Uffizi Diffusi is coming! First part of the project announced, here are the stages

The Uffizi Diffusi is finally here! Or rather: the first part of the project, consisting of a series of exhibitions called Terre degli Uffizi (Lands of the Uffizi), the first step in the plan for a broader knowledge of our artistic riches, promoted by the Florentine museum in recent months under the title Uffizi Diffusi (Uffizi Diffused), is on its way. The initiative was presented this morning at Villa Bardini by Jacopo Speranza, President of Fondazione Parchi Monumentali Bardini e Peyron; Luigi Salvadori, President of Fondazione CR Firenze; Eike Schmidt, Director of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence; Eugenio Giani, President of the Region of Tuscany; Alessandro Polcri, Mayor of Anghiari; Mario Agnelli, Mayor of Castiglion Fiorentino; Alessio Mugnaini, Mayor of Montespertoli; Carlo Toni, Mayor of Poppi; Emanuele Piani, Mayor of San Godenzo.

The Uffizi Galleries and Fondazione CR Firenze have entered into a five-year memorandum of understanding: this protocol will take the form immediately of five exhibitions that, on the one hand, fall within the framework of the celebrations for the seven hundredth anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s death, and on the other, deepen the link between the territory and the museum’s collections.

Here are what the stages are: Poppi (Arezzo), In the Sign of Dante, Castle of the Guidi Counts, from July 17 to Nov. 30, 2021; San Godenzo (Florence), Dante Alighieri and Andrea del Castagno return to San Godenzo, Visitor Center of the National Park of the Casentinesi Forests, Mount Falterona and Campigna, from July 26 to Sept. 5, 2021; Anghiari (Arezzo), The Civilization of Arms and the Courts of the Renaissance, Museum of the Battle of Anghiari, Aug. 12, 2021 to Jan. 6, 2022; Montespertoli (Florence), Giottesque Painters in Valdelsa, Museum of Sacred Art of San Piero in Mercato, Sept. 25 to Dec. 10; Castiglion Fiorentino (Arezzo); "The Last Seal. The Stigmata of St. Francis at La Verna from the Collections of the Uffizi Galleries, Pinacoteca Comunale, October 2, 2021 to January 6, 2022.

The aim of the project is to enhance instances common to the two institutions, each for its own expertise. As part of their heritage promotion and dissemination activities, the Uffizi Galleries, with Terre degli Uffizi, have decided to launch initiatives to regenerate lesser-known centers in the area by focusing on local art and history, so as to attract a wide and varied audience through diversified projects. In turn, Fondazione CR Firenze intends to continue the program for the enhancement of small museums in the territory called Piccoli Grandi Musei, which it carried out from 2005 to 2014 and which enabled the enhancement of more than one hundred small museums in which restoration work and new layouts took place and scientific catalogs were published with the aim of raising awareness and offering a new narrative of the historical and artistic heritage spread throughout the territory. It was also an opportunity to rationalize, renew and manage the cultural offer on the network.

Uffizi, the Western Corridor

The five exhibitions

In Poppi, the exhibition In the Sign of Dante presents works related to the three Cantiche of the Comedy. The paintings on display deal with themes and characters from the Casentino valley, a territory with which the poet Dante had close relations: he stayed there several times, a guest of the Guidi counts, and on June 11, 1289, he took part, at the age of 24, in the Battle of Campaldino. Paolo and Francesca, a work by Nicola Monti depicting one of the best-known episodes of Dante’s Inferno, is a recent acquisition by the Uffizi Galleries and is historically linked to the exhibition area. Indeed, documents hand down to us the kinship ties between the Guidi lineage and the county of Ghiaggiolo in Romagna, and also Guido da Montefeltro (father of Bonconte who died at Campaldino) who had married Manentessa di Ghiaggiolo. Paolo Malatesta, known as il Bello, brother of Gianciotto, who was married to Orabile Beatrice, daughter and heir of Uberto, was killed by the latter along with Francesca da Rimini as Dante recalls in Canto V of the Inferno. As for the municipality of San Godenzo, where the exhibition Dante Alighieri and Andrea del Castagno return, there is a double anniversary in 2021: the seven hundredth anniversary of Dante and the six hundredth anniversary of the birth of Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla, known as Andrea del Castagno because of his birthplace. The Uffizi possesses among the portraits of Illustrious Men, frescoes detached from Villa Pandolfini in Legnaia, that of Dante Alighieri, which was recently restored by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. The famous effigy of the “Ghibellin fuggiasco” will spend the summer of 2021, starting July 26, in the cool of the Casentino forests at the foot of the Falterona. Its author will thus be celebrated and at the same time also remembered the Ghibelline Outcasts’ Convention that took place in the abbey of San Godenzo in 1302 when Dante was already an exile with others from Florence and sentenced to death in absentia since January 1302. Soon thereafter, Alighieri would leave his native Tuscany never to return.

