In 1769, the Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture included by Maria Teresa of Austria in the Academy of Science, Fine Language and Arts, was entrusted to the Cremona painter Giuseppe Bottani. In the thirty years that he lived in Rome, he collected a rich series of plaster casts (in 1773 he made a directory listing of over six hundred pieces) that were then sent to Mantova after his transfer.
Between 1775 and 1776 the Bottani casts were utilized at the Academy for drawings until 1862, when the building and the entire collection became city property. At the beginning of the 900s, the city transferred a big part of the collection to the Duke’s Palace and in 1940 it was given to the Mantova and Guidizzolo Institutes of Art. In 2004 after a careful inventory, all casts were taken from scholastic locations in order to reunite them in the Duke’s Palace and restore the city’s plaster cast collection. The collection, composed of 231 pieces, is currently conserved in storage at the Musei Civici. As with the logical value of the artistic heritage, a nucleus of works pertaining to the plaster cast collection was recently restored and is now displayed at the City Museum.