Opened in 2000 as the Museum of Russian Icons, the first of its kind in Italy, the Museum of Palazzo Pretorio preserves various collections.
Francesco Bigazzi’s Collection
The original one donated by the journalist Francesco Bigazzi, for years a correspondent in Poland and Moscow: about sixty nineteenth- and twentieth-century icons painted in tempera and oil.
The Belvedere Collection
To this was added the Belvedere collection, with wooden icons from the Orthodox world, mainly Russian. An entire exhibition section, a unique case in Italy, is dedicated to crosses, icons and bronze polyptychs, mostly typical of the production of the Old Believers, including a rare example of a fifteenth-century baptismal cross.
Engravings and Lithographs
Another interesting section of the museum is the Collection of Engravings and Lithographs – Donation Vito Merlini (local philanthropist): it consists of 279 sheets of engravings, lithographs, xylographs and serigraphs that summarize the Italian artistic panorama of the twentieth century. There are many pure engravers, from Viviani to Paris, as well as painters and sculptors such as Baj, Carrà, Guttuso and Possenti, who have dedicated themselves to this genre.
It is part of the Museum Pole of Peccioli, together with the Archaeological Museum and the Museum of Sacred Art.
