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Villa La Quiete

History

Acquired in 1432 by Niccolò da Tolentino, Captain of the Florentine Republic, the "Boldrone estate" passed in 1453 to the Medici who then resell it in 1495 only to buy it back in 1530 upon their final come back to Florence. 

Between 1561 and 1627 Cosimo I assigned the "Medici house of Quarto" to the Order he founded, the Knights of Santo Stefano.

In 1627 the Villa was purchased by the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Christina of Lorraine who orders Giovanni da San Giovanni to paint the fresco "La quiete che pacifica i venti" (The quiet that pacifies winds) painted in 1632. This fresco will give the Villa its current name, thus replacing all the others.

In 1650 Ferdinando II, grandson of Christina, sells Villa La Quiete to Eleonora Ramirez de Montalvo, founder of two congregations dedicated to the religious and cultural education of Florentine young women. 

The "Minimum Maidens of the Holy Trinity", of noble extraction, lived with the founder Eleonora, at Villa La Quiete. The "Maidens of the Holy Virgin", mostly of humble origin, lived in the city, first in the Conventino (in the current Via S. Antonino, in the district of San Lorenzo) and then, in 1794, in the monastery of San Jacopo di Ripoli (in via della Scala).

In 1688, commissioned by the Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere, protectress of the Congregation, the Church was built and consecrated. In it are kept to this day some of the most representative works of the Montalve heritage as well as the sepulchre of Eleonora and the cenotaph of the Grand Duchess.

In 1716 the Grand Duchess Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, Electress of the Palatinate, assumed the patronage of the Montalve, choosing La Quiete as a place of holiday and spiritual retreat. The frescoes on the ground floor date back to this period and the Italian garden is still considered among the most beautiful and best preserved Medici Gardens.

Following the Unification of Italy, Villa La Quiete is handed over to the State where the Montalve, gathered in a single community with the arrival at the Villa of the town Sisters from the Convent of Ripoli, continue their work of female education up to the threshold of the twenty-first century.

The "Regio Educandato delle Signore Montalve della Quiete" - founded in 1886 as a lay institution - became a religious institute in the 1940s, named "Istituto delle Montalve", a legal entity distinguished from the "Conservatorio della Quiete" which remains under the protection and superintendence of the State government.

 

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