Palazzo Corsini

Along the Arno in Florence, Palazzo Corsini is easy to spot by the statues and vases lined up along its roof. The Corsini, an old Florentine family, bought the site from Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici in 1649 and built over the following decades, and the family still owns the palace. Their fortunes peaked when Lorenzo Corsini became Pope Clement XII in 1730, and a branch of the family settled in Rome, where its palace later became part of Italy's national gallery.

What stayed in Florence is the Galleria Corsini, a private picture collection hung in rooms frescoed in the 1690s by Florentine painters such as Anton Domenico Gabbiani. Among its older works is a Christ on the Cross by Giovanni Bellini, the Venetian master, painted around 1475 with the crucified figure set against an open landscape. Another picture comes with a long argument. It is a portrait of the young cleric Maffeo Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII. The art historian Lionello Venturi published it as a Caravaggio in 1912, Roberto Longhi later gave it to a follower of the portrait painter Scipione Pulzone, and some recent scholars have argued for Caravaggio again.

Because the palace is a private residence, its rooms open by appointment, and a selection of the collection has travelled as far as Perth and Auckland.