Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence
By Diane Apostolos-Cappadona.
Figure 1. The Sala del Paradiso in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence. Photograph courtesy of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
One of the finest museums in that art lovers’ paradise known as Florence is the recently renovated and reorganized Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (Museum of the Works of the Cathedral) which sits serenely ensconced in the row of shops and restaurants to the east, or apse end, of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. During the glorious days of the Renaissance, artists including Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) worked on magnificent sculptures commissioned for the cathedral which also included the Baptistery of San Giovanni and Giotto’s Campanile.
Following the creative heights of the Renaissance, the original complex was no longer a center of artistic production where the great architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1371-1446) had his offices and workshop, or where Michelangelo’s carved his David (1501-1504) which was commissioned to stand on one of the buttresses of the former’s magnificent Cupola. Instead, the site of “the works” was used as a storage facility for both unfinished or damaged as well as completed artworks no longer favored for use within the Cathedral and its associate buildings.
From 1891, the “opera del Duomo” — "the works” of the Cathedral here indicating both the works of art that were being produced and the spaces which might better be known by the French term atelier — became a museum displaying many of the sculptures and other works of art created for the spiritual devotions, religious pedagogy, sacramental life, and liturgical celebrations for the cathedral collective in Florence.
Despite its over 700-year existence, the “opera del Duomo” was not necessarily a key landmark to be visited either for its place in Florentine history or its role in the history of Renaissance art, especially sculpture, as the Uffizi Galleries and the Accademia loomed large on the typical list of tourist sites in a city with an overwhelming wealth of artistic treasures. Nonetheless, the “opera del Duomo” has played a significant role in the conservation of many of the best-known sculptural monuments of Florence, garnering the more recent epithet of “one of the world’s most important collections of sculpture.”
Figure 2. View of the sculpture gallery in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence. Photograph courtesy of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
20th-Century Disasters strike Florence and her artistic heritage
Although the artistic treasures and legacy of Florence, especially of the Florentine Renaissance, were under threat throughout the centuries from natural disasters including earthquakes and plagues, civil and theological unrest, and international wars, the city and its treasures survived. Even the horrors of the 1497 “Bonfire of the Vanities” incited by the Dominican reformer Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) and which destroyed “sinful objects” including cosmetics, mirrors, books, and works of art premised on secular and pagan themes, did not extinguish the Florentine legacy of beauty, harmony, and cultural values.
However, the two 20th-century disasters which wreaked the greatest havoc on the art, architecture, and religious values of Florence — the Nazi occupation of 1943-1944 and the flooding of Florence that happened on 4th November 1966 — promoted the importance of the collection of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. The Nazi occupation, despite its confiscation of the greatest masterpieces of Florentine art, had a lesser impact on the monumental and minor sculptures, paintings, and liturgical objects created for Santa Maria del Fiore then on the city of Florence. The infamous “Night of the Bridges” (3-4 November 1944) encompassed the destruction of all the bridges of Florence and surrounding areas, except the Ponte Vecchio [1]. Frederick Hartt (1914-1991), the renowned American art historian and a monuments officer for the US 5th Army which liberated the city, declared that over one-third of medieval Florence had been destroyed by the Nazis as they departed the city. Their goal was to delay as long as possible the Allies’ advance as the bridges would need to be rebuilt to allow for any northward movement. However once Italy was liberated on 2 May 1945, the men and women attached to the MFAA (Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives) program sought out the varied artistic masterworks that were either sent to twenty-three Tuscan locations or cocooned in situ for safety as well as those in transit to the Nazi “safe houses.” These were restored to the Florentine people and their churches and museums in late July 1945. Much of the repatriation and the restoration of these Florentine treasures was documented and overseen in part by Professor Hartt, a role he would repeat in 1966.
The extraordinary flooding caused by the perfect storm of torrential rains and the subsequent release of water from the Valdarno Dam at 4AM on the morning of 4 November 1966 resulted in a catastrophic flooding greater than that of 1557. As the mass of water including sludge, fuel oil, and debris overflowed the banks of the Arno River so quickly that by 9AM, the neighborhoods of Santa Croce and Gavinana fell victim to the rapidly rushing 60,000 gallons of water that would overwhelm Florence. By 10AM, the Piazza del Duomo and Santa Maria del Fiore were overwhelmed by the mud and muck of this inundation of biblical proportions which did not begin to recede until early that evening.
The damage on every level was catastrophic in terms of the loss of human life, and domestic and religious buildings. Minimally, some 850 works including 221 panel paintings, 413 works on canvas, 11 in-situ fresco cycles, and 39 frescoes along with 22 wooden sculptures and 23 illuminated manuscripts were damaged with untold numbers destroyed or lost including musical instruments, maps, archival documents, historical photographs, and manuscripts and books. Ironically, but perhaps appropriately, Fredrick Hartt led the recovery and restoration efforts aided by many international organizations and newly established volunteer groups such as the Angeli del fango (‘Mud Angels’) composed of historians, artists, and students who labored night and day for weeks, if not months and years, to locate, clean, and when possible, restore damaged works.
