The capital that we tell you today comes from the cathedral of Santa Maria del Popolo. The sculpture extends on three sides and is composed of two horizontal bands, the lower one has a semicircular section molding; the upper band instead sees sculpted seven male busts facing frontally. Physiognomic characteristics are poorly defined, flat covers and disproportionate. The figure in the right corner is missing the face, unfortunately lost. Some figures are also characterized by a Y-neckline, an element presumably attributable to the episcopal planet. Both the characters positioned on the corners and the first figure on the left side bring their hand to their chest; instead the last figure on the right side holds a cross in his hand. The capital is of difficult iconographic interpretation. A previous hypothesis, according to which he could have depicted the Assassination of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, has been accompanied by a more recent one, which would like a representation of the Capture of Christ in the Garden of the Mount of Olives.

The capital with telamon and two dragons comes from inside the lost Romanesque basilica of S. Giovanni in Borgo, the church demolished in 1811 to give more space to the monumental Borromeo college. The artifact, characterized by an advanced executive technique, is unanimously considered by critics to be a masterpiece, one of the most famous and highest quality pieces of Pavia plastic from the early decades of the 12th century. The processing technique reaches a high level of mastery, for example in the rendering of the legs of dragons that sink into the fleshy masses of lions. The sculptor manages to create an ingenious composition and to wisely graduate the planes in relation to the background, making the surfaces turned, smooth and well polished. The motif of intertwined monstrous animals, between which the telamon is safely inserted, reaches the maximum fusion and plastic effectiveness of the whole in this capital. The capital of a rectangular pillar finds in the center a naked virile figure, crowned, sculpted in high relief, with a prominent belly, navel and well-defined ribs, legs apart and arms open to grasp the neck of the two powerful winged dragons, with globe eyes, the whose long scaly tails intertwine symmetrically wrapped around the legs and feet of the seated man. The two monsters in turn lean on the hips of two semi-rampant lions, with a long neck marked by a mane furrowed by tufts ending in curls and the tail between the legs, arranged at the two corners of the capital. In the abacus there is a fretwork fret with staggered rectangles, executed with a chisel, which seems to continue, in smaller dimensions, on the crown of the central figure, emphasizing the head. On the short side on the right there is another monstrous winged figure, with a snake body crossed by pearl-shaped scales.

Mosaic with scenes from the Martyrdom of Saint Eustace - considered among the most beautiful preserved in the West - is also the only known case of such a large mosaic surface dedicated to the hagiographic depiction of the events of a single saint. The earliest evidence of mosaic decorations in Pavese dress dates back to the first half of the fourteenth century, when the Pavese cleric Opicino de Canistris reported that many churches in the city were equipped with mosaic floors. If there are very few examples left on site, fragments of mosaic decoration from the lost winter cathedral of Santa Maria del Popolo, from the area of Sant’Invenzio, and from that of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Stuoie have converged in the Romanesque section of our museum. Various fragments come from Santa Maria del Popolo, brought to light between 1854 and 1936 during the demolition of the building. The southern nave of the church housed the story of the Martyrdom of Saint Eustace with scenes not in sequence and with the characters involved recognizable thanks to inscriptions. The central portion depicts the stages of martyrdom, the saint is escorted by three torturers (speculatores) in the presence of the emperor Hadrian, identified by the typical regalia (crown, scepter and cloak). Subsequently, the saint is fed to a beast that is difficult to identify (only the legs can be read), always in the presence of the sovereign. The upper register depicts two carnifices also present at the martyrdom, while the panel on the ground is more difficult to interpret in which a figure with a fantastic animal on a leash heads towards others. The scenes are framed within false architectures in which fluted columns with leaf capitals support lowered arches.

The Romanesque reliefs of the winter church of Santa Maria del Popolo have been kept in our museum since 1935, the year in which the demolition of the clerical complex came to an end. Thanks to the general direction of Gaetano Panazza, director of the Civic Museums of Art and History of Pavia (1947-56), flanked by the architect Bruno Ravasi, the Romanesque artifacts find their arrangement in rooms VII and XI of the Romanesque section of the Civic Museums , in an evocative path aimed at philologically recomposing the finds saved from destruction. The portal is reassembled in the original structure that provides for the alternation of rectangular and curved section elements and is currently located in room VII of our museum. The portal of Santa Maria del Popolo presents a symmetry of the motifs and a technique of the decorations that are linked to the Pavia tradition, which includes the presence of spirals, zoomorphic inserts, sea monsters, ribbon-like weaves. The harmony in the geometric proportions and the attention to decorative symmetry have led to the hypothesis of a later dating compared to most of the Romanesque facades in Pavia. Unfortunately, in the work to remove the architectural details, the upper parts of the capitals have been preserved in an incomplete way.

