Visit to Museums and Foundations: Museo degli Argenti
The Silver Museum, housed in a group of exquisitely frescoed rooms features countless items made of the most valuable and rare materials from the Medici collections (including the fabulous jewels that had belonged to the Palatine Electress). Visit duration from 10 to 11 a.m.
Reservations required: tel. + 39 055 23 40 742, fax + 39 055 24 41 45
prenotazioni@cscsigma.it
Accessibility for the disabled.
Museo degli Argenti - Palazzo Pitti Firenze
Piazza de' Pitti, 1, 50125 Florence, Italy
Founded in the second half of the 1800s in Palazzo Pitti in what were the splendid summer apartments of the Medici court, decorated with frescoes that exalt the glories of the family, the Silver Museum (or “Medici Treasury”) offers the visitor an itinerary studded with authentic marvels, an extraordinary document attesting to dynastic collecting, including gemstones, cameos, items made of semi-precious stone, ivories, jewelry, and silver.
What was once the “Medici treasure” is represented here as a series of thematic groupings that witness the family members’ interest in collecting but also in creating new works based on examples of ancient art, with precious and semiprecious materials; these arts were raised to the highest aesthetic and technical levels by the finest workshops in the Grand Duchy. Arranged according to chronological criteria, the rooms display vases and cups in amethyst, jasper, and sardonyx, of ancient origin but mounted in gold and silver in the medieval and Renaissance periods, eighteen of which are from the private collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent; cameos and carved stones collected by Grand Duke Cosimo I, and extremely valuable objects whose purchase was suggested by Benvenuto Cellini; pitchers, salt-cellars, and cups in rock crystal and lapislazuli desired by Cosimo’s son Francesco, Maria Magdalena of Austria’s amber pieces, and the surprising German ivories brought to Florence by Mattias de’ Medici. The variety of the collections is further enhanced by rare, bizarre “Wunderkammer” objects from far-off worlds; the silver treasure of the Salzburg prince-bishops that gave the museum its name, and above all the jewels of the Palatine Elettress: a rare example of precious gems and “jeweled gallanteries” of various eras, among which the pendants in gold, precious stones, and enamel centering on singular Baroque pearls selected by Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, the dynasty’s last representative.
In recent years the museum’s holdings have been enriched by an important free loan of different types of women’s and men’s jewelry from the 1700s through the 1900s including diadems, parures, and devants de corsage in diamonds and colored stones as well as bracelets and brooches in micro-mosaic or Etruscan granulation with an archeological flair, all from the Roman workshops of the Castellani and the Giulliani goldsmiths, and precious Cartier pieces from the 1920s. Palazzo Pitti, Piazza Pitti, 1
T 055 2388709
Info 055 294883
www.polomuseale.firenze.it
See details >>
What was once the “Medici treasure” is represented here as a series of thematic groupings that witness the family members’ interest in collecting but also in creating new works based on examples of ancient art, with precious and semiprecious materials; these arts were raised to the highest aesthetic and technical levels by the finest workshops in the Grand Duchy. Arranged according to chronological criteria, the rooms display vases and cups in amethyst, jasper, and sardonyx, of ancient origin but mounted in gold and silver in the medieval and Renaissance periods, eighteen of which are from the private collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent; cameos and carved stones collected by Grand Duke Cosimo I, and extremely valuable objects whose purchase was suggested by Benvenuto Cellini; pitchers, salt-cellars, and cups in rock crystal and lapislazuli desired by Cosimo’s son Francesco, Maria Magdalena of Austria’s amber pieces, and the surprising German ivories brought to Florence by Mattias de’ Medici. The variety of the collections is further enhanced by rare, bizarre “Wunderkammer” objects from far-off worlds; the silver treasure of the Salzburg prince-bishops that gave the museum its name, and above all the jewels of the Palatine Elettress: a rare example of precious gems and “jeweled gallanteries” of various eras, among which the pendants in gold, precious stones, and enamel centering on singular Baroque pearls selected by Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, the dynasty’s last representative.
In recent years the museum’s holdings have been enriched by an important free loan of different types of women’s and men’s jewelry from the 1700s through the 1900s including diadems, parures, and devants de corsage in diamonds and colored stones as well as bracelets and brooches in micro-mosaic or Etruscan granulation with an archeological flair, all from the Roman workshops of the Castellani and the Giulliani goldsmiths, and precious Cartier pieces from the 1920s. Palazzo Pitti, Piazza Pitti, 1
T 055 2388709
Info 055 294883
www.polomuseale.firenze.it
See details >>