The Bigallo museum and loggia are to be restored thanks to the Florence-based advertising agency Real Media, who will cover the total cost of just over one million euro. In exchange, the company will have exclusive rights to the advertising spaces on the worksite.
photo by sailko via Wikipedia
The Bigallo, which was founded as a hospice and orphanage, is owned by ASP (Azienda Pubblica Servizi) Firenze Montedomini, whose president Luigi Paccosi hailed the collaboration as “innovative” and “not a procedure that we have ever adopted before”.
It is hoped that the second stage of work will be underway within a year and the site will then open two days a month to the public, who, under supervision, will be able to climb the scaffolding and follow the restoration process from up close.
The interior of the museum has undergone modernising work for some time, with frescoes being restored in 2013-14, but this restoration will involve all the facades, roofing and stained-glass windows as well as the wooden altar commissioned in 1515 from Antonio Noferi. The altar vaunts a predella by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, which in three scenes represents the activities of the then-united Compagnia della Misericordia and the Compagnia del Bigallo: the death of St. Peter the Martyr, the Madonna della Misericordia in the Nativity and the Flight into Egypt, and Tobit and Tobias burying a dead man in front of the Bigallo.
