Italian Cabinet Galleries February 23, 2010

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.