Casa Museo Sigfrido Bartolini

Studio house of the Pistoia artist Sigfrido Bartolini, over three floors, with a picture gallery, plaster casts, printing presses, library and archive.

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About the museum

The house on Via di Bigiano in Pistoia was the family home and workshop of Sigfrido Bartolini (1932–2007), painter, engraver and writer. After his death it was turned into a house museum and is now run by the Associazione Centro Studi Sigfrido Bartolini, which looks after its conservation and promotion.

The three floors of the building reflect the artist’s world: life-size plaster casts of the Venus de Milo, the Venus of Cyrene and the friezes of the Parthenon, a collection of amphorae from all over Italy, and his working tools, including gouges, burins, a workbench and presses for intaglio and lithographic printing. It was here that Bartolini made the 309 black-and-white and colour woodcuts illustrating Collodi’s Pinocchio.

The picture gallery on the walls brings together detached frescoes, oils, monotypes and the artist’s woodblocks, alongside works by masters such as Sironi, De Chirico, Soffici, Viani and Maccari. The library, the collection of 20th-century periodicals and the archive with the artist’s correspondence are available to visitors and scholars; on the third floor the collections of Barna Occhini and Giulio Innocenti, received as donations, are also kept. About 200 metres from the house, in the Chiesa dell’Immacolata, you can see the fourteen leaded stained-glass windows made of tesserae, the artist’s last great work.

Highlights

Life-size plaster casts of the Venus de Milo and the Parthenon friezes
Tools and presses used to make the 309 woodcuts for Pinocchio
Picture gallery with detached frescoes, oils, monotypes and works by Sironi, De Chirico and Soffici
Library, collection of 20th-century periodicals and the artist’s archive
Stained-glass windows of the Chiesa dell’Immacolata, about 200 metres away