The story
A small gold-ground panel of Saint Stephen by Giotto is the oldest highlight in this house on Via de' Benci. Close by is Queen Vashti Leaving the Royal Palace, a scene from the Old Testament story of Esther painted around 1480 by Filippino Lippi, one panel from a set of wedding chests whose other parts are now spread across several museums. There is also an Allegory of Music by Dosso Dossi, court painter to the dukes of Ferrara.
All of it was gathered by one man. Herbert Percy Horne, an English architect, designer and art historian, settled in Florence and wrote a study of Botticelli, published in 1908, that scholars still cite. In 1911 he bought this house, the Palazzo Corsi, rebuilt around 1500, probably to designs by Simone del Pollaiolo, known as il Cronaca. He restored it as a home for his 14th- and 15th-century paintings, sculpture, furniture and household objects, and left the palace with everything in it to the Italian state to become a museum.
That is why the pictures hang among chests, tables and chairs, at the scale of a private Renaissance home. Horne died in 1916, five years after buying the house, and the foundation that carries his name still runs it.
