Rodolfo Siviero House Museum
The museum in Florence offers a collection of artworks by 20th-century masters
Rodolfo Siviero, nicknamed the 007 of art for having been the director of the “Delegation for recovering stolen works” for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and for bringing back hundreds of masterpieces to Italy that were taken during World War II, upon his death, in 1983, left his house in Florence to the Region of Tuscany, along with all the artworks and furnishings it contained, provided that the property be transformed into a museum open to the public.
Today, the Rodolfo Siviero House Museum conserves his personal collection and visitors can see the apartment on the ground floor of the 19th-century palace, built during Giuseppe Poggi’s urban redevelopment of the city that took place when Florence was the capital of Italy in the 1860s.
The collection is not the result of Siviero’s professional recovery of stolen artworks, but is a private collection built up over his lifetime. The holdings include ancient Roman busts and 15th-century and Baroque paintings (Maestro della Natività Johnson, Bicci di Lorenzo, Pietro Liberi and Orizzonte).
The collection’s 20th-century works are of particular interest, with pieces by Giorgio de Chirico, Ardengo Soffici, Giacomo Manzù and Pietro Annigoni, artists who were personal friends of Siviero.
Accessibility information: regione.toscana.it
