The End of the Line
Umberto I assumed the throne upon the death of his father, Vittorio Emanuele II, in 1878, and the Pitti enjoyed a happy period of recuperation and innovation, in parallel to that enjoyed by the city at large, with the opening of new and well-heeled neighborhoods, along with the boulevards and streets that resulted from Giuseppe Poggi’s plan for the city. While Rome had been the capital of Italy since 1871, and the royal family called it home, unlike his father, the new king and his family often resided at Palazzo Pitti and made frequent use of the Royal Apartments, already suitably decorated for formal occasions.
As the Inventories at Palazzo Pitti indicate, the Savoys, with their eclectic taste, made good use of the furniture and furnishings already available in large quantities in the palace. They combined older paintings (like those by Botticelli, Nattier, or Parma) with more contemporary acquisitions made by Vittorio Emanuele II, and they did the same thing with furnishings and furniture.
During the reign of Umberto and Margherita of Savoy, the only major architectural innovation was the addition of an important stairway as an entrance to the Palatine Gallery. This was designed and built by Luigi del Moro in a Renaissance style.
Marco Chiarini, in his From Palace to Museum, observed, "After World War I the Florentine galleries were once again reorganized, with the Uffizi being given the lion’s share, as it was turned into a national gallery (Rome, at the time, did not have one). Works that had been held at Pitti (in the gallery and in the royal apartments), in the Accademia, and even in Siena (at the Altdorfer) began to flow into the Uffizi, with the consequent loss of the Lorrainean design, which had attempted to give each gallery a precise historical role. At the same time, the Gallery of Modern Art was created at the Pitti as a compromise location between the commune’s and the state’s plans for Macchiaioli’s works and those works that had been casually acquired by the Savoy. At the Pitti proper were exhibited the Florentine paintings of the seventeenth century that the Medici had originally kept at their villas, now on public view in the wing that Vittorio Emanuele III ceded to state domain.
"This new order came in response to the same historico-critical reasoning that lay behind the 1922 exhibition “Italian Painting in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” in the royal apartments of the Pitti Palace. If this even determined the direction of study and the appreciation of art from those centuries, it nonetheless contributed to the dissolution of the traditional historical presentation of the Florentine galleries. This philosophical position was also prompted by a new museology that continued in the recent rearrangement of the Uffizi galleries on art-historical lines rather than according to a scheme based on the history of the collections themselves. This tendency, a result of the birth of the great national galleries in our own century, is irreversible, but it seems also to be the logical outcome of the ideas of Pietro Leopoldo and Luigi Lanzi. Most important and decisive for the complete scope of the collection since World War II have been the acquisition of paintings by Lotto and Foppa and the recovery of works stolen during the war (by Masaccio, Masolino, Veronese, Tintoretto, and Giovanbattista Piepolo). In 1969 the Contini-Bonacossi donation, provisionally housed in the small Meridiana Palace, brought to the collections a nucleus of paintings of the finest quality by such artists as Cimabue, Sassetta, Andrea del Castagno, Bramantino, Zenale, Savoldo, Cima da Coneglinao, Tintoretto, Veronese, Jacopo Bassano, Velázquez, Zurburá, and Goya; among other things, this has allowed gaps to be filled in the Florentine galleries, which thus command great prominence among the great museum institutions," [Marco Chiarini, From Palace to Museum: The History of the Florentine Galleries; Paintings from the Uffizi and Palatine Galleries; Boston, 1994, p. 17.]
The only other significant architectural work undertaken at the palace during the reign of the Savoy involved the Winter Quarters, which had become the apartments of the royal family since the time of Vittoria Emanuele II. Cardinal Leopoldo’s chapel was transformed into an elegant bathroom adjacent to the King’s Bedroom.
As the Inventories at Palazzo Pitti indicate, the Savoys, with their eclectic taste, made good use of the furniture and furnishings already available in large quantities in the palace. They combined older paintings (like those by Botticelli, Nattier, or Parma) with more contemporary acquisitions made by Vittorio Emanuele II, and they did the same thing with furnishings and furniture.
During the reign of Umberto and Margherita of Savoy, the only major architectural innovation was the addition of an important stairway as an entrance to the Palatine Gallery. This was designed and built by Luigi del Moro in a Renaissance style.
