The Museo dell'Opera del Duomo is a museum in Florence, on the
northeast side of the Piazza del Duomo. It collects works of art
from the sacred complex of the Duomo of
Florence, the Baptistery and
Giotto's bell tower, with a very
important nucleus of Gothic and Renaissance statuary.
Among
the most important works, works by Andrea Pisano, Arnolfo di Cambio,
Nanni di Banco, Ghiberti's Doors, Michelangelo's Pietà Bandini and
one of the largest collections in the world of works by Donatello,
second only to the Bargello National Museum.
The current museum is located on the site of a building used since
1296 to house the Opera del Duomo, the institution founded by the
Florentine Republic and supervised by the Wool Guild, whose task was the
construction, furnishing and maintenance of the cathedral of Santa Maria
del Fiore.
In the 15th century there was a courtyard here used by
Brunelleschi to store wood for the construction of the dome, and also
here, around 1500, Michelangelo sculpted the famous David.
At the
end of the 19th century, the Opera del Duomo, finding itself in the
situation of having to choose whether to transfer its most important
works of art abandoned from their original locations to other museums in
the city (especially the two choir lofts by Luca della Robbia and
Donatello ) or keep them in environments accessible to the public, he
decided to use some rooms of his offices as an exhibition hall and in
1891 he opened his museum to the public.
In fact, over the
centuries an astonishing collection of masterpieces from the three
monuments and priceless historical memorabilia on the building of Santa
Maria del Fiore had gathered, such as Brunelleschi's models for the
dome, the 16th-17th century projects for the facade and the 19th century
performed on the occasion of the competitions announced for the
neo-Gothic front. Other important marbles, such as Michelangelo's San
Matteo, had already joined the collections of the Accademia Gallery and
the Bargello National Museum. During the twentieth century, amid ups and
downs, the Museum experienced a progressive increase in its spaces and
collections. Important enlargement, modernization and technical
adaptation works were carried out between 1998 and 2000, in view of the
Jubilee, by Luigi Zangheri and David Palterer which increased the
exhibition area of the old museum by about a third. A new extension,
designed by Adolfo Natalini together with the Guicciardini&Magni studio
following the museological idea of the director Mons. Timothy Verdon,
was built from 2012 to 2015, expanding with the acquisition of the
adjacent spaces of the ancient Teatro degli Intrepidi (1779). The new
layout is conceived as a didactic itinerary that winds through 28 rooms,
arranged over three floors, for 6,000 m² where more than seven hundred
works of art, including a large number of masterpieces, offer a complete
overview of the development of the history of the monumental buildings
of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore from the end of the thirteenth
century to the end of the nineteenth century. The works are exhibited
with attention to their original location and the visit is enriched by
numerous textual, video and digital interactive captions.
At the
entrance is the group of statues of the Glory of St. John the Baptist by
Girolamo Ticciati (1732), which once decorated the altar of the
Baptistery. We continue in the so-called "Corridor of names": a Hall of
Fame of the most important personalities in the history of the Opera del
Duomo in Florence. You then enter the Sculpture Gallery, with valuable
statue fragments by Tino di Camaino (from the Baptistery) and by
Donatello and Nanni di Banco from the Porta della Mandorla of the
Cathedral. In the large Hall known as "del Paradiso" you can admire the
three monumental bronze doors of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, i.e.
the Porta known as "South" by Andrea Pisano, with the Stories of Saint
John the Baptist, the Porta known as "North" by Lorenzo Ghiberti with
the Stories of Christ and the so-called "Gate of Paradise", again by
Lorenzo Ghiberti, with the Stories of the Old Testament. Above are the
three sixteenth-century sculptural groups with episodes from the life of
the Baptist, by Giovan Francesco Rustici (Preaching of the Baptist),
Andrea Sansovino (Baptism of Christ) and Vincenzo Danti (Beheading of
Saint John). Opposite is the 1:1 scale replica of the unfinished
medieval front of the Cathedral with the original sculptural groups that
decorated it, the work of Arnolfo di Cambio and other fourteenth-century
masters. An adjacent room houses on the wall the fragments of Arnolfo's
facade demolished in 1587, in inlaid and mosaiced marble. The eighth
room is dedicated to the Magdalene: in the center you can admire the
moving penitent Saint Mary Magdalene by Donatello in wood and other
polychrome materials (c. 1455, from the Baptistery), placed in line with
a dramatic wooden Crucifix by Giovanni di Balduccio (attr .) and
surrounded by important fourteenth-century panels and sculptures of
female saints. At the back there is access to an octagonal room, a
consecrated chapel, in which precious reliquaries are kept, made by
various goldsmiths between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries.
The visit continues in the large Tribuna where one of the great
masterpieces of the collection is exhibited: Michelangelo's Pietà,
sculpted by Buonarroti for his own funeral monument between 1547 and
1555 and in which Michelangelo portrayed himself in the face of
Nicodemus holding up the body of Christ taken down from the cross
between Mary and the Magdalene. The visitor then passes through a
corridor where stone fragments of various origins are preserved,
including the remains of the inlaid marble panels of the ancient
baptismal font of San Giovanni (removed in 1577).
You go up a
large modern staircase along which one of the preparatory lunettes
for the mosaics of the tympanums of the Cathedral doors is
displayed. The first floor then leads to the large Galleria del
Campanile, where the sculptural decorations of Giotto's Tower are
kept: on the left, the reliefs of the first two registers, by Andrea
Pisano and collaborators and Luca della Robbia, depicting the Human
Arts (the hexagonal ones) and the celestial powers that govern them
(the diamond-shaped tiles with a blue background in majolica tiles);
while on the right are the sculptures depicting Prophets and Sibyls,
sculpted between the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth
century. Among these we recognize some of Donatello's masterpieces:
the Prophet Abacuc (nicknamed by the Florentines the Zuccone because
of his bald skull), the Prophet Jeremiah, the Prophet called
"thoughtful" and the Sacrifice of Isaac. The openings of the pillars
behind the sculptures allow you to observe the sculptures of the
upper levels of the rear replica of Arnolfo's facade in the Sala del
Paradiso.
The fifteenth room is a gallery dedicated to the
Dome of the Cathedral and to the brilliant figure of its architect:
Filippo Brunelleschi. The visitor is greeted by two modern
large-scale architectural models of the dome and its lantern with a
cross-section; on the right, Brunelleschi's funeral mask is kept
between the two original wooden models of the dome and the lantern.
On the left you can see various models with proposals for completing
the decoration of the drum of the Dome (15th and 16th centuries) and
the original tools from the construction site.
From an
adjacent room, a panoramic window allows you to enjoy the Sala del
Paradiso below from above.
The itinerary continues in the
so-called Hall of the Navate, where several fourteenth-century
paintings and sculptures are kept, removed over the centuries from
the Cathedral. This room is connected by one of the large marble
arches that decorated the sixteenth-century choir to a second room,
where you can admire the choir stalls by Donatello and Luca della
Robbia, true masterpieces of the early Renaissance. Other valuable
works are conserved in the same room: a panel by Donatello with the
Creation of Eve, the famous Reliquary of the Libretto and a diptych
in Byzantine micro-mosaic.
From here we move on to an
octagonal room dedicated to some reliefs sculpted by Baccio
Bandinelli and Giovanni dell'Opera for the choir of Santa Maria del
Fiore removed in the 19th century. The adjacent room preserves the
most precious treasures of the Baptistery: the historiated
Antependium with Stories of the Baptist, known as the "Silver Altar
of San Giovanni", a masterpiece of Tuscan goldsmithing from
1367-1483; the large Cross in enamelled silver by Antonio Pollaiolo
and Betto Betti (1457-59) and 27 embroideries of the Parato di San
Giovanni, executed on a design by Pollaiolo in 1466-88.
This
is followed by a section made up of five rooms dedicated to
nineteenth-century projects for the construction and decoration of
the facade of the Cathedral: here are kept a large number of
architectural drawings and paintings sent to the Opera del Duomo on
the occasion of the various competitions announced for this project
and sketches for the sculptures of the facade and the new bronze
doors.
On the second floor there is access to a large
gallery, open on one side onto the Sala del Paradiso, where a series
of large wooden models for the reconstruction of the facade of the
Cathedral in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by
Buontalenti, are exhibited in a series of large display cases.
Giambologna, Dosio and others.
A room at the back allows you
to enjoy a double comparative view: downwards towards the Dome
Gallery, upwards, through a belvedere window, towards the real Dome.
On the opposite side of the Gallery of Models, one passes in
front of two large sixteenth-century canvases and then enters two
adjoining rooms; in the second, precious sacred hangings are
displayed in a large display case and in a glass case you can admire
the famous Madonna by Giotto known as the "Madonna of San Giorgio
alla Costa". Alongside this, a belvedere window offers a view of the
Sala del Paradiso from the right side of the replica of the medieval
facade.