After a few years of busy work, under the supervision of Lodovico and Alberto Belgioioso, the Milan Museo Diocesano has opened to the public in the St. Eustorgio cloisters.

With the ceremony, which has taken place in the presence of Cardinal Martini, Archbishop of Milan, and of the President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the most important Italian Museum of sacred art has seen the light and joined other art museums throughout Italy, such as MIMAC (International Marian Museum of Sacred Art) at Mons. Bello Foundation in Alessano (Le) and the Museo dello Splendore in the Basilica of St. Gabriel in Abruzzo. 400 works divided into 10 sections, including, in addition to the works of art coming form parishes within the Milan diocese, a substantial core of paintings and drawings coming from the Archiepiscopal Picture Gallery and from private donations.
Mons. Crivelli, President of the St. Ambrose Foundation, the institution that manages the Museum, says that: “The diocesan project was an idea of Ildefonso Schuster in 1931.
Subsequently Cardinal Montini in 1960 and, above all, Cardinal Martini in the ‘80s, laid the foundations for the present structure, which is not only responsible for the safe-keeping of the works it exhibits, but also somehow for taking care of all the voluminous artistic heritage distributed among the parishes”.
It should be stressed that the whole archiepiscopal art collection is particularly important, not only because of the high quality of the paintings, but also because it bears witness to the artistic taste of the Milan archbishops, starting from Cardinal Cesare Monti up to Giuseppe Pozzobonelli.

The exhibition route starts with the works coming from the Museum of the Basilica of St. Ambrose, now closed down. In the section devoted to the works coming from the diocese (today’s provinces of Milan, Varese and Lecco) we find pieces coming from 58 parishes; the precious jewellery works placed in the hypogeum area on the third side of the cloister (which dates back to the 13th century), also come from the territory of the diocese.
On this area upper floor, in a large hall, we find the series of paintings of the Archconfraternity of the Blessed Sacrament; these are major paintings by artists operating in Milan in the late 17th century (Legnanino, Federico Bianchi, Magatti, etc.) picturing miracles worked by the Blessed Sacrament or related events. Forty paintings from the Gold Background collection are exhibited on the first floor; these works were mostly produced by artists operating in the Tuscan area: an incomparable heritage in Milan. Many works on display here come from the Archiepiscopal Palace, starting from the Monti collection, which was donated by Cardinal Cesare Monti to his archbishop successors in 1650 and originally included 172 works.
These remained on display in the Archiepiscopal Palace up to 1811, when Andrea Appiani selected a number of them, which he transferred to the famous Brera picture gallery, founded by Maria Theresa of Austria, where they still are.
This collection reveals the Cardinal’s tastes, which gravitated towards the 16th century Venetian School, the early 17th century Lombard painters, as well as the artists from the Leonardesque and Emilan Schools.
The Pozzobonelli Collection paintings became part of the Archiepiscopal Works in 1738; many of these got lost over the centuries and the surviving core includes 65 paintings, 31 of which are exhibited at the Diocesan Museum, and picture characters and scenes with figures and heraldic subjects, all datable between the late 17th century and 1780. Cardinal Federico Visconti donated his paintings to the existing archiepiscopal collections in 1691 and those that are of interest to Lombard art are placed today in the aforesaid museum, where they make up an entire section.
Also of interest is the section relating to the collection of Cardinal Benedetto Erba Odescalchi (1679-1740), Archbishop of Milan as from 1712; this includes a series of 41 portraits of saints who had been bishops of Milan, from St. Barnaba to St. Charles Borromeo. Placed along the Museum entrance stairway, these represent a range of period masterpieces, bearing the features of those who have experienced and made the history of the Diocese.
An iconographic precedent of this series has been identified in a similar sequence, picturing thirty-four bishops of Milan, carved on the wooden choir stalls of the Milan Duomo Minor Chapterhouse and popularised through a graphic reproduction of the series, illustrating a text that can be dated between the 17th and the 18th century.
The Diocesan Museum itinerary closes with the Way of the Cross by Gaetano Previati, produced in 1882 for the Cemetery of Castano Primo. Gaetano Previati closes, in chronological terms, the first phase of the Diocesan Museum, in that, with his work, he ferries 19th century culture across to the 20th century.
The work to be accomplished in connection with contemporary art lies entirely ahead of us, although the Museum already owns a number of works by contemporary artists, such as Carpi and Fontana. (trad.Interpres-Giussano)