Massimo Listri - Exhibition Details

MASSIMO LISTRI: ITALIAN WONDER

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Scroll down for more information about Massimo Listri's photographs on display at the Embassy of Italy. Resources and links are listed at the bottom of this page.

Palazzo Pitti a Firenze, Sala di Giove 2018

The Palazzo Pitti, is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio.
The core of the present palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker.
The palace was bought by the Medici family in 1549 and became the chief residence of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It grew as a great treasure house as later generations amassed paintings, plates, jewelry and luxurious possessions.

In the late 18th century, the palazzo was used as a power base by Napoleon and later served for a brief period as the principal royal palace of the newly united Italy. The palace and its contents were donated to the Italian people by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919.
The palazzo is now the largest museum complex in Florence.
The principal palazzo block, often in a building of this design known as the corps de logis, is 32,000 square meters. It is divided into several principal galleries or museums.
The Palatine Gallery, the main gallery of Palazzo Pitti, contains a large ensemble of over 500 principally Renaissance paintings, which were once part of the Medicis' and their successors' private art collection. - The Palatine Gallery has 28 rooms, among them: Room of Jupiter: contains the Veiled Lady, the famous portrait by Raphael (1516) that, according to Vasari, represents the woman loved by the artist. Among the other works in the room, Paintings by Rubens, Andrea del Sarto and Perugin.

Biblioteca Marciana II, Venezia 2012

The Marciana Library or Library of Saint Mark - in historical documents commonly referred to as Libreria pubblica di san Marco) is a public library in Venice, Italy. It is one of the earliest surviving public libraries and repositories for manuscripts in Italy and holds one of the world's most significant collections of classical texts. It is named after St Mark, the patron saint of the city.

The library was founded in 1468 when the humanist scholar Cardinal Bessarion, bishop of Tusculum and titular Latin patriarch of Constantinople, donated his collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts to the Republic of Venice, with the stipulation that a library of public utility be established.

The collection was the result of Bessarion's persistent efforts to locate rare manuscripts throughout Greece and Italy and then acquire or copy them as a means of preserving the writings of the classical Greek authors and the literature of Byzantium after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

His choice of Venice was primarily due to the city's large community of Greek refugees and its historical ties to the Byzantine Empire.

The Venetian government was slow, however, to honour its commitment to suitably house the manuscripts with decades of discussion and indecision, owing to a series of military conflicts in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries and the resulting climate of political uncertainty. The library was ultimately built during the period of recovery as part of a vast program of urban renewal aimed at glorifying the republic through architecture and affirming its international prestige as a centre of wisdom and learning.

Constructed between 1537 and 1588, it is considered the masterpiece of the architect Jacopo Sansovino and a key work in Venetian Renaissance architecture.

Today, the building is customarily referred to as the 'Libreria sansoviniana' [after its architect ] and is largely a museum. Since 1904, the library offices, the reading rooms, and most of the collection have been housed in the adjoining Zecca, the former mint of the Republic of Venice. The library is now formally known as the Biblioteca nazionale Marciana. It is the only official institution established by the Venetian Republican government that survives and continues to function.

Fortuny, Venezia 2022

The Museo Fortuny or Fortuny Museum is an art museum in San Marco, in central Venice, Italy.

The museum is housed in the Palazzo Pesaro Orfei, now often known as Palazzo Fortuny, where Mariano Fortuny (1871–1949) had a studio in the late nineteenth century, and lived from 1902.

The museum presents paintings, fabrics, and Fortuny’s lamps on the first floor, together with the history of the palazzo and its atelier on the second floor. The building still has features created by Fortuny. The working environment is represented through wall-hangings, paintings, and lamps.

Fortuny died in 1949, and in 1956 the Palazzo Pesaro Orfei was gifted to the comune of Venice; the comune took full possession only in 1965, after the death of Fortuny's widow, Henriette Negrin.

