Description
The Museum of Sant'Agostino is Genoa's museum of sculpture, in Piazza Sarzano, inside a thirteenth-century convent: statues, capitals, frescoes and tombs rescued from the city's churches and palaces that vanished over time, from the tenth to the eighteenth century.
The convent of the Augustinian Hermits keeps its Gothic church of 1260, now deconsecrated and used as an auditorium, with a brick bell tower clad in tiles. The route runs around two cloisters: one late medieval and triangular in plan, the other square, from the seventeenth century.
The most famous work is the funerary monument of Margaret of Brabant, wife of Emperor Henry VII, who died in Genoa in 1311. Fragments of it survive, the last great work of Giovanni Pisano, the master of fourteenth-century Italian sculpture.
Next to it is the tomb of Simone Boccanegra, the first doge of Genoa, who died in 1363: the dead man's face, carved with great naturalism, has handed down his portrait to us. It comes from the church of San Francesco di Castelletto, since demolished.
Among the oldest pieces are the Byzantine-style capitals from the convent of San Tommaso, from around the year 1000, and the lions that supported the columns of the old portico of San Siro, from the twelfth century.
From the cathedral comes the Griffin, symbol of the city: half lion and half eagle, it alluded to both the Papacy and the Empire. There are also Gothic frescoes detached from destroyed churches and a collection of ceramics from Mediterranean trade.
The Renaissance brings the doorways with Saint George and the Dragon, which the most powerful families, starting with the Doria, placed above their front doors, and Guglielmo Della Porta's young David with the head of Goliath.
The Baroque section is dominated by Pierre Puget, the great French sculptor active in Genoa in the seventeenth century. By him there is a series of busts of Roman emperors, the Madonna Carrega and the Abduction of Helen, with the Trojan heroine being carried onto the ship by Paris: the last two come from palaces on Via Garibaldi.
After the Napoleonic suppression, the convent served as a military warehouse, a Carabinieri barracks, a workshop, a carpentry shop and even a puppet theatre. It became a museum in 1939, and after the wartime bombs it was rebuilt by Franco Albini's studio.
Don't miss
• Monument to Margaret of Brabant.
• Tomb of Simone Boccanegra.
• The Griffin.
• Puget's Abduction of Helen.
• The triangular cloister.
Did you know?
• A guided route starts from the museum and follows the walkway of the Barbarossa walls to Porta Soprana and the Columbus House.
The convent of the Augustinian Hermits keeps its Gothic church of 1260, now deconsecrated and used as an auditorium, with a brick bell tower clad in tiles. The route runs around two cloisters: one late medieval and triangular in plan, the other square, from the seventeenth century.
The most famous work is the funerary monument of Margaret of Brabant, wife of Emperor Henry VII, who died in Genoa in 1311. Fragments of it survive, the last great work of Giovanni Pisano, the master of fourteenth-century Italian sculpture.
Next to it is the tomb of Simone Boccanegra, the first doge of Genoa, who died in 1363: the dead man's face, carved with great naturalism, has handed down his portrait to us. It comes from the church of San Francesco di Castelletto, since demolished.
Among the oldest pieces are the Byzantine-style capitals from the convent of San Tommaso, from around the year 1000, and the lions that supported the columns of the old portico of San Siro, from the twelfth century.
From the cathedral comes the Griffin, symbol of the city: half lion and half eagle, it alluded to both the Papacy and the Empire. There are also Gothic frescoes detached from destroyed churches and a collection of ceramics from Mediterranean trade.
The Renaissance brings the doorways with Saint George and the Dragon, which the most powerful families, starting with the Doria, placed above their front doors, and Guglielmo Della Porta's young David with the head of Goliath.
The Baroque section is dominated by Pierre Puget, the great French sculptor active in Genoa in the seventeenth century. By him there is a series of busts of Roman emperors, the Madonna Carrega and the Abduction of Helen, with the Trojan heroine being carried onto the ship by Paris: the last two come from palaces on Via Garibaldi.
After the Napoleonic suppression, the convent served as a military warehouse, a Carabinieri barracks, a workshop, a carpentry shop and even a puppet theatre. It became a museum in 1939, and after the wartime bombs it was rebuilt by Franco Albini's studio.
Don't miss
• Monument to Margaret of Brabant.
• Tomb of Simone Boccanegra.
• The Griffin.
• Puget's Abduction of Helen.
• The triangular cloister.
Did you know?
• A guided route starts from the museum and follows the walkway of the Barbarossa walls to Porta Soprana and the Columbus House.