A new cultural project is blossoming in the Boboli Gardens: through “Primavera di Boboli,” supported by Italy’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Florentine-founded fashion giant Gucci will finance a two million euro restoration of Palazzo Pitti’s 33-acre green space. Marco Bizzarri, president and CEO of Gucci, announced the initiative alongside Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Galleries, of which the Palazzo Pitti complex is part.
The Fountain of Neptune in the Boboli Gardens | Ph. Toni Almodóvar Escuder
Funds will be distributed over a three-year period and will go toward preserving the gardens’ unique aesthetic, comprising sculpture, architecture, intricate landscaping and plants dating back to the 16th century. To celebrate the partnership, Gucci will hold a Cruise 2018 show in Palazzo Pitti’s Palatine Gallery, which overlooks the gardens.
This is the first time that the gallery will host a fashion show, but the venue choice reflects a recent pattern for Gucci: last year, the brand held its Cruise 2017 runway show in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey in London—a first for the historic church.
Bizzarri commented, “Gucci is a global brand with solidly Florentine origins {…} After presenting the most recent Cruise collections in New York’s Art District in 2015 and in London’s Westminster Abbey in 2016, celebrating the upcoming Cruise collection in the heart of this city has a special meaning, one that is consistent with the cultural and aesthetic path of {Creative Director} Alessandro Michele, who finds neverending inspiration in the city of Florence and in its Renaissance masterpieces.”
Schmidt echoed Bizzarri’s comments, highlighting the initiative’s long-term importance for the gardens: “We are truly grateful to Gucci for choosing the Palatine Gallery, that one-of-a-kind treasure trove of European painting, for the presentation of the most recent fruits of their exceptional, and wholly Florentine, creativity. {Through this initiative} they will make the Primavera di Boboli possible, literally making the garden bloom again, and bringing it back to its historic status as the ‘Italian Versailles’.”
