Vittorio Emanuele Comes to Florence
Vittorio Emanuele II arrived in Florence on 3 February 1864 to establish a capital for the newly united Kingdom of Italy, marking the advent of the House of Savoy as the royal house of Italy. While Rome had been formally declared the capital of Italy in 1861, it remained under the control of the pope, supported by Napoleon III’s French troops, and thus not a part of the newly unified country. Florence was a second, and hopefully only temporary, choice. The city itself was already in the process of undergoing a substantial transformation. The arrival of the king only exacerbated an already difficult situation. Happily, Palazzo Pitti did not present any special problems. Vittorio Emanuele found a palace that was sumptuously decorated, capable of demonstrating the “genius of the Italian nation” as it received “the best of kings”. But Vittorio Emanuele was little disposed to like much of the monumental elegance that the Lorranese left behind. He was satisfied instead to organize his quarters in the new palazzina Meridiana, and Leopoldo II before him. There, life continued at a more regular pace amidst the normal routine of daily life and the exigencies of the king’s political duties.
The palazzina Meridiana was decorated under the direction of the new Administrator General, Demetrio Carlo Finochhietti, largely with materials that Vittorio Emanuele had acquired at the Exposition in Florence in 1861; the rooms of the palazzina facing the garden were largely decorated in the “regal” style of Louis XV, Louis VI and the Empire, inspired in the main by the workshops of Vannini and del Corzi, following the historical fashion in place at the end of the Lorraine period. The private rooms, facing toward the city, were uniformly decorated to the taste of the Savoy, substituting furniture with natural finishes instead of gilding, and with allegorical frescoes on the walls. Additionally, there were many trophies from nature, as would please the hunter king.
It is in these rooms and in the contemporaneous decoration of the royal villas of Petraia and Poggio a Caiano, originally the property of the Medici grand dukes, that we can see the clearest manifestation of the Savoy style as it appeared in Florence for the first time. It was an amalgamation of all kinds of objects, with various provenances, that marked the upper-middle-class style of the time, while the monumental apartments of Pitti were saved for important celebratory occasions.
The rooms which made up the Royal Apartments were left virtually untouched at the time of Vittorio Emanuele. The Sala dei Nicchie, soberly decorated with a series of eight consoles Impero, in part from the Lorrains, led on to the Green Room, the Blue Room, and between those two, the Red Room or Chamberlaine’s Room that had become the Throne Room.
The fresco painted by Cesare Maccari for the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena (below), depicts a Roman deputation led by Michelangelo Caetani who presents to King Vittorio Emanuele II the results of the plebiscite of 2 October 1870 (where, by a vote of 133,681 to 1,507, Rome was annexed to Italy, becoming the capital of a unified italy). The fresco provides us a good idea of how the Throne Room looked and how it was used. The actual throne had belonged to Maria Luigia who sent it to Florence directly from Parma. The throne was then sent on to Rome in 1871. The monumental candelabra was also sent from Parma in 1868 and then transferred to the Queen’s Drawing Room in 1872.
The palazzina Meridiana was decorated under the direction of the new Administrator General, Demetrio Carlo Finochhietti, largely with materials that Vittorio Emanuele had acquired at the Exposition in Florence in 1861; the rooms of the palazzina facing the garden were largely decorated in the “regal” style of Louis XV, Louis VI and the Empire, inspired in the main by the workshops of Vannini and del Corzi, following the historical fashion in place at the end of the Lorraine period. The private rooms, facing toward the city, were uniformly decorated to the taste of the Savoy, substituting furniture with natural finishes instead of gilding, and with allegorical frescoes on the walls. Additionally, there were many trophies from nature, as would please the hunter king.
It is in these rooms and in the contemporaneous decoration of the royal villas of Petraia and Poggio a Caiano, originally the property of the Medici grand dukes, that we can see the clearest manifestation of the Savoy style as it appeared in Florence for the first time. It was an amalgamation of all kinds of objects, with various provenances, that marked the upper-middle-class style of the time, while the monumental apartments of Pitti were saved for important celebratory occasions.
The rooms which made up the Royal Apartments were left virtually untouched at the time of Vittorio Emanuele. The Sala dei Nicchie, soberly decorated with a series of eight consoles Impero, in part from the Lorrains, led on to the Green Room, the Blue Room, and between those two, the Red Room or Chamberlaine’s Room that had become the Throne Room.
The fresco painted by Cesare Maccari for the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena (below), depicts a Roman deputation led by Michelangelo Caetani who presents to King Vittorio Emanuele II the results of the plebiscite of 2 October 1870 (where, by a vote of 133,681 to 1,507, Rome was annexed to Italy, becoming the capital of a unified italy). The fresco provides us a good idea of how the Throne Room looked and how it was used. The actual throne had belonged to Maria Luigia who sent it to Florence directly from Parma. The throne was then sent on to Rome in 1871. The monumental candelabra was also sent from Parma in 1868 and then transferred to the Queen’s Drawing Room in 1872.
With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Napoleon III, who had been protecting the Papacy from the newly united Italy, could no longer afford to keep a substantial number of troops in Rome protecting the pope, and they were recalled to join in the war against Prussia. With Rome undefended, Italian troops invaded through a breach near the Porta Pia and captured the city. Pope Pius IX went into exile and declared himself a prisoner in his own capital. This papal exile lasted until the signing of the Lateran Pacts of 1929 between the Papacy and the government of Benito Mussolini. Rome could finally assume its rightful place as the capital of Italy and was named so in that same year. Vittorio Emanuele left Florence for Rome in 1871. Nevertheless, Pitti remained a focus of the Savoy family, and in July of the same year a small apartment in the Winter Quarters was prepared for Vittorio Emanuele, eldest son of Umberto I, heir to Vittorio Emanuele II, and his wife Margherita of Savoy. The future Vittorio Emanuele III, then the Prince of Naples, used it during his brief stop en route to Rome. Umberto and Margherita used the other apartments of the Winter Quarter, which today we refer to as the Quarters of the Ducchess of Aosta, on their frequent visits to Florence.