Description
The Museo della Grafica is housed in Palazzo Lanfranchi, on Lungarno Galilei in Pisa. Inside are 20th-century drawings and prints, in a Renaissance palace made from four medieval houses.
The museum, opened in 2007 at the wish of the city and the University, holds the collections of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Department of Art History, a collection of contemporary graphic art begun in the late 1950s by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti.
Many sheets are gifts from the artists themselves or from cultivated collectors, such as the scientist Sebastiano Timpanaro and the art historian Giulio Carlo Argan. The temporary exhibitions present the collection from a new angle each time, and the palace was already hosting them before the museum opened.
The palace is worth a visit too. Its present look comes mainly from the renovation of 1535-1539, which joined four medieval cores, dating from the 13th century on. At the back stands a medieval tower in verrucano stone and brick.
The façade on the Arno has its portal shifted to the left, with stone blocks and a terrace above. The windows have triangular or semicircular pediments on the first two floors and stone frames on the third.
Along via dei Lanfranchi you can read the story of the oldest houses. There is a wall left without plaster, with depressed arches, bricked-up windows and putlog holes, the holes where scaffolding beams were inserted. On the ground floor three verrucano pillars remain.
The palace takes its name from the Lanfranchi family, who lived in it for centuries, until the 19th century. The line died out in the Rasponi dalle Teste, who handed it to the city in 1952.
The restoration, entrusted to the architect Massimo Carmassi, even stripped the plaster from the façade: some cried scandal. But underneath, wall paintings and medieval architecture hidden for centuries came back to light, and today the palace's various phases can be reconstructed.
The museum, opened in 2007 at the wish of the city and the University, holds the collections of the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Department of Art History, a collection of contemporary graphic art begun in the late 1950s by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti.
Many sheets are gifts from the artists themselves or from cultivated collectors, such as the scientist Sebastiano Timpanaro and the art historian Giulio Carlo Argan. The temporary exhibitions present the collection from a new angle each time, and the palace was already hosting them before the museum opened.
The palace is worth a visit too. Its present look comes mainly from the renovation of 1535-1539, which joined four medieval cores, dating from the 13th century on. At the back stands a medieval tower in verrucano stone and brick.
The façade on the Arno has its portal shifted to the left, with stone blocks and a terrace above. The windows have triangular or semicircular pediments on the first two floors and stone frames on the third.
Along via dei Lanfranchi you can read the story of the oldest houses. There is a wall left without plaster, with depressed arches, bricked-up windows and putlog holes, the holes where scaffolding beams were inserted. On the ground floor three verrucano pillars remain.
The palace takes its name from the Lanfranchi family, who lived in it for centuries, until the 19th century. The line died out in the Rasponi dalle Teste, who handed it to the city in 1952.
The restoration, entrusted to the architect Massimo Carmassi, even stripped the plaster from the façade: some cried scandal. But underneath, wall paintings and medieval architecture hidden for centuries came back to light, and today the palace's various phases can be reconstructed.