The one hundred and three pieces of the Parisian manufacture Darte Aîné displayed in the Museum of the Foundation represent the part of the family gala set destined by Count Mario Miniscalchi-Erizzo to the new museum Foundation.
According to the family oral tradition, collected over thirty years ago in the home, the served would have been a "gift from Napoleon".
It is known that Francesco Miniscalchi-Erizzo (1811-1875), first senator of the Italian Kingdom of Verona, as vice-president of the Italian Geographic Society officially attended the inauguration of the Suez Canal at the invitation of Napoleon III.
It is possible that on that occasion the set was donated by the emperor taking from the very large patrimony of the State Mobilier.
The set, in hard-paste porcelain, is made up of two different sets, for lunch and for dessert, which were combined in use.
Forty-nine pieces are painted with polychrome figures of birds of all kinds, exotic and homegrown, taken from Louis de Buffon's Historie Naturelle. The name of each animal species is written in gold.
Twenty pieces are petits pots decorated in shiny gold on a white background and painted with polychrome figures of butterflies sometimes placed on flower shoots.
Finally, thirty-four pieces have a rouge tomate background color, enlivened by decorations in shiny and burnished gold, assorted compositions of fruit are painted in polychrome, sometimes enlivened by the presence of an insect.
