T

he collection on exhibition inside the museum of “Villa delle Meravigle” cover fields including different typologies, from statuary to furniture, from books to paintings, from seals to ancient prints, items which all belong not just to a specific area of Sicily but to any culture somehow related to Sicily. 
Many items on display were recovered from auctions of old Sicilian collections and are therefore relics of great documentary importance.
Here, besides pieces of furniture dating back from the Renaissance up to Neoclassical Period of the second half of 19th century, visitors can admire remains of Roman sculptures, all the copies, created in both 1700 and 1800, of sculptures reminding ancient Greek works, pottery and slate marquetry of the Bourbon Age, representing scenes typical of ancient Greek vases. Moreover there are several objects d’art such as clocks with sculptures portraying gods, paintings representing ancient Greek myths such as the “Slaughter of Niobe’s Sons” and also micromosaics of views of Rome and Venice set in slabs with marbles and semi-precious stones, a head of an Aragonese monarch by Francesco Laurana, an outstanding sixteenth-century statue of the infant Hercules carved after the manner of Michelangelo still under scrutiny for attribution. 
The exhibition includes also collections of minerals, shells, semi-precious stones, artefacts of everyday use with elegant wooden marquetry, pieces of Eastern art and several portraits - some of which representing family ancestors - painted between 1660 and 1800.
A specific sector is devoted to pottery, which ranges from artefacts dating back to the early Middle Ages, the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance up to terracotta pieces by Bongiovanni Vaccaro and nineteenth-century majolica objects from Caltagirone.