(DailyExpertNews) — They commissioned and collected some of the most pivotal works of art of the Renaissance and built an art collection that has now been transformed into one of the best-known museums in the world.
But the Medici family from Florence also collected works of art from other cultures. And now the Uffizi Gallery, which started as the family’s office when they ruled the city, and is now Italy’s most visited museum, opens a gallery-within-a-gallery to showcase such a collection.
The target? To appeal to a more diverse type of tourism.
The Museum of Russian Icons, which opens January 2, will be housed in the Palazzo Pitti – the vast palace of the Medici family from which they ruled much of Tuscany.
Four rooms, never opened to the public, have been assigned to the museum, with their 17th-century frescoes restored, making it a theatrical setting of trompe-l’oeil columns, coffered ceilings and mysterious veiled statues lurking in niches.
The Cappella Palatina – a private chapel of the Medici family, previously open for Mass only once a year – will also be part of the museum.
The collection, said to be the oldest of its kind outside of Russia, contains 78 icons from the 16th to 18th centuries.
In the theatrical setting, the icons interact with the regal decor.
Uffizi Gallery
Some icons were painted by artists who usually worked for the Russian tsars, and were sent directly from the Kremlin in Moscow.
It was founded by the Medici family, before being continued by the House of Lorraine, Austrian monarchs and rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, who ruled Tuscany after the Medici family died out.
The icons were first mentioned in an inventory of the Medici’s possessions at the beginning of the 17th century, and then again in 1761, when they were in the Palazzo Pitti, while the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I had expanded the collection .
But due to the size of the Uffizi’s collection — which has tens of thousands of works in storage — they haven’t been on display since the 18th century.
Highlights of the collection include a Madonna owned by the Medici family, and the Menologio – a calendar of Orthodox festivals, divided into over 100 individual scenes painted in microscopic detail.
The Menologio is a meticulously painted highlight.
Uffizi Gallery
Uffizi director Eike Schmidt thinks this is a more intimate collection than other works of art commissioned by the Medici.
“It differs from other collections because [the icons are] mainly small and medium-sized, intended for personal family worship and designed to be portable,” he said.
The staff believe the museum will respond to a post-pandemic desire to get off the typical tourist trail and see something different.
The four halls have never been open to the public before.
Uffizi Gallery
“It responds to the current need to broaden our cultural offer for an increasingly diverse audience, who want to explore lesser-known places,” said Daniela Parenti, curator of the icon museum.
Schmidt added that the museum would pave the way for the opening of the entire ground floor of Palazzo Pitti, whose frescoed rooms have never been open to the public.
“They are incredible rooms, and the Grand Dukes [of Tuscany] lived in them, but today they are mainly used as offices and service areas,” he said.