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This room holds two Pitti Top 10s: Raphael’s La Velata and Giorgione’s Three Ages of Man . Early Renaissance masterpieces include Perugino’s Madonna del Sacco , a subtle study of spatial relationships, and a small, wrinkly St Jerome either by Verrocchio or Piero di Pollaiuolo. Andrea del Sarto painted St John the Baptist (1523) in a Classical style, but his Annunciation (1512) is proto Mannerist. Fra’ Bartolomeo’s Lamentation of the Dead Christ (1512) and Bronzino’s Guidobaldo Della Rovere (1532) are High Renaissance works that anticipate the Baroque.

Raphael’s entire career is covered here, from the Leonardesque Madonna del Granduca (1506) to his late Vision of Ezekiel (1518). Among his other Madonnas and portraits, seek out the Mona Lisa-inspired Maddalena Doni (1506), which heavily influenced Renaissance portraiture. Raphael’s Umbrian teacher Perugino painted a strikingly composed Lamentation of the Dead Christ (1495). Fra’ Bartolomeo’s Stupor Mundi (1516) and del Sarto’s fresh Annunciation and Dispute of the Trinity (1517) then round out the room.

Titian finds a home here: his Mary Magdalene hangs near his Portrait of an Englishman (1540). Influential works abound: Andrea del Sarto’s Pietà (1522) and Holy Family (1523) helped found the Mannerist style. The tight, focused power of the Sacred Conversation (1522), by del Sarto’s student Rosso Fiorentino, was affected when the painting was later artificially extended to fit a large Baroque frame. The Classical style of Bolognese artists Guido Reni (a late Cleopatra ) and Guercino (an early Resurrection of Tabitha ) helped inform the burgeoning Baroque.

The centrepiece of the room is a Venus carved by Canova to replace the ancient original Napoleon had shipped to Paris (now in the Uffizi). Titian steals the show with The Concert (1510; his elder, Giorgione, may have contributed), a Portrait of Julius II (1545) copied from Raphael, and the celebrated Portrait of Pietro Aretino (1545). Rubens’s bucolic Return from the Hayfields is often overlooked.

Rubens dominates with The Consequences of War (1638) and Four Philosophers (1612), which includes portraits of himself (far left) and his brother. The fine portrait collection includes the penetrating Portrait of a Man (1550), which is attributed to Veronese, Luigi Conaro (1560), which is now attributed to Tintoretto, Ippolito de’ Medici (1532) by Titian and Cardinal Bentivoglio by Van Dyck.

After Napoleon’s Bathroom, the quality really peters out, though the names – Tintoretto, Rubens, Botticelli, Pontormo – remain major. The only masterworks are Raphael’s Madonna dell’Impannata (1514) and a Filippo Lippi Madonna and Child (1450), the museum’s oldest painting. Compare Signorelli’s Sacra Famiglia , which influenced Michelangelo’s in the Uffizi, with that of Beccafumi – a Mannerist take informed by Michelangelo’s work.

Raphael’s unusual, almost Flemish-style portrait of a pregnant woman, La Gravida (1506), is the star of the room. Andrea del Sarto is represented by a pair of Assumptions (1523 and 1526). Artemisia Gentileschi is also represented: she was the Baroque’s only noted female artist and often portrayed strong female biblical characters, including Mary Magdalene and Judith , in her works.

Paintings are on temporary display in this long entrance hall, but a few have been here for years, including Caravaggio’s violent genre scene The Toothpuller (officially an Uffizi painting), and an early Rubens Risen Christ . Don’t miss the gorgeous 19th-century table in pietre dure – the Florentine art of inlaid stone.

Two works of particular note here: Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid (1608) is a study in realism and chiaroscuro. Christofano Allori’s Judith Beheading Holofernes has double meanings: every face is a portrait. Judith is the artist’s girlfriend, the old woman looking on bears the face of her mother, and Holofernes’ decapitated head is Allori’s self-portrait.

The Sala della Stufa preserves Pietro da Cortona frescoes and 1640 majolica flooring. Napoleon’s Empire-style bathroom is one of the few Pitti remnants of the Frenchman’s brief Italian reign.