Description
The Museo Marino Marini is the museum of the sculptor Marino Marini, in Piazza San Pancrazio, a short walk from Palazzo Rucellai, inside an old deconsecrated church. It gathers almost two hundred works including sculptures, portraits and drawings, and in the middle of the space a great bronze horseman stands out.
Marini, born in Pistoia in 1901 and died in 1980, is considered one of the most important Italian sculptors of the twentieth century. In 1980 he donated his collection to the city of Florence, which recovered the former church of San Pancrazio to house it, with works finished in 1986.
Under the dome, at the center of the old presbytery, rises the Horseman, six meters tall, lit by the transparent wall of the apse. Walkways run around it on four levels, so the sculptures can be seen from every side and from above: the designers even left in view the bolted beams of the factory that occupied the church.
The subjects return from room to room: horses and riders, in every pose and mood, from weariness to danger, and the Pomonas, the rounded female figures, a symbol of fertility since the Etruscans. Rough, essential forms, in bronze and cement, with polychrome plasters, canvases and drawings on other floors.
Don't miss, next door, the Rucellai Chapel with Leon Battista Alberti's little temple of the Holy Sepulchre, completed in 1467: a miniature in white and green marble of the sepulchre in Jerusalem, where Giovanni Rucellai is buried.
The church has been through a lot. Deconsecrated after the Napoleonic suppression of 1808, it passed from hand to hand through ever less sacred uses: lottery office, courthouse, tobacco factory, and finally a barracks storeroom.
The monastery next door was founded in 1157 by the Benedictine nuns of Saint Hilary, and Giovanni Villani believed the church had been founded by Charlemagne. On the right side opens a large Renaissance cloister, with round arches and Ionic columns.
Marini, born in Pistoia in 1901 and died in 1980, is considered one of the most important Italian sculptors of the twentieth century. In 1980 he donated his collection to the city of Florence, which recovered the former church of San Pancrazio to house it, with works finished in 1986.
Under the dome, at the center of the old presbytery, rises the Horseman, six meters tall, lit by the transparent wall of the apse. Walkways run around it on four levels, so the sculptures can be seen from every side and from above: the designers even left in view the bolted beams of the factory that occupied the church.
The subjects return from room to room: horses and riders, in every pose and mood, from weariness to danger, and the Pomonas, the rounded female figures, a symbol of fertility since the Etruscans. Rough, essential forms, in bronze and cement, with polychrome plasters, canvases and drawings on other floors.
Don't miss, next door, the Rucellai Chapel with Leon Battista Alberti's little temple of the Holy Sepulchre, completed in 1467: a miniature in white and green marble of the sepulchre in Jerusalem, where Giovanni Rucellai is buried.
The church has been through a lot. Deconsecrated after the Napoleonic suppression of 1808, it passed from hand to hand through ever less sacred uses: lottery office, courthouse, tobacco factory, and finally a barracks storeroom.
The monastery next door was founded in 1157 by the Benedictine nuns of Saint Hilary, and Giovanni Villani believed the church had been founded by Charlemagne. On the right side opens a large Renaissance cloister, with round arches and Ionic columns.