Description
Padua's Diocesan Museum occupies the halls of the Bishop's Palace, next to the Cathedral: a journey through a thousand years of Paduan sacred art, from a ninth-century silver inkwell to the Tiepolos, inside frescoed halls that are worth the visit on their own.
The heart of it is the monumental Hall of the Bishops: along the walls parade the portraits of the first hundred bishops of Padua, from Saint Prosdocimus to Pietro Barozzi, frescoed by Bartolomeo Montagna in the early sixteenth century. Here too is a portrait of Francesco Petrarca, detached from the poet's house in Padua.
From the hall you pass into the Chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, built in 1495 for Barozzi himself: the walls are frescoed with the Apostles' Creed, and on the altar stands a triptych by Jacopo da Montagnana with the Annunciation and the archangels.
In the Belvedere rooms the highlights are the seven panels of the Stories of Saint Sebastian by Nicolò Semitecolo, from 1367, and two Madonnas with Child, by Paolo Veneziano and Giusto de' Menabuoi. A little further on is a Reliquary of the Cross in gilded silver, of Danish make.
A fresco detached from an outer wall of the Baptistery shows a portrait of a boy. For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there are sculptures by the Bonazza family, a Saint Francis of Paola by Giambattista Tiepolo and paintings by his son Giandomenico.
The cathedral treasury holds the oldest objects: a ninth-century silver inkwell later turned into a container for the chrism, a processional cross from 1228 and an eleventh-century steatite panel showing Christ blessing.
The room of vestments is worth a visit too: among the gold embroidery is the set bearing the papal coat of arms given to the Cathedral by Clement XIII, who had been bishop of Padua before becoming pope. In the nineteenth-century room, by contrast, a wealth of ex-votos tells of popular devotion.
The museum was created for the Jubilee of 2000. The Hall of the Bishops, which had fallen into decay in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, regained its splendour with the restoration completed in 2006.
The heart of it is the monumental Hall of the Bishops: along the walls parade the portraits of the first hundred bishops of Padua, from Saint Prosdocimus to Pietro Barozzi, frescoed by Bartolomeo Montagna in the early sixteenth century. Here too is a portrait of Francesco Petrarca, detached from the poet's house in Padua.
From the hall you pass into the Chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, built in 1495 for Barozzi himself: the walls are frescoed with the Apostles' Creed, and on the altar stands a triptych by Jacopo da Montagnana with the Annunciation and the archangels.
In the Belvedere rooms the highlights are the seven panels of the Stories of Saint Sebastian by Nicolò Semitecolo, from 1367, and two Madonnas with Child, by Paolo Veneziano and Giusto de' Menabuoi. A little further on is a Reliquary of the Cross in gilded silver, of Danish make.
A fresco detached from an outer wall of the Baptistery shows a portrait of a boy. For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there are sculptures by the Bonazza family, a Saint Francis of Paola by Giambattista Tiepolo and paintings by his son Giandomenico.
The cathedral treasury holds the oldest objects: a ninth-century silver inkwell later turned into a container for the chrism, a processional cross from 1228 and an eleventh-century steatite panel showing Christ blessing.
The room of vestments is worth a visit too: among the gold embroidery is the set bearing the papal coat of arms given to the Cathedral by Clement XIII, who had been bishop of Padua before becoming pope. In the nineteenth-century room, by contrast, a wealth of ex-votos tells of popular devotion.
The museum was created for the Jubilee of 2000. The Hall of the Bishops, which had fallen into decay in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, regained its splendour with the restoration completed in 2006.