The museum was opened in 1975. It is run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

Cappelle Medicee I, Firenze 2008

Tomb of Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici with Dusk and Dawn

The Medici Chapels (Cappelle medicee) are two structures at the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, and built as extensions to Brunelleschi's 15th-century church, with the purpose of celebrating the Medici family, patrons of the church and Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

The Sagrestia Nuova ("New Sacristy") was designed by Michelangelo.
The Sagrestia Nuova was intended by Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and his cousin Pope Leo X as a mausoleum or mortuary chapel for members of the Medici family.
It was the first essay in architecture (1519–24) of Michelangelo, who also designed its monuments that are dedicated to certain members of the Medici family, with sculptural figures of the four times of day that were destined to influence sculptural figures reclining on architraves for many generations to come. Although it was vaulted over by 1524, the ambitious projects of its sculpture and the intervention of events, such as the temporary exile of the Medici (1527), the death of Giulio, eventually Pope Clement VII, and the permanent departure of Michelangelo for Rome in 1534, meant that Michelangelo never finished it.

Four Medici tombs were intended for the project, but those of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano (buried beneath the altar at the entrance wall) were never begun.

The magnificent existing tombs are those of two more recently deceased and less well known family members whose careers had been cut tragically short by their comparatively early deaths: Giuliano di Lorenzo, Duke of Nemours (d. 1514, aged 37) and his nephew (d. 1519, age 27) Lorenzo di Piero, Duke of Urbino, whose daughter Catherine de' Medici became Queen of France). The architectural components of these tombs are similar and with sculptures offering contrast.

Dusk is a marble sculpture by Michelangelo, datable to 1524–1534. It is paired with Dawn Also by Michelangelo (6 feet and 8 inches in length) on the tomb of Lorenzo II de' Medici.
Dusk, or Sunset, is personified as man and is stretched out and nude, as are the other statues in the series. It was modelled, perhaps, after the mountain and river gods at the Arch of Septimius Severus in Rome.
If its pair, Dawn is in the act of awaking, Dusk is falling asleep. The statue lies down with one leg crossing the other, for greater compositional dynamism, one arm resting on his thigh to hold back a falling cloth. The other arm is bent to support the figure. The statue's face is bearded, with a thoughtful, downward gaze.

Among the various iconographic meanings proposed, the statue is seen as an emblem of the phlegmatic temperament or of the elements of water or earth. Michelangelo's study for Dusk is known for exemplifying his style of striking, unfinished drawings.

Palazzo Butera II, Palermo 2016

The Palazzo Butera is a Baroque-style aristocratic palace located facing the Mediterranean in the ancient quarter of Kalsa of central Palermo, region of Sicily, Italy. On the shoreside, the long facade has a wide terrace, built atop the base of the former walls and called Passeggiata delle Cattive, in front of this is the park Foro Italico, in front, rising just south of Porta Felice and Via Vittorio Emanuele (the Cassaro); the access to the palace is from the land-side street of Via Butera.

After 1950, the palace had various owners of local government institutions, housing a tourism institute.
In 2016, the palace was purchased by the gallery owner Massimo Valsecchi and his wife Francesca.
The new owners financed a complete restoration of the building, both structural and artistic, and an architectural and museographic project, with the intention of opening the monumental asset to public use.
After the restoration, the building has been transformed into a laboratory open to the city, which uses history, culture, science and art as catalysts for social development.
Francesca and Massimo Valsecchi's collection took place in London over the last fifty years and includes ancient paintings, monochrome porcelain, English furniture designed by great architects, watercolors by traveling artists and many other works to discover.
The collected works represent the peaks of artistic production from different historical periods and various cultures For Massimo and Francesca Valsecchi, art indeed has a profound educational value. Through juxtapositions of objects from different cultures and eras, one can educate a gaze to understand cultural differences.
Artists, curators and cultural personalities are hosted in the guesthouse, where they can work on research projects for the exhibitions and activities held in the building.
In 2018, the first rooms of Palazzo Butera were opened to the public.
In the first year and a half of its opening, the Palace was visited by more than 30,000 people.
In 2021, Palazzo Butera reopened to the public once the restoration was complete and the most acute phases of the pandemic emergency had passed. - In the first nine months, there were 15,000 visitors.
Thanks to this intervention, Palazzo Butera will give the possibility to access the historic center of Palermo directly from the sea. A visual relationship that the city had lost can be recovered.

