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To mark the 300th anniversary of the death of Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici (1663-1713), the Galleria degli Uffizi is planning to devote a celebratory exhibition to this key figure who was one of the most important collectors and patrons of the arts in the entire history of the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

The son of Cosimo III and of Marguerite-Louise d'Orléans, Ferdinando nurtured two overriding interests, in the theatre and music and in the figurative arts, from a very early age.

The exhibition sets out to convey the complexity of his interests and the innovative nature of his approach which drew the leading artists of the era (musicians, instrumentalists, painters and sculptors) to Florence between the end of the 17th century and the first decade of the 18th.

The exhibition is broken down into sections illustrating the complex issues surrounding the prince's cultural inclinations, while also presenting the buildings in which his patronage was played out.

June 26 - November 3, 2013

Admission
Full price: € 11.00;
Concessions: € 5.50 for EU citizens aged 18 to 25
Admission free under 18
Admission free for EU citizens over 65

Opening hours
Tuesdays - Sundays 8:15 am to 6:50 pm, ticket office closes at 6:00 pm
Through September 24, on Tuesdays 8:15 am to 10:00 pm
The Uffizi is closed on Mondays!

More information on this exhibit can be found at the following links:

http://www.polomuseale.firenze.it/en/mostre/mostra.php?t=51c03f74f1c3bcfc1c000104

http://www.unannoadarte.it/granprincipe/eng/index.html

From 12/18/2012 until 03/18/2013

Guardare Rembrandt con gli occhi di Morandi per capire il segreto della loro lontanante vicinanza: questo l'intento della prossima mostra al Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, dove la visione delle opere sarà esaltata dal nuovo impianto di illuminazione.

Che Morandi, proprio agli inizi della sua formazione autodidattica come incisore, si fosse interessato a Rembrandt è risaputo. Nella sua biblioteca non mancavano pubblicazioni sull'artista olandese, mentre nella collezione figuravano almeno cinque incisioni. Morandi, dunque, deve aver tenuto sotto gli occhi a lungo quegli autentici capolavori di bravura tecnica tesi a descrivere la complessa ricchezza della realtà fenomenologica, ma poi, quando si risolse a incidere, parve, con un colpo d'ala improvviso, liberarsene: all'opulenza tecnica e descrittiva di Rembrandt oppose l'estrema rarefazione della "sua" natura, rinunciando a ogni complicata commissione di acquaforte, puntasecca e bulino per puntare quasi esclusivamente, dopo le sperimentazioni tecniche degli anni fra il 1921 e il 1923, sulle acqueforti.

Lamberto Vitali, che nel 1957 dedicò all'opera grafica di Morandi una monografia ancora oggi fondamentale, parla, in effetti, di un momento rembrandtiano, cui appartengono soprattutto stampe dei primi anni Venti. Ma l'accostarsi di Giorgio Morandi a Rembrandt segue le strade, più nascoste e impervie, dell'emulazione, piuttosto che quelle, più ostentate e scontate, dell'imitazione e, per certi versi, ci ricorda il cammino sapientemente imboccato dal maestro olandese in direzione delle incisioni di Lucas van Leyden e di Dürer.
Il punto di incontro con Rembrandt, Morandi lo rintraccia, infatti, soprattutto sul piano della verità del segno, che non vuol dire ricerca di una vicinanza iconografica, stilistica o morale, ma emulazione delle potenzialità espressive della linea incisa.

L'unica volta che si ispirava a Rembrandt anche dal punto di vista iconografico, con la sua Conchiglia del 1921, Morandi lo farà emulando (non copiando) la sola natura morta dovuta all'olandese, quel conus marmoreus del 1650, che per la sapiente "ricreazione" dell'artista pare cambiare pelle e dal mondo dei naturalia trasmigrare in quello degli artificialia.
Morandi stesso, nella nota intervista rilasciata al Prof. Mangravite il 25 aprile del 1957 per "Voice of America", aveva asserito: "Per me non vi è nulla, cioè ritengo che non vi sia nulla di più surreale e nulla di più astratto del reale".

Fine article in the Financial Times by Rachel Spence about the current show at the Uffizi - Bagliori Dorati or "The Gleam of Gold":

There are artists who seduce and artists who stun. Gentile da Fabriano was of the latter camp. Commissioned in 1423 by the Florentine merchant and banker Palla Strozzi to create an altarpiece for his family chapel, the Umbrian-born painter saw it as a a golden opportunity to flaunt his talent as draftsman, storyteller and decorator extraordinaire.

Into one canvas, "The Adoration of the Magi", he crams a fairytale world of castles, mountains, gardens and exotic animals including a monkey perched on the back of a camel. Such melodrama would overwhelm the sacred story in the foreground did its characters not glitter in robes and halos of unbridled sumptuousness. A highlight of the Uffizi Gallery's permanent collection, "The Adoration" is one of the touchstones of International Gothic, the artistic style at the heart of this new exhibition.

