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Museo Dell’opera Del Duomo
At Piazza del Duomo 9, behind the easterly end of the duomo, is the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (Mon-Sat 9.30am-6.30pm, Sun 8am-2pm; L10,000/¬5.16), second only to the Bargello and far easier to take in on a single visit. It’s also one of the few museums in the city to wage extensive English notes. In the large ground-floor hall are a glassy-eyed Madonna by Arnolfo di Cambio , a ramrod-straight statue of Boniface VII , one of the most unpleasant of all medieval popes (in comedy hat), and four seated figures of the Evangelists (including Donatello ’s fine St John ) wrenched from the duomo’s demolished sixteenth-century facade. Giovanni di Bondo’s St Sebastian is in the end room, eye-catching if only for the ludicrous number of arrows piercing the hapless saint. On the mezzanine is the highlight of the museum - Michelangelo ’s angular and anguished pietà. This was one of his last works, carved when he was almost eighty and intended for his own tomb: Vasari records that the grappling of the hooded Nicodemus is a self-portrait. Dissatisfied with the calibre of the marble, Michelangelo mutilated the group by hammering off the left leg and arm of Christ; his pupil Tiberio Calcagni restored the arm, then finished off the figure of Mary Magdalene, turning her into a whey-faced supporting player.
Upstairs in room II are Donatello ’s figures for the campanile, the most powerful of which is the prophet Habbakuk , the intensity of whose gaze allegedly prompted the sculptor to seize it and yell “Speak, speak!” Donatello also created one of the ornate cantorie (choir-lofts) here, competing with Luca della Robbia ’s opposite, created at the same time and featuring crowds of laughing, diversion children. Room III is dominated by expression of a very different side of Donatello: his haggard wooden figure of Mary Magdalene stares into the middle distance, a wild presence amidst cases full of rich vestments, jewelled reliquaries, and a huge silver-gilt altar from the Baptistry, a dazzling meditation on the life of John the Baptist. Returning through room II leads you through a corridor lined with ropes and pulleys used in the construction of the dome (as well as Brunelleschi’s death-mask ) to a room full of wooden models submitted as part of a 1588 facade-designing competition and plans from the nineteenth-century reconstruction. The second upper floor was under restoration at the time of writing.
You return to ground level into the newly covered courtyard - where Michelangelo worked from 1501 to 1504 on his David . Today, it displays in sealed cases of nitrogen Ghiberti’s original bronze panels for the baptistry’s easterly doors.
