International events: Exhibitions mark the Cultural Exchange Year for Russia and Italy

Within the framework of the Cultural Exchange Year for Russia and Italy May 19, 2011 in the One-Pillar Chamber of the Patriarch’s Palace is opening an exhibition “The Medici Treasury”, which unveils masterpieces, which once belonged to this famous Florentine dynasty.

May 26 at the Silver Museum in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence, the Moscow Kremlin Museums are launching   “The Kremlin’s Treasury” exhibition, which will familiarize the Italian public with the richest treasury of Russian monarchs.

“The Medici Treasury” introduces visitors to magnificent rarities of 15th-18th cc. from the famous Medici treasury. Today its major part is preserved in the Silver Museum, located in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

The exhibits presented in chronological order reveal an unsurpassed aspiration for the arts and “collecting” of all the Medici generations, from Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492) to Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici (1667-1743), the last scion of the House of Medici, who handed the preserved  Medici treasures to the authorities of the city of Florence. The project was intended to explore the process and tendency of the development of the Medici’s collection, which turned out to contain a great number of artworks of high artistic merit ranging in date from the time of the antiquity and Byzantine Empire to the epoch of Baroque.

“The Kremlin’s Treasury” will show the Italian public the richest collection of the oldest Museum of Russia – The Kremlin Armoury, the treasury of Grand Princes and Tsars, rarities related to prominent governors of the Russian state. The exhibition aims to demonstrate the essence of the treasury of Grand Princes and Tsars as a special complex, shaped within centuries.