Pisa, Opera del Duomo Museum reopens with completely new layouts. Photos

After five years of work and following an investment of six and a half million euros, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo di Pisa reopens to the public with a totally renovated layout (including in the choice of exhibits) and entirely refurbished. TheOpera della Primaziale Pisana has entrusted the renovation of the itinerary to the architectural firms Adolfo Natalini and Magni&Guicciardini, with the coordination of engineer Giuseppe Bentivoglio and with museographic design by Professor Marco Collareta, a specialist in medieval art history at the University of Pisa.

The new layout intends to enrich the museum with important new materials, while at the same time eliminating some surplus by rethinking the exhibition criteria: the goal is to restore the original value of the works and monuments from which the objects come. The idea was to create layouts that can also be modern and engaging, to get the public excited and to put visitors and specialists in the best conditions to enjoy the works, which come from the monuments of the Piazza del Duomo: before coming to the museum, many of them were moved from one place to another in the monuments of the Piazza, others still came to the Museum from different places, but all together they are an expression of the devotion and magnificence of Pisa from the 12th century onward. It is a history made of intertwining cultures, of great artists (from Nicola and Giovanni Pisano to Matteo Civitali, from Spinello Aretino to Rainaldo, from Tino di Camaino to Andrea Guardi and beyond), of continuous experimentation, of great sculpture: the new exhibition was born precisely with the idea of telling this story in the best possible way, leveraging not only the specificities of the individual work, but the whole context within which all the pieces were produced.

For this reason, the works have been contextualized through arrangements that evoke the original place, location and atmosphere. For example, the public will find the hint of a niche to recontextualize works that were born to be framed by the architecture, or even the evocation of the atmosphere, colors, materials and lights of the interior of the cathedral for works that were once located inside it: gestures that the designers deemed necessary to mend the rift that musealization inevitably entails.

There is also room for newly restored works: among them, the Triptych of the Enthroned Madonna and Saints, tempera and gold on panel by Spinello Aretino or the crown, scepter, globe and a very fine drape of Emperor Henry VII recovered during the 2014 survey of his tomb. The Museo dell’Opera del Duomo is spread over 3,000 square meters inside, arranged on two floors, and a portion of the exterior portico. The itinerary exhibits 380 works (mainly sculptures, but also architectural elements, paintings, liturgical objects, sacred vestments) divided into 26 sections (25 interior rooms, plus the exterior cloister). A special caption apparatus and multimedia stations created by the PERCRO laboratory of the Sant’Anna School of Pisa, directed by Professor Massimo Bergamasco, facilitate the reading of the exhibition itinerary. In addition, a new staircase connecting the ground floor to the first floor has been built to make the route more fluid. The space in front of the main entrance was also redesigned following the existing street layout and was equipped with a ramp so as to make it fully accessible. The vaulted rooms on the ground and first floors have been preserved, while the less historically connoted ones have been completely redesigned architecturally and in terms of layout in order to set the various collections. Closing the museum, as anticipated, is the cloister that faces the Leaning Tower (i.e., the Bell Tower of the Cathedral), and which preserves on the ground floor the statues depicting the Madonna and Child, the Evangelists and the Prophets sculpted by Giovanni Pisano for the Baptistery, included in a new layout whose goal is to recapture the suggestion offered by the monument’s three-mullioned windows where copies are now kept. The museum has also been equipped with a bar/cafeteria overlooking the Piazza in the upper part of the cloister, with tables overlooking the monuments in the square, a book-shop set up at the entrance, and a brand-new refurbished Auditorium equipped with new audiovisual systems and new lighting fixtures.

“After more than 30 years,” said Pierfrancesco Pacini, president of the Opera della Primaziale Pisana, “the current Deputation of the Opera della Primaziale Pisana has decided to refurbish the museum with a new museographic itinerary entrusted to scholars and restorers led by Prof. Marco Collareta and to an evocative set-up taken care of by the architectural firms of Adolfo Natalini and Magni&Guicciardini, all coordinated by the Works Management of Eng. Giuseppe Bentivoglio. A necessary rearrangement because all the plant engineering, lighting, and control systems were absolutely obsolete, but above all the choice of a new and allow me to say contemporary philosophy of presentation of the works, which in the previous arrangement were displayed in a ’sacred’ way with a minimal set-up and today instead are included within a spectacular scenography. Basically, we felt that the previous arrangement, although correctly displayed, was aimed at an understanding perhaps more suited to scholars and art lovers while now, through specific settings that Prof. Collareta will tell you about, it is presented with an easier reading. In fact, the arrangement of the works is not only chronological but set, at least in the ground floor dedicated to great Pisan sculpture, by monument of belonging.”

“Our work,” says Adolfo Natalini, “has gone through the stages of listening and interpretation, using the methods of art, science and technique to stage the works and offer them to visitors and scholars. We tried to combine precision with lightness and grace, balancing scientific needs with spectacular ones and trying to make people read the religious sense with which the works were created. Too often in museums we think of them as works of art, or relics of the shipwreck of a civilization. The works collected in the museum refer back to the places for which they were conceived in the admirable Square of Miracles with which it borders. Time and place, the sacred and the profane are thus brought together in a new alliance.”

“The idea we have of the artist,” Professor Marco Collareta stressed at the press conference, “is still that of the nineteenth-century painter who goes to paint with his easel. But in reality, art has developed a bit like architecture, and we try to account for that with the itinerary we have developed for the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Pisa, and with which we wanted to return in a clear way that circular, continuous and very dynamic relationship that in art there is between eye, hand and brain.”

During the month of November every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. it will be possible to book a free guided tour. To take advantage of the service, it is necessary to book via email at mod@opapisa.it and wait for confirmation emails from the Opera Secretariat by the day before the visit. The museum opens daily: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. until Nov. 3, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. until March 22, and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. from March 23 to Nov. 1, 2020. The full ticket costs 5 euros, with the possibility of making combined tickets for the monuments in the Cathedral Square. Below are some pictures of the new Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Pisa.

The new Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Pisa. Ph. Credit Nicola Gronchi for Opera della Primaziale Pisana

The new Museum of the Opera del Duomo of Pisa. Ph. Credit Nicola Gronchi for Opera della Primaziale Pisana

The new Museum of the Opera del Duomo of Pisa. Ph. Credit Nicola Gronchi for Opera della Primaziale Pisana

The new Museum of the Opera del Duomo of Pisa. Ph. Credit Finestre Sull’Arte

The new Museum of the Opera del Duomo of Pisa. Ph. Credit Finestre Sull’Arte

The new Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Pisa. Ph. Credit Finestre Sull’Arte

The new Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Pisa. Ph. Credit Finestre Sull’Arte

The new Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Pisa. Ph. Credit Finestre Sull’Arte

The new Museum of the Opera del Duomo in Pisa. Ph. Credit Finestre Sull’Arte

Pisa, Opera del Duomo Museum reopens with completely new layouts. Photos

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