The power of the rushing waters was so exuberant that Lorenzo Ghiberti’s (1378-1455) famed Gates of Paradise (1401-1424) on the Baptistery located across from the main doors of the Cathedral were not only blown open with five of the ten bronze panels ripped off and swept away as two were carried eastward to the Santa Croce neighborhood before being recovered several days later. Also damaged with a dramatic coating of mud and sludge was Donatello’s (c.1386-1466) famed Penitent Magdalene (c.1455) originally commissioned for the Baptistery but located inside the Cathedral in 1966. As with many other art works damaged in 1966 the originals of these two noted sculptures were restored and then safely placed within the Museo dell’Opera with brilliantly made replicas located where these original works once stood. As was an earlier tradition with many of the exterior sculptures on the Cathedral façade, replicas replaced the originals which were put into storage or on display. As a result of these new and older practices, the “opera” garnered consequence not only as a haven for these restored masterworks but as a prestigious and innovative exhibition space telling the story not simply of the masterworks of the Duomo but of the narrative of religious faith and commitment of Florence and her citizens.
Figure 3. Donatello’s Penitent Magdelene. Now in the Sala della Maddalena, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. Photograph courtesy of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
Museo dell’Opera del Duomo: a view into the artistic and religious heritage of Florence
With a continually expanding collection and a renewed sense of its mission as a spiritual and educational center for both Florentine art and the history of the Santa Maria del Fiore, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo took the opportunity to expand its exhibition space by taking over the adjacent building known as the Teatro Nuovo (New Theatre). That began a period toward the design and execution of a spectacular new museum which now covers over 6,000 square meters across 28 rooms on three floors.
Opening its doors in October 2015, the new Museo dell’Opera del Duomo is a brilliantly conceived and light-filled space that is home to the largest collection of sculptures made in Medieval and Renaissance Florence along with an industrious restoration lab and a school with special classes on the art, architecture, and history of Florence for primary through upper school students. Once past the lobby area, the visitor enters a dramatic long hall which is highlighted by the list of names of the artists, architects, theologians, and philosophers who have been engaged in the Museo from its beginnings. The foyer takes you through an intriguing space whose height is the result of the conversion from an 18th-century theater and allows for your entry into the life-size displays that initiates your experience of what it would have been like to be in Florence when the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Giotto’s Tower were first being built.
Figure 4. View of the sculpture gallery in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Florence. Photograph courtesy of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
Living as we do now in a world of higher skyscrapers and unconventional architecture designs, we need to be jarred into what the living reality of the Duomo and its environments must have been like between its initial architectural works and its eventual consecration in 1436 as the then largest ecclesial structure in the world capable of a congregation of 30,000 believers. That is the visitor’s experience when entering the Sala dell’Antica Facciata (Hall of the Antique Façade) which is flooded with natural light from the skylights which hover 20 meters above the floor. This huge space measuring 20 meters wide and 36 meters long provides one of those extraordinary moments of having one’s breath taken away as you walk toward the life-size reconstructed first façade of the Duomo designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in the late 13th century. Di Cambio’s original structure stood in place from 1420 to 1587 and to accentuate the experience, the niches are filled with original statues and figures to provide a better context for both the spiritual experience of awe and majesty that entering the Duomo proffered to congregants and pilgrims. Although surrounded by spectacular statues and sculptures, di Cambio’s Madonna dagli occhi di vetro (Madonna of the Glass Eyes) promotes an encounter of singular reverence.
Figure 5. Baptistery doors, Sala del Paradiso. Photograph courtesy of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
Turning around the visitor confronts the original bronze doors that graced the Baptistery: the famous East Entry Doors or “Gates of Paradise” by Ghiberti stands in the central pride of place as the South and North Doors by Ghiberti and Pisano stand on either side. After a protracted conservation period of over 27 years, these monumental bronze doors stand protected in display cases which allow visitors to clearly see the careful detail work and to read the biblical narratives so well known to the artists’ contemporaries and which are arranged so that the message of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are revealed in parallel visions.
Figure 6. The Sala del Paradiso. Photograph courtesy of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
So begins the visitor’s journey through over 750 works that tell the story of the Museo dell’Opera’s over 700-year-old history as well as the histories of the Renaissance art, architecture, and religious values that form the narrative of Santa Maria del Fiore. From elegant displays of fragments of architectural trim that have survived the many renovations in the interior and exterior of the cathedral to the hallways filled with the reliefs and statues that once adorned the niches of Giotto’s Bell Tower. Moving upward there are rooms filled with the choir lofts or singing galleries (cantorias) designed by Luca dell Robbia and Donatello as well as displays of illuminated books of liturgical music and the Renaissance instruments employed to make that music fill the Cathedral and the Baptistery with solemn and joyous sounds.
Continuing to the upper levels we find the rooms given over to the story that forms the Gallery of Brunelleschi’s Dome which proffers display cases filled with models, drawings, and designs for this masterpiece of Renaissance architecture as well as maquettes of façade segments submitted for potential renovations. Brunelleschi’s death mask is displayed not far from the large model of his dome. At the highest level of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo is the Terraza del Brunelleschi which is a panoramic outdoor terrace where one can encounter some of the most breathtaking views of both Florence and its most famous dome!
