Cagliari, Museum of the Genoese Archconfraternity

The museum is located in the premises of the Archconfraternity, adjacent to the modern church of Saints George and Catherine, built after the war on the slopes of Mount Urpinu.
The main theme is represented by materials and furnishings from the homonymous church in Via Manno, in the historic center of the city, which was destroyed under Allied bombing on 13 May 1943.
The museum exhibits paintings, statues, silver and vestments from the liturgical collection of the old church, and documents from the Archives of the Archconfraternity.
The exhibition materials were acquired by the association over the centuries through the Ligurian art markets. They largely date back to the seventeenth century, the “golden century” of the Archconfraternity, during which the ancient church was built, and are evidence of the vitality of the Genoese community, present in the city as early as the eleventh century, which had frequent economic and cultural exchanges with the entire Italian peninsula.
The exhibition is divided into several rooms between the ground floor and the first floor, without following a precise chronological or stylistic order. The painters, sculptors and silversmiths commissioned by the confreres to create the furnishings were from different areas of Italy: Naples, Rome, Cagliari, Turin, even if the greatest contribution is Genoese.
Among the sculptures, the group of the processional box of the martyrdom of Saint Catherine, created by Giuseppe Anfosso in 1792, stands out for its high artistic value (a beautiful eighteenth-century professional crucifix can be admired inside the adjoining church). There are paintings, including “Christ and Mary offering the rosary to Dominican saints”, from 1620-30. There are many pieces of sacred silverware. A beautiful seventeenth-century processional cross with the trademark of the Genoa goldsmiths and silversmiths guild and an eighteenth-century monstrance from the Turin area, framed and decorated with precious stones, stand out.
The textile section is very rich and refined, dating from between the seventeenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It includes planets, stoles, dalmatiques, pivials, coats, spools, cottes, chalice veils, made of the most varied fabrics and colors.
On the upper floor there are texts, acts and archival documents of the association, from the end of the sixteenth century (the papal bull erecting the association as an archconfraternity dates back to 1591) to today.

Why it's important to see it
A special piece of the exhibition is represented by the beautiful parchment volume where the Constitutions that the Genoese gave themselves in 1596 are recorded, by far the first statutes of a Sardinian archconfraternity and the only ones on the island written in Italian.