Pinacotheca and Civic Museum of Volterra

Volterra's worthy small painting gallery contains some pick-of-the-litter works by artists working in Volterra between the 12th and 17th centuries. Room 4 has a remarkably intact polyptych of the Madonna with Saints (1411), complete with pinnacles, predella, and all, signed by Taddeo di Bartolo; the guy in the red cape and beard in the tiny left tondo is Santa Claus (St. Nicholas of Bari). Room 5 preserves a polyptych by Cenni di Francesco, and in the following room hangs a polyptych by Portuguese immigrant Alvaro Pirez d'Evora (1430), who mixed Spanish traditions with early Renaissance Sienese styles. In room 11 is an Apotheosis of Christ with Saints (1492), the last great work from the brush of Florentine Domenico Ghirlandaio. The figures create a perfectly oval architectural frame for the Flemish-inspired landscape detailing of the background -- if you look hard, you can spot a giraffe, recently acquired by the Medici for their menagerie, being led along the road. Room 12 pulls out all the stops and hits you with two large 1491 Luca Signorelli paintings, including a remarkably colored Annunciation, and an early masterpiece by Rosso Fiorentino. A 26-year-old Rosso Fiorentino painted the Deposition here (1521). The late Renaissance instruction of his teacher Andrea del Sarto shows through in the young artist's work, as do the influences of other contemporary masters, like Filippino Lippi, from whom Rosso lifted the basic composition, and Michelangelo, from whom he copied the pose of the mourning St. John on the right. (It's Eve expelled from the garden on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.) But Rosso's supremely odd color palette and exaggerated use of light are purely his own, and the work's tense action and the rhythm created by the ladders and alternately calmly posed or violently contorted figures have helped set it among the masterpieces of the Mannerist movement. Try to picture it hanging amid the bright Cenni frescoes in San Francesco church, where it originally sat atop the altar.