The Museum of Fashion and Costume (formerly the Costume Gallery)
is one of the museums housed in the Pitti palace in Florence, in
particular in the Meridiana building, a pavilion to the south of the
palace which can also be accessed from the Boboli garden.
In
2013 the museum circuit of the Boboli Gardens, which also includes
the Treasury of the Grand Dukes, the Fashion and Costume Museum, the
Porcelain Museum and the Bardini Gardens, was the sixth most visited
Italian state site, with 710,523 visitors and a total gross income
of 2,722,872 euros. In 2016, the museum circuit recorded 881,463
visitors.
The wing known as the Palazzo della Meridiana owes its name to the
Sala della Meridiana, which was built under the astronomical consultancy
of Vincenzo Viviani between 1693 and 1696, with a gnomonic hole within a
fresco of the Allegory of Time which enhances the Science and tramples
Ignorance and, together with Merit, pays homage to Galileo Galilei and
Amerigo Vespucci by Anton Domenico Gabbiani.
In 1776 Pietro
Leopoldo of Lorraine decided to build a real outbuilding south of
Palazzo Pitti, the project of which was entrusted to the architect
Gaspare Paoletti, who worked there until 1813 assisted by Giuseppe
Cacialli. A decade later it was completed by Pasquale Poccianti, who
created the southern façade, equipped the building with new rooms and
oversaw the decoration programme.
The costume gallery was founded in 1983 under the direction of
Kristen Aschengreen Piacenti and contains a collection which, including
objects in storage, reaches more than 6,000 artefacts, including antique
clothes (the oldest date back to the 16th century), accessories,
theatrical and cinematographic costumes of great documentary importance,
making it one of the most important fashion museums in the world. The
Italian museum traces the detailed history of the fashions that have
followed one another, thanks also to the presence of numerous
prestigious examples of famous Italian and foreign stylists such as
Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace, Emilio Pucci, Ottavio
Missoni, Yves Saint Laurent, etc.
Most of the specimens come from
public and private donations, sometimes with the sale of entire
wardrobes of celebrities, of great historical as well as aesthetic
importance. This is how the clothes of the Sicilian noblewoman Franca
Fiorio, or that of Eleonora Duse, arrived. Also noteworthy is the
collection of theatrical costumes collected by Umberto Tirelli, founder
of an important tailor's shop specializing in this sector.
Among
the exceptional rarities in the museum are the funeral clothes of the
Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, his wife Eleonora di Toledo and their
son Garzia, who died at the age of fifteen due to malaria. The
restoration took place in the laboratories of the same museum.
Due to the fragility of the objects on display, the collections rotate
periodically at least every two years, within a path that winds
chronologically and thematically, not counting the periodic monographic
exhibitions held in some particular rooms of the Gallery.
A
collection of 20th-century stage costume jewelery is also on display.
Access to the gallery is generally permitted at set times, with the
same ticket for the Boboli Gardens.
Women's fashion between the two wars is the theme that was tackled in
an exhibition - between 2000 and 2001 - curated by Caterina Chiarelli at
the Costume Gallery, reopened in June 2000 after a long restoration.
The exhibition "The wardrobe of a Sicilian lady" (2001) retraced the
taste and fashion of the rich Sicilian bourgeoisie - from the 1920s to
the 1950s - through the wardrobe of Mrs. Venus Musarra
In 2001, the
donation that Flora Wiechmann Savioli made to the costume gallery was
exhibited, which includes a nucleus of jewellery, dresses, abstract
paintings, fashion accessories and small family art objects.
The
exhibition "Acquisitions through the twentieth century" wanted to
enhance the new acquisitions of the gallery, without following any
thematic program. The exhibition was organized into two groups according
to the provenance of the works: the first included clothes and
accessories purchased in 2002 at an auction sale and donated by the
Florence Center for Italian Fashion, including garments labeled by
Givenchy, Yves Saint Laurent, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jean Patou, Alaïa, but
also Gucci, Gottex and Kenzo. The second group, with more heterogeneous
origins, also includes specimens from the first half of the twentieth
century.
In 2004 the gallery hosted a significant nucleus of Coptic
dresses, from the 4th and 6th centuries AD, showing the evolution of
fashion and costume in different eras.
The Costume Gallery of Palazzo
Pitti presented, between 2007 and 2008, a selection of the Riva
collection which consists of about three thousand buttons. The button
has been the symbol of masculine elegance and has achieved spectacular
effects thanks to the use of gold, silver and precious stones.
An
exhibition was held at the Gallery dedicated to the birth of the Medici
tapestry factory, at the behest of Cosimo I, which demonstrates the
entrepreneurial spirit of the duke.
Twenty-one tapestries and
furnishing components relating to the production of Mobilier National
and the Gobelins and Beauvais factories constitute the material of an
exhibition held between 2008 and 2009 at the Costume Gallery.
The
exhibition in honor of Dianora Marandino - presented at the Costume
Gallery of Palazzo Pitti in 2011 - presented a selection of clothing
items and preparatory sketches that are part of the conspicuous
collection given as a gift by her husband, the master Enzo Faraoni .
This artist, having deliberately always remained outside of large-scale
production, is scarcely known outside the ambit of specialists in the
sector.
Between 2013 and 2014, an exhibition on the ancient
profession of the milliner who creates hats was proposed at the Costume
Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, here elevated to real works of art. In the
same period, another exhibition – curated by Caterina Chiarelli – was
dedicated to the wardrobe of some of the most influential women of the
twentieth century and to the protagonists of fashion of the last
century. Two sections were instead dedicated to wedding dresses and
woven jewels created by Rwandan women. The Costume Gallery is currently
the only museum of the history of fashion and costume in Italy.
From
1 October 2014 until 11 January 2015 the Costume Gallery of Palazzo
Pitti is the venue for the exhibition in honor of Piero Tosi. In honor
of his achievement of the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, they
describe him as a "visionary whose unique manners surpass time by
bringing art to life in motion pictures". The exhibition, entitled
“Tribute to Maestro Piero Tosi. The art of stage costumes from the
Tirelli Donation”, is made up of around fifteen stage costumes by Piero
Tosi; the works are exhibited in the ballroom of the museum. The set-up
was coordinated by the architect Mauro Linari and also includes a
nucleus of important historical dresses, theatrical and cinematic
costumes of great charm dating back to the rich donation by Umberto
Tirelli to the Costume Gallery in 1986. Among the stage costumes present
in the exhibition and created by the designer Tosi, we remember Medea
(directed by: Pier Paolo Pasolini), Elisabetta (Sissi) (directed by:
Luchino Visconti), Giuliana Hermil (The Innocent, directed by: Luchino
Visconti).