The Pitti Palace was begun during the second half of the fifteenth century by Luca Pitti. Tradition says that the palace was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and built by his pupil Luca Fancelli.
Today, the palace and the Boboli gardens behind it contain some of the most important museums in Florence and even in all the world. On the first floor is the Palatine Gallery, on the ground floor and mezzanine the Silver Museum ("degli Argenti") and the Gallery of Modern Art is on the top floor. In the separate Palazzina del Cavaliere on the upper slopes of the Boboli gardens is the Porcelain Museum, while in the Palazzina of the Meridiana the Costume Gallery can be found.
The Palatine Gallery in the Pitti Palace takes its name from the reigning family in whose palace it was housed and was opened to the public by Leopoldo of Lorraine in 1828. Its present layout preserves the character of a private picture gallery with a sumptuous combination of lavish interior decoration and the rich picture frames ordered by the Medici themselves.
One of the main nucleuses of the collection are the paintings by Titian and Raphael. Of outstanding interest are Rubens' "Four Philosophers" and "Allegory of War" and the portrait of Isabella Clara Eugenia. Van Dyck's magnificent portrait of Cardinal Bentivoglio shows all the artist's richness of colouring, and Giusto Sustermans' portraits immortalize the whole grand ducal family. Spanish painting is well represented by the sweetness of Murillo's "Madonna and Child". Apart from exceptionally important works by Bronzino (1503-1572), Fra Bartolomeo (1472- 1517) and Piero di Pollaiolo (1441-1496), the Sleeping Cupid by Caravaggio (1573-1610) and the seventeenth century portraits of Pourbus and Velasquez, the decoration of many of the rooms where they are hung is also important, both historically and artistically. The Putti Room is devoted entirely to Flemish painting. The Stove Room is one of the masterpieces of Pietro da Cortona, who frescoed it in 1637 with the "Four Ages of Man", the "Ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron".