Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli’s international network and models for a modern museum

Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli (1822–1879) was one of the major Italian collectors of the second half of the nineteenth century. He set up a museum to show his collection in his native Milan, an art foundation that was the first private period-room museum in Europe. Here he brought together decorative arts and Old Masters from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century in a display that was to inspire European and American collectors. His refined and up-to-date taste can be attributed to the remarkable international network of connoisseurs and antiquaries to which he belonged and the journeys he undertook, both of which this essay aims to trace.