The Museo Nazionale di Palazzo Mansi is one of the two main art museum hosting tapestry collections and mainly post-19th century art collections owned by the city of
Lucca, Italy
Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957.
Lucca is known as one o ...
. The collection is displayed in the
Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
palace, formerly belonging to the Mansi family, and located in central Lucca. Many of the original room decorations remain in place.
The Palace was first erected at the site of a few earlier tower-houses bought in 1616 by the Lucchese merchant of silk Ascanio Mansi and his descendants. While the facade retains earlier Renaissance window features, between 1686 and 1691, Ascanio's son Raffaello employed the architect
Raffaello Mazzanti Raffaello, Raffaele or Raffaellino is an Italian given name. It usually refers to Raphael (a.k.a. Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino), an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance.
Raffaello may also refer to:
* Raffaello (confection), a conf ...
to further renovate the now palace, and the piano nobile rooms acquired the present decoration and a grand staircase access. The cooler ground floor rooms were turned into a summer apartment.
In the second half of the 18th century, Luigi Mansi pursued further refurbishing. The Mansi family retained prestige in the early 19th century; Raffaele Mansi and Camilla Parensi had been appointed courtiers to
Elisa Bonaparte
Maria Anna Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi Levoy (French: ''Marie Anne Elisa Bonaparte''; 3 January 1777 – 7 August 1820), better known as Elisa Bonaparte, was an imperial French princess and sister of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was Princess of Lucca ...
and
Felice Baciocchi. Raffaello Mansi Orsetti, who died in 1956, was the first to display the art collections to the public. In the mid-1960s his children sold the palace to the state, which has converted into a National Museum of arts and tapestries.
The interiors house a highly decorated bedroom alcove with gilded
caryatid
A caryatid ( or or ; grc, Καρυᾶτις, pl. ) is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term ''karyatides'' literally means "ma ...
columns flanking the portal.
''A History of Architecture'', Volume 4
by Russell Sturgis, Arthur Lincoln Frothingham, The Baker & Taylor Company (1915): page 202.
Gallery
File:Jacopo_Pontormo_063.jpg, Pontormo
Jacopo Carucci (May 24, 1494 – January 2, 1557), usually known as ''Jacopo da Pontormo'', ''Jacopo Pontormo'', or simply Pontormo, was an Italian Mannerist painter and portraitist from the Florentine School. His work represents a profound st ...
:
'' Porträt of Amerigo Antinori'', ca. 1525.
File:Domenico Beccafumi - The Continence of Scipio Africanus - WGA01544.jpg, Domenico Beccafumi
Domenico di Pace Beccafumi (1486May 18, 1551) was an Italian Renaissance-Mannerist painter active predominantly in Siena. He is considered one of the last undiluted representatives of the Sienese school of painting.
Biography
Domenico was born ...
:
''The Continence of Scipio Africanus'', ca. 1525.
See also
*Villa Mansi, Segromigno in Monte
Villa Mansi is a country palace and gardens located in Segromigno in Monte, near Capannori, about 12 kilometers northeast of the city of Lucca in the region of Tuscany, Italy.
Biography
The villa was initially constructed in the 16th century by t ...
, the villa of the Mansi family in nearby Segromigno in Monte
References
External links
Official websitePage at Italian Ministry of Culture website
Mansi
Museums in Lucca
Art museums and galleries in Tuscany
National museums of Italy
{{Italy-museum-stub