There is no greater pleasure for a Russian person than spending a day in a small Tuscan town. To join in during his usual life … walk the streets, smell rosemary, drink wine. In addition, absolutely in every, even the most microscopic commune, there will certainly be "monuments" without examining which the cultured public would be tormented by a sense of guilt. And so you can pretend that we are here for business. But in reality, all these towns would not lose their charm, even if there were not a single statue, not a single church and not a single altarpiece left in them. We would still be drawn there.
What fascinates us, the inhabitants of the empire, is not at all "monuments" (there are plenty of them in museums, and there they are seen better), but a dimension of chamber life that is poorly known to us. Provinciality without a minus sign, without a taste of inferiority, without a feeling of under-life, which does not leave a person who takes it into his head to travel through the towns of the Russian province. The Italians (the South does not count), among their other diverse talents, have a very developed taste for chamber life. This culture of intimacy, transforming the small into the big, is ideally embodied in the Benozzo Gozzoli Museum, recently opened in Castelfiorentino.
Historically, Castelfiorentino is a small fortress that served as an outpost for the Florentine military operations. At the end of the 15th century, two works by Benozzo Gozzolli appeared there. Early Renaissance artists were alien to snobbery. Benozzo, a famous Florentine master, painted chapels in the Palazzo Medici in Florence and the Papal Palace in the Vatican, but he is also called the "genius of the place" of the Elsa Valley: he painted so many things in the small communes of Tuscany. He also did not refuse orders in Castelfiorentino, which the locals are very proud of. Both works belong to the type of street tabernacles widespread in Italy (something like an open chapel).
One of them, the tabernacle with the image of the Madonna della Tossa, was commissioned in 1484 by Messer Grazia da Castelnuovo, prior of one of the local churches. Over time, this image acquired very necessary properties, becoming the guardian of children from whooping cough (hence its name Madonna della Tossa, ie, "Our Lady of the Cough"). The image was highly appreciated and in 1853 was placed in a neo-Gothic chapel. The second, the tabernacle with the "Visit of Mary Elizabeth" (Madonna of the deeds of the Visitation) in 1491 was written for the Franciscan convent of Santa Maria della Marka. In the 1960s and 70s, the Gozzoli frescoes were removed from the walls and moved to the city library, and at the beginning of the 21st century a museum was built to display the frescoes.
The competition for the design of his building was won by Massimo Mariani, an architect born and raised in Pistoia, a Tuscan town larger than Castelfiorentino, but imbued with the same spirit. The museum was named La Casa di Benozzo, which should be translated as a house-museum. In fact, it was built on the site of a demolished structure from the 1960s, and Benozzo never lived on this site.
The architect himself saw the museum as a "home workshop, to which the artist and apprentices are about to return to keep company with the visitors." This is a museum of only two exhibits, built for them, and it presents them as advantageously as possible, allowing you to combine the spontaneity of the audience and the meticulousness of the scientific views on the object. The new containers for the frescoes adequately reproduce the format and size of the original tabernacles from which they were removed, so they can be perceived from the same point of view for which they were originally designed. The lobby, with its low ceiling and low lighting, drops abruptly into the high ground floor space where the Tabernacle della Visitation is located. On the 2nd floor, in the corner is the Madonna delle Tossa. The glass roof, which provides overhead light, contributes to the impression of a natural environment. The staircase does not just connect the two levels: from it, like from restoration scaffolding, you can see the paintings up close.
Nearby, there is something that was not intended by the author for the eyes of the viewer at all: synopias of tabernacle paintings - preparatory drawings that were applied directly to the wall and then covered with a layer of plaster, on which the frescoes were painted. So we really get the opportunity to look into the artist's studio, trace the path from concept to implementation and see what happens in the process of turning graphics into painting. The series of halls of the museum is completed by a small space on the third floor, intended for temporary exhibitions and educational activities with children.
The project was carried out in collaboration with the Museum of the History of Science in Florence, who provided the museum in Castelfiorentino with multimedia equipment. It allows, without leaving the Tuscan town, to get an exhaustive picture of Benozzo's work: to take a virtual tour of his famous and little-known works, to delve into the details of his painting technique, the organization of his workshop, etc.
Outside, the building of the museum does not hide the fact that it is new, but at the same time it conducts an intelligible dialogue with the history of local architecture and is subtly coordinated with the architectural environment. Despite modern materials, laconic forms and asymmetry in the arrangement of windows, the building resembles a small church: its proportions are close to small basilicas, the roof profile “quotes” their section with a higher middle part, the central risalit at the end suggests that the building is basilical with three naves. The terracotta cladding also refers to the local religious building tradition.
In addition, the architect used the planning formula of the Renaissance cities of Tuscany, placing the museum as a church in a small square. These references to sacred architecture are taken for granted and fit perfectly with the original purpose of both tabernacles - to serve the piety of the townspeople. The homelike character of the new building is emphasized by the curved base, which provides the museum with public space where you can arrange flower beds, relax and play. It frames it and, like a podium, presents it to the city.
The Benozzo Gozzoli Museum perfectly demonstrates the advantages of a small museum: it can really become a “home”. Its appearance repeats the form familiar to the eye with a new language. Its layout, subordinated to the peculiarities of a few exhibits, allows them to unfold in their entirety, so that the frescoes are truly in their place - that is, at home.
