych of the Coronation, which originally decorated the main altar of the Church of San Francesco in Biella, now destroyed. Next, one can admire examples of 16th-century painting, such as the panels painted by Defendente Ferrari, Gerolamo Giovenone, and Bernardino Lanino, among which stands out a copy of the Virgin of the Rocks, painted by Bernardino de’ Conti, recently reconnected to the original side panels.
Two recently donated works – a drawing depicting the Marriage of the Virgin from the workshop of Bernardino Lanino and the Self-Portrait by Morazzone – create the ideal junction to continue the visit with works from the 17th and 18th centuries. Numerous works, arriving through private collecting, particularly from the Collection of Cav. Giuseppe Masserano, donated at the end of the 19th century to the Professional School of Biella for the education of students: among them, a Saint Francis in Ecstasy resulting from Lombard Counter-Reformation culture, a Caravaggesque canvas with Rinaldo and Armida, and a Memento mori by the Genoese Bartolomeo Guidobono. Among the 18th-century works, the three overdoors by Giovanni Battista Crosato, featuring Biblical Heroines, stand out.
The path concludes with the collection of portraits of benefactors from the Ospizio di Carità, established in the 18th century thanks to the legacy of Ferdinando Antonio Dal Pozzo, from which also comes the large frame with the family crest.
The journey continues in the 19th and 20th Century Rooms, which display works that have arrived at the Museum thanks to donations from private individuals, testifying to the numerous collections present in the territory.
This section opens with the full-length portrait of the Biellese painter Lorenzo Delleani, portrayed by his friend Leonardo Bistolfi. His numerous small panels, painted “en plein air,” are compared with the paintings of other contemporary Piedmontese artists. Indeed, works by Antonio Fontanesi, Marco Calderini, Giovanni Piumati, Silvio Allason, Giovanni Giani, and Giovanni Battista Quadrone are exhibited, all coming from the collection of Maria Poma and Enrico Guagno, which also includes an interesting nucleus of paintings from the Macchiaioli school.
Continuing, one encounters the masterpiece by Emilio Longoni, the large divisionist canvas titled Reflections of a Hungry Man: it was donated to the Museum by the industrialist Bruno Blotto Baldo along with the sculpture by Carmelo Cappello and the paintings by Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo and Carlo Carrà.
It is well known that Biella, starting from the first half of the 20th century, with the help of fortunes from the wool industry, was an ideal place for the birth of a vibrant art market and the proliferation of artistic collections. This is evidenced by the canvases displayed along the path by Cesare Maggi, Gino Piccioni, Felice Carena, and the work of a young Michelangelo Pistoletto depicting Piazza Duomo.
The journey concludes with the Lucci Collection, where one can admire works by internationally renowned artists. Indeed, there are numerous works related to Surrealism, such as those by René Magritte, Yves Tanguy, and Max Ernst, but also Marc Chagall, Jean Miró, and two ink drawings by Salvador Dalí.
Futurism enters the collection with an abstract landscape by Giacomo Balla and a Spatial Concept by Lucio Fontana from 1952, which chronologically concludes the exhibition path.
