ONGOING EXHIBITION

Juliette Minchin and Marta Roberti enchant the ancient monastery of Sant’Orsola
Curated by Morgane Lucquet Laforgue

The second edition of the “exhibitions on site” featured the French sculptor Juliette Minchin and the Italian designer Marta Roberti, both invited to create site-specific works for Sant’Orsola. In the space of the first convent church, Minchin created Souffle (Breath), an installation of wax veils and draperies that seemed to restore the lost breath of the Baroque convent. In the former apothecary, she presented La veillée aux racines (Vigil with Roots): wax panels with wicks that, when lit daily, burned slowly, giving life to a ritual of light and metamorphosis.

Roberti, inspired by the stories of the saints that once circulated within the convent walls, created Aure, a series of large drawings covering the walls of the second church like frescoes re-emerging from the plaster, where figures of women and animals subverted traditional religious iconography. Her research continued in the underground spaces of Sant’Orsola – opened to the public for the first time – with a group of works on carbon paper, in which the images, incised into the black surface, emerged from darkness like sudden revelations. The encounter between the two artists transformed the convent into a dreamlike landscape, where past and imagination intertwined in a visionary weave.

Sophia Kisielewska-Dunbar and Alberto Ruce tell forgotten stories
Curated by Morgane Lucquet Laforgue

The first exhibition of the future museum, Beyond the Walls of Sant’Orsola, involved two young contemporary artists who created an art project inspired by the women who once inhabited the place. In the space of the former church, the street artist Alberto Ruce created a suspended installation inspired by the story of Lisa Gherardini, the presumed model of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, who spent her last years of life in the convent of Sant’Orsola. In the former monastic apothecary, on the other hand, he painted large murals evoking the pharmaceutical activity practiced by the nuns in that very place.

Sophia Kisielewska-Dunbar’s work enters into dialogue with the dispersed heritage of Sant’Orsola and questions the condition of women within the walls of convents. Her oil-oncanvas triptych, titled Noli me tangere, reinterprets and actualizes the traditional iconography of saints’ martyrdom through a female lens. The painting, set up in the second convent church, opens a new space of encounter between the ancient and the contemporary.

Italian champions of the Grand Boucle
Curated by Valeria d’Ambrosio

On the occasion of the Florence Grand Départ (29 June 2024), the Sant’Orsola Museum hosted an exhibition dedicated to the seven Italian champions who have marked the history of the Tour de France: Ottavio Bottecchia, Gino Bartali, Fausto Coppi, Gastone Nencini, Felice Gimondi, Marco Pantani, and Vincenzo Nibali. Through a selection of 37 photographs from the archives of L’Équipe (1946 to the present day), as well as materials from Excelsior (1910–1940) and Le Miroir des Sports (1920–1945), together with historical films from the Gaumont-Pathé Archives and the Istituto Luce, the exhibition retraced nearly ninety years of the “Grande Boucle”, capturing the exploits of Italian riders from 1924 to 2014.

Alongside the images, period objects—exceptional loans from the Ottavio Bottecchia Museum and the Gino Bartali Cycling Museum—offered a more tangible and personal dimension to the race: the jersey, glasses, and watch of Bottecchia, the first Italian to wear the yellow jersey from start to finish, as well as Bartali’s bicycle and trophy, witnesses to his epic victories. A journey that, between promise and ordeal, evoked the collective imagination built over decades around France’s most legendary race.