Uffizi Gallery

The collection ranges from ancient Greek art to works by Rembrandt, but it’s its large collection of Renaissance masterpieces that makes it one of the world’s leading art museums. The Uffizi suffered significant damage from a terrorist bombing in 1993, but has since undergone significant renovations. The museum is so popular that visitors are admitted in groups of a few dozen, so it’s best to get there early.

Overview :

The Galleria degli Uffizi is the most visited and iconic art museum in the Florence region of Italy. It was founded in the mid-16th century under the plans of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of the Medici family, and was built and decorated by Giorgio Vasari and his pupils, including the famous painter and architect of the time.

The Uffizi Palace was completed in 1581, during the reign of Cosimo I’s son, Francisco de’ Medici, and served primarily as the official residence of the Medici family, which exercised centralized power.

Uffizi means “office” in Italian. Consisting of two palaces and a corridor connecting them, it was converted into an art museum by Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, the last heiress of the Medici family, and became one of the world’s leading collections of Renaissance paintings.

The Uffizi Gallery contains important works by Italian Renaissance painters from the 14th to 16th centuries, as well as Baroque and Rococo painters from the 17th and 18th centuries, and German and French Renaissance painters.

History:

The Uffizi (Italian for office) was built in the mid-16th century by the architect Giorgio Vasari. This was the time when Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Great Duke of Tuscany, was consolidating his power at the start of his reign, and he built the Uffizi to bring his cabinet together at the center of his power, where he also founded the Florentine Navy. The Uffizi was completed in 1581, during the reign of Cosimo I’s son, Grand Duke Francisco de’ Medici.

The palace’s structure is shaped like a horse’s hoof, with two buildings and a corridor between them: the Signoria and the Vecchio, with the Arno River running between them, and the Vassari Corridor, which connects the two palaces, above the river, so that the family could travel to and from their homes and offices through the corridor. The Medici family was interested in culture and the arts and patronized many artists, and when the Uffizi Palace was built, the first three floors of the building were devoted to collecting and displaying art. The Uffizi Palace and its artworks were donated by Anna Maria Luisa, the last heiress of the Medici family, in 1737, and officially opened to the public in 1765.

The Uffizi Palace became the Uffizi Gallery after the donation, and after the unification of Italy, it became the National Gallery. In 1800, the sculpture collection was transferred to the National Gallery and the National Archaeological Museum, with the exception of a few pieces, and the Uffizi now houses paintings, manuscripts, and some sculptures.

Featured collections :

The Uffizi Gallery is organized to be visited from the front of the east wing. The paintings can be viewed on three floors, and thanks to the circulation and chronological organization of the museum, visitors can enjoy the works in chronological order. The first room features altarpieces by Cimabue and Giotto di Bondone, pioneers of the Renaissance Florentine school of painting. They are said to be impressive because they showcase the new artistic trends of the early Renaissance and the humanization of divine images. The elegance of the Sienese school can be seen in the paintings of Duccio di Buoninsegna and his pupils Simone Martini and Pierto Lorenzetti in rooms 3 and 4, and in rooms 5, Rooms 5 and 6 are devoted to international Gothic paintings from the early 15th century, including the Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabriano and Lorenzo Monaco.

Perhaps the best-known room in the Uffizi Gallery is Room 7, where you can see Florentine School paintings that mark the beginning of the Renaissance in the 15th century. In Room 7, you’ll find works by Masaccio, a master of perspective, Paolo Uccello, who studied perspective drawing, and Domenico Veneziano, a Florentine school whose oil paintings were influenced by northern European art, Fra’ Angelico, a religious painter who was also a friar and is known for reconciling his faith with his art, and Piero della Francesca, a pupil of Veneziano who wrote on the art of perspective painting. Next is Room 8, where you’ll find a variety of graceful depictions of the Virgin Mary by Filippo Lippi, who was a prolific artist. Filippo Lippi is known as Raphael’s teacher, and was a friar who lived in a monastery from an early age, but famously fell in love with a nun, Booty, when he went to paint an altarpiece for a convent. In Room 9, you can admire Antonio del Pollaiolo’s lighthearted portraits of the nuns.

Then there are rooms 10-14, where you’ll find mythological and devotional paintings by the famous Sandro Bottidelli. These rooms have been newly renovated and reconstructed and feature some of Botticelli’s greatest works, including the Birth of Venus, the Primavera, the Annunciation, the Coronation of the Virgin, the Virgin Clothed in Red, and the Hymn to the Virgin. In Room 15, you’ll find Leonardo da Vinci’s Baptism of Christ and Verrocchio’s Adoration of the Magi, a collaboration with da Vinci and Verrocchio.

Rooms 16-23 are the oldest in the Uffizi Gallery and are special in that they showcase some of Uffizi’s earliest settings. These rooms, some of which were once the Medici family’s armory, now house Renaissance works by Bellini, Giorgione, Perugino and others, as well as works by German and Belgian regional painters from the 15th and 16th centuries. Room 18 is La Tribuna, the famous octagonal room designed by Buontalenti, the architect who completed the Uffizi. Inside the room is an octagonal table dating from 1589 and attributed to the Renaissance designer Jacopo Ligozzi. In the center of the room is a 1st century BC statue of the goddess, often referred to as the Medici’s Venus, and a painting of Cupid Playing a Lute by Ross Fiorentino.

After passing through the Bazzari Corridor, a passageway over the Arno River, you’ll come to Room 25, Michelangelo’s room, where you’ll find Tondo Doni, the artist’s only extant painting. Painted in a round, circular frame, it is believed to have been commissioned by the Florentine magnate Arnolo Doni and his wife to commemorate the birth of their daughter Maria. In Room 26, you’ll find more 16th-century masterpieces, including Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch and Titian’s Venus of Urbino. This is followed by works by Mannerism painters, and then by Venetian painters.

Room 41 contains works by Rubens, including a painting depicting the Triumphs of Henry IV of France and a portrait of the artist’s wife. Room 42 is called the “Niobe Room” and includes a gold and white plaster statue of Niobe (daughter of Tantalus in Greek mythology, the protagonist of a tragedy in which she boasts of having many children, only to have them all die, symbolizing a woman weeping over the loss of her children) and marble works depicting her children. In Room 43, you can enjoy 17th-century paintings, including Caravagio’s Young Bacchus and Abraham and Isaac.

After passing through Room 44, which features works by Dutch and Belgian painters, including various self-portraits by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, you’ll come across 18th-century works. The final room is dedicated to 18th-century paintings from Italy and Europe. Here you can admire works by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Francesco Lazzaro Guardi, Jean-Marc Nattier, and Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, among others, as well as the Spanish painter Francisco José de Goya. The Bazari Corridor, meanwhile, is home to a collection of self-portraits by famous artists, but you’ll need to make a separate reservation to see the works in this corridor.

Visiting Detail:

Location : Piazza degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy
Open : Tuesday – Sunday 08:15 – 18:30
Sundays and public holidays 10:00~19:00
Last entry 17:30
Closed days: Closed on Mondays, December 25
Founded : 1765
Annual attendance : Approximately 1,650,000
Official Website : www.uffizi.it