Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce

The Museum of the Opera di Santa Croce occupies the former refectory and adjoining convent spaces between the cloisters. Its collection preserves works displaced from the basilica and other religious houses, including Taddeo Gaddi’s Tree of Life and Last Supper and Giorgio Vasari’s monumental Last Supper. The flood-damaged Cimabue Crucifix, another emblem of the 1966 disaster, is displayed in the complex’s sacristy.

Why it matters

Opened on 2 November 1900, the museum was assembled by monuments inspector Guido Carocci from works belonging to the Santa Croce complex, material from nineteenth-century demolitions and objects from suppressed religious houses. The 1966 flood submerged the refectory to a depth of 5.2 metres and made Cimabue’s Crucifix a symbol of the disaster. The museum reopened in 1975 after fragile frescoes had been detached and replaced; Vasari’s Last Supper, also damaged in the flood, returned after restoration in 2016.

What to notice

The early-fourteenth-century refectory has a trussed wooden roof and a large fresco by Taddeo Gaddi, the Tree of Life and Last Supper, dating to about 1345–1350. On the facing wall, Vasari’s 1546–47 Last Supper records the room’s later history and the long recovery after the flood. Fragments of Andrea Orcagna’s mid-fourteenth-century Triumph of Death, Hell and the Last Judgment were detached from the basilica’s south aisle. The adjoining spaces include the Cerchi Chapel; the sacristy, elsewhere in the complex, holds the restored panels and Cimabue’s Crucifix. The cloisters provide further context for the museum’s convent setting.

Context and history

The refectory’s uses reflect Florence’s changing history. After the Napoleonic suppression it became a carpet factory, and when Florence was the capital of Italy it was used to store public-debt files. The museum opened in 1900, was reorganised in 1959 and expanded into the convent wing in 1962. The Opera di Santa Croce continues to care for the complex and its works.