Diocesan Museum of Santo Stefano al Ponte Florence

A rare and very special collection of monastic dresses belonging to various religious orders and different eras. We are talking about watercolors on paper that date back to the first half-century; of the eighteenth century. We observe and make ourselves a culture. The Friar Preachers wore the white dress. The Augustinians the black woolen cassock. The Carmelites are a curious striped hood with stripes of various colors. For the Servants of Mary, black cassock, leather belt, hood and hood.
Undergarments deserve a separate chapter.

The inner petticoat could be made of rough goat hair, like a sort of hair shirt. The underpants will be considered immoral until the end of the seventeenth century. It is unknown if the author was a monk or a real painter, however he is an artist who had many qualities. of miniaturist and portraitist. It is certainly known that the collection belonged to the Benedictine monastery of the Florentine Abbey and moved to the Diocesan Museum of Santo Stefano al Ponte in 1995, a church where they are still kept. Together with other treasures transferred from abandoned churches or at risk thefts.
Today a part of the watercolors (32 models) is exposed at the base of the bell tower in the midst of precious masterpieces of sacred art. It would be - says Don Sergio Pacciani - of a sort of handbook used by the tailor who made clothes. A catalog in short.