Museums: Monument for a Humanist

There is no more celebrated living art ist in Italy than Giacomo Manzù. At 60, he is renowned throughout Europe for his stately cardinals, his great bronze doors of St. Peter's in Rome, and his role as friend, confidant and portraitist of Pope John XXIII. It was altogether fitting, then, that this summer Manzù should become the only living Italian art ist to have a museum dedicated to his work alone.

A severe stucco structure, the museum is set in a gracious garden of lawns, rosebushes, palms and pines at Ardea, 25 miles...