Reggia di Caserta IV 1993

The Royal Palace of Caserta (Reggia di Caserta ) is a former royal residence in Caserta, southern Italy, constructed by the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies as their main residence as kings of Naples.
It is the largest palace erected in Europe during the 18th century.
In 1997, the palace was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site; its nomination described it as "the swan song of the spectacular art of the Baroque, from which it adopted all the features needed to create the illusions of multidirectional space”.
The Royal Palace of Caserta is the largest former royal residence in the world, over 2 million m3 in volume and covering an area of 47,000 m2.
The construction of the palace began in 1752 for Charles VII of Naples (Charles III of Spain), who worked closely with his architect, Luigi Vanvitelli.
When Charles saw Vanvitelli's grandly scaled model for Caserta, it filled him with emotion "fit to tear his heart from his breast." - In the end, Charles never slept a night at the Reggia, as he abdicated in 1759 to become King of Spain. The project was carried to only partial completion for Charles' third son and successor, Ferdinand IV of Naples.
The political and social model for Vanvitelli's palace was Versailles, which, though strikingly different in its variety and disposition, solved similar problems of assembling and providing for the king, court, and government in a massive building with the social structure of a small city, confronting a baroque view of a highly subordinated nature, la nature forcée.
The population of Caserta Vecchia was moved 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) to provide a workforce closer to the palace. A silk factory at San Leucio resort was disguised as a pavilion in the immense parkland.
Vanvitelli died in 1773: the construction was continued by his son Carlo and then by other architects; but the elder Vanvitelli's original project, which included a vast pair of frontal wings similar to Bernini's wings at St. Peter's, was never finished.
The palace was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. According to the rationale, the palace, "whilst cast in the same mould as other 18th-century royal establishments, is exceptional for the broad sweep of its design, incorporating not only an imposing palace and park but also much of the surrounding natural landscape and an ambitious new town laid out according to the urban planning precepts of its time.
The palace has five floors; 1,200 rooms, including two dozen state apartments; 1,742 windows; 34 staircases; 1026 fireplaces; a large library; and a theatre modelled after the Teatro San Carlo of Naples.
A monumental avenue running 20 kilometers between the palace and Naples was planned but never realized.
Like its French predecessor, the palace was intended to display the power and grandeur of an absolute Bourbon monarchy.

Palazzo Martelli, Florence 2008

The Palazzo or Casa Martelli was a residential palace, and since 2009, a civic museum displaying in situ the remains of the original family's valuable art collection, as well as its frescoed rooms. The palace is located in central Florence, Italy.
In 1627, the area of this palace was aggregated after the marriage of Senator Marco Martelli and his cousin. Marco also acquired further buildings. Some frescoes on the main floor date to this era. The Cardinal Francesco Martelli (1633–1717) was a member of this family.
In 1738, Giuseppe Maria Martelli, Archbishop of Florence and Niccolo Martelli, bailiff of Florence, unified the palaces under the designs of the architect Bernardino Ciurini.
The piano nobile of the palace was decorated by frescoes by Vincenzo Meucci, Ferdinando Melani, Niccolò Connestabile, and Bernardo Minozzi, as well as stuccowork by Giovanni Martino Portogalli.
At the end of the eighteenth century Marco, son of Niccolo, commissioned further frescoes depicting mythological and historic episodes of the family from teams led by Tommaso Gherardini, while Luigi Sabatelli decorated the vault of the staircase, where they displayed once two works attributed to Donatello, a statue of David and the coat of arms of the family. - The marble David statue is now displayed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and it is now felt to be a copy of the marble David by Donatello in the Bargello in Florence.
Large parts of the house's artworks were sold over the past two centuries.
In 1986, the last Martelli resident, Francesca Martelli, willed the house to the Curia of Florence.
In 1998, the Curia sold the complex to the Italian state as part of a larger deal. This allowed the collections to be opened as a museum in 2006.
Even accounting for the loss and dispersal of items, the collection remains impressive, including works by Piero di Cosimo, Francesco Francia, Francesco Morandini, Salvator Rosa, Giordano, Beccafumi, Sustermans, Michael Sweerts, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Orazio Borgianni, Francesco Curradi, and collections of small bronzes, including some by Soldani Benzi. The works are displayed in the crowded arrangement typical of the period. The ground floor has a room frescoed with an illusionistic pergola by Connestabile.

