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The new Marble Museum at Palazzo Medici Riccardi Ancient Roman Statuary
[Susan Glasspool]
Looking for a museum with a difference? A new internal museum has just opened in Palazzo Medici Riccardi to host a selection of the sculpture collected by the Riccardi family after they moved into this great palace, purchased from the Medici family in 1659. The creation of collections of ancient sculpture was particularly popular in Florence between the 16th and the 17th centuries. Of course the Medici family took pride of place in the city for their collections, but close on their heels came the museum created by the clever banker and refined humanist Riccardo Riccardi (1558-1612). At first the collection was kept in his house of Gualfonda, but when it was moved to Palazzo Medici in Via Larga, it definitely found a worthier site. The marble statues were left here even after the family lost all its money and the palace became state property of the state, and therefore of the Grand Dukes, in 1814.
Three rooms in the basement have been specially restored and arranged with the wonderful collection of classical Roman sculpture, twentytwo in all, that includes portraits of emperors, poets, atheletes and philosophers.
This is only a small part however of the large collection of works that is on display in the various environs of the great Medici palace, in particular in the courtyard by Michelozzo, where ancient remains are intermingled with the delicate stucco decorations designed by Giovan Battista Foggini.
The first group of marbles includes heads carried out in Roman times from classical and Hellenistic Greek models, while the second group is composed of private and official portraits of Roman age.
Alongside splendid copies of Attic statues of the 5th century B.C., like the famous Riccardi athelete, it is possible to admire extremely rare examples of reconstructed portraiture dating from the second half of the 4th century B.C., which were basically attempts to give a face to long-dead celebrities, like Anacreon or Euripides.
The portraits dating from Roman times are also extremely fine in quality, like the dramatically expressive head of an old man or the bust of Sabina, Hadrian's wife, one of the finest known portraits of the Empress, or the delightful bust of a child who lived in the 3rd century A.D.
A curious note is that sixteen wells dating from various periods were discovered during the restoration of the basements in the house that Michelozzo built for Cosimo the Elder and where Lorenzo the Magnificent once lived. They had been filled in with objects dating from Roman, mediaeval, Renaissance and Baroque times, some of which are on display in the new museum. The original dustbins!
It is quite incredible to think that these wells had never been discovered before! Many old houses in Florence possessed them and, after plague epidemics, they were often filled in with household objects. Make the most therefore of the very reasonably priced entrance ticket and a hot day (you may be sure that it’s cool inside), to visit the interior of this fascinating Palace, with its centuries’ old history, without forgetting the wonderful pageantry so magnificently frescoed in the Chapel of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli. Here you can pick out portraits of many members of the Medici family, including the youthful Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Like many of Florence’s great monuments, it is not to be missed!
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http://www.palazzo-medici.it