Galleria d'arte moderna - palazzo pitti firenze Museums

Galleria d'Arte Moderna - Palazzo Pitti Firenze

Galleria d'Arte Moderna - Palazzo Pitti Firenze
museums
Piazza de' Pitti, 1, 50125 Florence, Italy
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The gallery, inaugurated in 1922 on the second floor of Palazzo Pitti, presents the development of Italian painting and sculpture from the neoclassical period through the early decades of the last century and also contains significant works by foreign artists, all arranged according to precise chronology and thematic groupings. The collection originated in the era of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine - with the idea of creating a museum dedicated to the coeval works that took prizes at academic contests - and was later enriched, at the time of Italian unification, by numerous other collections to which the gallery acceded by gift, like the very important Diego Martelli bequest of 1897, or by purchase. A visit to the museum’s rooms places in evidence not only the many historical and stylistic passages that made up this complex cultural period, exhibiting the regional schools of undeniable attraction such as the Tuscan Macchiaioli, but also, thanks to a splendid portrait gallery, focusing attention on the inimitable union of the character and personality of the subjects and the style and form of the clothing they wore, which leads one’s imagination to the drawingrooms and the local tailors’ establishments or the great international ateliers of the various periods. In paintings by such artists as Ary Sheffer, Puccinelli, Ciseri, Lega, Fattori, Cecioni, Winterhalter, Carolus Duran, Zandomeneghi, Boldini, Simi, and Elizabeth Chaplin we can explore cutaways of different lifestyles and glimpse, through the artists’ eyes, the gestures, postures, and rituals of domestic intimacy or sophisticated social life. Passing from delicate shifts in cotton mousseline to the rustling silks of the ball gowns we can read, almost as though in an illustrated manual of style, the oscillations of fashion and its forms, from the simple Empire toilette through the billowing crinolines and the sculptural tournures of the nineteenth century to the reaffirmation of essential linearity in the Decò. Or follow the same personality in the different phases of his or her existence, as in the case of Alaide Banti, painted as a young girl in blue by the meticulous Michele Gordigiani, then as a woman with a strong personality in Boldini’s lively brushstrokes, and finally with the austere carriage of old age by Oscar Ghiglia.

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