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana I, Città del Vaticano 2015

Museums of the Vatican Apostolic Library constitute one of the most complex, articulated and extensive sections of the Vatican Museums, to which they have passed responsibility since 1 October 1999.
The rooms that today house the museums were the headquarters, until Pope Leo XIII, of the Vatican Apostolic Library and its various collections.
The library museums consist of a series of collections that have been formed over the centuries: coins, cameos, glass and catacomb furnishings, ancient carvings, gems, crystals, bronzes, enamels, ivories, etc.; with Pius X the painting collections were transferred to the Vatican Pinacoteca; during the 20th century it became customary to allocate the gifts offered to the popes by sovereigns and heads of state to library museums.
Musei Vaticani ~ The Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani; Latin: Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City.
They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most well-known Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world.
The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display, and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
Pope Julius II founded the museums in the early 16th century. The Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling and altar wall decorated by Michelangelo, and the Stanze di Raffaello (decorated by Raphael) are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums.
In 2022, the Vatican Museums were visited by 5,080,866 persons, 215 percent more than in 2021, bur still below pre-COVID attendance. They ranked second in the List of most-visited art museums in the world, after the Louvre. There are 24 galleries, or rooms, in total, with the Sistine Chapel, notably, being the last room visited within the Museum.
The Vatican Museums trace their origin to a single marble sculpture, purchased in the 16th century: Laocoön and His Sons was discovered on 14 January 1506, in a vineyard near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. - Pope Julius II sent Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo, who were working at the Vatican, to examine the discovery. On their recommendation, the Pope immediately purchased the sculpture from the vineyard owner. The Pope put the sculpture, which represents the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by giant serpents, on public display at the Vatican exactly one month after its discovery.
Benedict XIV founded the Museum Christianum, and some of the Vatican collections formed the Lateran Museum, which Pius IX founded by decree in 1854.
The museums celebrated their 500th anniversary in October 2006 by permanently opening the excavations of a Vatican Hill necropolis to the public.

Musei Vaticani, The Vatican Museums

Musei Vaticani ~ The Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani; Latin: Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City.
They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the most well-known Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world.
The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display, and currently employ 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
Pope Julius II founded the museums in the early 16th century. The Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling and altar wall decorated by Michelangelo, and the Stanze di Raffaello (decorated by Raphael) are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums.
In 2022, the Vatican Museums were visited by 5,080,866 persons, 215 percent more than in 2021, bur still below pre-COVID attendance. They ranked second in the List of most-visited art museums in the world, after the Louvre. There are 24 galleries, or rooms, in total, with the Sistine Chapel, notably, being the last room visited within the Museum.
The Vatican Museums trace their origin to a single marble sculpture, purchased in the 16th century: Laocoön and His Sons was discovered on 14 January 1506, in a vineyard near the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. - Pope Julius II sent Giuliano da Sangallo and Michelangelo, who were working at the Vatican, to examine the discovery. On their recommendation, the Pope immediately purchased the sculpture from the vineyard owner. The Pope put the sculpture, which represents the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by giant serpents, on public display at the Vatican exactly one month after its discovery.
Benedict XIV founded the Museum Christianum, and some of the Vatican collections formed the Lateran Museum, which Pius IX founded by decree in 1854.
The museums celebrated their 500th anniversary in October 2006 by permanently opening the excavations of a Vatican Hill necropolis to the public.

