Scroll Down
Scroll Down
Scroll Down
Lighting desing: Marco Miglioli ArchiLight Studio.
Client: Fontazione Artistica Museo Poldi Pezzoli. Architectural Design: Luca Rolla e Alberto Bertini.
Curatorship: Annalisa Zanni and Federica Manoli. Artwork historical consultancy: Andrea di Lorenzo
Construction of the display case: Bagatti Bronzisti. Photograps: Andrea Ceriani and Marco Miglioli.
POLDI PEZZOLI MUSEUM | MILAN | ITALY

LIT Lighting Design Awards 2024
Winner

FX INTERNATIONAL INTERIOR DESIGN AWARDS 2024
Shortlisted Project
In 2022, Raffaello Sanzio’s “Processional Cross with Franciscan Saints” was relocated to a new display case in the renovated rooms of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan.
The Cross, an artwork between painting and sculpture, was placed within an architecture which, through a succession of spaces, gives a sense of depth, recalling the sequences of rooms in noble Renaissance palaces. The paintings, displayed in these rooms, not only underline the depth but are enhanced by a common golden background.
As through the new lighting the color rendering of the golden surface of the cross differed from that of the frames of the paintings displayed in the room, special filters were used to shape the light spectrum so as to harmonize the warm tones of all the golds.
To avoid glare generated by any lighting fixtures external to the display case, the light sources have been hidden inside the case itself. This expedient allowed the wooden surfaces of the cross to be lit with a soft grazing light so as to bring out details, reliefs and punchings, which were barely very visible in the old setup.
This new, more focused light made the work more brilliant and luminous, as if it were an object of high goldsmithing.
The lights, close to the surfaces of the cross due to the small size of the case, would have led to an imbalance in the distribution of light between the foot and the upper terminal of the Cross. To overcome this problem, a special film was glued onto the apical surface of the case which, while maintaining transparency, reflects part of the light on the Cross, making the lighting homogeneous. Finally, further films have been inserted inside the lighting fixtures which modify the “shape” of the light, concentrating almost all the luminous flux along the two arms.
Since the lighting in a museum is based on a careful calibration of the light intensities within the rooms, the lighting of the Cross unavoidably involved a re-arrangement and fine-tuning of the pre-existing lighting of the entire exhibition hall and of works of art.