Frommer's Review
This museum exists mainly to house the sculptures removed from the niches and doors of the Duomo group for restoration and preservation from the elements. The dusty old museum was completely rearranged from 1998 to 2000.
The courtyard has now been enclosed to show off -- under natural daylight, as they should be seen -- Lorenzo Ghiberti's original gilded bronze panels from the Baptistery's Gates of Paradise, which are being displayed as they're slowly restored. Ghiberti devoted 27 years to this project (1425-52), and you can now admire up close his masterpiece of schiacciato (squished) relief -- using the Donatello technique of almost sketching in perspective to create the illusion of depth in low relief.
On the way up the stairs, you pass Michelangelo's Pietà (1548-55), his second and penultimate take on the subject, which the sculptor probably had in mind for his own tomb. The face of Nicodemus is a self-portrait, and Michelangelo most likely intended to leave much of the statue group only roughly carved, just as we see it. Art historians inform us that the polished figure of Mary Magdalene on the left was finished by one of Michelangelo's students, while storytellers relate that part of the considerable damage to the group was inflicted by the master himself when, in a moment of rage and frustration, he took a hammer to it.
The top floor of the museum houses the Prophets carved for the bell tower, the most noted of which are the remarkably expressive figures carved by Donatello: the drooping aged face of the Beardless Prophet; the sad fixed gaze of Jeremiah; and the misshapen ferocity of the bald Habakkuk (known to Florentines as Lo Zuccone -- pumpkin head). Mounted on the walls above are two putty-encrusted marble cantorie (choir lofts). The slightly earlier one (1431) on the entrance wall is by Luca della Robbia. His panels (the originals now displayed at eye level, with plaster casts set in the actual frame above) are in perfect early Renaissance harmony, both within themselves and with each other, and they show della Robbia's mastery of creating great depth within a shallow piece of stone. Across the room, Donatello's cantoria (1433-38) takes off in a new artistic direction as his singing cherubs literally break through the boundaries of the "panels" to leap and race around the entire cantoria behind the mosaicked columns.
The room off the right stars one of Donatello's more morbidly fascinating sculptures, a late work in polychrome wood of The Magdalene (1453-55), emaciated and veritably dripping with penitence.
The new exit corridor leading off from the Prophets room houses some of the machines used to build the cathedral dome, Brunelleschi's death mask as a grisly reminder of its architect, and the wooden model proposals for the cupola's drum and for the facade. The original Gothic facade was destroyed in 1587 to make room for one done in High Renaissance style, but the patron behind the work -- Grand Duke Francesco de' Medici -- died before he could choose from among the submissions by the likes of Giambologna and Bernardo Buontalenti. The Duomo remained faceless until purses of the 18th century, heavy with money and relentless bad taste, gave it the neo-Gothic facade we see today.
Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without
notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before
planning your trip.
