Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (Firenze)

The Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (Museum of the Works of the Cathedral) in Florence, Italy is a museum containing many of the original works of art created for the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral (Duomo) of Florence. As of August 2013, the director of the museum is Fr. Timothy Verdon, an American.

The museum is located just east of the Duomo, near its apse. It opened in 1891, and now houses what has been called “one of the world’s most important collections of sculpture.” Among the museum’s holdings are Lorenzo Ghiberti’s doors for the Baptistery of Florence Cathedral called the Gates of Paradise, the cantorias, or singing-galleries, designed for the cathedral by Luca della Robbia and Donatello (also from him is a “Magdalene Penitent”), and “The Deposition”, a pietà intended by Michelangelo for his own tomb.

It was reported on August 6, 2013, that a tourist had accidentally snapped a finger off a 14th-century statue of the Virgin Mary by Giovanni d’Ambrogio. The finger itself was from a later repair, not part of the original work.

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