Read the whole thing: Bagliori Dorati: International Gothic in Florence 1375-1440, Uffizi Galleries, Florence. There is more information here. Until November 4th.

From 15 December 2011 to 29 January 2012, in the Sala delle Reali Poste, the Uffizi hosts the eleventh edition of the "Never Seen Before" cycle with the Faces Unveiled exhibition, organised and promoted by the Friends of the Uffizi (responsible for the major contribution made for the restorations carried out for the occasion) in liaison with the Uffizi Gallery.

Curated by Fabrizio Paolucci, Director of the Department of Classical Antiquities at the Uffizi Gallery, and Valentina Conticelli, Director of the Eighteenth-century Art Department at the Uffizi Gallery, the exhibition celebrates this new appointment of the Never Seen Before by restoring to public enjoyment a central segment of the collection of classical sculptures belonging to the grand-ducal collections: that of the portraits of emperors and private citizens which have always been displayed at intervals along the corridors of the exhibition itinerary.

The exhibition brings back to light and allows the public to view 44 busts composing the series of the "Caesars in marble", the finest and most important portraits of the unseen collection of the Uffizi. Presented alongside the selection of busts are 23 works (paintings and drawings), portraits and self-portraits that illustrate how great the interest in the antique was among the artists, while at the same time also revealing direct references to the heads themselves.

The exhibit has been extended until January 8th - there is a review of the exhibit from the Financial Times here.

On the fifth centenary of the birth of Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), this exhibition is devoted to the foundation of the Uffizi (1559-1560): more than a building, an architectural system on urban scale that emerged from the close collaboration between the Duke, Cosimo I de' Medici, and Vasari, his favourite artist. Standing in the heart of the city, where it reflects the absolutist and centralising policy of Cosimo I, the complex was designed to bring together the administrative institutions of government, the so-called Magistrature and the Guilds, subjecting them - logistically and symbolically - to the direct rule of the young Duke.

The memory of this original destination lives on in the name of the Uffizi, literally "offices". The ingenious versatility of the Arezzo-born Vasari was displayed in his capacity to give spatial form and architectural conviction to his commissioner's political programme and desire for self-representation. The building is in fact an emblematic fragment of a new city, sealing into a single organism the two ducal residences of Palazzo Vecchio (the seat of government) and the Pitti Palace beyond the Arno, impressing upon the city the physical presence of Power in the shape of architecture.

The long colonnaded piazza of the Uffizi also functions as an authentic open-air antechamber leading into both Piazza della Signoria, with its whirl of statues celebrating the Duke, and into Palazzo Vecchio where the rooms renovated and redecorated by Vasari celebrate the apotheosis of Cosimo and his dynasty. The architectural structure of the Uffizi, which was without paragon in the sixteenth-century world and was destined to become a model, was crowned at the top by a long loggia which, when construction was complete, came to house precious antique statues from the Medici collections. This secondary and almost incidental use then developed over the centuries into the collection and display functions that now characterise the Uffizi, the epitome of the art museum.

The exhibition, which takes as its cue the personalities of the protagonists - the Duke and his artist - starts by training the spotlight on the urban layout of the area between Palazzo Vecchio and the Arno prior to the construction of the Uffizi; it then goes on to illustrate the phases of design and construction of the complex, which was the most extensive and most demanding building site of sixteenth-century Florence. The spatial and figurative connotations of the monumental complex are underscored, comprising the wooden doors of the Magistrates' offices.

The formal and typological elements drew inspiration from the antique Roman architecture well known to Vasari and to the erudite humanists of his circle, including Paolo Giovio and Vincenzo Borghini, but also from the contemporary architecture of both Venice and Rome, where the artist had frequently sojourned. The highly-organised building site, masterfully controlled by the military architect Bernardo Puccini, is evoked here by the working tools of the time, alongside finds only recently discovered after having been buried for centuries in the infill of the vaults. Beyond all this, the Uffizi was also the mature fruit of an exuberant artistic milieu polarised by the court, looming over which was the terrible magnificence of the genius of Michelangelo. Gravitating around it were lead roles and supporting players: Pierfrancesco Riccio, major-domo to the Duke, Luca Martini, Cosimo Bartoli and Benedetto Varchi, who are also evoked in the exhibition.

This was a competitive ambience, which held aloof from and challenged Vasari as a provincial from Arezzo, up to his triumphal entry into the service of the Duke in 1554. These two phases of rejection and acceptance are illustrated in the exhibition by the works of the artists who hampered Vasari's admittance and those who fostered it, unfurling a dense artistic and cultural weft that marked the apex of the flowering of the Florentine Renaissance, emblematically illustrated by the legendary pomp of the wedding of Prince Francesco and Joanna of Austria (1565), the inaugural ceremony for the as yet unfinished Uffizi complex.

