Medici Icons' new home in the Pitti Palace
January 7 2022
Picture: arnet.com
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Artnet.com have published news that the Medici collection of Russian icons have found a new home in the Pitti Palace, Florence. The collection, numbering 78 works acquired since the seventeenth century, will be housed in a set of newly rennovated rooms. Some of these religious artworks owned by the Uffizi haven't been on display for centuries.
According to the article:
The exhibition “responds to today’s need to expand the cultural offer for an increasingly heterogeneous audience eager to explore lesser-known contexts,” said Uffizi curator Daniela Parenti.
Thought to be the oldest collection of its kind outside of Russia, the group of paintings was assembled, initially, by the grand dukes of the Medici, appearing for the first time in an inventory of the family’s possessions in the early 1600s. The next time the collection appeared on record was in 1761, by which time the senior branch of the Medici family had died out and the House of Lorraine had assumed control of Tuscany, and the Palazzo Pitti.
It was during this later stage that the majority of the artworks entered the collection, largely thanks to Emperor Francis I. The paintings haven’t been on public display since the 18th century, kept, instead, in storage—largely due to the sheer size of the Uffizi’s collection.