Weaving back to the lower levels of the Museo, visitors find galleries replete with further examples of the liturgical life and history of Santa Maria del Fiore through presentations of clerical vestments and liturgical objects including reliquaries, chalices, and patens all elegantly displayed along with works of religious art that provide additional context. Upon returning to the entry level, visitors find themselves traversing a small chapel style room filled with reliquaries including one which mid-16th century clerics believed contained a piece of St. John the Baptist’s jawbone.
Figure 7. Sala della Maddalena. Courtesy of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
From this setting which reminds us once again of the religious fervor and spiritual nature of both Renaissance art and Florentine culture, we pass into the Sala della Maddalena (Room of Mary Magdalene) which is filled with works depicting this singular female saint, all surrounding the central glass case containing Donatello’s Penitent Magdalene, fully restored from her infamous “mud bath” during the 1966 flood. Recognized here as a prime example of the medieval fusion of the Magdalene with that other former courtesan/prostitute/desert mother St. Mary of Egypt, the haggard, almost emaciated, androgynous body now covered with a penitential hair shirt stands engaging visitors with her prayer gesture as a call to repentance vis-à-vis the Baptist. Dramatically lit to highlight the cautious and careful work of the conservators, Donatello’s wooden sculpture is positioned to lead visitors into the tribute room to Michelangelo.
Figure 8. Michelangelo, Deposition. Photograph courtesy of the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
Displayed by itself is the unfinished sculpture of the Deposition (often mistakenly identified as a pietà) which Michelangelo reputedly designed to mark his tomb. For reasons still unknown, one day the sculptor took a hammer to the work in what has been described as a fit of rage smashing Christ’s left leg. Traditionally the term pietà is reserved for presentations of the mourning mother embracing the body of her dead son; this work depicts an expanded group which includes the figure of Mary Magdalene and Nicodemus. The former is positioned on Christ’s right to balance the kneeling figure of his mother on his left as both women strive to hold his dead body. The standing male figure in the background who appears to lower Christ’s body into their waiting embrace is Nicodemus who by the time of Michelangelo was reputed to have been a stonecutter. Here the Florentine master carves his self-portrait onto the face of this scriptural stonecutter.
Museo dell’Opera del Duomo as a place for exhibitions and curatorial pedagogy
Beyond its displays of the permanent collection which have been alluded to here, the new Museo dell’Opera del Duomo has also expanded its presence in the larger world of museums and museum studies by both its special exhibitions and international conferences and symposia including Florence and the Idea of Jerusalem in 2020; Museology and Values in 2018; and several sessions of the Forum on Museums and Religion. These events attracted international scholars, curators, and artists, and have resulted in critically praised publications.
Some might find it a curious twist of fate that it was another American art historian Mgsr. Timothy Verdon who should be credited with the latest chapter in the stored existence of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo and its transformation into an extraordinary Florentine museum. Beyond his other roles as a Canon of Santa Maria del Fiore and Director of the Office of Sacred Art of the Archdiocese of Florence, Verdon was a member of the Florence Cathedral Foundation Board of Directors in 1997 when it was decided to purchase the Teatro Nuovo and expand the Museo dell’Opera. He was asked to define the museological purpose of the “new” Museo dell’Opera and worked closely with the architects Adolfo Natalini, Marco Magni, and Piero Guicciardini on the new design. Appointed Director of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in 2011, he oversaw every aspect of the renovation and expansion, and supervised the new installation of the collection between 2012-2015. Verdon continues to serve as Director and has been the prime mover in the current program of educational, cultural, and scholarly activities.
Note
[1] Traditionally the German Consul in Florence Gerhard Wolf (1896-1971) was credited with saving the Ponte Vecchio from destruction as well as for saving the lives of political prisoners and Jews, most notably the art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1959). He was named an Honorary citizen of Florence for his noble actions during his tenure as consul from 1940 to 1944.
Diane Apostolos-Cappadona is Professor Emerita of Religious Art and Cultural History, Catholic Studies Program, Georgetown University. Her research interests include the iconology of women in religious art, and Christian iconography. Her latest book is Mary Magdalene: A Visual History (2023 - see below for a special discount for Gods’ Collections readers); her other books include A Guide to Christian Art (2020), and Biblical Women and the Arts (2018). Online publications include “Portrayals of Mary Magdalene by Early Modern Women Artists” for ArtHerStory.com, and “Visions of Mary Magdalene” for Minerva Magazine.
Dr Apostolos-Cappadona is also Editor-in-Chief of the 8-volume series Sources and Documents in the History of Christian Art (2024-2025), the 3-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion and the Arts in the West (2024-2025), and the Oxford Handbook of Mary Magdalene (2024). She is currently completing Favored, Fallen or Otherwise: Visualizing Biblical Women (2025); Christian Art: A Bibliographic Guide (2024); and Empathos Transfigured: Rogier van der Weyden’s Transformations of the Magdalene (2025).
Bloomsbury have kindly offered Gods’ Collections readers a 25% discount on Mary Magdalene: A Visual History
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