From February 7 to May 14 at the Museum of the Treasury of the Grand Dukes in Palazzo Pitti, the summer residence of the Medici family, the largest exhibition ever dedicated to the figure of Grand Duchess Eleonora da Toledo, wife of Cosimo I and daughter of the Viceroy of Naples, who was gifted with extraordinary organizational skills. Introducing Spanish etiquette to Florence Eleonora played a key role in the construction of the Medici court and radically revolutionized the fashion of the elites, while contributing to the transformation of the Tuscan landscape.
Together with her husband Cosimo I she achieved important goals: increasing the stability of the state, securing the throne for her first son and the purple for her second, and raising Cosimo to grand ducal dignity, a goal achieved only after the death of Eleonora, who died of tuberculosis at the age of only forty.
Eleanor was an icon of beauty, queen of the fashion and costume of her time, an influential political figure, and a lover of art: in more than one hundred works including paintings, sculptures, drawings, luxurious antique dresses, and jewelry this exhibition describes the life and cultural impact of the Grand Lady of the 16th century.