Palazzo del Quirinale, Roma 2015

The Quirinal Palace (Palazzo del Quirinale) is a historic building in Rome, Italy, one of the three current official residences of the president of the Italian Republic, together with Villa Rosebery in Naples and the Tenuta di Castelporziano, an estate on the outskirts of Rome, some 25 km from the centre of the city.
It is located on the Quirinal Hill, the highest of the seven hills of Rome in an area colloquially called Monte Cavallo. It has served as the residence for thirty popes, four kings of Italy and twelve presidents of the Italian Republic.
The Quirinal Palace was selected by Napoleon to be his residence par excellence as emperor. However, he never stayed there because of the French defeat in 1814 and the subsequent European Restoration.
The palace extends for an area of 110,500 square meters and is the twelfth-largest palace in the world in terms of area, some twenty times the area of the White House.
The current site of the palace has been in use since ancient Roman times, as excavations in the gardens testify. On this hill, the Romans built temples for several deities, from Flora to Quirinus, after whom the hill was named.
During the reign of Constantine, the last complex of Roman baths was built here, as the statues of the twins Castor and Pollux taming the horses decorating the fountain in the square testify.
The Quirinal, being the highest hill in Rome, was much sought after and became a popular location for the Roman patricians, who built luxurious villas there. An example is the remains of a villa in the Quirinal gardens, where a mosaic, part of the old floor has been found.
The palace, located on the Via del Quirinale and facing onto the Piazza del Quirinale, was built in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII as a papal summer residence.
The Pope, who wanted to find a location which was far away from the humidity and stench coming from the river Tiber and likewise the unhealthy conditions of the Lateran Palace, chose the Quirinal hill as it was one of the most suitable places in Rome.
On the site, there was already a small villa owned by the Carafa family and rented to Luigi d'Este.
The Pope commissioned the architect Ottaviano Mascherino to build a palace with porticoed parallel wings and an internal courtyard by incorporating the Carafa villa, the original nucleus of the palace, later known as the Gregorian building.
That project was not fully completed due to the Pope's death in 1585. However, it is still recognizable in the north part of the courtyard, especially in the double loggia facade, topped by the panoramic Torre dei Venti (tower of the winds) or Torrino.
To the latter, a bell tower was added according to a project by Carlo Maderno and Francesco Borromini.
The palace is composed of the main building, which is built around the majestic courtyard, with the most beautiful halls and rooms of the complex environments that serve as representative of the Presidency of the Republic, while the offices and apartments of the head of state are housed in the Fuga building at the end of the Manica lunga, the long building on the side of Quirinal street (via del Quirinale in Italian).
The palace, in its totality, has 1,200 rooms.

