Palazzo della Fraternita dei Laici is a 14th-century palace in Arezzo, located in the beautiful Piazza Grande. The palace houses the organization of Fraternita dei Laici, an institution founded in 1262, still active today and very involved in projects of social and cultural interest. SHORT HISTORY The palace, started in 1375, was completed only in the second half of the 16th century. Between 1550 and 1560, the facade was finished with the construction of the balcony and the lunar phases of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic clock, built in 1552 by Felice di Salvatore Vannucci. The part of the palace towards the apse of the Church of Santa Maria della Pieve was completed in the second half of the 16th century, following a project by Giorgio Vasari. The renovation of Palazzo della Fraternita in 1781, supported by the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo di Lorena, led to the opening of the Library to the public. Today, the palace houses the Fraternita dei Laici Museum, reopened in 2010. ART AND ARCHITECTURE The original painting of Christ from the external lunette of the central portal, work of Spinello Aretino, was replaced by a copy at the end of the 1970s, and is now in Read more [...]
Tag: Felice di Salvatore da Fossato in Arezzo
Fraternita dei Laici Museum
The Fraternita dei Laici Museum is a museum in Arezzo, housed by Palazzo della Fraternita dei Laici, located in Piazza Grande. The museum was founded anew in 2010 to exhibit a series of works collected between the 14th and 19th centuries. SHORT HISTORY The first collections of the institution were exhibited in the Fraternita dei Laici Museum starting with 1820, the year of its foundation, until 1935, when most of the art (archeology and science collections, and the library saved after the 1759 fire) was partly sent to the Civic Museums of Arezzo. Most of the works, about 6000 of them, including 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and ancient furnishings, are still in the palace and represent the core of today’s exhibition. ART The Museum is composed of the Quadreria, the Council Room, and the Primo Rettore’s Room. Besides the ancient works, the collection was completed around 1780 with the magnificent Gallery of Portraits, a series of effigies of grand dukes and benefactors who made the institution rich since the Middle Ages. The Bartolini Collection, composed of drawings, prints, plaster casts and books, is named after its founder, the sculptor Ranieri Bartolini, who left it to the city Read more [...]
