The Uffizi will open eight rooms of Florentine Quattrocento art in the wing once damaged by the bombing in via dei Georgofili 21 years ago, thanks to a donation made by the Salvatore Ferragamo company.
(Room 26 of the Uffizi Gallery, current state)
The announcement was made this morning at a press conference held in the former church of San Pier Scheraggio.
Ferragamo has signed an agreement with Florence’s department of city museums, pledging to donate 600,000 euro, which the department has decided to allocate to the renovation of eight rooms located at the start of the Uffizi Gallery’s Third Corridor. The renovation will include upgrading the air conditioning and dehumidification systems, security systems (motion detectors, infra-red detectors and video cameras), restoring the flooring in certain areas and installing a new lighting system. The revamped rooms are expected to open within 12 months.
(Luca Signorelli, Annunciation, Nativity, Adoration of the Magi, oil on panel, cm 21 x 210, inv. 1890 n. 1613)
Together with recovered rooms 33 and 34, rooms 25 to 32 of the Uffizi Gallery, which were previously home to 16th-century Florentine, Veneto and Lombard paintings by artists such as Michelangelo to Lotto, form a “small U” that begins and ends at the start of the Third Corridor.
(Lorenzo di Credi, Venus, oil on canvas, cm 160 x 76, inv. 1890 n. 3094)
Upon completion of the work, the rooms will display 50-something 15th-century Florentine artworks, a third of which will come from the museum’s storages. The new layout will include paintings by Ghirlandaio and Baldovinetti in room 25, Cosimo Rosselli, Jacopo del Sellaio and Florentine painters in room 26, Filippino Lippi in room 27, Piero di Cosimo and others in room 28, Perugino in room 29, Lorenzo di Credi in room 30, and Luca Signorelli in rooms 31 and 32.