The artistic consolidation of Vasari, which went hand-in-hand with his political legitimisation, was driven not only by his artistic activity, but also by his work as a historian, boosted by the foundation of the Accademia del Disegno. The two editions of his Lives of the Artists (1550 and 1568), which brought the enterprising provincial a fame that went beyond the confines of the Duchy, are on display alongside his sonnets, letters and drawings, together with the statutes of the Accademia behind which he was the driving force.

da/from 9 Sep 11 fino a/until 6 Nov 11

Francesco Clemente. The Tarot

The interest of the Uffizi Prints and Drawings Department in the contemporary dates back to its very origins, in other words the mid-17th century. In effect, alongside the works of the Renaissance period, which were appreciated largely for their historic value, Cardinal Leopoldo through his own interests as a collector, and Filippo Baldinucci in the role of first curator and organiser of the collection, both revealed an intrigued systematic and constant attention towards the "moderns", who were at this time the artists of the Baroque period. The same can be said of the periods that followed, which explains the chronological continuity of the graphic works present in the collection.

Without aspiring to a complete planning of contemporary acquisitions, which are entrusted above all to the qualified generosity of donations, the GDSU is still today open towards living artists and those who lived in the century just ended. This explains why it welcomes in its own modern, albeit already "historic" spaces, a sequence of display initiatives that alternate the so-called Old Masters with presences and narrations that have the value of absolute modernity.

It is within this framework of institutional vocation that we can place the exhibition addressed to Francesco Clemente (Naples 1952) who, perhaps precisely in an awareness of the complex and stratified artistic tradition of this site, has chosen to express his unmistakable creative vein at the Uffizi by addressing a topic as ancient as that of the Tarot.

The drawings, executed in different parts of the world - including Naples, New York, India and New Mexico - call to mind the private places of Clemente, but also the global and collective geography which each of us is experiencing, at least virtually. And the portraits of the exponents of a cosmopolitan cultural community, inserted into the allegorical illustrations of the Astral bodies, the Virtues and the Triumphs, bring together the new and the old continents in a play of glances orchestrated by the artist, who portrays himself in the arcana of the Fool. Alongside the Tarot, twelve canvases in the Sala del Camino featuring the same number of self-portraits of Clemente in the garb of Apostle, continue the mesh of temporal cross-references between the figurative of the past and that of one of the numerous possible presents.

The current special exhibit at the Uffizi is "Caravaggio e caravaggeschi a Firenze" - from May 22nd to October 17th:

"Florence and Caravaggio: sound like a gamble?

Did Caravaggio actually come through Florence?

Did he see, as some would claim, the wonderful botanical watercolours by Jacopo Ligozzi in the Medici collection?

It is certain that he frequented the Palazzo Firenze in Rome whence ambassador Cardinal Del Monte kept on good terms with grand duke Ferdinando I de' Medici. While the other interrogatives remain without answers for the moment, we know that splendid paintings by Caravaggio - the Bacchus and the Medusa - reached the Uffizi already towards the end of the XVI century. Others (two or three) were in time purchased by the Grand Dukes who thus proved to be early and staunch admirers - especially Cosimo II - of the controversial Lombard painter and of his followers and imitators. The presence of important artists in the city such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Battistello Caracciolo and Theodoor Rombouts, and the direct dealings with artists like Gerrit Honthorst, Bartolomeo Manfredi and Jusepe Ribera gave rise to an intense Caravaggesque "season" which left an extraordinary number of paintings at the court and in the city that after Rome still today boasts the largest collection of Caravaggesque paintings in the world. Gerrit Honthorst (who authored the Adoration of the Shepherds, today in the Uffizi Gallery, though heavily damaged by the Via dei Georgofili bombing of 1993) was the protagonist of one of the most important episodes of the fortune of Caravaggesque painting outside of Rome. This was the never completed decoration of the Guicciardini Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita which he was to execute with Cecco del Caravaggio (the Resurrection of Christ, Art Institute of Chicago) and Spadarino and of which, for the first time, the exhibition proposes a virtual reconstruction.

Thanks to the outstanding Florentine legacy of works by Caravaggio, a nucleus of Caravaggesque paintings, and numerous loans, two of the most important state museums of Florence - the Uffizi Gallery and the Palatine Gallery - will host the Caravaggio and Caravaggesque exhibition in Florence, on the occasion of the IV centennial of Caravaggio's death. Forty years after the pioneering exhibition curated by Evelina Borea, the event will be the occasion to present more than one hundred paintings, both famous and less famous, in the light of research, documents and new attributions that have modified the critical panorama and the taste of the public."