Reggia di Portici IV, Napoli 2013

The Royal Palace of Portici (Reggia di Portici or Palazzo Reale di Portici; or Reggia ‘e Puortece) is a former royal palace in Portici, Southeast of Naples along the coast, in the region of Campania.
Today it is the home of the Orto Botanico di Portici, a botanical garden operated by the University of Naples Federico II. These gardens were once part of the large royal estate that included an English garden, a zoo and formal parterres.
It is located just a few metres from the Roman ruins of Herculaneum and is home to the Accademia Ercolanese, the deposit for all found objects of archaeological site.
This is in effect the Museum of Herculaneum, opened in 1758 by King Charles.
On 3 July 1735 at the age of 18, Infante Charles of Spain was crowned the King of Naples and Sicily. He had taken control of the two kingdoms by military force opposing the powerful Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor. In 1738, Charles and his consort Princess Maria Amalia of Saxony were favourably impressed with the area of Portici when they visited the villa of Emmanuel Maurice, the Duke of Elbeuf. The couple commissioned this palace in Portici to serve not only as a private residence, but as a place to receive foreign officials travelling to the kingdom. Work began at the end of 1738 under the direction of Antonio Canevari. Canevari had helped the royal couple in construction of the Neapolitan Palace of Capodimonte.
The interiors of the Palace of Portici were frescoed by Giuseppe Bonito, while the gardens were decorated with marble sculptures by Joseph Canart.
Portions of ancient Roman villas and noble residences were discovered in preparing the foundations of the palace, and excavation of the area revealed numerous works of art, among them temple with 24 marble columns. This discovery was put in the Museum of Portici, built for the occasion, and annexed to the Accademia Ercolanese.
The museum was founded by Charles in 1755 also to house the findings from the excavations of Herculaneum.
Since the new royal palace was not large enough to house the whole court, it stimulated construction of other grand residences in the neighborhood, 122 of which are now known as the Vesuvian Villas. This also led to the expansion of the Palace of Capodimonte.
Charles and his wife kept the Portici Palace as their summer residence and seven of their twelve children were born there.
Upon King Charles' accession to the Spanish throne in 1759, he left his Neapolitan and Sicilian domains to his third son, Prince Ferdinand who would rule until his death in 1825.
During the reign of Ferdinand, the palace was overshadowed by the far grander Caserta Palace which became the official home of the court from 1759.
Portici was the private home of Prince Felipe of Naples and Sicily, the eldest son of Charles III of Spain. Prince Felipe was mentally disabled and lived in the palace until his death there on 19 September 1777. - In the spring of 1769, the palace hosted Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. - In 1770, a fourteen-year-old Mozart stayed there. - In 1799, King Ferdinand added an opera house to the palace. - During the Napoleonic occupation, General Joachim Murat refurnished the palace with French furniture.
In 1804, the Queen Consort, Maria Isabella of Spain, gave birth here to her first child, Princess Luisa Carlotta. Luisa Carlota would marry her uncle, the Spanish Infante Francisco de Paula. - On September 13, 1848, Queen Maria Isabella died at the palace aged 59.

Venaria Reale XI, Torino 2016

The Palace of Venaria (Italian: Reggia di Venaria Reale) is a former royal residence and gardens located in Venaria Reale, near Turin in the Piedmont region in northern Italy.
It is one of the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy, included in the UNESCO Heritage List in 1997.
The Palace was designed and built from 1675 by Amedeo di Castellamonte, commissioned by duke Charles Emmanuel II, who needed a base for his hunting expeditions in the heathy hill country north of Turin.
The name itself derives from Latin, Venatio Regia meaning "Royal Hunt".
It was enlarged to become a luxurious residence for the House of Savoy. The palace complex became a masterpiece of Baroque architecture and was filled with decoration and artwork.
It fell into disuse at the end of the 18th century. After the Napoleonic wars, it was used for military purposes until 1978, when its renovation began, leading to the largest restoration project in European history. It opened to the public on October 13, 2007, and it has since become a major tourist attraction and exhibition space.
It is noted for its monumental architecture and Baroque interiors by Filippo Juvarra, including the Galleria Grande and its marble decorations, the chapel of Saint Uberto, and its extensive gardens.
It received 1,048,857 visitors in 2017, making it the sixth most visited museum in Italy.
The palace is made up of two distinct wings: the original 17th century Palace of Diana, covered in white plaster, and the later 18th-century addition, with exposed brickwork. The entrance of the palace leads into the Cour d'honneur ("Honour Court"), which once housed a fountain with a deer.
The Palace of Diana is the core of the complex and the oldest section of the palace. It was built between 1658 and 1663 under the direction of Amedeo di Castellamonte. The two pavilion date to the Michelangelo Garove period (1669–1713) and are covered with multicolor pentagonal tiles in ceramics, which are united by a large gallery, known as Grand Gallery (Galleria Grande). The centerpiece of the 18th-century wing is the Galleria Grande (Grand Gallery), which is stucco decorations, 44 arched windows, and black and white tiled floor.[16] The interiors originally housed a large collection of stuccos, statues, paintings (according to Amedeo di Castellamonte, up to 8,000) from some of the court artists of the times, such as Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli, Pietro Domenico Olivero [it] and Bernardino Quadri.
The original gardens of the residence have now totally disappeared, since French troops turned them into training grounds. Earlier drawings show an Italian garden with three terraces connected by elaborate stairways and architectural features such as a clock tower in the first court, the fountain of Hercules, a theatre and parterres.

