“Silk Treasures. Textile Masterpieces from the Falletti Donation” is the first exhibition composed of works from the collection of the Florentine physician Giovanni Falletti—an eclectic collector and scholar of many disciplines—who over fifty years of passionate research preserved and assembled textiles, embroideries, books, prints, jewellery, historical weapons and ritual masks from Europe and from numerous Asian and African countries.
This substantial collection has extraordinarily enriched the Museum’s holdings. Installed in the gallery dedicated to historic textiles, the exhibition unfolds along a chronological path spanning four centuries of outstanding textile manufacture, bringing together styles, productions, materials and subjects—exceptional witnesses to European production from the fifteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century.
Originally used to create sumptuous secular garments for the aristocracies of the time, these textiles, owing to their immense quality and value, were later donated to religious institutions, which reused them to make sacred vestments such as chasubles, dalmatics and copes. This remarkable practice of reuse has ensured the preservation of textile masterpieces, of which the exhibition presents the public with several magnificent examples.
To facilitate the understanding of historical and technical content, the exhibition space is equipped with two multimedia installations that, through different methods and languages, narrate the process of textile production and the development of the art of silk up to the pre-industrial period. Digital microscopes allow visitors to observe at close range the internal structure and the complexity of the weaves of velvets, damasks, brocades and lampas (figured silk textiles). Finally, graphic reproductions placed alongside the textiles illustrate the development of the main decorative motifs adopted by workshops between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Reproductions of significant painted works, displayed next to textiles from the same period, make immediately visible the different functions of these precious silk masterpieces.
