Giorgio Vasari and the Uffizi Gallery

Architect of the Ufizzi Giorgio Vasari built a secret corridor, the King’s Walkway now known as the Vasarian Corridor, after the original construction of the offices.  Commissioned by Cosimo I of the Medici family, the secret passageway connects from the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti across the Arno river.  The Vasarian Corridor runs atop the Ufizzi and over the shops of the Ponte Vecchio, passing through the church of Santa Felicita (so the Medici could pause for mass in secret), before ending at the Boboli Gardens of the Palazzo Pitti.  The purpose for this corridor was to allow the Medici family and other important figures to pass safely throughout the city.  The Medici understood that they went unloved by many Florentine citizens at certain periods throughout their reign, and wanted to protect themselves from assassination attempts from rival families.  The corridor stretches a huge length of Florence’s antic district, and is today a vastly private passageway, holding some of the Ufizzi’s most prized paintings.

Uffizi Galleria - Madeline

Facade facing the Arno River

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.

Plan of the Uffizi 

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.

Crum, Roger J. ""Cosmos, the World of Cosimo": The Iconography of the Uffizi Façad." Art Bulletin June 1989, Vol. 71, No. 2 ed.: 237-53. Print. Thorough information about Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and the involvement of the Medici in the Uffizi Galleria. 

"The History of Uffizi Gallery." Uffizi, Uffizi Gallery, Florence. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2012. <http://www.uffizi.com/history-uffizi-gallery.asp>. Great overview of the straight facts. Aided us in knowing what to search for and research further. 

"Uffizi." , Florence. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2012. <http://www.aviewoncities.com/florence/uffizi.htm>. Facts from the Medici's involvement to Vasari's plans. 

"THE UFFIZI, FLORENCE, ITALY - INFORMATION AND BOOKING." The Uffizi, Florence, Italy. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2012. <http://www.tickitaly.com/galleries/uffizi.php>. Fast facts about the Uffizi from the facade to the Vasari corridor. 

"Uffizi Gallery – What It Is, What's in It (and How Do You Pronounce It)?" Artviva Italy Blog. N.p., 09 Jan. 2011. Web. 02 Dec. 2012. <http://blog.artviva.com/2011/01/09/uffizi-gallery-what-it-is-what’s-in-it-and-how-do-you-pronounce-it/>. 

Uffizi Gallery

• Built in 1581 under request of Grand Duke Franciso de’ Medici, son of Cosimo I Original design was 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.
• Built rapidly despite minor difficulties and major social events taking place in he area.
• Originally intended for offices and to host bureaucratic meetings for various magistrates.
• Once construction of the Uffizi was complete, Cosimo I had Vasari, his favorite architect, create a passageway connecting the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti, running atop the Ponte Vecchio which is just down river from the Uffizi Gallery.
• In 1584, the Octagonal Platform was built by Vasari’s successor Buontalenti.  It consists of a weathercock connecting to an inside pointer alluding to the air element.  The sky vault and red upholstery allude to the water and fire elements.
• On the other side of the building were the labs of smaller limbs, the foundry (or pharmacy) and over the loggia of the lanzi there was a hanging garden.
• The project to arrange the Gallery on the 3rd floor of this large building, conceived by Cosimo I Medici, 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, with the so called "family-pact" held in Vienna 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.
• The Lorraines, successors of the Medici, enriched the Gallery and built the beautiful room of Niobe to house the marble group called Niobe and her children struck by Apollo and Diana. After the expulsion of the Lorraine (1859), the Gallery passed under the State and was completely reorganized according to modern criteria.

Sculptures

David

Michelangelo

1501–1504

Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

Perhaps one the most famous statues in the world, Michelangelo’s David is a universal icon of the Renaissance and the genius of the artist himself. Commissioned for the Piazza della Signoria, the David was rendered like no other interpretation before. The pose in particular sets it apart from previous David’s by Donatello and Verrocchio who had both represented the hero standing victorious over the head of Goliath, and Andrea del Castagno who had shown the boy in mid-swing, even as Goliath's head rested between his feet.  Carved out of a single piece of Carrara marble, the David is a statue created using the subtractive method. This freestanding sculpture is truly a marvelous work of the time balance-wise as Michelangelo so cleverly shifted the weight of the figure onto a stump attached to the back of the bottom right leg.

Judith and Holofernes

Donatello

1460

Copy in the Piazza della Signoria, Original in Palazzo Vecchio

As with virtually all of his other works, Donatello focused on naturalism in Judith and Holofernes. The base of the sculpture, for example, is cushion-like and reminiscent of a similar device used in Donatello's St. Mark. Judith's clothes are realistically mussed; her clothes fall naturally in folds along her raised arm. The bronze for the statue was cast in eleven parts to make the gilding easier. The sculpture was crafted in the round and has four distinct faces, providing the viewer with 360 degrees of intensely inspiring sculpture.

Pope Liberius Baptizing the Neophytes

Alessandro Algardi, European

Southern European

Italian, 1602 – 1654

This terracotta relief is the only known preliminary study for a sculpture adorning the fountain of Saint Damasus in the Belvedere courtyard of the Vatican. The relief shows Pope Liberius baptizing with water from this newly created source. In contrast to the reductive process of carving, modeling is essentially a building-up process in which the sculpture grows organically from the inside. The artist, Algardi, made this study in clay, an easily worked medium that allowed him to experiment and refine his ideas before carving the fountain relief in marble. By sculpting the foreground figures almost fully in the round and those farther away in increasingly shallow relief, Algardi achieved the illusion of spatial depth and three-dimensional volume on a two-dimensional surface.

Always Changing

Printmaking

Woodcut

“Nightvision” by Penck 1982
Woodcut was the perfect choice for A.R. Penck’s Nightvision as the effect of the roughly cut away wood hightened Pencks tribal-like figures. These primitive stick figures of the piece are derived from a personal system of symbols and signs that embody a message of commonality. The thick, angular lines created by the figures in addition to the patterns that surround them would have been very hard to create with other techniques such as etching and lithography. In fact, the unrefined aesthetic of the piece is commonly associated with woodcuts. 

Etching

“The Skull” by Otto Dix 1924

Skulls have always been used in the past as messages of wartime. Dix’s Skull is a gruesome image of decay and worms investing a human skull, which is meant to symbolize the indescribable horrors of the first World War. The details of the piece are qualities that are often attributed with etchings. These details and precision are achieved by the fine tools that are used to incise the designs on metal plates and would have been extrememly hard to do with woodcarving, where the grain of the wood might not permit it, or lithography, which would have left much room for error.

Lithography

“Profile of Light” by Redon 1886

Lithographs are known for their similarities to drawings themselves and are one of the most direct methods of printmaking. This is due to the process behind this technique. Instead of using a specific tool in a subtractive manner, lithographs are drawings in either crayons or tusche on polished slabs of limestone or metal. Many artists find this method preferable for a variety of reasons like Rodin who appreciated lithography’s proximity to drawing and the deep, mysterious blacks it can produce as seen in Profile of Light. This drawing-like quality is seen in the headpiece of the woman and in the lines of her face.

Serigraph

“Brushstroke” Roy Lichtenstein 1965

This hard-edged image was one of a series of paintings depicting enlarged brushstrokes that Lichtenstein created in 1965-1966. This series was created to make a direct comment on the elevated content and loaded brushwork of Abstract Expressionism. This piece is very clearly a screen print as evident in not only the clean, and sharp lines of the ‘brushstroke’ but in the bold areas of solid color. These qualities would have not been as easily produced through other techniques such as lithography and etching.