Lechi Museum

The fascinating history of the Lechi collections started around the half of the 18th century when this family, formerly called “de Lecho”, at the height of its wealth, built the sumptuous villa of Montirone (Brescia). They also equipped the city palace with a real picture gallery, collected by Count Pietro Lechi (1690-1764) out of respect for a tradition so popular among the educated aristocracy of the time. With Faustino Lechi (1730-1800), Pietro’s son, collecting paintings became an irresistible passion, thanks to favourable circumstances too, such as the first sales of the artistic heritage of the Lombard clergy that from the second half of the 18th century contributed to enrich numerous Italian and European private collections. At the end of the century, Faustino’s collection was composed of almost six hundred paintings with important masterpieces of the 16th and 17th centuries, above all painted by artists from Brescia. Faustino’s sons took part in the military events following the French invasion of Lombardo-Veneto (1797) alongside the Napoleonic troops, as officers in the army of the Cisalpine Republic. A choice that Lechi family paid dearly during the brief return of the Austro-Russian forces to Brescia (1799) with the brutal looting of the family palace in the city and the exile of Faustino Lechi in Genoa, where he died in 1800. What remained of the collection he had so lovingly built was soon sold to one of the many foreign speculators who, in those years, used to travel to Italy taking advantage of the moment. At the beginning of the 19th century a new collection of paintings took shape thanks to general Teodoro Lechi (1778-1866), the tenth son of Faustino, who devoted himself to the military career fighting with Napoleon Bonaparte on the most famous battlefields in Europe, from Austerlitz to the Moscova. And then, in the Italian Risorgimento, he was a protagonist in the anti-Austrian conspiracy of 1814 and the Five Days of Milan in 1848. Events that determined his condemnation to hard prison, exile in Turin and humiliating patrimonial requisitions. Once again, the collection, rich in extraordinary works, was therefore sacrificed and dispersed to escape the consequent difficulties.

During the 20th century Fausto Lechi (1892-1979), great-grandson of General Teodoro, although not able to restore the prestige of the collections of the ancestors, dedicated his life to a civil and intellectual commitment, organising in 1930s the first exhibitions of investigation of painters from Brescia from the 15th to the 19th century and then carrying out worthwhile historical and artistic studies. It is in this new family dedication that Luigi and Piero Lechi matured their collecting interests, thus recovering the great tradition of the family and finally sharing the choice of allocating the respective artistic collections to the public benefit. They donated them in May 2005 and July 2008 to the Municipality of Montichiari, where Luigi had worked as a notary for more than forty years. After his death in November 2010 the organisation of this museum started with the idea to honour the memory and the noble intentions.