The Scarognino Polyptych , originally in Santa Maria delle Grazie in Varallo, in the chapel of the Immaculate Conception, now dedicated to Santa Margherita da Cortona, shows the most up-to-date culture available in Valsesia at the end of the fifteenth century. Whoever executed it is perhaps Francesco Spanzotti, brother of the better known Martino and already active in the Chapel of Santa Margherita in Crea on commission of the Marquis of Monferrato Guglielmo VIII Paleologo. Below right, kneeling and dressed in formal clothes, the client Marco Scarognino is portrayed, probably responsible for the arrival in Varallo of the Franciscan Bernardino Caimi, founder of the Sacro Monte: the construction site, started in 1486, has a decisive impact on the landscape local art and opens the doors to a new modernity.

The painting, as its size suggests, was intended for private devotion and in ancient times reached the Sacro Monte di Varallo and then merged into the museum's collections at the end of the nineteenth century. Christ is depicted as a Man of Sorrows , with a purple cloak, crowned with thorns, with his hands crossed in front of his chest and his eyes open, according to the recurring iconography in the Germanic context. The composition, considered almost an invention by Dieric Bouts (c.1415 - 1475), includes the Mater dolorosa next to Christ, to compose a diptych: the painted frame that frames the Christ, with two intertwined acanthus leaves and a resting shield on a slender column, it certainly continued in the lost pendant with the Virgin, whose shadow remains next to the right side of Jesus. The restoration of the panel has clarified the posteriority of the current wooden frame, perhaps made at the time of the dismemberment of the original diptych.

The wooden group of the Anointing Stone comes from the oldest nucleus of the Sacro Monte di Varallo. The chapel that originally housed the sculptures was part of the project of imitation of the Holy Places initiated by the Franciscan Bernardino Caimi and intended to evoke the place, marked by a stone placed in the basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, in which the anointing of the body of Christ before his burial. The group, referring to the Lombard workshop of the brothers Giovanni Pietro and Giovanni Ambrogio De Donati (documented between about 1470 and 1530), among the most active in the Milanese dukedom at the end of the fifteenth century, is among the most important sources for the young Gaudenzio Ferrari , which takes him as a point of reference in his first pictorial works, such as the table with the Crucifixion, always in the museum collections. The profound psychological analysis of the characters, who mute an inner drama, is the product of a refined culture, which translates emotions into simple volumes and into suspended gestures and glances.

This admirable Angel announcing is exhibited in the third room of the Pinacoteca. Together with another panel, now lost, with the announced Virgin , it was in the "Old Church" on the Sacro Monte di Varallo, demolished in 1773. The author is Gaudenzio Ferrari (documented from 1507 - 1546), who painted it with the help of a collaborator, perhaps Sperindio Cagnoli from Novara, around 1515. The very recent restoration has brought back to life the original colors and brilliance of the painting, rich in details: the green and black lozenge floor, the distant landscape, the flowered crown on the Angel's head and precious vegetal decorations in laminated gold on the sleeves of his robe.

The historiated panels, exhibited today in the fifth room of the Pinacoteca, were part of a dismembered ancon depicting the Mysteries of the Rosary : the episodes from the life of Christ and the Virgin are inserted in rectangular and oval frames, surrounded by decorative motifs. For quality of carving and polychromy and for narrative freshness, these bas-reliefs are among the most significant examples of local wood production in the first half of the seventeenth century. For the execution of these small stages, almost a portable Sacro Monte, the reference to the workshop of the sculptor Gaudenzio Bonino from Varese has recently been proposed. Among his documented works are the ancient altarpiece of the Rosary in the parish church of Zuccaro in Valduggia (VC) and the carpentry of the altarpiece with the Procession of the Holy Nail painted by Tanzio da Varallo for the church of San Lorenzo in Cellio (VC), both executed in 1628.

From an indefinite dark background, which reveals the brown preparation of the canvas, the figure of the young David emerges, like a vision that materializes. Her hair is blown by a light breeze, her cheeks are red from the fight just ended with the giant Goliath. The crude realism of Goliath's head, raised by the young shepherd like a battle trophy, counterbalances the melancholy disturbance of David, whose gaze is suspended in the direction of the observer. Compared to the other version preserved in the museum, in this canvas the influence of the Lombard Mannerist tradition is less predominant and the Caravaggesque suggestions of the Roman-Neapolitan period of Tanzio (circa 1582 - 1633) still dominate: the citation of David del Merisi today at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, evident above all in the detail of the portrait-head of Goliath, it is only the most conspicuous of the matrices readable in the painting.

The canvas arrived in the museum's collections at the end of the nineteenth century and soon became a sort of icon. David has just beheaded the giant Goliath and suddenly turns to the viewer. The painting captures the moment of extreme physical and moral tension of the young shepherd: the right arm is lowered, after having struck the sword, the left one, with tense muscles and stretched diagonally as if he were the protagonist of the work, is to raise the giant's huge head.

The naturalism of the details, from the fur on David's shoulders, to the mesh bag with heavy stones tied at the waist, to the rocky background on the left, coexists with the evident plasticism of the figure: to the Caravaggesque reference is added that of Lombard mannerism.

