Aurelio Castelli Museum in Siena
This museum is named after Father Aurelio Castelli, who assembled the displayed artworks after the closure of many convents
The Aurelio Castelli Museum is next door to the Basilica dell’Osservanza, a church built by Saint Bernardino of Siena at the start of the fifteenth century. The museum is in the wing of the building which looks out onto the convent courtyard, under a late fifteenth century loggia with a wonderful view of the city of Siena.
The museum contains many works of art including paintings, sculptures, prints and seals from the basilica. A visit to the museum is not complete without a tour of the Basilica dell’Osservanza itself, which itself is home to several important works of art.
The burial tombstone of Niccolò Piccolomini (1476), thought to be by Antonio Federighi, is of particular interest. Nor should visitors miss Girolamo Benvenuti’s fresco on the back wall, an image of Universal Judgment; the 17 illuminated chorales made by Fra Giovanni da Siena and Fra Jacopo Torelli in the fifteenth century and which now reside in the convent’s scriptorium; the reliquary of Saint Bernardino by the goldsmith Francesco d’Antonio (1462), and various vestments from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
