lorence
owes a great deal to Anna Ludovica, the last descendant of the Medici
family, because she stipulated in her will that no part of her property
should ever leave the city, thus ensuring that the art works accumulated
by her family over a period of three centuries remained in Florence.
The result is a collection of treasures which makes the Uffizi the
oldest gallery in Europe, one of the most widely-visited in the
world, and the second in Italy after the Musei Vaticani.
The museum is situated in the Palazzo degli Uffizi, on the southern
side of Palazzo Vecchio, and extends as far as the Lungarno, creating
an oblong piazza called Piazzale degli Uffizi. Built on the orders
of Cosimo I, it was designed around about 1560 by his architect
and Minister of Culture, Vasari, as the offices (Uffizi) of the
13 magistracy which until then had been dotted around the city.
It was built as an adjunct to Palazzo Vecchio and was further confirmation
of the centralised power of Cosimo I.
Cosimo's son, Francesco I, decided in 1518 to exhibit the treasures
of the Grand Duke in the rooms of the Uffizi, and had the tribune
of the Uffizi especially built by Buontalenti. Since then, thanks
above all to the artistic sensibility first of the Medici and then
of the Lorraine dynasty, the gallery has accumulated antique sculptures,
Italian and European painting masterpieces ranging from the XIII
to the XVIII century, collections of prints and antique drawings
It is impossible to list all of the masterpieces exhibited in this
gallery, so one has been chosen to represent them all: La Primavera
by Botticelli (1445-1510), one of the most-widely admired paintings
in the world, which enchants the viewer with its perfect harmony
of forms.
There is still uncertainty as to when it was painted but it is presumed
to have been around 1485. La Primavera was commissioned together
with his Venere by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco dei Medici for his villa
at Castello, where it remained until it was placed on display in
the Uffizi in 1815.
It consists of nine figures in a luxuriant arboreal setting. In
the top-centre of the picture there is a winged Cupid shooting an
arrow, under whom there is a female figure who is looking to her
right towards
three dancers. To their right (on the extreme left of the picture)
there is a youthful figure who
is gazing up into the trees. On the right-hand side of the picture
we can see a female figure adorned with flowers, close to whom there
is another veiled female figure being grabbed by another winged
male figure. This is one of the many readings of this enigmatic
painting.
The Uffizi have recently been undergoing a historic transformation
in that with the creation of the Grandi Uffizi, the exhibition space
is being doubled in order to add a further two thousand works to
the two thousand already on display, using modern exhibition criteria
and providing services in order to make a visit to this vast gallery
easier. All the space vacated by the State Archives in 1988 will
be turned over to the gallery, and by 2002 the new rear exit designed
by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki will have been completed.
It is estimated that by 2004 the number of visitors that can be
admitted to the Uffizi at any one time will have increased from
the current 650 to approximately 2000.
The estimated cost of the work, which has been approved and is being
financed by the Heritage Ministry, is 110 billion lira. The work
should be completed in 2004.
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