In Anghiari, the goal of the exhibition The Civilization of Arms and the Courts of the Renaissance is to highlight the relationship between city and suburb in the Renaissance, ideally related to the guiding idea of the Uffizi diffuse project. In particular, the city of Anghiari during the Renaissance provided men-at-arms loyal to various lordly armies of cities the nobility of which were related to the Anghiarian nobility. They were thus not people who made their living from the craft of arms, but a true notabilato who also knew the propaganda value of works of art and had an interest in the artists of their time. The review therefore focuses on historical figures connected with Anghiari who were engaged in transforming themselves from knights and soldiers into men of court and culture. The focus is particularly on links with the Montefeltros of Urbino. Translations into figures of the Battle of Anghiari will also be recalled, continued to dates far removed from the historic battle. In Montespertoli, in the rectory of the church of San Pietro in Mercato, the exhibition Pittori giotteschi in Valdelsa goes on instead: among the various 14th-century panels is a small Madonna and Child, attributed to the painter Lippo di Benivieni, an imaginative and expressive Giottesque of whom the Uffizi possesses a Madonna and Child of almost identical dimensions, part of a famous polyptych belonging to the Alessandri family. The painting in the Montespertoli museum, was originally housed inside the church of San Lorenzo in Montegufoni, near the castle that during World War II was a refuge for the works of the museums of Florence, which were endangered by bombings and the passage of armies. As part of this exhibition, it will be placed in comparison with the Uffizi Madonna; The juxtaposition will be useful in reflecting on the spread of Giotto ’s style throughout the Valdelsa, an area populated with works by Taddeo Gaddi and other masters who closely received Giotto’s teachings.

Finally, in Castiglion Fiorentino, the exhibition "The Last Seal. The Stigmata of St. Francis at La Verna from the Collections of the Uffizi Galleries focuses on the figure of St. Francis of Assisi, who has in the Sanctuary of La Verna, near Castiglion Fiorentino, one of the most celebrated places in Christianity. On the occasion of the Feast of the Saint, Patron Saint of Italy, the Uffizi Galleries and the Municipal Art Gallery of Castiglion Fiorentino will “exchange” two important paintings depicting the episode of the Stigmata. The Uffizi will send Castiglioni the masterpiece by Ludovico Cardi, known as Cigoli, Saint Francis Receives the Stigmata (1596). At the same time, Castiglion Fiorentino will lend the Uffizi its ’own’ St . Francis Receives the Stigmata, a beautiful painting by Bartolomeo della Gatta, dated 1487, among the most precious pieces in the municipal picture gallery: the work will be on view in the 15th-century rooms of the Gallery of Statues and Paintings for the duration of the exhibition.

The restoration of the portrait of Dante by Andrea del Castagno.

The “Uffizi Diffusi” project

As is well known, in recent months the Uffizi Galleries, in pursuit of its institutional mission, decided to undertake an important activity of relocation and enhancement of the territory, through the Uffizi Diffusi project, which intends to stand as a renewed model of fruition of the Galleries’ collections. The aim is to work in synergy with peripheral museums already present in the territory to encourage a more sustainable tourism capable of bringing art closer to the territories, thus making works of art currently located in the Uffizi’s storage rooms usable through exhibition in local museum spaces. In this broad context, the ’Terre degli Uffizi’ project thus represents one of the tools for the realization of the broader program and is aimed at fostering new forms of decentralized, sustainable, territorial tourism, while at the same time enhancing the extraordinary artistic heritage of some of Tuscany’s lesser-known museum realities.

The Project aims to bring together the museums of the territory, including the smaller ones, in a single network that reports, from a scientific and communication point of view, to the Uffizi Galleries, organizing exhibitions in some of the less visited exhibition facilities with loans from the collections of the Galleries, so as to attract the greatest number of visitors and reactivate the link of the works with their places of origin, also in order to rediscover and strengthen their historical identity. A formula that will make it possible to extend the loan of the works over the medium or long term, so as to consolidate the scope of the benefit beyond the usual duration of temporary events. To ensure the maximum enhancement of the operation, an extensive communication and promotion campaign will be activated, involving the Uffizi Galleries’ large social audience, and will see the creation of dedicated pages and content both on the website and on the Florentine museum’s social channels. Visitors will be provided with even unusual visitor paths, made easy to consult thanks to attractive and simplified graphics designed specifically for the project.

“This operation is very important for our territory and for the art world,” says Fondazione CR Firenze President Luigi Salvadori, "because it enhances that great widespread museum that is one of the riches of Tuscany and Italy. It is also the continuation of an important territorial cultural marketing project of ours called Piccoli Grandi Musei, which was launched in 2005 and which had the intuition, before the phenomenon took on larger proportions, to make the lesser-known beauties of our land and its specific identities known and appreciated. It involved a total of 96 small realities that, thanks to this operation, had a total of almost a million visitors and important reflections also on the professionalism and businesses present in those areas."

"Terre degli Uffizi is the first project that takes off from the Uffizi diffuse strategy," explains Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Galleries. “In a nutshell, it’s like a sturdy branch starting from the trunk of an extremely vital, growing tree. Together with the Fondazione CR Firenze, an immediate and concrete implementation formula has been found in the first five exhibitions, all dedicated to sophisticated topics but also firmly anchored in the target territories. These are not initiatives aimed only at boosting tourism still faltering after a year and a half of the pandemic: they are in fact intended above all for the local population, with the intention of strengthening the sense of belonging and identity that is at the roots of the highest, noblest civic sense.”

Uffizi Diffusi is coming! First part of the project announced, here are the stages

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