A major exhibition on Florence's Jewish Ghetto at Palazzo Pitti

In Florence, at the Pitti Palace, from October 24, 2023 to January 28, 2024, a major exhibition tells the story of Florence’s Jewish Ghetto, which existed between the 16th and 19th centuries, the time of its demolition. Entitled The Jews, the Medici and the Ghetto of Florence, the exhibition is organized by the Uffizi Galleries, is set up between the Gallery of Modern Art, Sala dei Fiorino and Sala della Musica, and is curated by Piergabriele Mancuso, Alice S. Legé and Sefy Hendler (The Medici Archive Project).

The Florentine Ghetto was founded in 1570 by Cosimo I and Carlo Pitti as part of the urban reorganization project and was demolished between 1892 and 1895. For nearly three centuries the ghetto was the center of Florentine Jewry. As the private property of the dynasty, it constituted an absolute unicum in political and administrative terms, as in the complex web of Italian Jewish history. The exhibition, divided into five sections, draws on Florence’s extraordinary cultural heritage and important international loans to reveal a significant and forgotten page of the Medici’s political strategy, in a centuries-long context of conflict, diplomacy and cultural exchange.

The itinerary opens in the Florence of Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent, with illuminated manuscripts of Jewish and Medici commission, the result of the interaction between Jewish scribes and Christian artists of the early Tuscan Renaissance, with loans from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and a variety of Italian libraries. Republican and Medici imagery are intertwined in the depiction of paradigmatic biblical figures, “Jewish heroes,” such as Donatello’s bronze David (on loan from the Berlin Museums), or the Joseph from the tapestry series woven in Flanders for Cosimo I, whose imposing Dream of the Maniples is presented in the exhibition. The path juxtaposes mythical figures with real ones, revealing little-known pieces of the history of Florentine Jewry, such as the activities of the explorer Moisé Vita Cafsuto or that of Jewish painter Jona Ostiglio, a selection of seven paintings recently attributed to him will be exhibited for the first time in modern times, all works commissioned by the Medici court, along with the self-portrait of Isaiah or David Tedesco, a little-known author but of whom it is speculated that he was a pupil of Ostiglio, in what was one of the first art workshops within an Italian ghetto.

A place of segregation, but also the hub of an important human, cultural and spiritual microcosm, the Florence Ghetto is also reconstructed through a three-dimensional model, the result of a decade of research conducted by the Eugene Grant Jewish History Program of The Medici Archive Project. With attention to the multiplicity of audiences and the need to break down prejudices and stereotypes, the exhibition investigates how the history of the Grand Duchy is intertwined with that of the Jewish minority, shedding light on the events of an important and hitherto little-known piece of Renaissance Florence.

"The exhibition The Jews, the Medici and the Ghetto of Florence opens at a dramatic moment for the Jewish world because of the Hamas massacre violence that has struck Israel with horrific cruelty and new forms of anti-Semitism," emphasizes Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano. "The exhibition at Palazzo Pitti, however, shows us that even in the past another world was possible, made of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect and prosperity. It was 1555, when Pope Paul IV with the papal bull Cum nimis absurdum condemned the Jews to live relegated to a neighborhood and not to be allowed to carry out any activity except that of ragpickers or robivecchi, Florence did not comply, since the Medici, who in the previous century favored the settlement of a Jewish community in the city, were their friends. This did not happen until 1570, when Cosimo I, wishing to become Grand Duke of Tuscany, had to submit to papal dictate in order to have the title and crown. The exhibition retraces this history, highlighting how, as long as tolerance prevailed, Judaism, which even later remained an integral part of the community while contributing its own customs and traditions to the Florentine identity, was one of the roots of the flourishing and mighty plant that was Florence in the era of Humanism and the Renaissance. This is the past to which we must refer in imagining our present and our future. Jewish culture is an important part, decisive for the great contributions it has made, of the entire Italian culture. I therefore wish every success to this important exhibition."

“The exhibition,” explains Uffizi director Eike Schmidt, "is the result of more than a decade of research that has included the rediscovery of the Jewish painter Jona Ostiglio, who was active in the seventeenth century at the Medici court. His works are on display on this occasion, which ideally continues the major exhibitions of the Uffizi Florence and Islam in 2018, and All the Colors of Jewish Italy, which in 2019 attracted nearly a million visitors. At a time in history that sees new waves of cynical anti-Semitism and racial hatred against Jews, it is especially important to make the general public share in the suffering of Jews in our city during the three centuries of the ghetto’s existence. But it is even more fundamental to make known the Jewish contribution to Florentine and Italian culture, despite all the difficulties."

“This exhibition,” says Noemi Di Segni, president of the Italian Jewish Communities, “is an important overlook on the condition of segregation that characterized three centuries of Jewish Italy, and it highlights how culture is osmotic and crosses even separations; at the same time it leaves the question mark as to how much we could all have developed in the utmost freedom and recognition of the Jewish presence in Florence, as elsewhere. Question to which today we have the answers of the present intense collaboration and fruitful sharing of knowledge, arts and values that we will continue together to defend.”

A major exhibition on Florence's Jewish Ghetto at Palazzo Pitti

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