Museo Diocesano Giacomo Boccanera

The Giacomo Boccanera Diocesan Museum occupies a wing of Camerino's sixteenth-century Archbishop's Palace beside the cathedral. Its collection brings together religious art from churches across the diocese, including paintings by the Camerino school, works associated with Luca Signorelli and Carlo Crivelli, sculpture, metalwork and vestments.

Why it matters

Monsignor Giacomo Boccanera began organizing the diocesan artistic heritage in 1965. The museum presents works gathered from more than five hundred churches, preserving a record of the region's religious art and the communities that commissioned and used it. It reopened in its present arrangement on 8 December 2004, after restoration and reorganization.

What to notice

Among the painters represented are Giovanni Boccati, Giovanni Angelo d'Antonio and Girolamo di Giovanni, alongside a master associated with a 1454 triptych. The collection also includes works by Signorelli and Crivelli, canvases by Lazzaro Baldi, Giuseppe Chiari and Francesco Trevisani, polychrome wooden sculpture, small frescoes, liturgical metalwork and vestments. Medieval structures and sections of the old city wall are visible in the palace basement.

Context and history

The palace wing was built in the sixteenth century by Bishop Berardo Bongiovanni beside the cathedral, above earlier city walls and medieval structures. The museum bears the name of Boccanera, who began assembling and ordering the diocesan patrimony. After his death in 2004, the collection was restored and reorganized before its reopening that December. Its holdings reflect the artistic life of parish churches throughout the Camerino diocese.