Museo Sistino di Arte Sacra

Inside San Giovanni Battista, the diocesan Museo Sistino gathers sacred art from the Piceno coast. Its collection includes a signed polyptych by Vittore Crivelli, an altarpiece by Vincenzo Pagani, vestments and altar silver, including a sixteenth-century chalice traditionally recorded as a gift from Pope Sixtus V to Grottammare.

Why it matters

The museum is named for Sixtus V, the pope born in Grottammare in 1521. It was installed in 2002 in the restored church of San Giovanni Battista as part of the Musei Sistini del Piceno network. The collection ranges from paintings of the fifteenth to twentieth centuries to liturgical furnishings. A signed polyptych by Vittore Crivelli is among its notable works.

What to notice

The polyptych by Vittore Crivelli includes panels of San Rocco and San Sebastiano. The collection also includes Vincenzo Pagani's Sacra Conversazione, Ubaldo Ricci's Madonna del Carmelo and a carved bust of Santa Lucia attributed to the school of Denis Plouvier.

Other objects are associated with Sixtus V. A sixteenth-century chalice with an elongated node is presented by the municipality as the pope's gift to the town. A 1590 medal of the church of Santa Lucia was struck by Domenico Poggini at the order of Camilla Peretti, the pope's sister. A carved seventeenth-century organ extends the collection's story into the Baroque.

Context and history

The church of San Giovanni Battista was first documented in 1391 and rebuilt in its present classical form between 1792 and 1809 by Pietro Maggi. A twentieth-century restoration concluded with the building's reopening in 2002, when the Museo Sistino was installed. The museum gathers paintings, reliquaries, liturgical metalwork, vestments and sculpted wood from local churches. The Musei Sistini del Piceno links it with other diocesan collections across the Piceno.