Museo Collezione Gianfranco Luzzetti (Polo Culturale Le Clarisse)

The Gianfranco Luzzetti Collection Museum in Grosseto presents sixty-four works of painting, sculpture and decorative art from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. It occupies the former convent of Santa Chiara and the adjoining Baroque church of the Bigi.

Why it matters

Antiquarian Gianfranco Luzzetti, born in the Grosseto area, donated the collection to the city. Its core is seventeenth-century Florentine painting, bringing works by artists from that period into the Maremma. The museum opened in 2019 as part of the Le Clarisse cultural centre.

What to notice

The collection includes paintings by Santi di Tito, Cigoli, Passignano, Jacopo Vignali, Francesco Curradi, Giovan Battista Vanni and Pier Dandini, alongside sculpture by Pietro Tacca. The display moves around the convent's small cloister and into the church of the Bigi, whose Baroque interior provides a setting for the works. Other parts of the cultural centre include an ethnographic collection and materials from urban archaeology excavations.

Context and history

The convent of Santa Chiara was built from the late sixteenth century and enlarged during the seventeenth. After the Poor Clares left in the late eighteenth century, the complex had several civic and residential uses. The municipality acquired it in 1995 and restoration began around the turn of the millennium. The restored complex opened in 2016 as the Le Clarisse cultural centre, bringing together the museum, exhibition spaces and archives.