Uffizi Lands, an exhibition in Anghiari on the link between Pope Julius II and the Tuscan city

From May 22 to Sept. 25, 2022, the Museo della Battaglia e di Anghiari will host the exhibition Il Papa Guerriero Giuliano della Rovere e gli uomini d’arme di Anghiari (The Warrior Pope Giuliano della Rovere and the Men-at-Arms of Anghiari ), which aims to tell the story of Pope Julius II ’s stay in the Tuscan city. The third exhibition in 2022 of Terre degli Uffizi, a project of Fondazione CR Firenze and Gallerie degli Uffizi that develops their respective programs Uffizi Diffusi and Piccoli Grandi Musei, with the aim of enhancing the regional artistic heritage by bringing works to various Tuscan centers, in fact focuses on the unprecedented link between the warrior pope, Julius II, and the Tuscan town of men-at-arms, Anghiari.

The exhibition follows one held last year entitled The Civilization of Arms and the Courts of the Renaissance, but it offers new stories and discoveries about the men-at-arms, a social class that distinguished Anghiari between the 15th and 16th centuries.

The big news concerns the relations of Giuliano della Rovere (future Pope Julius II) with Anghiari, where in October 1476 he was hosted by a man-at-arms from the Tuscan village, Mazzone di Gregorio. The latter belonged to one of the most influential families of Anghiarian notabilities between the 15th and 16th centuries, and had already received Federico da Montefeltro and members of the Urbino court in the Tuscan town. Later Mazzone, by virtue of this closeness to the “warrior pope,” was named “Bartolomeo Valentino Mazzoni d’Anghiari” and was also admitted by Della Rovere among his “friends, relatives and comensals,” but also exempted from all “gabelle e passi di qualsivoglia luogo per tutte le robbe: i libri, argenti et altro per uso della persona sua.”

Curated by the director of the Museum of the Battle and Anghiari Gabriele Mazzi, the exhibition features a portrait of Julius II lent by the Uffizi Galleries, a copy attributed to Giulio Romano from Raphael’s famous portrait of the pontiff. That painting was immediately so successful that numerous replicas and copies were made. Julius II is portrayed between October/December 1510 and March 1512, at a time of severe physical debilitation, when he vowed to grow a beard until the French were defeated. Despite the fact that this was a state portrait, the “warrior pope,” who earned the nickname for his frequent military campaigns, was painted by Raphael as a tired and worried man in an image of surprising psychological acumen, which was exhibited after his death on December 12, 1513, in the church of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome.

Also arriving from the Uffizi Galleries are two works by Antonio Tempesta that document the success of Leonardo’s theories and drawings for cavalry battles. Of these, Gérard Edelinck ’s engraving in the Museo della Battaglia e di Anghiari, taken from the Da Vinci cartoon for the Palazzo Vecchio, is the most important evidence.

Anghiarian men-at-arms who lived in the 15th century had important contacts with the most cultured and avant-garde Italian circles of the period. Indeed, these figures invested in their own prestige on a par with their more illustrious counterparts: through them the town redeemed itself from a rural center by becoming a small Renaissance court. Archival records lead us to reflect on the actual contribution of these people of arms to the life of Anghiari. It seems that they were among the few at the time who were able to raise the cultural level of the fortified village, lending their help in organizing the building sites of fortified works still visible today and important religious buildings, sponsoring chapels and burials for themselves and their families, commissioning works of art in nearby Florence, and pursuing prestigious marriage policies.

“Wars in the Renaissance were as dirty and bloody as those that are fought in our day,” commented Uffizi Galleries director Eike Schmidt, “but in this exhibition they remain in the shadows and give way to History, to the extraordinary discovery of Anghiari’s connection to one of the most interesting figures of its time, Julius II, the pope who commissioned Raphael and Michelangelo to do their greatest artistic feats. This was an opportunity to illustrate with works from the Uffizi a series of personalities of the time and their exploits that were not only military, but helped to beautify their city and open it to the world. It is also thanks to these ancient men-at-arms that, upon arriving in Anghiari, we remain enchanted by the beauty of the place.”

“We are pleased to return to Anghiari, for the second time, with Terre degli Uffizi,” commented Gabriele Gori, general director of Fondazione CR Firenze. “This testifies to the liveliness and ferment of the territory around art. The exhibition is an opportunity to reconstruct pieces of history that reinforce the roots of the town of the men-at-arms.”

“The exhibition stands in close dialogue with the previous exhibition, which saw a great mingling by the public, registering a significant increase in visitors and a strong interest in the subject matter,” added Anghiari Mayor Alessandro Polcri. “This year the exhibition is enriched with the loan of other works, including the portrait of Pope Julius II, which allows us to continue in the framework of the close ties that the notables of Anghiari knew how to weave with the most prominent personalities of the time. Special thanks to museum director Gabriele Mazzi, who in recent years has been able to rediscover some of the most beautiful but dormant pages of Anghiari’s history, which find the limelight thanks to this initiative of the Uffizi Galleries and the Fondazione CR Firenze. We should also emphasize the great contribution of the University of Naples Federico II, which through the Department of Humanistic Studies has made these issues its own for a more in-depth study of the subject, not only Anghiarian, of 15th-century society.”

Image: Giulio Romano, Portrait of Julius II (copy from Raphael) (c. 1556; oil on panel, 110 x 87 cm; Florence, Uffizi Galleries). Photo by Stefano Casati

Uffizi Lands, an exhibition in Anghiari on the link between Pope Julius II and the Tuscan city

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