Description
The Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini holds the sacred art treasures of the Diocese of Milan in the cloisters of the old convent of Sant'Eustorgio, in Milan. From 4th-century fragments to drawings by van Gogh, it is a richer and more varied museum than its name suggests.
The route opens with Saint Ambrose: fragments of the wooden doors of his first basilica, a 10th-century stucco bust and the silver capsella of San Nazaro, a 4th-century reliquary the size of a twenty-centimeter cube, with embossed scenes on its sides.
One section is devoted to paintings from Lombard parishes, with Michelino da Besozzo, Bergognone, Marco d'Oggiono and Magnasco. Then comes the Crespi gold-ground collection: 41 panels with gilded backgrounds, mostly Tuscan and Umbrian, from the 14th and 15th centuries, with Bernardo Daddi and Sano di Pietro.
There are also the cardinals' collections, including the Monti collection with Cerano, Guido Reni, Tintoretto and Morazzone. On the ground floor, Lucio Fontana: the preparatory plasters for the Duomo's fifth door and the white Via Crucis, in fourteen stations.
The Sozzani collection gathers 105 drawings from the 1400s to the 1900s: among Ingres, Delacroix, Corot and Balthus there is even a van Gogh. And if a temporary exhibition is on, the museum hosts that too.
It all began with a letter. In 1931 the Archbishop of Milan, Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, wrote to the clergy "For sacred art and for a diocesan museum." The museum came seventy years later, inaugurated by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini in December 2001.
The place has a long history. The cloisters belonged to the Dominican convent of Sant'Eustorgio, the basilica that tradition says held the relics of the Magi, until after Barbarossa's sack they ended up in Cologne. The bombings of the Second World War had left them in terrible condition.
In 1960 the future Paul VI, Giovan Battista Montini, pointed to those cloisters as the seat of the new museum, but it took several more decades to restore them.
The route opens with Saint Ambrose: fragments of the wooden doors of his first basilica, a 10th-century stucco bust and the silver capsella of San Nazaro, a 4th-century reliquary the size of a twenty-centimeter cube, with embossed scenes on its sides.
One section is devoted to paintings from Lombard parishes, with Michelino da Besozzo, Bergognone, Marco d'Oggiono and Magnasco. Then comes the Crespi gold-ground collection: 41 panels with gilded backgrounds, mostly Tuscan and Umbrian, from the 14th and 15th centuries, with Bernardo Daddi and Sano di Pietro.
There are also the cardinals' collections, including the Monti collection with Cerano, Guido Reni, Tintoretto and Morazzone. On the ground floor, Lucio Fontana: the preparatory plasters for the Duomo's fifth door and the white Via Crucis, in fourteen stations.
The Sozzani collection gathers 105 drawings from the 1400s to the 1900s: among Ingres, Delacroix, Corot and Balthus there is even a van Gogh. And if a temporary exhibition is on, the museum hosts that too.
It all began with a letter. In 1931 the Archbishop of Milan, Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, wrote to the clergy "For sacred art and for a diocesan museum." The museum came seventy years later, inaugurated by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini in December 2001.
The place has a long history. The cloisters belonged to the Dominican convent of Sant'Eustorgio, the basilica that tradition says held the relics of the Magi, until after Barbarossa's sack they ended up in Cologne. The bombings of the Second World War had left them in terrible condition.
In 1960 the future Paul VI, Giovan Battista Montini, pointed to those cloisters as the seat of the new museum, but it took several more decades to restore them.