iPalazzo Pitti · Oltrarno
The King's Furniture: Royal Masterpieces across Three Dynasties
Sixteen furniture masterpieces spanning three centuries and three dynasties — Medici, Lorraine, and Savoy — newly arranged in the Palatine Gallery's Niche Room. Pieces range from 17th-century intarsia armchairs and Sèvres porcelain vases to Giovanni Socci's mechanical writing desk and a stipo cabinet that recreates the facade of Palazzo Pitti itself.
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One of the sixteen pieces in the Niche Room is a cabinet made as a scale copy of Palazzo Pitti, so you stand inside the palace looking at a pocket version of it. Also here is a kneeling stool Leonardo van der Vinne made in 1687, studded with precious stones.
The pieces run from the 17th to the 19th century and through the three dynasties that lived here. The Medici bring cabinetwork and pietre dure inlays of lapis, jasper and agate from the grand-ducal workshops. The Lorraine add oriental lacquer and curving shapes, Napoleon's sister Elisa Baciocchi brings the Empire style, and the Savoy used Pitti as a test run for furnishing the Quirinal in Rome.
It's a single room on the Palatine Gallery's first floor, so fold it into your visit to the paintings. Director Simone Verde says the pieces will rotate as restorations continue. It's covered by the Palazzo Pitti ticket (€16, or €19 booked ahead), Tuesday to Sunday, until 31 December.
Look for
The palace in miniature
Look for the stipo, a cabinet that reproduces Palazzo Pitti to scale, shown inside the building it copies.
Van der Vinne's kneeling stool
Made in 1687 in the Medici workshops, this prayer stool is studded with precious materials, devotion turned into a display of power.
Socci's mechanical desk
Giovanni Socci's writing desk folds shut by a mechanism, engineering that Stilearte compares to an eighteenth-century Leonardo's workshop.
The French lacquer chest
A mid-18th-century lacquered chest with mother-of-pearl inlay, gilt bronze mounts and a verde antico marble top, and the director's own favourite piece.
The pietre dure tabletop
Made around 1797 by Florence's hardstone workshop, its inlaid stones are cut to picture porcelain vessels.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You came for paintings: this room is sixteen pieces of furniture and vases.
Also at Palazzo Pitti
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Image credits
8
- The King's Furniture: Royal Masterpieces across Three DynastiesCourtesy of Palazzo Pitti
- Vasari Corridor: Friday Evening OpeningCourtesy of Vasari Corridor
- Vasari Corridor: Friday Evening OpeningCourtesy of Uffizi Gallery
- Palazzo PittiDavid Vizzoni (Almaak), CC BY-SA 3.0
- Vasari CorridorFreepenguin, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Uffizi GalleryArek N. (Arkadiusz Nanowski), CC BY-SA 3.0
- Palazzo VecchioFrancesco Bini / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Palazzo StrozziMenkinAlRire / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0