Galleria d'arte moderna, Modern art museum in Pitti Palace, Florence, Italy
The Gallery of Modern Art occupies the second floor of Pitti Palace, in the north wing and the rooms of the former Bourbon Quarter, including the ballroom. Its thirty-odd rooms follow a chronological route from Neoclassicism to the early 20th century, with Italian painting and sculpture such as Canova's Calliope and Duprè's Abel. The rooms keep their 19th-century painted ceilings.
The gallery's origins lie in 1784, when Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo founded a modern art gallery at the Accademia di Belle Arti. In 1867 the works moved to the Accademia's modern gallery, and in 1897 the city acquired Diego Martelli's Macchiaioli collection. A 1914 convention between the Italian state and the City of Florence governed the gallery, which opened officially at Palazzo Pitti in 1924.
The Macchiaioli section comes largely from the collection of Diego Martelli, a critic and friend of the painters, bought by the city of Florence in 1897. Giovanni Fattori is represented by works including his 1854 Self-Portrait (room 13) and The Italian Camp after the Battle of Magenta of 1862 (room 18); Silvestro Lega by The Stornello Song of 1867 (room 12).
The gallery occupies the second floor of Pitti Palace, reached by the palace's main staircase; the route runs in chronological order through more than thirty rooms, from neoclassical painting to the early twentieth century. Rooms 14 to 16 keep painted ceilings from the time of Ferdinando II de' Medici, while the ballroom and the former Bourbon quarter lie at the far end of the north wing.
The ceiling paintings in rooms 7 to 13 were made under the Restoration: Giorgio Berti painted Cincinnatus Receiving the Roman Senate in room 7, Niccola Monti The Triumph of the True Cross in room 8, and Giuseppe Bezzuoli Alexander in Apelles' Studio in room 12. Rooms 14 to 16 keep painted decoration from the age of Ferdinando II de' Medici.
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