The Hall of Maps in the Palazzo Vecchio will be restored. Work to begin in spring

For thefirst time, the famous Hall of Maps and the World Map inside the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence will be restored thanks to Friends of Florence. Work will get underway in the spring: the restoration work will involve 500,000 euros to restore and enhance the furnishings, installations, maps and thehuge globe placed in the center of the room, to which it owes its name. With the exception of some maintenance work in the 1950s, both the Mappamondo and the maps had never undergone restoration using modern techniques. The project, drawn up by the Palazzo Vecchio’s Technical Services-Factory Directorate, was given the green light by the city council at the suggestion of Culture Councillor Tommaso Sacchi and will be financed thanks to a donation from the Friends of Florence foundation under the Florence I Care program. The restoration will last a year in total, but the Sala will remain visitable, albeit partially, during the works.

“The Hall of Maps,” stressed Councillor Tommaso Sacchi, "is one of the most precious environments of the Museum of Palazzo Vecchio. The wonderful globe placed in the center is one of the largest and oldest that has come down to us almost completely intact. Now we are going to take care of it thanks to the generosity of Friends of Florence and enhance the whole room from floor to ceiling and the cabinets to the walls, where about fifty papers on oil panels depicting the whole known world at the time of Cosimo I are placed."

"For almost two decades Friends of Florence has wanted to carry out the restoration of the Hall of Maps and the World Map, not only because of the scientific and artistic importance of the works, but also because, here between the walls of this room in Palazzo Vecchio, we preserve evidence of what the known world was like at the time of Cosimo I," said Simonetta Brandolini d’Adda, president of Friends of Florence. "This is a fascinating and highly necessary project to safeguard such a unique environment. We thank the donor for their support of the project and the many projects of Friends of Florence."

On the third floor of the Palazzo Vecchio Museum, the Hall of Maps is among the most visited rooms in the central Florentine museum venue and is therefore subject to considerable wear and tear. In particular, both the floor, now disconnected, and the lighting and technological systems, now inadequate for the museum itinerary and the enhancement of the maps and the thirteen artistic wall cabinets that contain them, are in urgent need of restoration.

The maps, consisting of fifty-three oil-on-board paintings that offer detailed depictions of lands and seas known at the time of Cosimo I, are embellished with gilded inscriptions, cartouches, Medici enterprises and fantastic creatures. For their restoration, they will be detached and placed in the adjoining room; the globe, on the other hand, which is too large to be moved to another room (in fact, it has a circumference of more than two meters), will remain in its own room and moved as the work proceeds. Visitors will then be able to see between the scaffolding the restoration work, as was already the case with the Hall of the Elements, which was restored a few years ago.

The room was created by Giorgio Vasari, between 1561 and 1565, at the request of Cosimo I, as the main room of the Guardaroba, the quarter where all the movable goods of the court were kept, and as a cosmography room. The plan for the layout of the new room, drawn up by Vasari with the collaboration of the cosmographer Fra’ Miniato Pitti, who later ceded his role to the Perugian Dominican Egnazio Danti, and finally to the Olivetan Stefano Bonsignori, included: in the ceiling, paintings depicting the constellations; along the walls, large wooden cabinets, with tables of geography on the doors and images of the fauna and flora of their respective territories on the bases; above these, busts of princes and emperors and three hundred portraits of illustrious men. Finally, in the middle of the room, two large globes were to appear scenically from above at the opening of the central panels of the ceiling, the celestial one, suspended in the air, and the terrestrial one, on the floor. The idea of representing in one room the whole known world in the mid-sixteenth century reflected Cosimo’s interest in geography, natural sciences, and trade. However, the ambitious project remained partly unfinished. Dionigi di Matteo Nigetti made the walnut cabinets that would house first tapestries and other vestments, then silver and gold objects, and finally ancient weapons. Of the fifty-three geographical plates brought to completion, thirty were painted by the Dominican Egnazio Danti and twenty-three by the Olivetan monk Stefano Bonsignori. Twenty-seven were taken from Ptolemy’s Geographia (2nd century CE), updated according to modern authors, and the others, including those of America, from various more recent sources. Egnazio Danti also made the large globe (1564-1571), which, however, was placed elsewhere and returned to its original purpose only in the last century. In the center of the wall opposite the entrance was placed Lorenzo della Volpaia’s Clock of the Planets, which had been kept in the adjoining Sala dei Gigli since 1510. Of the latter, which was destroyed in the 17th century, there is a modern reconstruction in the Museo Galileo in Florence. Cristofano dell’Altissimo began to paint portraits of illustrious men to be placed on cabinets, copying them from Paolo Giovio’s famous collection in Como. By 1570 there were more than two hundred portraits, arranged in three rows, but in the following decade they were moved to the corridor of the Uffizi Gallery, where they can still be seen today.

Ph.Credit

The Hall of Maps in the Palazzo Vecchio will be restored. Work to begin in spring

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