Florence, Accademia Gallery: fully renovated rooms of the Two and Four Hundred reopen

The rooms dedicated to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century painting on the ground floor of the Accademia Gallery in Florence have been completely renovated and reopened to the public, with a new air-conditioning and lighting system and with a new layout, including in the color of the walls.

“At last, the major construction sites that have occupied us over the past few years to modernize and restore the structure of the Accademia Gallery,” says Gallery Director Cecilie Hollberg with satisfaction, "are coming to an end one stage after another. With the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century rooms, another important piece is being added back to the exhibition itinerary. The rooms have undergone interventions aimed at microclimatic and lighting improvements in order to make the most of the pictorial works preserved here. It was also an opportunity to review the layout and order of the paintings, as well as the walls now of a green, inspired by the colors of the masterpieces housed in these rooms and in particular the one we find in the beautiful fragment of Giotto’s fresco with the shepherd’s head. It will be a real surprise for our visitors."

The so-called Byzantine rooms are full of gold-ground panels belonging to the collection of the masters of Florentine Gothic painting, predecessors or contemporaries of Giotto. These include the Master of Magdalene, the Master of Saint Cecilia, Taddeo Gaddi, Bernardo Daddi, Andrea di Cione known as l’Orcagna, and Pacino di Buonaguida. To Pacino, a painter and miniaturist, the central hall is dedicated. In addition to the well-known Tree of Life, which has just returned from the Bargello Museum, where it was on display during the exhibition Honorable and Ancient Citizen of Florence. The Bargello for Dante, three other important works, all tempera on panel, dated 1305-1310, will once again be visible to visitors, depicting: saint Proculus, saint John the Evangelist and saint Nicholas, which constituted three of the side panels of a dismembered polyptych from the church of San Procolo in Florence.

The rooms were equipped with an air conditioning system that they were totally lacking and a new lighting system, which was made possible thanks to the support of Enel. In fact, the project was overseen as a sponsor by Enel X.

In addition to enhancing the precious surface of the paintings in these rooms, allowing a clear reading of the details, the new lighting is at the same time attentive to energy conservation. The 30-degree inclination of the projectors with respect to the walls with the works will make it possible to avoid projections of visitors onto the walls as much as possible. The chosen lighting fixtures are equipped with LED sources with high photometric and colorimetric performance.

The work was supervised by the Gallery’s in-house staff, architect Claudia Gerola and restorer Eleonora Pucci.

Florence, Accademia Gallery: fully renovated rooms of the Two and Four Hundred reopen

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