Municipal Art Gallery

A short distance away from the Basilica of St. Francis you can visit another significant venue in the town: the Municipal Art Gallery, set up on the piano nobile (main floor) of Palazzo Vallemani.

The museum holds a large number of mediaeval and Renaissance frescoes and paintings on wood and canvas from the town’s civil and religious buildings. The collection dates back to the years following the Unification of Italy and was inaugurated in 1912 in the former convent of Saint Anthony, where it remained until 1926. It was transferred that year to the rooms on the ground floor of Palazzo dei Priori and finally, to its current home.

A visit to the Art Gallery means immersing yourself in the history of art, observing the development of local painting over the centuries, and getting to know the main artists who worked in the area and in the town. The most important works include: the Maestà, attributed to Giotto or one of his collaborators, originally from the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo, the Madonna by Palmerino di Guido, who had previously decorated the façade of the Church of San Niccolò in Piazza del Comune, and a fragment of the fresco of Porta San Rufino carried out by Puccio Capanna.

An entire room is devoted to the painter Tiberio di Assisi. In the room next door proudly stands the gonfalon by Niccolò di Liberatore, known as l’Alunno, with the Madonna of Mercy between St. Francis and St. Clare on the front and the Annunciation at the top; on the back is Saint Biagio on the throne between Saint Rufino and Saint Vittorino and scenes from the life of Saint Biagio with the Crucifixion in the upper part. You can also admire not only the Annunciation and the Madonna with Child between St. James and St. Anthony, but also what remains of the decoration of the façade of the pilgrims’ hospital, Ospedale dei Pellegrini, built in 1417 and run by the confraternity of St Joseph and St. Anthony the Abbot. The frescoes in particular were carried out by one of the most important artists of Umbrian Late Gothic art, Ottaviano Nelli from Gubbio.

Continue your tour until you come to the works of Dono Doni (second half of the 16th century): his Annunciation, St. Francis receiving the stigmata and his Crucifixion. Lastly, once you have passed the little distempered study, you’ll come to the final room that holds the most significant painting on wood in the museum, portraying the dying St. Francis blessing the town of Assisi by Cesare Sermei (16th century).