Situated in the ancient part of Certaldo Alto, the museum opened in 2001 and so it is among the newest in Tuscany.

The tour unfolds in some rooms of the ancient religious society premises adjacent to the Augustinian Church of Santi Jacopo e Filippo, where the cenotaph of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375), is found. Boccaccio was born in the house that overlooks the same street, a short distance away.

In the museum, there are about one hundred fifty works, coming from various parishes in the surrounding area, such as San Lazzaro in Lucardo, which were brought together here for reasons of conservation and security.

From the church of Santa Maria in Bagnano come three masterpieces of medieval painting; these panels portray the Madonna with Child enthroned, painted by the Master of Bigallo and by Meliore, both active in Florence, the former in the first and the latter in the second half of the 1200’s, and the triptych with the Madonna with Child and Saints Peter and Romolus painted by Ugolino di Nerio about 1320.

One of the most important artists of the Florentine Valdelsa at the end of the 1300’s and the beginning of the 1400’s, Cenni di Francesco’s work is present here with an evocative Crucifixion on a panel and by two frescoes taken from the church of San Martino in Maiano, a Madonna with Child and Saint Martin and Saint Catherine, dating back to between 1405 and 1410.

Among the wooden sculptures displayed is a true masterpiece, a surprising Crucifix, sculpted and painted by a Tuscan artist about 1250, which is one of the very rare examples of ‘Christus triumphans’ of the Italian medieval art.

The museum also offers examples of Tuscan painting from the 1600’s and a large collection of vestments, altar cloths and holy vessels, including a reliquary bust in embossed silver of the Blessed Julia, the hermit saint of Valdelsa, who died in Certaldo in 1367 and soon became an object of such strong popular devotion there, that an altar, now missing, was dedicated to her in the Church of Santi Jacopo e Filippo.

essential bibliography

Il Museo di Arte Sacra a Certaldo
AA.VV., Firenze, Editore: Becocci/Scala, 2001