page_title: Villa del Poggio Imperiale
section_title: Interior design
hierarchical_section_title: Villa del Poggio Imperiale / Interior design
caption_attribution_description: Villa_di_Poggio_Imperiale, salone_bianco
context_page_description: Villa del Poggio Imperiale is a predominantly neoclassical former grand ducal villa in Arcetri, just to the south of Florence in Tuscany, central Italy. Beginning as a villa of the Baroncelli of Florence, it was seized by the Medici, became the home of a homicidal and unfaithful husband, and a lavish retreat for a Grand Duchess with imperial pretensions. Later given to Napoleon's sister, it was reclaimed by the hereditary rulers of Tuscany before being finally converted to a prestigious girls' school. During its long history, it has often been at the centre of Italy's turbulent history, and has been rebuilt and redesigned many times.
context_section_description: The original 1487 plan of the Poggio Imperiale bears little resemblance to the  present day neoclassical layout. Originally, the building was a country manor house belonging to the Baroncelli family; this passed to the Pandolfini family, and eventually in 1622 it was sold to the Grand Duchess Maria Maddelena of Austria. This change of ownership was to mark the beginning of a slow transformation from provincial country manor to grand, imperial villa. The Grand Duchess immediately commissioned the building's "restoration, enlargement, and embellishment."
  The commission was granted to the architect Giulio Parigi, who between 1622 and 1625, introduced a more ornate Baroque style, and the later version of Baroque, Rococo. This was achieved with an expanded floor plan, lengthening the facades and elevations. These longer facades were in the late 18th century deprived of their Baroque ornament to create the chaste austere neoclassical architecture seen at the villa today.
  "The eminent architectural historian Carlo Cresti describes Parigi's 1624 design as yielding a corps de logis flanked by two lower, symmetrical wings with terraces and semicircular concave profiles. Inside the Villa, Parigi restructured the old central courtyard and the rooms of the grand-ducal apartment, which were frescoed by Matteo Rosselli and his pupils."
  A further period of enhancement took place when the villa passed to the Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere who created the ground-floor rooms situated at the crest of the inner courtyard designed by Giacinto Maria Marmi. Between 1681 and 1683, the courtyard and its surrounding loggias were further re-designed by the architect Giovanni Battista Foggini.
  Between 1766-1783, the architect Gaspare Paoletti, during the third and final renovation of the villa, accomplished the definitive restructuring of the villa to twice its previous size. Paoletti added the two flanking inner courtyards to the central courtyard, and also designed the rear facade and the great ballroom on the piano nobile. This was embellished with the notable stuccowork by Giocondo and Grato Albertolli.
  The principal facade, however, was not to be transformed until ownership of the villa passed to Maria Louisa of Bourbon, the Queen of Etruria, who in 1806 assigned the project to the architect Pasquale Poccianti. Poccianti extended this effort of complete neoclassical transformation (of the facade) to include a rusticated five-bay portico flanked by a theater and a chapel. The facade was completed under the eventual ownership of Napoleon's sister Elisa Baciocchi, then the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, who hired the architect Giuseppe Cacialli to freely adapt the completion of Poccianti's original plans. The free adaptation by Cacialli allowed him to supplement the original piano nobile with luminous peristyle including stuccowork and wall paintings. With the return of the House of Lorraine in 1814, the previously designed chapel and guard house were at last built, and a number of rooms were embellished by the painters Domenico Nani and Giorgio Angiolini.
caption: The neoclassical plaster-work of the White Salon
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