Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie Museum
In San Giovanni Valdarno, a museum of sacred art displaying one of the Annunciation by Beato Angelico
The Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie Museum is situated in San Giovanni Valdarno, next to the Basilica. This small but important museum of sacred art displays numerous paintings arriving from churches and monasteries in town and in the area, including a true Renaissance masterpiece: the Annunciation by Beato Angelico, one of his three Annunciations on wood, dated around 1440.
The collection consists in a large number of fifteenth-century Florentine paintings, with works by Giovanni di Ser Giovanni, known as Lo Scheggia, Masaccio’s brother, by Mariotto di Cristofano, his brother-in-law, by Giovanni di Piamonte, Piero della Francesca’s student, by Domenico di Michelino and Iacopo del Sellaio.
The museum also houses sacred furnishings, religious vestments and some seventeenth-century paintings, including the beautiful Decollazione di San Giovanni Battista (Beheading of St. John the Baptist) by Giovanni da San Giovanni.
In 2019, thanks to a new layout, the ancient altar of the Oratory, a work by Buontalenti, Giulio Parigi and others, that was destroyed by a fire in 1596, has been rebuilt in the seventeenth century hall.
Accessibility information: museobasilica.it
