Museo Civico di Sansepolcro (Pinacoteca)

The Resurrection by Piero della Francesca remains in the Sala dei Conservatori of Sansepolcro’s Civic Museum, the room for which it was painted. The medieval palace that once housed the town’s government now holds a collection centred on the artist’s work.

Why it matters

The museum’s picture gallery is built around Piero’s Resurrezione, dated by the museum to around 1456 and regarded as an emblem of Sansepolcro. The collection also includes the Polyptych of Mercy (1445–1462) and panels of Saints Julian and Louis of Toulouse. Aldous Huxley famously called the Resurrection “the best picture in the world.” The palace preserves the history of the town’s civic government.

What to notice

In the Sala dei Conservatori, the risen Christ steps from the sarcophagus above the sleeping soldiers, with a landscape divided between winter and spring behind him. Piero’s Saint Julian and Saint Louis are displayed in the same room; the Polyptych of Mercy, with the Virgin sheltering the townspeople beneath her cloak, is in an adjoining space. Other works include paintings by Matteo di Giovanni, Raffaellino del Colle and Pontormo, glazed terracottas in the Robbia manner, and Romanesque stone sculpture in the semibasement. The Arco della Pesa connects the museum to the adjacent fourteenth-century Palazzo del Capitano, joining two former seats of government.

Context and history

The museum occupies the Palazzo della Residenza o dei Conservatori del Popolo, where the commune governed until the Malatesta lords of Rimini took control in 1371. Their rule ended in 1430, and the building returned to civic use. It was enlarged to incorporate the Monte Pio, one of the early charitable pawn banks, and reached roughly its present form around 1456. The fourteenth-century palace of the Capitano was joined to it through the Arco della Pesa. Restoration campaigns ran from 1991 to 1997, followed by seismic-safety work.