Marco Chiarini, in his From Palace to Museum, observed, "After World War I the Florentine galleries were once again reorganized, with the Uffizi being given the lion’s share, as it was turned into a national gallery (Rome, at the time, did not have one). Works that had been held at Pitti (in the gallery and in the royal apartments), in the Accademia, and even in Siena (at the Altdorfer) began to flow into the Uffizi, with the consequent loss of the Lorrainean design, which had attempted to give each gallery a precise historical role. At the same time, the Gallery of Modern Art was created at the Pitti as a compromise location between the commune’s and the state’s plans for Macchiaioli’s works and those works that had been casually acquired by the Savoy. At the Pitti proper were exhibited the Florentine paintings of the seventeenth century that the Medici had originally kept at their villas, now on public view in the wing that Vittorio Emanuele III ceded to state domain.
"This new order came in response to the same historico-critical reasoning that lay behind the 1922 exhibition “Italian Painting in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” in the royal apartments of the Pitti Palace. If this even determined the direction of study and the appreciation of art from those centuries, it nonetheless contributed to the dissolution of the traditional historical presentation of the Florentine galleries. This philosophical position was also prompted by a new museology that continued in the recent rearrangement of the Uffizi galleries on art-historical lines rather than according to a scheme based on the history of the collections themselves. This tendency, a result of the birth of the great national galleries in our own century, is irreversible, but it seems also to be the logical outcome of the ideas of Pietro Leopoldo and Luigi Lanzi. Most important and decisive for the complete scope of the collection since World War II have been the acquisition of paintings by Lotto and Foppa and the recovery of works stolen during the war (by Masaccio, Masolino, Veronese, Tintoretto, and Giovanbattista Piepolo). In 1969 the Contini-Bonacossi donation, provisionally housed in the small Meridiana Palace, brought to the collections a nucleus of paintings of the finest quality by such artists as Cimabue, Sassetta, Andrea del Castagno, Bramantino, Zenale, Savoldo, Cima da Coneglinao, Tintoretto, Veronese, Jacopo Bassano, Velázquez, Zurburá, and Goya; among other things, this has allowed gaps to be filled in the Florentine galleries, which thus command great prominence among the great museum institutions," [Marco Chiarini, From Palace to Museum: The History of the Florentine Galleries; Paintings from the Uffizi and Palatine Galleries; Boston, 1994, p. 17.]
The only other significant architectural work undertaken at the palace during the reign of the Savoy involved the Winter Quarters, which had become the apartments of the royal family since the time of Vittoria Emanuele II. Cardinal Leopoldo’s chapel was transformed into an elegant bathroom adjacent to the King’s Bedroom.
The royal family occupied the rooms in the Winter Quarter for only a short time. Today instead, the rooms bear the stamp of the younger branch on the Savoy family, the Aosta, who resided there from the first years of the Savoy reign. The Aosta occupied these quarters more or less continually even after much of the rest of the palace had become offices of the State Administration.
Three descendants of Amedeo, first Duke of Aosta and brother of Umberto I, lived in the Pitti.
Vittorio Emanuele, Count of Turin and Amedeo’s second son, was given the palazzina Meridiana, which he held until his death in 1946.
Luigi, Duke of the Abruzzi, and Amedeo’s third son, had the mezzanine above the Winter Quarters, previously assigned to his uncle, the Prince of Naples and future King Vittorio Emanuele III.
Finally Amedeo, son of the Amedeo’s eldest son, Emanuele Filiberto, and heir to the title, was given the Winter Quarters. After the death of Emanuele Filiberto in 1931, his widow, Anna Elena of France, Duchess of Aosta, continued to live there, and so the Winter Quarters also became known as the “Duchess of Aosta’s Apartment”. Amedeo, the 3rd Duke of Aosta, died in a British prisoner-of-war camp in Nairobi, Kenya in 1942. His mother, the Duchess, finally abandoned these apartments at the end of World War II, which also marked the end of the Italian monarchy. She was the end of the line.
Three descendants of Amedeo, first Duke of Aosta and brother of Umberto I, lived in the Pitti.
Vittorio Emanuele, Count of Turin and Amedeo’s second son, was given the palazzina Meridiana, which he held until his death in 1946.
Luigi, Duke of the Abruzzi, and Amedeo’s third son, had the mezzanine above the Winter Quarters, previously assigned to his uncle, the Prince of Naples and future King Vittorio Emanuele III.
Finally Amedeo, son of the Amedeo’s eldest son, Emanuele Filiberto, and heir to the title, was given the Winter Quarters. After the death of Emanuele Filiberto in 1931, his widow, Anna Elena of France, Duchess of Aosta, continued to live there, and so the Winter Quarters also became known as the “Duchess of Aosta’s Apartment”. Amedeo, the 3rd Duke of Aosta, died in a British prisoner-of-war camp in Nairobi, Kenya in 1942. His mother, the Duchess, finally abandoned these apartments at the end of World War II, which also marked the end of the Italian monarchy. She was the end of the line.