Palazzo Reale I, Venezia 2022

The Royal Palace of Venice, known today as the Museo Correr (named for the institution’s chief benefactor, Teodoro Correr), stands as a reminder of Venice’s long history as an independent state and, during much of the nineteenth century, as a territorial possession of France and Austria.
The museum is located in the Piazza San Marco, housed within the Procuratie Nuove. The adjacent Ala Napoleonica, or Napoleonic Wing, a neoclassical structure built on the orders of Napleon I, houses the museum’s entrance.
The building contains what was once the royal palace of Venice, whose interiors display the work of some of the period’s most renowned designers, including Giuseppe Soli, Lorenzo Santi, and Giuseppe Borsato.
Construction of the palace began in 1808, and the building was used by ruling powers throughout the nineteenth century. The museum’s collection, established in 1830 and supplemented by gifts and acquisitions in later years, documents both the civic and artistic history of the city.
The palace was largely intended as a reflection of Napoleonic authority in Venice, and its Royal Suite features a high level of decorative craftsmanship in the neoclassical style favored at the turn of the nineteenth century. By 2003, however, the palace had suffered from decades of neglect: cracks threatened interior walls, stucco, and frescoes, and marble floor tiles appeared cracked, displaced, or missing. World Monuments Fund supported a program to address the various problems that jeopardized the monument, room by room. Most recently, World Monuments Fund (WMF) completed work on Giuseppe Borsato’s impressive decorative scheme for the State Dining Room. That project concluded in February 2009, when the Royal Suite reopened to the public.
More recently, in 2021, the Comité Français pour la Sauvegarde de Venise implemented a new project, and the restored and refurnished small imperial apartments within the Correr Museum were inaugurated in July 2022. The Museo Correr (Is a museum in Venice, northern Italy. Located in St. Mark's Square, Venice, it is one of the 11 civic museums run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. The museum extends along the southside of the square on the upper floors of the Procuratorie Nuove. With its rich and varied collections, the Museo Correr covers both the art and history of Venice.
The Museo Correr originated with the collection bequeathed to the city of Venice in 1830 by Teodoro Correr. A member of a traditional Venetian family, Correr was a meticulous and passionate collector, dedicating most of his life to the collection of both works of art and documents or individual objects that reflected the history of Venice. Upon his death, all this material was donated to the city, together with the family's Grand Canalpalace which then housed it. The nobleman also left the city funds to be used in conserving and extending the collections and in making them available to the public.
The period when he was gathering his collections was a very particular one, as the Republic of Venice had fallen in 1797 and for decades thereafter the city would be under foreign rulers and out of real necessity, many Venetian families were eager to sell off their valuable collections. Several collections ended up being bought by foreigners, but in the early decades of the 19th century there were still many pieces on the market. An insatiable collector, Correr, from his youth bought all sorts of objects and dedicated all his resources in putting together an incredible amount of material. Correr would reveal himself to have a sharp eye, putting together a collection that was undoubtedly very original. He was explicit about his intention that the collections should be made available to the public, and the museum was finally open in 1836.
Over the years, the contents of the museum would be catalogued and organized to provide scholars with a study facility and the general public with the opportunity to see the best from each individual collection. Subsequent bequests, donations and acquisitions would be added to the collection, ultimately leading to various pieces being housed on other venues.
From the Correr Collection to the Musei Civici Veneziani.
Among the new pieces were the collections donated by several important Venetian families, such as the Molin, the Zoppetti, the Tironi, the Sagredo, and the Cicogna, and these included significant paintings, maiolica, glass pieces, and bronzes. In 1887, the enlarged collection was moved from Palazzo Correr to the nearby Fondaco dei Turchi, where it was laid out in a new display. However, in 1922, the Museo Correr was moved again to its present location in Piazza San Marco.
In the 1990s, the entire civic museums system was redesigned, all under a single municipal administration. In 1996, thanks to an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Culture, the St. Mark's Square Museums ticket was launched, granting entrance not only to the Museo Correr, but also the Doge's Palace, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale and the Monumental Rooms of the Biblioteca Marciana. Finally, in March 2008, the Museo Correr became part of the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia system.

