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| Ufizzi Galleria, photo courtesy of Wikipedia CC |
Built in 1581 under request of Grand Duke Franciso
de’ Medici, son of Cosimo I, the Uffizi Galleria was originally designed by
Giorgio Vasari. In 1560, work was began to create the horseshoe-shaped building
that reaches from the Ponte Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria, to and along the
Arno River. The building was originally intended for offices and to host
bureaucratic meetings for various magistrates, but evolved into a sort of
museum, housing the Medici’s many art pieces (2). Once Vasari had died, building and extension work continued,
with each successive member of the Medici clan adding to the increasingly rich
treasure trove of the family's art collection.
The façades of the Uffizi bordering the courtyard are
decorated with niches containing statues of important historical figures and
has been described as the focal point of both the architecture and sculpture of
the Uffizi. Some argue that Vasari’s use of the triumphal arch motif for the
façade may reflect a modification for dramatic effect of Bartolommeo
Ammannati’s apparently unsolicited suggestion, embodied in a drawing in the
Biblioteca Riccardiana, to repeat the arch as a structural and decorative motif
along the ground level of the lateral wings. It is suggested that the building
was actually meant to be two separate facing buildings as indicated in Domenico
Poggini’s foundation medal of 1561 (1). Conceived by Cosimo I Medici, the
project to arrange the Gallery on the 3rd floor of this large building, was
realized by his son Francesco I. Later Cosimo III had the Gallery made larger
in order to house the works inherited from his uncle Cardinal Leopold. With the
extinction of the Medici dynasty, the last of the family, Anna Maria Ludovica,
who died in 1737, arranged that all the art treasures gathered by the powerful
dynasty forever remain at the disposal of the Florentines and of the visitors
of the entire world.
