The self portraits rooms at the uffizi galleries. Five hundred plus years of self-portraits and portraits of artists return to the gallery after a century: the new installation extends from fifteenth-century masters to the painters, sculptors, video artists, and comic book artists of today
The Uffizi Galleries in Florence on Monday opened 12 new rooms exclusively dedicated to portraits and self-portraits, with paintings, sculptures, installations and graphic works spanning over six centuries from masters to the painters, sculptors, video artists, and comic book artists of today. Starting with the portrait of the Gaddi family artists (by an artist from the circle of Fra Angelico) it ranges to the present with Bill Viola, Antony Gormley, Ai Weiwei, and Yan Pei-Ming. Other artists featured include Andrea del Sarto, Luca Giordano, Rubens, Rembrandt.
The museum owns the world’s largest collection of artist portraits. It was started by cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici in the seventeenth century and has never stopped growing thanks to acquisitions and donations.
Director Eike Schmidt said: “This new arrangement was made possible thanks to the Pritzker family’s gift of one and half million Euros; the many masters whose works can be admired in the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti are back in the rooms where artists and craftsman had worked since the sixteenth century”.
“In the rooms where artists and craftsmen worked since the 16th century, the many protagonists of that same art that can be admired in the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti now live again,” Schmidt added.
Many of the works on display have undergone restoration and the museum said in a statement on Monday that some would be rotated in order to show as far as possible the scope of the vast collection.
