Galleria degli Uffizi
In 1560 Cosimo I commissioned Vasari to design these government offices, or uffici, between the river and the Palazzo Vecchio. The two resultant portico wings are united by an archway that frames a striking view of the Piazza della Signoria from the Arno. Vasari also designed, for the grand duke, a private and covered passageway to take him from the Uffizi over the Ponte Vecchio, and on to his Palazzo Pitti.Cosimo's son turned the Uffizi's upper arcade into a painting gallery for the Medici collection; subsequent generations added to it, until the last Medici left the collection to Tuscany in 1737. Although Napoleon lifted some important works for the Louvre, the Uffizi today still holds one of the most important painting collections in the world. To avoid exhausting yourself, try to be selective or divide your viewing into several visits. For the best short course in the history of Italian art, follow the galleries in their chronological sequence. At the end, you can rest in the terrace bar, where the views of Brunelleschi's dome, Giotto's campanile, and the Palazzo Vecchio tower are worth the price of table service.
It's hard to spend less than two hours at this stunning museum; the sheer range of Italian painting, from the 13th to the 17th centuries, is staggering. Even seasoned art students need a good guidebook to map their way through such a comprehensive collection, although the building itself is not especially large. The premier period here is the Renaissance, and all the greats are represented, including Giotto, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rubens, and Botticelli. Among its most famous holdings is Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Michelangelo's Holy Family, and Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch. The museum has fully recovered from a senseless gangland bombing in 1993.
The painting galleries are on the third floor, or piano 2. There is an elevator (reserved for handicapped) to the galleries, but the grand staircase provides the most fitting access. Midway up is the Print and Drawing Room with its superb, temporary exhibits of Renaissance and Mannerist works. Nearby, Room 2 contains three great altarpieces of the Enthroned Madonna that show the transition in the late 13th century from Byzantine, iconlike formality to the late Gothic interest in depth and portraiture.
Rooms 10–14 contain the most famous works of Botticelli. His Allegory of Spring (1482), with its diaphanously clothed graces dancing against a dense, mysterious forest, and his later Birth of Venus, with its mesmerizing, nude Venus, her skin chalky and luminous, her neck elegantly elongated, are both dreamlike translations of the classical myths so popular during Lorenzo Il Magnifico's rule. Lorenzo himself is portrayed as the arrogant youth on the extreme left of Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi; the artist, cloaked in yellow, confronts you on the right.
In Room 15 you find da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi (c. 1481); unfinished and only an underdrawing, the work is no less than masterful, from the energy of the horses in the background to the pyramidal order of the transcendent virgin in the foreground. Leonardo's Annunciation (c. 1473) is radiant with light, beautiful in its landscape details. In Room 21 are several works by Giorgione and a serene Sacred Allegory by Giovanni Bellini as well as his Composition with Christ.
The west corridor begins with two of the great artists of the High Renaissance. In Room 25 is Michelangelo's Holy Family (1503), painted in the somewhat strident colors now revealed on the cleaned ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In Room 26 are two important Raphael paintings, Madonna with Goldfinch (c. 1506), heavily influenced by Leonardo, and Portrait of Leo X (c. 1518), a searching portrayal of the artist's papal patron, plus three other works including Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere. Here, too, are paintings by Andrea del Sarto. The next few rooms exhibit other Florentine works from the early 16th century—the Mannerists Rosso Fiorentino, Pontormo, and Bronzino.
Room 28 is full of the works of the Venetian artist, Titian. His Venus of Urbino (1538) presents an art form almost modern in its play of light and very Venetian in its sumptuousness. Titian's portraits show the same dramatic use of light and his Gentleman from Malta seems a precursor of Rembrandt.
The three Rembrandts in Room 44 seem quite comfortable with all the paintings preceding them. In fact, 17th-century European art grew out of the Italian tradition. As you will already have observed in the Sala di Rubens (Room 41), the Venetian color and Roman monumentality of Rubens's works prove his eight years of study in Italy. But the dynamism of his crowd scenes in Henry IV Enters Paris and Henry IV's Battle d'Ivry come as something of a shock after so much Renaissance calm. The restless surfaces of the Baroque transformed Rome, then swept Europe. Soon after, artistic developments no longer centered on the Italian peninsula.
Address:
Piazzale degli Uffizi
Florence
Italy
Telephone: +39 (55) 21-83-41