Beato Angelico's Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece reconstructed at the Uffizi

Beato Angelico’s ancient altarpiece depicting the Coronation of the Virgin is being reassembled at the Uffizi Gallery after many decades: the painting housed in the Uffizi depicting theCoronation of the Virgin has in fact just been reunited with its predella, the latter housed in the Museo di San Marco in Florence and depicting the Marriage and Funeral of the Virgin. They had been separated since the end of World War II, and now visitors can admire thework in its entirety in the Vasarian Museum.

The altarpiece with theCoronation, the Wedding and the Funerals of the Virgin came from the Florentine church of Sant’Egidio; its arrival at the Uffizi Gallery can be dated to around the early 1900s. The fates of the panel and predella bifurcated after World War II: to protect it from bombing and the Nazi army, the altarpiece was in fact taken out of Florence and moved to safety to various secret locations, including the castle of Poppi and the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano. When the world conflict ended, the work was divided into two parts: the panel returned to the Uffizi and the predella sent to the Museo di San Marco, where it remains for decades, until today.

At the same time, the panel with the Thebaid, a work now attributed to the Dominican friar-painter, was transferred from the Uffizi Galleries to the Museo di San Marco, part of the Regional Museums Directorate of Tuscany, where much of Beato Angelico’s pictorial production is displayed. The Thebaid, now located in the Beato Angelico Room, arrived at the Uffizi in 1783 with the attribution to Gherardo Starnina and was first referred to Angelico’s early days by Roberto Longhi (1940), but its attribution was not affirmed until the 1990s. Also arriving at the Museo di San Marco from the Uffizi are four monochrome plates by an unknown 17th-century painter depicting Dominican saints, hitherto housed in the Drawings and Prints Cabinet of the Galleries, but which were in the Spezieria of the San Marco convent at the end of the 18th century.

The exchange of works is the result of a joint decision by the directors of the Uffizi Galleries Simone Verde and the Regional Museums Directorate of Tuscany Stefano Casciu.

“This exchange of works, strongly desired by the new direction from the Galleries, is consistent with the scientific orientation we hold dear, that is, it goes in the direction of a philological recomposition of the collections and the universal history of the Uffizi,” said Uffizi Galleries director Simone Verde.

“The initiative is part of the well-established relationship between the Florentine museums of the Regional Directorate and the Uffizi Galleries, a relationship founded on a common heritage and history of Medici, then Lorraine and then Savoy ancestry, which substantiate and structure the entire city museum system,” commented the director of the Regional Directorate of Museums of Tuscany Stefano Casciu. “The arrival of the Thebaid at St. Mark’s, exhibited in the room entirely dedicated to the Friar’s panel paintings, will be a further reason for interest and enrichment for the selected and demanding public of the Museum, directed in recent years by Angelo Tartuferi, and to which the Regional Directorate of Museums of Tuscany has dedicated over time energy and commitment to the care and enhancement of the monumental environments, works, collections and new museum layouts in constant renewal.”

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Beato Angelico's Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece reconstructed at the Uffizi

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