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Raphael did many portraits, usually of Madonnas, and several of his best are in these collections. La Velata (1516) is his masterpiece of the form, demonstrating his mastery of colour, light and form. The sitter is most likely La Fornarina, Raphael’s Roman girlfriend.

Venus tries to stop Mars going to war, while a Fate pulls him towards it (1638;). This was an ageing Rubens’s plea against his homeland becoming embroiled in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48).

The first (1535) of many Mary Magdalenes painted by the Venetian master Titian.

The Renaissance garden with Baroque and Rococo touches has cypress avenues, hidden statues and burbling fountains.

Filippo Lippi has masterfully placed the Madonna’s chin in this 1450 painting’s geometric centre, helping to unite a complex composition involving both the main scene and background images from the life of the Virgin.

The attribution of this allegorical work of 1500 to Giorgione is not certain, but it is a beautiful piece nonetheless, with a strong sense of colour and composition. Compare it with the Baroque Four Ages of Man (1637), which was frescoed by Pietro da Cortona on the ceiling of the Sala della Stufa.

The best-preserved room in the royal apartments (Appartamenti Reali) contains such lavish furnishings as an ebony cabinet inlaid with semi-precious stones and bronze. The ceiling of the Green Room is set with trompe l’oeil stuccoes and a canvas by Luca Giordano.

Mannerist architecture was a robust, oversized retake on the Renaissance. Bartolomeo Ammannati expounded this in dramatic, heavily rusticated Classical orders (1560–70).

On the second floor, the modern art museum’s masterpiece is a work (1850) by Giovanni Fattori. He was the greatest of the Macchaioli, a 19th-century Tuscan school with parallels to Impressionism.

Mannerist cavern dripping with stylized stalactites, Giambologna statues and plaster casts of Michelangelo’s Slaves .