The Palatine Gallery
Galleria Palatina
The gallery called "Palatine", signifying that the gallery was "of the palace" of the ruling family, was first opened to the public by Leopoldo II of Lorraine in 1828. The Gallery occupies the most important rooms on the piano nobile, or first floor: six rooms overlooking the piazza and those in the north wing at the rear of the building, previously the winter apartments of the Medici Grand Dukes. When the ruling family vacated these rooms for those on the floor above, they were used, from the end of the eighteenth century, for the permanent display of the finest paintings in Palazzo Pitti, originally some five hundred works, collected for the most part by the Medici. It is difficult to imagine a more ideal setting than these rooms on the facade, magnificently decorated with frescoes and stucco by Pietro da Cortona and Ciro Ferri between 1641 and 1647. These housed the nucleus of the collection, notable for the number of large altarpieces and monumental works. A tour of the collection would originally have begun in the first room, the Venus Room. For practical reasons visitors now enter from the Gallery of the Statues, full of antique sculpture taken from the Villa Medici in Rome, and from the Castagnoli Room, in which the Table of the Muses stands, a supreme technical achievement produced by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in 1853, and mounted on a bronze base by Giovanni Dupré.
The Castagnoli Room leads, on the right, into the Volterrano Wing (Quartiere Volteranno). The rooms in this wing were the private apartments of the Grand Duchesses from the time of Cosimo II until the death here of the last of the family, Anna Maria Luisa, in 1743. At her death, she bequeathed all the treasures of the Medici collections to the people of Florence to the perpetual enrichment of her city. A number of these rooms were restored and redecored in 1815.
Chiarini, Marco, "Palatine Gallery", Pitti Palace: all the museums all the works, Sillabe, 2001, Livorno, p. 27.
Padovani, Serena, La Galleria Palatina;
The Castagnoli Room leads, on the right, into the Volterrano Wing (Quartiere Volteranno). The rooms in this wing were the private apartments of the Grand Duchesses from the time of Cosimo II until the death here of the last of the family, Anna Maria Luisa, in 1743. At her death, she bequeathed all the treasures of the Medici collections to the people of Florence to the perpetual enrichment of her city. A number of these rooms were restored and redecored in 1815.
Chiarini, Marco, "Palatine Gallery", Pitti Palace: all the museums all the works, Sillabe, 2001, Livorno, p. 27.
Padovani, Serena, La Galleria Palatina;
Piano Nobile
10. The Room of Fame
11. The Room of the Ark 12. The Music Room 13. Poccetti's Corridor 14. The Prometheus Room 15. The Corridor of Columns 16. The Room of Justice 17. The Flora Room 18. Room of the Cupids |
19. The Ulysses Room
20. Napoleon's Bathroom 21. The Education of Jove Room 22. The Stove Room 23. The Iliad Room 24. The Saturn Room 25. The Jupiter Room 26. The Mars Room 27. The Apollo Room 28. The Venus Room |