Description
The Museo Nazionale di San Matteo is the most important museum of painting and sculpture in Pisa, in a former convent on the Lungarno. It gathers works by Pisan and Tuscan masters from the 12th to the 17th century: it is considered one of the most important museums in Europe for medieval art, and is perhaps less well known than it deserves.
The heart of the museum is the painted crosses. The most famous is the one by Giunta Pisano, from the mid-1200s: a suffering Christ, full of tension, a direct ancestor of the crucifixes of Cimabue and Giotto. Beside it, a series of even older crosses.
In the same room is the Madonna by the Master of San Martino, a nameless painter whom the historian Roberto Longhi considered a forerunner of Cimabue and Giotto. Farther on is Simone Martini's polyptych of St. Catherine, complete with predella and pinnacles.
The early Renaissance has a room all to itself: Masaccio's St. Paul, from 1426, the Madonna and Child by Fra Angelico and Donatello's bronze reliquary bust of San Rossore. There are also the original statues from Santa Maria della Spina, replaced by copies, and sculptures by Andrea and Nino Pisano.
The visit starts with archaeology: an early Christian sarcophagus with the Good Shepherd, Etruscan and Roman inscriptions, Lombard finds discovered near the Cathedral. Then comes the ceramics section: Islamic and Pisan basins that once decorated church facades, where copies are now. They tell of Pisa's trade across the Mediterranean, in the golden age of the maritime republic.
Here you discover something that surprises many: according to a growing number of scholars, until the threshold of the 13th century the Pisan school of painting was the most important in Italy, before Cimabue and Giotto.
It all began in 1796, when Canon Sebastiano Zucchetti donated his collection to the Opera del Duomo. Bequests and purchases did the rest, and in 1949 the works found a home in the former convent of San Matteo, first a convent of Benedictine nuns and then the city prison.
Don't miss
• Giunta Pisano's cross.
• Simone Martini's polyptych.
• Masaccio's St. Paul.
• Donatello's bust of San Rossore.
Did you know?
• The Crucifix of the Dogana, from 1437, contains the oldest view of the Cathedral of Pisa.
• Many of the ceramic basins on display were set into the facades of Pisan churches.
• Among the illuminated manuscripts is the famous Bible of Calci.
The heart of the museum is the painted crosses. The most famous is the one by Giunta Pisano, from the mid-1200s: a suffering Christ, full of tension, a direct ancestor of the crucifixes of Cimabue and Giotto. Beside it, a series of even older crosses.
In the same room is the Madonna by the Master of San Martino, a nameless painter whom the historian Roberto Longhi considered a forerunner of Cimabue and Giotto. Farther on is Simone Martini's polyptych of St. Catherine, complete with predella and pinnacles.
The early Renaissance has a room all to itself: Masaccio's St. Paul, from 1426, the Madonna and Child by Fra Angelico and Donatello's bronze reliquary bust of San Rossore. There are also the original statues from Santa Maria della Spina, replaced by copies, and sculptures by Andrea and Nino Pisano.
The visit starts with archaeology: an early Christian sarcophagus with the Good Shepherd, Etruscan and Roman inscriptions, Lombard finds discovered near the Cathedral. Then comes the ceramics section: Islamic and Pisan basins that once decorated church facades, where copies are now. They tell of Pisa's trade across the Mediterranean, in the golden age of the maritime republic.
Here you discover something that surprises many: according to a growing number of scholars, until the threshold of the 13th century the Pisan school of painting was the most important in Italy, before Cimabue and Giotto.
It all began in 1796, when Canon Sebastiano Zucchetti donated his collection to the Opera del Duomo. Bequests and purchases did the rest, and in 1949 the works found a home in the former convent of San Matteo, first a convent of Benedictine nuns and then the city prison.
Don't miss
• Giunta Pisano's cross.
• Simone Martini's polyptych.
• Masaccio's St. Paul.
• Donatello's bust of San Rossore.
Did you know?
• The Crucifix of the Dogana, from 1437, contains the oldest view of the Cathedral of Pisa.
• Many of the ceramic basins on display were set into the facades of Pisan churches.
• Among the illuminated manuscripts is the famous Bible of Calci.