(CNN) — They commissioned and silent some of the most pivotal artworks of the Renaissance, constructing a series of art that has now been remodeled into one in all the edifying identified museums within the arena.
But Florence’s Medici family additionally silent artworks from assorted cultures. And now the Uffizi Gallery, which started as the family’s offices after they ruled the metropolis, and is now Italy’s most visited museum, is opening a gallery-inner-a-gallery to expose off one such series.
The aim? To attract a extra numerous assemble of tourism.
The Museum of Russian Icons, which opens January 2, will be housed within the Palazzo Pitti — the Medici family’s substantial palace from which they ruled extraordinary of Tuscany.
Four rooms, which possess by no plot been opened to the public, had been allocated to the museum, with their 17th-century frescoes restored, giving it a theatrical atmosphere of trompe l’oeil columns, coffered ceilings and mysterious veiled statues lurking in niches.
The Cappella Palatina — a private chapel of the Medici family, which became as soon as previously initiate honest as soon as a one year for Mass — will additionally be section of the museum.
The series, said to be the oldest of its form initiate air Russia, contains 78 icons from the 16th to the 18th centuries.
The theatrical atmosphere has the icons interacting with the palatial decor.
Uffizi Galleries
About a of the icons had been painted by artists who generally labored for the Russian Tsars, and had been send at as soon as from Moscow’s Kremlin.
It became as soon as started by the Medici family, earlier than being continued by the Condominium of Lorraine, Austrian royals and rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, which ruled Tuscany after the Medici family died out.
The icons had been first mentioned in an early-1600s stock of the Medici’s possessions, and on the opposite hand in 1761, all over which duration they had been in Palazzo Pitti, with Holy Roman Emperor Francis I having expanded the series.
But as a result of extent of the Uffizi’s series — which has tens of thousands of works in storage — they’ve been off show because the 18th century.
Highlights of the series embody a Madonna owned by the Medici family, and the Menologio — a calendar of orthodox gala’s, divided into over 100 person scenes painted in puny detail.
The Menologio is a meticulously painted spotlight.
Uffizi Galleries
Uffizi director Eike Schmidt reckons right here’s a extra intimate series than assorted artworks commissioned by the Medici.
“It sets itself other than assorted collections because [the icons are] mainly puny and medium-sized, supposed for private family like, and designed to be portable,” he said.
Staff deem that the museum will tap into a put up-pandemic desire to head off the conventional vacationer traipse and compare one thing assorted.
The four rooms possess by no plot earlier than been initiate to the public.
Uffizi Galleries
“It’s responding to the fresh have to widen our cultural offering for an ever extra numerous public, who want to explore lesser identified locations,” said Daniela Parenti, curator of the icon museum.
Schmidt added that the museum would pave the plot in which for the opening of all of the floor floor of Palazzo Pitti, whose frescoed rooms possess by no plot been initiate to the public.
“They’re unbelievable rooms, and the Enormous Dukes [of Tuscany] lived inner them, nonetheless this day they’re mainly venerable as offices and repair rooms,” he said.
