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Empoli
Museo della Collegiata
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The Museum of the Collegiate Church of Sant’Andrea of Empoli was founded in 1859.
It has undergone several arrangements, the latest of which dates back to 1990.
On the ground floor, the first room is arranged in the old baptistery that contains the baptismal font,
a very refined work made by Bernardo Rossellino in 1447. Among the frescoes stands out
Masolino’s Cristo in pietà, one of the masterpieces of the artist who worked in Empoli in 1424.
The adjacent room contains a collection of sculptures, works datable between the end of the 13th
and the 18th centuries. The most important of these are the tondo with the Madonna col bambino,
formerly attributed to Tino di Camaino and today linked to the early production of Giovanni Pisano,
and the wooden sculpture by Francesco di Valdambrino portraying Santo Stefano.
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The picture galleryis on the first floor and it is arranged in four rooms.
The paintings come from the Collegiate church and from other churches of the area, but in
some cases they are endowments from private people, which gives witness to the interest that
the citizens have always had in the museum.The first two rooms give an overview of the
Florentine painting between the 14th and the 15th centuries. Of great importance are
the paintings by Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, Agnolo Gaddi and Lorenzo di Bicci and his
workshop, one of the most active for the Empolese customers.
The second room houses some authentic masterpieces of the museum: besides the two
triptychs by Lorenzo Monaco, the small Maestà by Filippo Lippi.
In the last two rooms, the route offers works that go from the second half of the
15th to the early 17th centuries. Here are exhibited the two monumental tabernacles by
the Botticini, the Tabernacolo di San Sebastiano, in the middle of which rises
the marble statue of the saint by Antonio Rossellino, and the Tabernacolo del Sacramento.
Another interesting work of art is the Incredulità di San Tommaso by Jacopo da Empoli.
The loggia houses some glazed terrecotte, among which we find the tondo with the Eterno Padre
benedicente in gloria by Andrea della Robbia. The route continues in the nearby church of
Santo Stefano, built by the Augustinian monks starting from 1367,
which still retains some traces of sinopie and frescoes by Masolino, a marvellous Annunciazione by Bernardo Rossellino and valuable paintings
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MuVe Glass Museum
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The Salt Storehouse, a historical building in the centre of Empoli lately restored, now venue of the MuVe,
represents an important piece of the history of the Town of Empoli;
the impressive brick building, probably of the 17th century, is in Via Ridolfi – once called via del Sale –
was originally used to store the rock salt coming from Volterra.
The arrangement of the collection, which consists of items of the historical glass production,
gives the building a new life. A tale made up of objects manufactured in the Empolese furnaces from the second half
of the 18th century to the 1970’s, and of images, which take the visitor inside the furnace of yesterday as well as
in the factory of today, discovering the different stages of manufacturing process: the glassmakers creating the product,
the sounds of the furnaces and of the machinery superimposed over the voices and the glow of fire.
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