Museo del Tesoro della Basilica di San Francesco

The Treasure Museum of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi preserves liturgical objects and works of art associated with the Sacro Convento. Its collections include textiles, reliquaries and panel paintings from the Perkins bequest.

Why it matters

Gifts to the tomb of Saint Francis began in the thirteenth century and accumulated over centuries of devotion. The museum brings together this treasury with the panel paintings collected by art historian Frederick Mason Perkins, offering a view of the artistic networks connected to the basilica.

What to notice

The collection includes a Flemish tapestry of the Tree of Saint Francis, made in the 1470s or 1480s, eastern silk textiles and reliquaries dating from the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries. The Perkins collection includes panels by central Italian painters from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, including works attributed to Lorenzo Monaco, Pietro Lorenzetti, Beato Angelico and Sassetta.

Context and history

The museum occupies the Salone Gotico and an adjoining room in the Sacro Convento beside the Lower Basilica. Its modern collection includes gifts made to the convent from 1230 onward. The Perkins panels have been displayed there since 1986, and the museum reopened in its current arrangement in 2000.