Town museum (Prato) - closed
Its most important collection has been transferred to the Cloister of St. Dominic (house of the Wall Painting Museum), where one may visit the exhibition "Immagini del Sacro" (Italian only).
Presentation
The Town Museum - that, from 1912, is housed in the Mediaeval Praetorian Palace - represents the most ancient cultural institution of Prato as for its history and collections.
It was in fact promoted by the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine from 1788 with the aim to create "a school of taste" for future artists, but was opened only in 1858 in the near Town Hall.
Artistic patrimony
The cultural patrimony of the Museum is constituted - in addition to the great masterpieces of the fourteenth-century season that one may see in the exhibition "The treasures of the Town" - by Renaissance paintings, works of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries of different schools, nineteenth-century drawings, plastic works of della Robbia, sculptures of the Prato artist Lorenzo Bartolini and objects belonging to the production of minor arts such as: eighteenth-century ceramics, Risorgimento arms and costumes of Gonfaloniers.
The collections of paintings and drawings have a great importance for the history of Tuscan painting from the Fourteenth to the Nineteenth centuries.
The Picture Gallery of the Town Hall, whose path is dedicated to the subject of the portrait, and the Emperor's Castle are under the Town Museum, where an exhibition consisting of plastics and sculptures recalls the history of the building with the support of explanatory texts.
Some masterpieces of the Fourteenth century - being works of the most important masters of the Giotto school - belong to the Town Museum: e.g. the predella with the Stories of the Sacred Belt by Bernardo Daddi, from the Cathedral, and the splendid Polyptych by Giovanni da Milano painted for the most ancient charitable institution of the town, the "Spedale della Misericordia" (1355-60).
The Renaissance has its foundation in the Madonna del Ceppo by Filippo Lippi (1453), with the realistic vision of the merchant of Prato, Francesco di Marco Datini, portrayed on his knees with the Superintendents of the "Ceppo" (charitable institution).
The portrait of the Madonna of the Sacred Belt by Filippo Lippi together with Fra Diamante, gives evidence - in the Fifteenth century - of the age-old cult of the relic preserved in the Cathedral since the Thirteenth century.
The late Renaissance is represented by Filippino Lippi with the Tabernacolo del Mercatale, dated 1498 and the Altar-piece of the Audience, 1503.
There are also plastic works of Andrea della Robbia and of the Florentine sculptors Benedetto Buglioni and Benedetto da Maiano, with some tabernacles devoted to the Virgin Mary.
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries are represented by paintings of different Schools (Roman and Neapolitan) with portraits of still life of the Roman School, from the Martini Gallery of the Spedale.
Finally, this important Gallery houses sculptures of Lorenzo Bartolini (1777-1850) with Prato painters of the Ninenteenth century: Antonio Marini, Giuseppe Ciardi and Alessandro Franchi.
The art collections of the Praetorian Palace are therefore extremely important as a document of Prato, representing its ancient part as well as the modern side of the Nineteenth century.
Activities
The Museum has organized didactic activities for local schools throughout the years.
As for adults' education, it has carried out and is currently producing a series of multimedia works in CD format or in VHS located in the main museum points of the town.
As for the multimedia museum, fully executed, the mediaeval town has been completely reconstructed in a three-dimensional version that one may visit both in the interiors and exteriors.
Besides, a CD on the heraldry and one on the weaving and the "feminine divine" are being set up.
