Description
Palazzo Martelli, on Via Zannetti, near Via de' Cerretani, houses the Museo di Casa Martelli: a house-museum that shows the centuries of a noble Florentine family, through paintings, furniture and frescoed rooms.
The facade is rather plain, but it has a wrought-iron balcony on the piano nobile, which in the 17th century was a novelty in a city of stone balustrades. On the front there is also a tabernacle with a Madonna and Child by Mino da Fiesole.
The courtyard, with arcades closed in by glass, has trompe-l'œil painting that widens the space with perspectives that don't exist. From here the pietra serena grand staircase leads up to the halls of the piano nobile, beneath the family coat of arms: a golden griffin on a red field.
On the first floor is the picture gallery, in four small to medium rooms, with walls covered in paintings as in the Palatine Gallery. There are Beccafumi, Salvator Rosa, Luca Giordano, Sustermans, Bruegel the Younger and Piero di Cosimo's Adoration of the Child.
A canvas by Giovan Battista Benigni shows a large portrait of the family, set in the picture gallery itself. The ceiling of the second room tells of the wedding of Cosimo I de' Medici and Camilla Martelli.
Off the painting route, the bathroom is a room entirely frescoed in 1822 with pastoral scenes, designed as a refuge from the heat thanks to fountains, basins and windows onto the courtyard. Then there is the ballroom, twice as tall as the other rooms.
At the end of the 18th century Marco Martelli reorganized the collection according to the principles of the Enlightenment, dividing the paintings by genre: landscapes, battles, historical scenes, self-portraits. Before, the spirit had been Baroque: variety.
In the 19th century the family fell into crisis and the collection began to be scattered. In 1986 the last heir, Francesca Martelli, on her death left the palace and all the family's possessions to the Florentine Curia.
In 1998 the State bought the complex, and the museum opened on October 22, 2009. The David and the coat of arms by Donatello, once the family's two jewels on the staircase, are now in the Museo del Bargello.
The facade is rather plain, but it has a wrought-iron balcony on the piano nobile, which in the 17th century was a novelty in a city of stone balustrades. On the front there is also a tabernacle with a Madonna and Child by Mino da Fiesole.
The courtyard, with arcades closed in by glass, has trompe-l'œil painting that widens the space with perspectives that don't exist. From here the pietra serena grand staircase leads up to the halls of the piano nobile, beneath the family coat of arms: a golden griffin on a red field.
On the first floor is the picture gallery, in four small to medium rooms, with walls covered in paintings as in the Palatine Gallery. There are Beccafumi, Salvator Rosa, Luca Giordano, Sustermans, Bruegel the Younger and Piero di Cosimo's Adoration of the Child.
A canvas by Giovan Battista Benigni shows a large portrait of the family, set in the picture gallery itself. The ceiling of the second room tells of the wedding of Cosimo I de' Medici and Camilla Martelli.
Off the painting route, the bathroom is a room entirely frescoed in 1822 with pastoral scenes, designed as a refuge from the heat thanks to fountains, basins and windows onto the courtyard. Then there is the ballroom, twice as tall as the other rooms.
At the end of the 18th century Marco Martelli reorganized the collection according to the principles of the Enlightenment, dividing the paintings by genre: landscapes, battles, historical scenes, self-portraits. Before, the spirit had been Baroque: variety.
In the 19th century the family fell into crisis and the collection began to be scattered. In 1986 the last heir, Francesca Martelli, on her death left the palace and all the family's possessions to the Florentine Curia.
In 1998 the State bought the complex, and the museum opened on October 22, 2009. The David and the coat of arms by Donatello, once the family's two jewels on the staircase, are now in the Museo del Bargello.