National Gallery of Art - EXHIBITIONS

IMAGE: Italian Cabinet Galleries

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Press Materials (2000)

IMAGE: Medici Porcelain Factory, Flask, c. 1575/1587, or slightly later, Widener Collection, 1942.9.354 Three intimately scaled galleries present the types of works that were kept and enjoyed in the private chambers of Italian princes, humanists, and well-to-do merchants. In these rooms, known as cabinets or studioli (studies), Renaissance collectors expressed their individual tastes and interests through the rare and beautiful objects they chose to display. Paintings, bronze statuettes and plaquettes, rock crystal vessels, and brightly decorated ceramics reveal the Renaissance fascination with classical Greece and Rome, as collectors sought out antiquities and commissioned works incorporating heroes and motifs from the ancient world.

On view in the National Gallery's West Building, Main Floor.