The Diocesan museum of Padua displays arts and artifacts belonging to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Padua; it is housed in the 15th-century former bishop's residence or Palazzo Vescovile. The building, adjacent to the Cathedral of Padua, faces the Piazza del Duomo, can in the historic center of Padua, region of Veneto, Italy. Many of the works in the museum derive from the cathedral or from other diocesan churches, some suppressed and no longer extant. The collections date from the 9th to the 19th centuries. They are displayed on two separate floors and are ordered chronologically and by type.
This room the first floor, chiefly for use by scholars due to the presence of the chapter library and the diocesan archives, is a room named for St Gregory Barbarigo, bishop of Padua, which contains several accounts of the diocese's library and of the cathedral's scriptorium. Of special interest are documents pertaining to the renaissance library of bishops Iaocopo Zeno and Pietro Barozzi, and which include 14th-century illuminated manuscripts, 15th-century incunabola, and pre-16th-century books. The actual diocesan museum is found on the second floor of the building.
Salon of the bishops and ''Capella di Santa Maria degli Angeli''
These rooms and the palace chapel display
Portraits of Padua's bishops frescoed in the 16th-century on the walls by Bartolomeo Montagnana but refurbished and completed in the subsequent centuries. Represented here are the first one hundred bishops of Padua, beginning with San Prosdocimo and arriving at Pietro Barozzi, who commissioned the work.
Fresco with a portrait Francesco Petrarca, removed from the poet's house in Padua
Madonna with Child- mid-15th century mosaic detached from the demolished church of St Job.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries this room slowly deteriorated, and was returned to its original splendor with its latest restoration in 2006. On the north-east side of the salon is the entrance to the chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, commissioned by bishop Pietro Barozzi and built in 1495 by architect Lorenzo da Bologna. The frescos by Prospero da Piazzola and Jacopo da Montagnana follow an iconographic program centered on the Apostles' Creed. On the main altar is found: