Posted on 12/16/2001 5:19:34 PM PST by dighton
AN exhibition of 50 major works of Italian art never before seen in public has opened in Florence's Uffizi gallery.
All the exhibits, mostly oil paintings but also including 14 sculptures, are from the gallery's storerooms.
The show includes work from Titian, Tintoretto, Filippino Lippi, Melozzo da Forli, Lorenzo di Credi, a fellow student of Leonardo, and Ghirlandaio, to whom Michelangelo was first apprenticed. There is also art from the workshop of Sandro Botticelli.
Some of the works are in need of restoration but the Uffizi's curator, Anna Maria Petriolo Tofani, said the gallery took the decision to exhibit them in the hope that someone would make a "generous offer" to pay for their repair.
She said that the gallery has about 2,500 works, representing just over half of its collection, still languishing in storage. It was a "museum within a museum".
Most of the works are being stored on upper floors of the building and not in cellars, as has been suggested. If this had been the case, many of the works would have been ruined in the floods of 1966 which devastated Florence.
The gallery lacks space to exhibit all its works because, besides its core collection, it has inherited several others and has been entrusted with keeping more than 100 works of art seized by the Nazis which cannot be returned to their rightful owners.
The I Mai Visti (Never Before Seen) show is being held until March 3 in the Reali Poste rooms across from the Uffizi's main entrance. It runs until March 3 and admission is free.
The large number of works still under wraps is largely due to the compulsive collecting of Francesco I, son of Cosimo di Medici, who turned the top floor of the building into a gallery in 1580.
The Tuscan state archives recently relinquished a major part of the Uffizi building after centuries of occupation and the gallery is to be greatly expanded.
The New Uffizi is expected to be unveiled in 2003.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2001.
Spill your gut, buddy! You're among friends here. I love to hear people's travel stories. I'm a globetrotter would-be, myself.
I saw the Uffizi back in the late 70's, when I was a young sailor. I think I took a train from Livorno to Pisa and Florence. I ran into the most excellent young lady at the Uffizi. Her name was Linda, and she was a college student from Minneapolis. She had a boyfriend back home, so there was no prospect for romance, but I surely enjoyed her company. I was telling her about the paintings, and (being me) I was trying to dazzle her with my knowledge of the religious themes, the various painters' techniques, etc. Then I asked her what she was studying, and she replied that she was working on her master's in Italian Renaissance art. So I very meekly asked her if she'd like to tell me about the paintings! She was the sweetest girl. I surely hope she's happily married, with as many kids as she wanted. She should be a grandmother now.
Seems like yesterday.
But Versailles (sp?), Monte Carlo, Paris, Barcelona, Switzerland, all left impressions that are still fresh altho my last trip abroad was nearly 30 years ago. My kids travel now and I love their stories all the more cause I'd been there. Thankfully, my son didn't tell me about his plans to run with the bulls until he arrived back at his army base in Germany, all in one piece!!! He did the World Cup in France........made nearly all the games and saw parts of France I missed!!! Thanks for giving me a chance to go back and remember!!!! P.S. Thanks for serving your country!!!!
My strongest memory of Venice at night was the time I got stranded there overnight, along with a number of other men from my ship. I served on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier; we couldn't actually go into port and tie up to a pier anywhere overseas. We always had to "anchor out" a good distance from shore, and then wait in line (occasionally for hours) in the hangar bay to ride ashore on "liberty boats". The ride itself could be pretty long.
Anyhow, we were ashore at Venice one icy winter night when a storm came up. The boating to the ship slowed way down, and we stood outside in the sleet and wind for close to half the night. One young marine in particular was in agony, because his head was shaved. I don't know that anybody was dressed warmly enough; there's not a lot of room in a sailor's locker for civilian clothes, and you don't normally wear your uniform ashore unless you have the duty. Eventually all boating was secured till the next day, and we had no idea where we'd go. At something like 2 am (I think), a couple of Italian sailors showed up, and they marched us through dark streets to an Italian navy barracks (at the Arsenale?), where they put us up for the night. It was chilly inside, but we slept under these great, thick, coarse wool army blankets, which were wonderful. I can't remember so much about it now; for instance, I can't remember whether we got anything to eat. I do remember some swarthy young sailors (whom I thought were Turks) coming in and wanting to trade stuff with us -- the one thing I recall them saying was "Zippo, Zippo". They wanted Zippo cigarette lighters (this would make a great ad)!
I think I was ashore in Venice one other night, but I'm not certain it wasn't earlier that same night, before the weather turned nasty. I remember roaming around alone on little back streets, and how dark they were.
Well, there's my recollection of Venice at night. It's a little less romantic than yours, but yes, Venice certainly is a magnificent ciy. It's good to remember.
My aunt and I decided to explore on our own early evening and walked out of the hotel and wandered unexpectedly into St. Marks Square....there was a small orchestra playing, everything was lit up....it was so amazing. During the day the pigeons were everywhere....everything about Venice enchanted me. At one point the tide made it necessary to walk on boards in the square as the water was above the courtyards. No other place I have ever visited made such a lasting visual impression.
Venice, on the other hand, is one of the most magnificent places on earth. Every time I went there, I had no trouble avoiding crowds if I wanted to, because the city is like a labyrinth, and even the most crowded street has a deserted courtyard adjacent to it. The view when you walk out of that train station and see the Grand Canal for the first time cannot be described.
Security at the Pitti Palace, across the Arno, was even more lax than at the Uffizi. The Italians are so awash in great art, they can't be bothered to take care of it. Priceless Caravaggios were housed in dusty corners of old churches in Rome where you had to put coins into a metered box to get lights to turn on so you could see them...
Here, insurance companies would insist on first rate security. Big traveling exhibits, like the Matisse that made the circuit of large museums in the nineties, must have corporate sponsors to foot the insurance bill.
...within a museum-piece, for the buildings themselves, Giorgio Vasari's finest work, are a faint echo of Michelangelo's incomparable Medici chapel and entrance to the Laurentian library, who himself respects and adopts Brunelleschi's cool, austere, and restrained use of pietra serena -- for me, the aesthetic embodiment of conservatism in its elegance, restraint, and modest self-confidence.
AAAAAAAAAAAA to live in Italy for two years and not see the Uffizi! Florence was my mothers favorite city in the world. I spent one 4th of July evening in the early 80's sitting in that restaurant that hangs over the Arno with my wife, mother, sister & her husband, and two of my best friends, toasting the United States as loudly as I could without being asked to leave!
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