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| Busseto: art and history |
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Busseto
was an important medieval agricultural village, situated
in a strategic place for the control of the fords on the Po
between Lombardia and Emilia and founded in the X century, when
the emperor Ottone II conceded the area in feud to the Pallavicino
family, a house descended from the Tuscan dynasty of the Obertenghi.
The Pallavicino family made Busseto the capital of their property,
and between the XIV and XV they transformed the village into
a rich and elegant city in line with the courtly tastes of the
time.
Proof of these happy times can be detected in the Collegiata
di San Bartolomeo church, host to frescoes by Michelangelo Anselmi,
together with the Santa Maria degli Angeli church, with the
grief for the dead Christ by Guido Mazzoni: two of the individuals
in the sculptured group represent the masters of Busseto. Between
the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, the centre of Busseto
became embellished with stately palaces and churches, weaving
an urban fabric worthy of a small capital.
It was during the same period that Busseto's most famous son
was born: Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901).
Villa Pallavicino
The building of the villa was concluded at the start of the
1500s.
In 1533, when it received a visit from Carlo V, the building
was still under construction. Between the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries the Villa was extended and decorated in a Baroque
style.
Surrounded by a square moat, the villa is reached by the bridge
crossing from the porter's lodge pavilion, of exquisite Baroque
craftsmanship.The internal open gallery preserves important
testimonials to the Renaissance era: frames of rustic ashlar
work and the space of the buffalora, open on four sides,
with an umbrella-shaped vault frescoed with mythological and
grotesque symbols in the style of Baglione and other Emilian
decorators from the second half of the Sixteenth century.
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