The story
For centuries the d'Este family ruled Ferrara, then Modena, and like other Italian dynasties they collected as a form of statecraft. This gallery, on the top floor of Modena's Palazzo dei Musei, is what survives of their taste.
Two portraits of one duke anchor it. When Francesco I d'Este wanted to be seen as a European power, he had Velázquez paint him in Madrid in 1638, in half-armour with the red sash of command and the Order of the Golden Fleece at his throat, and later had Bernini carve his likeness in marble from paintings alone, the hair and drapery caught as if in a gust of wind. The duke grumbled that he had paid a fortune for a bust of a man Bernini had never met.
The rest ranges across Correggio, Guido Reni, El Greco and a Cosmè Tura, and the gallery reopened after the 2012 earthquake that shook Emilia and briefly closed its doors.