It is a pair of perfectly specular sculpted marble lions, probably conceived to be installed in a structure that was not built and reused in the facades of the twin cathedrals. They are, in fact, perfectly finished on the front of the body, while on the rear only on one side, as if the other were to be hidden. A drawing by Opicino de Canistris, dating from around 1330, depicts them one in the left buttress of the facade of Santo Stefano the summer cathedral and the other in a similar position on the front of Santa Maria del Popolo, the winter cathedral. The latter (inv. B 75) probably arrived in the Museum as early as the late nineteenth century, on the occasion of the demolition of the medieval structures, functional to the erection of the facade of the new Cathedral. The first (inv. B 535), on the other hand, is documented in the same position as the fourteenth-century drawing still in some photographs of 1893 and was then transferred to the base of the Civic Tower, which suddenly collapsed on March 17, 1989. Recovered from the rubble, it was transferred to Museum. Thanks to the nineteenth-century investigations, the drawing and the description by Opicino de Canistris who gives an important testimony of the decoration of the cathedral facade in 1330, on it it is possible to identify the location of two lions, a recurring element in the Romanesque churches of Pavia.

It is a pair of perfectly specular sculpted marble lions, probably conceived to be installed in a structure that was not built and reused in the facades of the twin cathedrals. They are, in fact, perfectly finished on the front of the body, while on the rear only on one side, as if the other were to be hidden. A drawing by Opicino de Canistris, dating from around 1330, depicts them one in the left buttress of the facade of Santo Stefano the summer cathedral and the other in a similar position on the front of Santa Maria del Popolo, the winter cathedral. The latter (inv. B 75) probably arrived in the Museum as early as the late nineteenth century, on the occasion of the demolition of the medieval structures, functional to the erection of the facade of the new Cathedral. The first (inv. B 535), on the other hand, is documented in the same position as the fourteenth-century drawing still in some photographs of 1893 and was then transferred to the base of the Civic Tower, which suddenly collapsed on March 17, 1989. Recovered from the rubble, it was transferred to Museum. Thanks to the nineteenth-century investigations, the drawing and the description by Opicino de Canistris who gives an important testimony of the decoration of the cathedral facade in 1330, on it it is possible to identify the location of two lions, a recurring element in the Romanesque churches of Pavia.

The Pietà Mantegazza - so called because it was attributed by critics for a long time to the Mantegazza brothers, although in recent years it has been brought closer to the workshop of Giovanni Antonio Amadeo - is a relief of the highest technical and formal quality. Antonio and Cristoforo Mantegazza are two very famous personalities of the fifteenth century, engaged in the decoration of the facade and cloisters of the Certosa di Pavia, they are called in 1473 to develop the equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza, later designed by Leonardo. The aedicule of the Pietà was created to decorate the facade of the old S. Matteo Hospital, now corresponding to the front facing Piazza Leonardo of the fifteenth-century Aula of the University of Pavia, where a copy is placed. Inside the relief are inserted the figures of the dead Christ supported on the sepulcher, by Mary on the left and by St. John on the right; that stand out in a small space with the refined frames of the newsstand. The figures are characterized by thick locks of hair, pointed beards, long skinny hands, half-closed eyes and open mouths that seem to scream. The two sculptors create a well-defined prototype with their own physiognomic characters rendered with great realism, which manages to convey a strong feeling of pain, capable of reaching a suggestive dramatic fantasy. The terracotta frame is accompanied, below, by a marble slab with a celebratory inscription, destined for the Hospital of the Pietà, the first name of the foundation of the S. Matteo Hospital. In this capital work of fifteenth-century Lombard sculpture, references to the language ranging from Mantegna to the Ferrarese masters can be recognized, overcoming the limits of narrative custom, and marking a way of making sculpture that achieves effects of great emotional participation.

The mythical foundation of the church is attributed to the figure of Pertarito, a pretender to the Lombard throne, who saved himself from a conspiracy for the usurpation of the throne, and in 673 erected a female monastery on the site of his escape. At the center of the fresco there is the Virgin, in the act of being crowned by Christ, inserted in a complex architecture, concluded by three niches, of which the central one houses the dove of the Holy Spirit, surmounted by the Eternal Father holding the Crucifix. Six musician angels are arranged symmetrically on the marble base with geometric decorations. Saints Francis and Clare, founders of the order to which the monastery belonged (Franciscan from 1230), represented with their attributes and monastic clothes on the right, and on the left the saints Primo and Feliciano, whose relics were kept in the church. In the triumphal arch, within grotesque frames, the Four Doctors of the Western Church seated at their desks. In 1895 the apsidal fresco was detached and sold clandestinely to George Gray Bernard, an American sculptor and collector, by the Parisian antiquarian Raoul Heilbronner. The fresco arrived in the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945 and returned by the latter to the city of Pavia: in 1991 it was generously donated to the Civic Museums and has since been exhibited in the Romanesque and Renaissance Section of our museum