Il Polo Culturale Le Clarisse — Le Clarisse Cultural Centre — is located inside the former Convent of Santa Chiara in Grosseto, a building that dates back to the end of the sixteenth century, and which was enlarged and refurbished during the seventeenth century. Abandoned by the resident nuns at the end of the eighteenth century, the edifice was used first as the home for employees of the nearby hospital, before it eventually acquired a creative and artistic purpose, hosting the studios and apartments of painters.

Since 1995, it has been a property owned and run by the city. After the year 2000, thorough restoration works have been undertaken. Today, newly restored and united with the adjoining Church of the Bigi (the former Church of Santa Chiara), the convent of Le Clarisse (the Poor Clares) is a lively and dynamic civic cultural center, which looks towards the future while telling its own story, housing four cultural institutions:

THE MUSEUM OF THE GIANFRANCO LUZZETTI COLLECTION
CLARISSE ARTE
THE MUSEO LAB – Laboratory Museum of the city of Grosseto
The faculty of Historical Sciences and the Grosseto University centre cultural heritage

The ground floor holds THE MUSEUM OF THE GIANFRANCO LUZZETTI COLLECTION, inaugurated in 2019 following the donation to the City of Grosseto of a substantial collection of works that Gianfranco Luzzetti, a Florentine antiquarian — but of Grossetan origin — had brought together in the course of his life. The heart of the collection focuses on seventeenth-century Florentine art. Its display inside a monastery of the same period, built during Florentine dominion over Grosseto, enhances the identity of the collection, based on Baroque art from the Tuscan capital, rediscovered and valorised only since the 1960s, thanks to the work of important art historians like Mina Gregori, and antiquarians like Gianfranco Luzzetti. Among the seventeenth century works, particular recognition can be given to four paintings by Pier Dandini — to whom an entire room is dedicated — and to works by Santi di Tito, Cigoli, Passignano, Giovanni Martinelli, Jacopo Vignali, Francesco Curradi, Giovanbattista Vanni and Pietro Tacca.

The museum’s collection also features artworks by the Roman School, among them pieces by Spadarino, by Passeri and Rusconi, as well as paintings from Northern Italy, such as a large canvas by Montalto, and a small still-life by Panfilo Nuvolone. One also can admire eighteenth-century masterpieces, by Corrado Giaquinto and Giovanni Domenico Lombardi called the “Little Man”. The collection is completed by two nineteenth-century landscape paintings, by Maffei and by Markò.

Located on the building’s first floor is CLARISSE ARTE, an exhibition space reserved for temporary shows, and an information centre composed of the following: a library dedicated to local art, an artists’ archive, a mediatheque, and a repository of artworks selected from public art collections.

Among the works in the repository that are exhibited on a rotational basis, a first nucleus focuses on the theme of “Researching the Territory: Origins”. A second nucleus is entitled “Masters of Realism”, and includes works by Levi, Treccani, Grazzini, Zancanaro, and other artists who have elaborated a specifically local tradition, with realist inclinations, among whom are Gentili, Dominici, and Faccendi.

Then, following a chronological sequence, there are displayed works belonging to private donors: the nucleus of the Tarquini donation, which includes works by Antonio Bueno, Renato Guttuso, Tano Festa, and Mario Schifano. Finally, there are items from the Celtracon bequest – the International Art Exhibition at Grosseto in 1996, dedicated to “Research Efforts in the 1990s”.

On the second floor of the Le Clarisse Cultural Centre we find the MUSEOLAB, administered by the Fondazione Polo Universitario Grossetano (the University Centre Foundation of Grosseto) and by the University of Siena. The MUSEOLAB was founded after the urban archeological excavations in Grosseto carried out between 1998 and 2003, and it holds original finds as well as pictorial reconstructions of the history of the city and its surrounding province.

In addition, the second floor also houses the faculty of Historical Sciences and the Grosseto University centre cultural heritage.

Construction work on the Convent of the Poor Clares and the Church of Saint Clare, today known as the Church of the Bigi, began in the 1570s.

In 1572, with the Council of Trent, Pope Gregory XIII sanctioned cloistered seclusion for all nuns, abolishing begging for alms, and making obligatory the conventual dowry. Nevertheless, the nuns of Grosseto refused to be cloistered until 1625, when, with only two of them remaining, they were constrained to accept it.

Only then did the Grand Duke reward them, releasing the funds for the completion of the convent: an upper storey was added to house the cells of the nuns, and all the windows facing the outside world were closed with wooden grates. Furthermore, the garden wall that bordered the current Piazza Indipendenza was raised to a height of four metres. In 1633 were built, in the inner courtyard, the well and cistern to guarantee the hydraulic self-sufficiency of the convent and, in the following year, the church of Saint Clare was opened for religious observances.

Within a few years, the number of nuns trebled, and in 1703 there were twenty-four of them in residence. The original building of the church of Saint Clare was simple in form, with a single hall, a brick floor, a wooden truss roof, a single altar and a travertine portal. During the mid-seventeenth century, the church was renovated, decorated with Baroque altars, reconsecrated, and opened to the public. In the 1690s, the building’s elevation was raised, and enriched with a new high altar, by two side altars, and by an upper-level choir. On the left-hand wall, a grate is still visible, adjacent to the interior chapel of the convent, through which the nuns could attend religious services.

The renovation of the church was linked to the local Grossetan bishoprics of two authorities who were especially sensitive to the artistic questions of their era: Girolamo Tantucci, and Cesare Ugolini. This latter bishop, from Siena and a friend of Pope Alexander VII, himself of the Sienese Chigi family, employed Lombard masters in the Baroque refurbishment of the altars of the church of Santa Chiara.

During the eighteenth century, following the decline of the city’s economy, the convent went through a crisis. Consequently, in 1748 Pope Benedict XIV gave the nuns permission to break their cloistered seclusion, and to go outside the convent walls to seek alms. In the following decades, the nuns began to abandon the convent, which was definitively suppressed in 1786. Ten years later, the canon Alessandro Arrigucci entrusted the church to the confraternity of San Gherardo, the historic congregation of penitents called “i Bigi”, or “the Ash-Gray Ones,” for the colour of their robes. The Company continued to hold ceremonies in the church until the early twentieth century, when it was dissolved, for a lack of members. In the 1950s, the church was closed and deconsecrated.