Museo di Casa Martelli

The museum

The Museo di Casa Martelli is part of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello and is a house-museum, very close to Piazza Duomo, built by Niccolò and Giuseppe Maria Martelli, under the project of architect Bernardino Ciurini. The museum houses a gallery of paintings and sculptures by the most outstanding artists of the modern Italian age, including Piero di Cosimo, Luca Giordano and Domenico Beccafumi. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that its collection is not a posthumous reconstruction, but is composed of the centuries-old stratification of the ancient Florentine Martelli family.

The history

The building belonged to the Martelli family for centuries, and later came under the ownership of the Florentine Curia with the death of Francesca Martelli in 1986, together with all the family’s possessions. In 1998 the Curia sold the complex to the State, which opened the Museum in 2009.

The collection

The museum itinerary follows the decorative taste of the seventeenth-eighteenth century Florentine nobility, passing through beautifully frescoed rooms, from the ceremonial staircase in pietra serena and wrought iron, to a small courtyard leading to a private passage to the basilica of San Lorenzo.

The artworks

• The Lupercales, first half 16th century, Domenico Beccafumi (1486-1551)
• Adoration of the Child, 1505, Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522)
• Catiline Conspiracy, second half 17th century, Salvator Rosa (1615-1673)
• The Oath of Brutus against the Tarquinii after Death of Lucretia, second half 17th century, Luca Giordano (1634-1705)
• The Dying Gaul, mid 18th century, Johannes Sporer (1720-1759)
• Winter garden o bersò, 1791, Gaetano Gucci
• Stanza a paese (detail), 1809-16, Niccolò Contestabili (1759-1824)
• Roberto Martelli visits the Donatello’s workshop, 1822, Antonio Marino (1788-1861)

The artists

• Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522)
• Domenico Beccafumi (1486-1551)
• Salvator Rosa (1615-1673)
• Luca Giordano (1634-1705)
• Johannes Sporer (1720-1759)
• Gaetano Gucci
• Niccolò Contestabili (1759-1824)
• Antonio Marini (1788-1861)

Photo: Museo di Casa Martelli, Florence