Museo Sant’Orsola Residency
Wed, Jun 15 - Thu, Sep 15, 2022
From 15 June to 15 September 2022 Sophia worked as the first Artist in Residence for the future Museo Sant’Orsola in Florence.
The former convent of Sant'Orsola, its history and its heritage served as the basis for the creation of two original works. The pieces, one monumental and one miniature, will be completed shortly and will be purchased by the future Museo Sant’Orsola to form the nucleus of its contemporary collection. They will be presented to the public in their entirety at the opening of the museum, scheduled for 2024.
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The residency represents an opportunity to start a dialogue between the past and the present. The convent dates back to the early 1300s. In 1470, it passed from the Benedictine order to the Franciscans. It was enlarged and transformed in the 1500s and 1600s (construction of new altars etc.). But in 1797, when Napoleon Bonaparte entered Florence with his army, the nuns were displaced, the convent occupied, and all valuable assets were removed. From there began the dispersion of the artistic heritage of Sant’Orsola ... From 1818 to 1940, the convent was transformed into a tobacco factory. Around 1970 the Guardia di Finanza bought the building with the desire to create new offices, it covered the entire historical monument with concrete, but the project was abandoned and the convent remained in the state of abandonment until 2020 when the Metropolitan City of Florence announced a competition which was won by the French group Artea in 2020.
In 2014 the Superintendency of Florence carried out some excavations and some Renaissance tombs were found. Among them that of Lisa Gherardini, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The artistic heritage and all the assets of the monastery are missing, parts are still in Florence or in nearby regions in other museums or institutions. The majority part, however, has been lost, perhaps destroyed. Luckily there are still graphic or written testimonies of these works.
The general idea of the lost heritage residency project is to recall a heritage that no longer exists (or has lost its integrity) through the eyes of a contemporary artist, with their means of expression.
Morgane Lucquet Laforgue, Curator of the Sant’Orsola Residency project, Artea/Storia
Video and photo credit : Museo Sant’Orsola, Firenze, Storia (Artea). By Claudio Ripalti, Cinestudio, Italy