Museo Catedralicio y Archivo de la Catedral de Segorbe

Although the origins of interest in showing a more rational way the cathedral heritage leaves us witness traces from the late nineteenth century, the Cathedral Museum Segorbe is an institution opened in 1949. The tragedy that led to the rich artistic heritage war civil, 1936, after a long process of recovery of the same carried out by the council finally allowed the location of an exhibition shows the cultural heritage in the premises of the upper cloister adapted for this purpose. the new museum it became heir of a project, which began in the second decade of the twentieth century with the launch of a diocesan museum in units of the Episcopal Palace, which was totally soulless victim of the war, part of whose heritage was saved thanks the intervention of the Treasury Board Artistic during the conflict and subsequently members of the council and the Recovery Board.      The cathedral museum, although most hosts funds cathedral, also assumed the status of diocesan museum institution, forming one of the largest collections of representative art of the Valencian environment, since Segorbe Cathedral over the centuries generated gestation a great cultural richness in all its manifestations linked to the art world and its expressions. If in the early days was the conservationist aspect that prevailed in the museum management, the eighties led to the widespread dissemination of their funds out of the facility itself, with monographic exhibitions dedicated to your collection or significant presence of its parts in samples of great cultural resonance. After the exhibition The Light of Images, which hosted the cathedral in the years 2001-2002, we proceeded to the reopening of the museum in 2003 with new exhibition spaces and museum project. Since 1994 the Museum is integrated into the network recognized by the Valencian museums, and its work has been rewarded with the award of the Medal of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos de Valencia.      At present, the Cathedral Museum is a concept that, in addition to the assets located in the architectural space itself of which it forms part, specifically groups as such museum in the high cloisters and under, the attached chapels and other rooms of the building that forms the Cathedral.      As regards the content, it is mostly painting what best defines the heritage of Segorbe Cathedral and its museum, which include the collection of works from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries with significant examples of international Gothic (Miquel Alcanyís, Jaume Mateu or Gonçal Peris), the Spanish-Flemish cycle mid-fifteenth century (Joan Reixach, Master Luke, Master or Master Segorbe Perea) and the Valencian painting of the sixteenth century (Francesc d'Osona, Master Borbotó, Felipe Pablo de San Leocadio or Antoniazzo Romano), noting especially the tables of the great altarpiece work of Vicente Macip and Juan de Juanes. Very rich is also the painting of the nineteenth century XVII, with followers of the work of Ribalta, Espinosa Vergara, Shrimp, plans or Vicente Lopez. The more scarce the importance that the pictorial in the past, sculptural representation hosts some remains reliefs of ancient doorways and altarpieces, highlighting the small figure of the Psalmist, the set of brackets of the lower cloister and the chapel of the Saviour's tomb the Vallterra, the image of the Virgin with Child called "La Primitiva" Renaissance relief of the Madonna attributed to Donatello or the choir stalls from the early eighteenth century. Important they are also collections of jewelry, which chalices, reliquaries or custodies with copies of singular beauty as the reliquary of the Virgin and Child or chalice of Bishop Gilabert Martí shown. Remarkable is in turn the textile collection or ornaments, which brings together works of fabrics in silks and embroidered pieces from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Finally, we must mention paragraph of furniture with various cabinets, doors and cupboards, which highlights the beautiful Golden Gate in the lower cloister or urn-reliquary of San Felix, to which should be added the set of railings, enclosure chapels and choir works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.