Opening of the New Museo dell'Opera del Duomo

The new Museo dell'Opera del Duomo of Florence opened to the public on 29 October and there you can enjoy a collection of more than 750 sculptures and 200 art works from artists such as Donatello, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Arnolfo di Cambio, Andrea Pisano, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia, Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Andrea del Verrocchio among many others.

With this expansion, directed by Adolfo Natalini and Guicciardini & Magni Architetti, the museum has 6000 square meters of exhibition spaces, where restored works that had not been exposed and were kept in the museum's storerooms will be shown.

The central space of the museum is the Room of the First Façade, where a large model of the first façade of the cathedral designed by Arnolfo di Cambio is exposed, and in the opposite part of this room we can find the Doors of Paradise, named by Michelangelo and designed by Lorenzo Ghiberti for the Florence's baptistery. In words of the museum director, Timothy Verdon, "will once again occupy a position in front of the cathedral's original façade, reconstructing a visual and iconographical relationship which had been lost for over four hundred years".

Among all the great works exhibits highlights di Bandini Pietà of Michelangelo (1547-1555), a sculpture whose story still has some mysteries to solve. It is believed that the Italian artist made it as a sculpture for his own tomb at the Duomo, and that at some moment of depression he even tried to destroy it.

Michelangelo created this sculpture in the last years of his life, when he was more than seventy years old, at a particularly difficult moment for the artist, in which the theme of death appears insistently reflected, although he used a different representation instead of the traditional iconography. He made various sketches and carved three distinct sculptures, Pietà di Baldini was the first one. Afterwards he did Palestrina Pietà, which is in the Galleria della Accademia in Florence and Rondanini Pietà at the Museum of Castello Sforzesco in Milan.

When he din not get the expected result, Michelangelo attacked the sculpture with a hammer, but they managed to stop him before he destroyed it completely. Then the sculpture was sent to Francesco Bandini's ville in Rome, who commissioned its restoration to Tiberio Calcagni, although it was not completed. Afterwards the Pietà Bandini was transferred to different places in an attempt to recover it for the tomb of Michelangelo at the Duomo of Florence, where it was finally placed in 1722, and since 1981 the sculpture is in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.

Despite its controversial story, and the lack of some of its parts that were destroyed by its creator, this magnificent piece has reached our days, and now it is possible to enjoy it at the new Museo dell'Opera del Duomo di Firenze.

CREDTIS.-

Venue.- Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Piazza del Duomo 9, 50122 Florence.
Times.- Open every day from 9.00 am to 19.00 pm.
Ticket.- A single ticket of 15 euro including the visit to the Museum and in addition the Baptistry, Giotto's Bell Tower, the Brunelleschi's Dome, the Crypt of Santa Reparata.