Museo di Arte Sacra di San Pietro in Bossolo

Four rooms on the first floor of the Romanesque pieve's canonica hold paintings and devotional objects from parish churches across the Florentine Chianti. The collection includes works associated with Meliore, Rossello di Jacopo Franchi, Neri di Bicci and Ugolino di Nerio. The museum is attached to one of the region's oldest documented churches.

Why it matters

The museum brings together surviving furnishings from the historic parish districts, or pivieri, of San Pietro in Bossolo and San Donato in Poggio. Its collection spans Tuscan painting from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, including a gold-ground Madonna by Meliore, altarpieces from Neri di Bicci's workshop, a triptych from the circle of Ugolino di Nerio and later canvases by Jacopo da Empoli. The canonica is attached to the pieve of San Pietro in Bossolo, documented from 988, whose Romanesque arcades and detached baptistery remain part of the site.

What to notice

Meliore's late-thirteenth-century Madonna and Child came from the oratory of San Michele a Casaglia. An early-fifteenth-century Madonna by Rossello di Jacopo Franchi came from San Giusto a Petroio; its restoration in 1995 revealed devotional jewellery attached over the centuries. Works from Neri di Bicci's workshop in the 1470s, brought from the sanctuary of Santa Maria al Morrocco, include a Lamentation over the Dead Christ, a fragmentary Trinity with Saints Sebastian, John the Evangelist and Roch, and a Madonna del Latte. The museum also holds two thirteenth-century processional crosses, liturgical silver and vestments from neighbouring churches, and ex-voto tablets. In the church below, a monolithic stone baptismal font came from the excavated baptistery.

Context and history

The pieve of San Pietro in Bossolo is first documented in 988. The present church was built in the eleventh century on a three-aisled basilican plan with semicircular apses. A portico was added across the facade in 1510, and later changes preceded twentieth-century restorations that revealed the Romanesque fabric. Excavations in the square in front of the church uncovered an earlier early-Christian building and a later baptistery; its font is now inside the church. A late-medieval cloister with octagonal pillars opens through the canonica. The museum was installed in 1989 across four rooms on the canonica's first floor and is part of the Sistema Museale del Chianti e del Valdarno.