The Civic Museum of Montepulciano, located a few steps from the beautiful Piazza Grande, is located inside Palazzo Neri Orselli, a splendid fourteenth-century building. It houses the Crociani Art Gallery, made up of about 180 paintings from the 14th to the 19th century, collected and donated to the Municipality by the Primicerio of the Cathedral, Francesco Crociani.

Born in Montepulciano in 1781, Crociani was in fact able to create a significant collection of paintings that well reflect the tastes and trends in the artistic field of his time. The collection mainly includes works from the 1600s and 1700s of the Florentine and Bolognese environment, as well as paintings by painters from the Netherlands. This sort of “gallery” includes paintings of history and of sacred and profane figures, portraits, landscapes, genre scenes and still lifes.

In the museum itinerary, therefore, works by artists of the Sienese school stand out (Antonio Bazzi known as Sodoma, Alessandro Casolani, Rutilio Manetti, Deifebo Burbarini), Florentine (Giovannantonio Lappoli, Giovanbattista Naldini, Santi di Tito, Giusto Suttermans, Pier Dandini), Roman (Giovanni Antonio Galli known as Lo Spadarino), Emilian (Prospero Fontana, Agostino Carracci, Cristoforo Munari) and Flemish (Jan Miel, Abraham Bloemart).