House of the treasures of medieval and Renaissance sacred art collected by the 18th-century scholar Angelo Maria Bandini
The small and fascinating Bandini Museum preserves fine examples of medieval Florentine and Tuscan painting, a small group of Byzantine works and a rich selection of painted terracottas executed by the Della Robbia workshop.
The museum owes its name to the Fiesole canon Angiolo Maria Bandini, a great scholar of the 18th century who devotedly collected works of art to display them in his 'Sacred Museum'. Upon his death in 1803, Bandini donated his collection of sacred art to the Bishop and Chapter of Fiesole for the "decorum, education and charity of the people of Fiesole".
Angiolo Maria Bandini and the first 'Sacred Museum'
Angiolo Maria Bandini (Fiesole, 1726 - 1803) was a canon and librarian at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, as well as an erudite man well integrated into the cultural horizon of his time. Thanks to his contacts with some of the most important personalities of the period, including Cardinal Albani, Winckelmann's patron, Bandini developed a keen interest in antiques and collecting.
In 1795, he purchased the small church of Sant'Ansano, dating back to the 11th century, to create a 'Sacred Museum' there, which would bring together the works of art from his collection and thus provide an important testimony to medieval Florentine and Tuscan art.
In 1913, the collection was moved from its original location and housed in the new building designed by Giuseppe Castellucci, where it is still displayed after careful restoration work and rearrangement in the 1980s.
The exhibition itinerary
The small museum has two floors, where works are displayed according to genre and provenance:
GROUND FLOOR: the first room houses a number of paintings and sculptures from the Fiesole area, including the splendid polychrome terracotta statue of the Madonna and Child, attributed to Filippo Brunelleschi; the next room is dedicated to the "robbiane", glazed terracotta sculptures made by the Della Robbia family.
FIRST FLOOR: The two rooms on the upper floor preserve and display the section dedicated to paintings, including many fine examples of medieval sacred art, mostly produced in the workshops of Florentine and Tuscan painters.
Today, the Bandini Museum, owned by the Chapter of Fiesole, is managed by the Municipality together with the Area and the Archaeological Museum, thus demonstrating how the Bandini collection represents an important treasure for Fiesole's history and culture.
