Uffizi Gallery

Uffizi (Offices) was commissioned by Cosimo I in 1560 in order to have the magistrate and bureaucracy of the Grand Duchy close to the Palazzo Vecchio.

It was Vasari who designed and orchestrated the project on the monumental courtyard, the square and street, dividing the whole area in order to create an harmonious and solemn unity, enriched by columns, niches, loggias, culminating upon the Arno river.

Vasari used iron as reinforcement of the structure, which enabled his successor, Buontalenti, to create an almost continuos wall of glass on the upper story. Francesco I, who succeeded Cosimo, used the gallery to display the Medici treasure. In 1591 the first museum in the world of its type was born.

The gallery consists of 11 salons containing countless masterpieces by Botticelli, Tiziano, Raffaello, Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Giorgione and many others from all over the world.

The Holy Family

By Michelangelo 1456. The artist was the first to break with the tradition of showing the child Christ on the Virgin's lap.

The painting is notable for its vibrant colors and the unusually twisted pose of the characters.

Sacrifice of Isaac

By Caravaggio 1603. A dramatic interpretation of the biblical event. We are able to comprehend the strength of expression in Caravaggio' s works, that addresses the tangible and striking reality of the plight.

Spring

By Botticelli 1480. It is a great allegorical mythological painting that invites its beholders to enter into the garden of Spring, that is to say into the New World of the new man of the Renaissance.

Venus of Urbino

By Titian 1538. Titian's sensuous nude, inspired by Giorgione's Sleeping Venus, may in fact be a portrait of a courtesan deemed sufficiently beautiful to be a goddesse.