On Friday, 20 December 2024 at 5 p.m. at the Museo delle Sinopie, the president of the Opera della Primaziale Pisana, Andrea Maestrelli, will kick off a double appointment. On the ground floor of the museum, the exhibition Opa contemporanea will kick off, thanks to which, alongside the three extraordinary sketches made by Igor Mitoraj for the door of Santa Maria degli Angeli, the works of Francesco Barbieri, Giuseppe Bartolini and Gianni Lucchesi made to celebrate the 850th anniversary of the Bell Tower of the Cathedral will once again be visible to the general public.
An openness to contemporaneity that combines perfectly with the Primaziale's main mission: the conservation and protection of its artistic heritage. In fact, the same museum will host the exhibition Restoration on show. Masterpieces from the Primaziale's storerooms: a unique opportunity to admire masterpieces ranging from the 14th to the 18th century and including works by Buonamico Buffalmacco, Orazio Riminaldi, Perin del Vaga, Giovan Battista Tempesti, and Jacopo Foschi usually kept in the Primaziale's storerooms. But the exhibition will also provide a valuable opportunity to learn about and explore the daily work carried out by the restorers. Through a construction site set up inside the museum, it will be possible to follow live the restoration of the painting The Fall of Manna, painted in 1537 by the Venetian painter Battista Franco: one of the survivors of the dramatic fire that destroyed a large part of the Cathedral in October 1595.
A double appointment that is intended to be a point of synthesis between the objectives of the Opera della Primaziale Pisana, on the one hand - as the first article of its statute recalls - to provide for the ‘custody, protection, conservation and maintenance’ of the extraordinary artistic heritage that has been handed down to it for centuries and that it in turn must preserve for future generations. On the other hand, it opens an ideal window on the present day, in a constant search for dialogue between a place as extraordinarily emblematic in the universal imagination as the Piazza dei Miracoli and the need to make art day after day.
The double exhibition will be open until 30 March 2025.
