Palazzo Medici Riccardi Museum

I walked into the Palazzo Medici Riccardi Museum with an open mind curious as to what I was about to see.  It was hard for me to believe that at one point this was someone’s home because of how well it serves as an elaborate art museum.  The collections present include modern art painters, sculptors, and photographers and while we were there we were able to meet one of the artists.  Walking through this maze of artwork I was forgetting the purpose of my visit because of how the space has been adapted.  It was very hard to see this as a private residence.  Traveling up the stairs then led to and gave a look towards what this building was like as a home.  The grand rooms, furnishings, chandeliers, and tapestries all express so much wealth.  The Benozzo Gozzoli Chapel was seemingly tucked away and was constructed into a very small room within the huge palace.  It is symmetrical and no square inch of wall was left without pigment nor floor space without detailed decoration.  It was as miraculous as walking into any other of the churches we have seen.  The Renaissance style was difference from the decoration of the rest of the surrounding rooms.  It is hard for me to comprehend a family constructing a sacred space like this in their home, but it is a clear reflection of the Renaissance and the influence the Medici family  had on artists of the time, commissioning them to create spaces like this one.