Florence, Palazzo Portinari Salviati opens to public with precious frescoes by Alessandro Allori

After more than a decade of neglect and four years of work, from April 15, 2022, LDC Group will reopen to the public one of the most prestigious historic buildings in Florence: Palazzo Portinari Salviati. The palace has undergone a thorough restoration completed with respect for the original structures.

“We have taken care of this precious testimony of history and culture, knowing that we are only its custodians,” said Nelson Chang, CEO of LDC Group. “The restoration of this palace is first and foremost a cultural enhancement operation so that its heritage can be known and appreciated by all.”
“Palazzo Portinari has never been opened to the city and the whole world as it will be from today,” added Mayor Dario Nardella, speaking at the presentation of the restoration. “This is the extraordinary recovery of a place where the history of Florence has passed and which will be open to everyone.”

In fact, guided tours of the palace will be organized at least one day a week, and the proceeds will finance other restorations in the city. The work was carried out under the supervision of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the metropolitan city of Florence and the provinces of Pistoia and Prato.

Thanks to the restoration, the Court of Cosimo I, the Court of the Emperors and the Salviati Chapel, dedicated to Mary Magdalene, return to their splendor. Environments that hold the precious fresco cycles dedicated to theOdyssey and the stories of Hercules, created by Alessandro Allori and helpers between 1574 and 1576. The piano nobile with its original frescoed or coffered ceilings, where the 15th-century decorations with the Portinari coat of arms, a door between two rampant lions, are still visible, has been entirely recovered, and will house an exclusive period residence with thirteen elegant suites, furnished with antiques and works of art purchased at international auctions, including some important portraits of personalities linked to the history of the palace, such as Maria de’ Medici, Francesco I de’ Medici, and Alemanno Salviati.

In the part of the building that is not characterized by historical-artistic elements, valuable apartments have been built for residential use, most of which have already found an owner. Compared to the project inherited from the previous owners, which provided only apartments, LDC decided to allocate the entire part of the building’s historic-artistic value for public activities.

Starting April 15, the “Salotto Portinari Bar & Bistrot” will open on the ground floor, with proposals inspired by Tuscan and Italian culinary traditions. By June 1, it will be possible to admire the Salviati Chapel, still under restoration, and the Emperors’ Court and adjoining rooms, where the “Chic Nonna” restaurant, with star chef Vito Mollica, is being set up.

The new house is the first nucleus of the palace built in the second half of the 15th century by the heirs of Folco Portinari, Beatrice’s father, uniting the complex of houses where Dante’s muse had lived her childhood and youth. Indeed, the memory of the building brings back the famous meeting between Dante and Beatrice narrated by the Supreme Poet in La Vita Nova. It would be the brothers Pigello, Acerrito and Tommaso Portinari, thanks to the fortunes built with the Medici banks in Venice, Milan and Bruges, who would bring the palace to completion in the last decades of the 15th century. One of the brothers, Tommaso, would commission the Flemish painter Hugo van der Goes to paint the famous Triptych with theAdoration of the Shepherds now in the Uffizi Galleries. Of the monumental parts of the palace dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, the authors are unknown, but “it had to be men of vast ingenuity and artists of uncommon worth,” writes Guido Pampaloni, who names the great architect Michelozzo, with whom the brothers Acerrimo and Pigello cultivated a deep relationship. The architect restored the façade and residence of the two Portinari brothers and drew the design of the Portinari Chapel in Sant’Eustorgio, repeating the square structure of the Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence.

With the family’s economic decline, in 1538 the entire property passed to the Spedale di Santa Maria Nuova. In 1546 Jacopo Salviati purchased the palace and a group of adjoining houses later incorporated into a major expansion project. The palace was sumptuous both for its architecture and for the excellence of the pictorial cycles and the rarity of the collections, which brought together the protagonists of the artistic scene of the 15th and 16th centuries, such as Donatello, Verrocchio, Cellini, and Bronzino. Today the splendid rooms frescoed by Allori, the Emperor’s Court and adjoining rooms, and the chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalene remain. During the period of Florence as capital it housed the Ministry of Grace and Justice, and in 1921 it became the headquarters of the Banca Toscana’s general management.

The restoration

Comprehensive art-historical research and a thorough campaign of diagnostic investigations preceded the restoration of the palace’s architectural and decorated surfaces. On the ground floor the fresco cycles painted by Alessandro Allori and helpers between 1574 and 1576 in the Emperor’s Court and adjacent rooms, with Stories from the Odyssey and Stories of Hercules, and the frieze of the Batracomiomachia with the depiction of the battle between mice and frogs taken from the poem attributed to Homer, were restored. On the piano nobile, the rooms with the original 15th-century coffered ceilings, decorated with the Portinari coat of arms or frescoed, have been fully recovered, and restoration has uncovered paintings on the Gallery walls, hidden under layers of color painted later.
More complex, and still in progress, is the recovery of the Salviati Chapel, consecrated in 1581.

Image: Palazzo Portinari Salviati, Court of the Emperors,Odyssey cycle, concluding panel with Ulysses embracing Penelope after regaining human form, by Alessandro Allori and helpers (1575-1576). Courtesy of Palazzo Portinari Salviati.

Florence, Palazzo Portinari Salviati opens to public with precious frescoes by Alessandro Allori

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