This still life is part of a series of three paintings exhibited in the spaces of the Pinacoteca dedicated to the collections of the Palazzo d'Adda in Varallo, residence of the homonymous Milanese family of bankers and merchants present in Valsesia since the mid-sixteenth century. The author, Margherita Caffi (1648-1710), is the daughter of Vincenzo Volò, known as "Vincenzino dei Fiori" for the extraordinary variety of his botanical compositions. Margherita, who bears the surname of her husband, the Cremonese painter Ludovico Caffi, creates the painting in the early days of her definitive move to Milan (around 1685), which sees her fully enter the family workshop. On February 2, 1697 she was admitted to the Milanese Academy of San Luca together with her sister Francesca and Lucrezia Ferrari, like her both painters, the first and only women to obtain this privilege.

The large canvas by the Valsesian painter Pier Celestino Gilardi (1837-1905), known as Il Renaiolo sul Po , was painted in 1892, when it was exhibited in Turin, at the Valentino Castle. In the immediate future, the painting did not meet with great success and in the local press, always generous with information, only a few hints on this great composition and on the novelty of the theme it deals with appeared. The figure of the man in the foreground, who with brutal effort tries to lift the shovel loaded with sand from the waters of the river, is in the background a photograph of Turin in the late nineteenth century, with the clothes hung by the washerwomen along the bank of the Po and the steam tram that crosses the bridge, in the direction of the Gran Madre.

The large canvas, the work of Emilian Camillo Procaccini (1561-1629), belongs to the Remogna collection, donated to Palazzo dei Musei between 2002 and 2013. The painting dates back to the years in which the artist moved from Emilia to Milan thanks to its first Lombard patron, Count Pirro I Visconti Borromeo, who chose it to decorate his residence outside the city of Lainate. It is not known whether the work is the one described, in 1587, by the treatise writer Giovan Paolo Lomazzo in a tercet of his Rime , which tells of a mysterious Sacrifice of Isaac painted by Procaccini for his patron. If this were the case, the painting today in Varallo would be a sort of visiting card of the pictorial skills of the young artist, who in a few years gained an absolute leading role on the Milanese scene of the late sixteenth century.

The small canvas depicts the moment in which Francis, on Mount Verna, awaits the celestial vision of a seraph angel on the cross which anticipates the miraculous event of the reception of the stigmata. The choice to represent this moment of trepidation offers the painter the opportunity to experience all the symbolic and psychological potential of the landscape: impervious and sublime, nature is so powerful that it becomes the protagonist, painted with a chromatic range reduced to a few shades of blue it's grey. Two figurines of friars are on their way to the sanctuary that stands on the top of a hill, after having crossed a makeshift bridge made of simple wooden planks. On the opposite side, in the distance, some buildings can be glimpsed, surrounded by a mountainous scenery, perhaps reminiscent of the landscapes of origin of the painter from Alagna, but also of the Abruzzo mountains crossed and lived during the long stay in these distant lands.

The large basin, dated around the third quarter of the sixteenth century, belongs to the Francesco Franchi collection donated to Palazzo dei Musei between 2004 and 2007. It is part of a nucleus of specimens of 'whites of Faenza' or 'compendiari', typical of production from Faenza starting from the mid-sixteenth century and characterized by the use of only two color ranges, turquoise and yellow-orange, for the decoration of the majolica, in contrast with the redundant polychromies of the historiated style. On the basin is depicted the biblical episode of Abigaille offering gifts to King David : the woman kneels in the act of kissing the latter's hand, while her handmaids bring the gifts. The subject is taken from a burin of the school of Marcantonio Raimondi whose dimensions correspond to the diameter of the plate, thus suggesting that an integral dusting of the figurative composition was obtained for the decoration of the majolica.

The plate, painted in full polychromy, illustrates the story of Daedalus and Icarus told in Ovid 's Metamorphoses and is part of a nucleus of historiated majolica, so called for their narrative taste.

Above, father and son conquer the sky thanks to the wings built with feathers and wax; below, Daedalus helps Icarus after his fall, which occurred due to getting too close to the sun. A timeless metaphor that reminds us how one cannot challenge the limits of one's nature.

The date of execution, 1542, is painted on the reverse of the artefact.

This large elevation is entirely decorated with oriental depictions distributed over three floors: from top to bottom, a rocky island with a small boat and a junk inhabited by characters appears, an official ceremony in which a prisoner is presented to a sovereign, perhaps an Emperor, seated on a throne under a canopy, and a character with a typical oriental umbrella portrayed near a building. Floral decorations, birds and small insects surround the subjects described. The dish, which is affected by the spread of the taste for chinoiserie in eighteenth-century Europe, refers to the manufacture of Giorgio Giacinto Rossetti, who successfully produced this type of decoration in Turin, in the early 1840s.

The large vase is one of the most prestigious pieces in the Francesco Franchi collection. It is attributed to Carlo Antonio Grue (1655-1723), the main architect of Baroque majolica in Italy. On the body of the artefact the biblical episodes of Joshua stopping the Sun and the Conversion of Saul are illustrated : the marked gestures and the careful rendering of the drapery give vitality to the figures, partly taken from the engravers' repertoires in circulation. The elegance of Grue's pictorial style is also captured in the refined gold highlights, the result of a high level of technical expertise.

In the Varese collection there is another vase of a similar type, decorated with scenes from the life of Christ.