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| The Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy |
The Uffizi Gallery is one of the oldest and most famous art museums in world. It is situated in Florence, Italy. Since Florence is considered to be the birthplace of Renaissance, there are many Renaissance works and architecture. Many of them can be found in The Uffizi Gallery.
The story about the Uffizi Gallery like most of the sights in Florence is connected with the Medici Family. They were very powerful. They gave Europe popes and queens, bankers and criminals, they were very generous Maecenas and wasteful consumer of Florentine art.
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| The Uffizi Gallery on the inside, Florence, Italy |
The construction of the Galery started 1560. One of the Medici Family - Cosimo I de’ Medici ordered Giorgio Vasari to build a place which will provide the magistrates offices. Alfonso Parigi and Bernardo Buontalenti continued the work of Vasari. The construction of the building ended in 1581. The offices, hence the name, represent two long structures with arcades and colonnades.
The cortile (internal courtyard) is so long and narrow, and open to the Arno River at its far end through a Doric screen that articulates the space without blocking it, that architectural historians treat it as the first regularized streetscape of Europe. Vasari, a painter as well as architect, emphasized the perspective length by the matching facades' continuous roof cornices, and unbroken cornices between storeys and the three continuous steps on which the palace-fronts stand. The niches in the piers that alternate with columns were filled with sculptures of famous artists in the 19th century.
The Palazzo degli Uffizi brought together under one roof the administrative offices, the Tribunal and the state archive (Archivio di Stato). The project that was planned by Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany to arrange that prime works of art in the Medici collections on the piano nobile was effected by Francis I of Tuscany, who commissioned from Buontalenti the famous Tribuna degli Uffizi that united a selection of the outstanding masterpieces in the collection in an ensemble that was a star attraction of the Grand Tour.
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The Birth of Venus, Botticelli, The Uffizi Gallery |
Over the years, further parts of the palace evolved into a display place for many of the paintings and sculpture collected by the Medici family or commissioned by them. According to Vasari, who was not only the architect of the Uffizi but also the author of Lives of the Artists, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo gathered at the Uffizi "for beauty, for work and for recreation."
In 1737 Anna Maria Luiza de Medici, the last from The Medici Family decides do give the Medici collection and the building to the city of Florence. That way was formed one of the first modern museums.
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Primavera, Botticelli, The Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy |
The building of the gallery itself is not a special or even nice one, but this doesn’t matter. After all this is a place containing the most abundant collection of pictures, paintings, engravings of Italian authors from Renaissance, such as Giotto(The Ognissanti Madonna, Badia Polyptych), Leonardo da Vinci (The Annunciation, The Adoration of the Magi), Titian (Flora, Venus of Urbino), Botticelli ( Primavera, The Birth of Venus), Raffael (Madonna of the Goldfinch) , Caravaggio (Bacchus, The Sacrifice of Isaac, Medusa) and Michelangelo(The Doni Tondo),and many works of other artists, a lot of sculptures etc. This explains why there is always a crowds of people waiting for their turn to enter. But don’t be fool, you have to reserve tickets in advance. This is for the best if you are about to visit the Uffizi Gallery.
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