We go back to Palazzo Pitti to tell you more about one of its main features: the Galleria Palatina – Palatine Gallery.
- Palazzo Pitti: the Medici’s building which hosted emperors and kings – I
- Palazzo Pitti Museum: host of emperors and kings – II
- (this post) Palazzo Pitti “museum of museums”: the Galleria Palatina collection
- Palazzo Pitti IV – Galleria Palatina Masterpieces, Palazzo Pitti
Palazzo Pitti “museum of museums”: the Galleria Palatina collection
The Galleria Palatina of Palazzo Pitti is one of the museums of the huge ex Medici’s palace.
While Palazzo Pitti is a whole in architectonic terms, its collections have different history: it is in this way that we can talk about a “museum of – different – museums”.
The Galleria Palatina is hosted by the “noble floor” or “noble level” (sometimes addressed in French, bel étage) of the building. The second floor of a Renaissance “noble house” was the actual living space of the family.
The first floor, closer to the ground floor which was the working space, was for the servants.
Remember that Renaissance and early modern time was a… pretty smelly world: higher was definitely better…
The Galleria Palatina collection layout: a glimpse to a different way to set up a museum
The Galleria Palatina has quite an important feature: it is not a “modern” museum, but in this way it is even more important from a point of view of the history of aesthetics – and, if you want, taste – in a different time.
The Galleria Palatina’s layout is quite the same since its creation.
The taste here is the one of the nobleman who, in the XVIII Century, wanted to reorganize part of the huge collection of arworks left by his predecessors since the Renaissance: the Galleria Palatina was the private quadreria, the collection of paintings, of Leopold II (1747-1792), Holy Roman Emperor and Grand Duke of Tuscany (between 1765 and 1790).
The environment of the Galleria Palatina is beautified also by the Pietro da Cortona’s frescoes.
Pietro (1596-1669) worked in Palazzo Pitti under Ferdinando II de’ Medici between 1637 and 1647.
Galleria Palatina: the collection
The core of the collection – around 500 paintings – is mainly of holy art of the XVI and XVII Centuries.
The Galleria delle Statue – Statues Gallery – and the Sala del Castagnoli – Castagnoli’s hall – host roman and late roman statues, some XVII – XVIII – XVIX Centuries pieces and even four Qing dynasty (1636-1912) Chinese vases.
In the Sala di Prometeo – Prometheus’s Hall – we go back to the Renaissance and early Mannerism: the main work here is the Tondo Bartolini (around 1450), a Madonna with Child by Filippo Lippi.
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