Palazzo Bardini I, Firenze 2009

Palazzo Bardini is now a museum. The museum is situated in a fine building refurbished by Stefano Bardini at the end of the 18th century and donated by its owner to the Municipal Administration of Florence in 1922.
Bardini was a famous art dealer who collected objects of different periods and of high quality. Even the building itself is remarkable for its use of doors, windows and moldings of old fragments originally belonging to ruined churches and villas.
The ceilings are magnificent examples of Venetian and Tuscan woodwork ranging from the 15th to the 17th centuries.
The collection comprises sculptures, paintings, furniture pieces, ceramic pieces, tapestries but also fragments of the old center of Florence, salvaged before its destruction. All these items are displayed on the ground and the first floors according to a layout that fully reflects the character of a typically private collection, with the touch of a rather suggestive setting. In addition to Roman sarcophagi, capitelli, Roman and Gothic relief work, there are also other remarkable items like the work of the Della Robbia brothers (15th and 16th century), works attributed to Donatello and to Nino or Giovanni Pisano, in addition to the famous "Charity" by Tino di Camaino (c. 1280-1337).
The most outstanding painting of the collection is perhaps St. Michael Archangel by Antonio Del Pollaiolo (1431-1498), although there are many other precious works among the collections of weapons, 15th century polychrome stuccoes and wooden sculpture. The collection of old musical instruments is also worth a visit.
The second floor of the building exhibits the Corsi collection that comprises some works from the 12th to the 19th centuries, donated by Mrs. Carobbi, the widow of Corsi, in 1938.
After long and accurate restorations work aimed at re-establishing the configuration which its founder, the antiquarian Stefano Bardini, had originally given the exhibition, the museum is finally open to the public.
Stefano Bardini trained as a painter, became famous as a restorer and put together a collection of artwork with the love and passion for the Renaissance. Thanks to him, the keenness for Renaissance architectural decorations, for stucco sculptures and terracotta sculptures was rediscovered.
The original decorations of the rooms of the present-day Museum, which was actually the antiques showroom in Bardini’s times, can now be enjoyed. On account of its uniqueness, the blue color employed was imitated by many, including Jacquemart-Andrè in Paris and Isabella Stewart in Boston.
Thanks a painstaking restoration project undertaken by the Fondazione Parchi Monumentali Bardini e Peyron alongside Fondazione CR Firenze, Villa Bardini was brought back to life in 2006. The villa has now been returned to the city of Florence as a museum space, cultural center and garden for all, ready to be discovered.
After being abandoned for many years, the Villa was completely restored by the Parchi Monumentali Bardini e Peyron and the Fondazione CR Firenze, reopening to the public in 2006, with new spaces intended for events and exhibits. Villa Bardini is today a place of art and culture, hosting initiatives that feature globally renowned artists and other illustrious figures.

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