The idea of setting up a museum to preserve objects of art the most important of the parishes of villages in Bardonecchia was don Francesco Masset (1920 – 1987), parish priest of Melezet and Les Arnauds, which began to gather at the parish house the best works of art kept in the main sacred places of the area. The deposit created by Don Masset soon became the destination of connoisseurs and lovers of the history of art and local culture.
It remained in the same seat until 1999, when the works of the future Museum of Religious Art Alpina were moved in the Chapel of the Madonna del Carmine, restored at the behest of Don Edoardo Grua. In the spring of 2000, a small group of volunteers opened the Museum and at the end of the same year went the contacts to ensure that this artistic reality of the parish was included in the Diocesano Museum System.
The Museum houses works of jewelry, Wooden Statues, paintings and vestments coming particularly from the parish of Melezet, Les Arnauds, Rochemolles and by the chapels of San Sisto, San Sebastiano, San Rocco, of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame du Coignet and del Carmine. The artistic testimonies from the 15th to 20th century and between them there are numerous objects displayed on the occasion of the prestigious exhibition “Valle di Susa. Art and History from the XI to the XVIII century”, held in Susa in 1972 and the GAM in Turin in 1977.
Among the works on display stand out the paintings coming from the chapel of Coignet, the work of the Master of Coignet dated 1490-1500; the processional cross of 1520-29, the work of the goldsmith brianzonese Yppolite Borrel; the splendid wooden Madonna work by the Maestro of the mass of San Gregorio, dating to the first decade of 1500; the wooden ancona depicting San Sisto and the Madonna and Child, the work of the master of the Madonna of Savoulx dated 1470/75 about; a series of reliquaries to arm dating back to the XVII century and some contraltari leather embossed and painted.
museo@centroculturalediocesano.it