From Arezzo to Anghiari, Uffizi brings eight new exhibitions to Tuscany

The 2022 program of the Terre degli Uffizi project, the palimpsest of exhibitions spread across the territory of Tuscany that the Florence museum, in collaboration with Fondazione CR Firenze within their respective projects Uffizi Diffusi and Piccoli Grandi Musei, organizes in cities related to the works preserved in the institute’s collection, was presented this morning. The museum is offering eight new exhibitions to promote the area’s connection with its artistic riches. This morning’s presentation was attended by Luigi Salvadori, president of the Fondazione CR Firenze, Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Galleries, and the mayors of the municipalities involved in the project.

It starts in Reggello, where the Masaccio Museum of Sacred Art will hold Masaccio and the Masters of the Renaissance in comparison to celebrate 600 years of the Triptych of San Giovenale, from April 23 to October 23: the exhibition is dedicated to Masaccio on the occasion of the sixth centenary of the execution of the Triptych of San Giovenale, and traces the artist’s links with the painting of his time. Also dedicated to Masaccio is the exhibition Masaccio and Angelico. Dialogue on Truth in Painting, which will open from Sept. 17 to Jan. 15, 2023 in San Giovanni Valdarno in the Museo delle Terre Nuove and the Museum of the Basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie: it will be dedicated to the innovations offered by the two great Renaissance painters to the history of art, with a shortlist of paintings related to the iconography of the Madonna and Child.

In Anghiari, The Warrior Pope. Giuliano della Rovere and the Men at Arms of Anghiari is the exhibition opening May 21 through Sept. 25 at the Museum of the Battle and Anghiari. The event is in continuity with the scholarly project of the first edition of Terre degli Uffizi The Civilization of Arms and the Courts of the Renaissance, which investigated the presence in the town of Arezzo of a strong social class that derived its profits from the craft of arms. At the Museum of Sacred Art in Montespertoli is the exhibition The Uffizi Predella Saved at Montegufoni Castle, from May 14 to Jan. 8, 2023, which will display a 15th-century predella that had been kept in Montegufoni Castle, along with other works, such as Botticelli’s Primavera, during World War II. In Arezzo, the Ivan Bruschi House Museum will host from June 17 to October 23 the exhibition Pietro Benvenuti nell’età di Canova. Paintings and Drawings from Public and Private Collections, on the occasion of the second anniversary of Antonio Canova’s death.

Instead, the exhibition at the Conti Guidi Castle in Poppi, from July 8 to November 1, entitled Nel segno della vita. Women and Madonnas at the Time of Expectation, which revolves around a painting by Sante Pacini kept in the Vallombrosa monastery but coming from Santa Trinita in Florence. Instead, the exhibition at the Giuliano Ghelli Museum in San Casciano, Jacopo Vignali in San Casciano, is dedicated to the 17th-century painter Jacopo Vignali. Paintings from the Uffizi Galleries in Memory of Carlo del Bravo, from Oct. 2 to Jan. 8, 2023. The choice is also due to the interest in this author of Carlo del Bravo, full professor of History of Modern Art at the University of Florence, who was of San Casciano origin. Finally, from June 1 to November 6 A Renaissance Masterpiece from France to Bosco ai Frati: Nicolas Froment’s Triptych. Lands of the Uffizi in Mugello will see temporarily relocated to the Convent of San Bonaventura in Bosco ai Frati, in San Piero a Sieve, the work that stood for centuries in the convent’s church before being brought to the Florentine Galleries with the Napoleonic suppressions.

The goal of the project, the Uffizi notes, is to decentralize visitor flows and increase proximity tourism through collaboration with peripheral museums already in the area and with municipalities. The results of the first edition confirm the intent: there was an average increase of 16 percent in the number of visitors to museums in Poppi, Anghiari and Castiglion Fiorentino (in detail: +18 percent Poppi, +14 percent Anghiari, +18 percent Castiglion Fiorentino), compared to the same period last year. A total of 36,131 visitors for the five exhibitions (as of December 2021). 83% of respondents said it was their first time visiting the museum, attracted by the current event. The exhibitions thus acted as an attractor for lesser-known centers, which had the opportunity to make their artistic and historical heritage known to a wider audience.

“The excellent start of the project last year, confirmed by the visitor numbers, convinced us to continue on this path,” says Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Galleries. “This is not simply about enhancing the area in terms of tourism, but about redeeming the stigma of suburbia and historically re-evaluating the relationship between the area and the capital. The initiative, which makes use of new studies and often draws attention to very interesting but lesser-known works in the Uffizi Galleries, is intended to stimulate new research locally and centrally and, above all, to create a civic consciousness in the inhabitants. Many people, attracted by the exhibitions, have for the first time felt the curiosity to visit the museum of their city or town, thus discovering the treasures preserved there. Not only institutional bodies, but all citizens are called upon to protect and respect the artistic heritage, which we can protect only by working extensively on the dissemination of knowledge. And why not, also feeling proudly part of the wonderful widespread museum that is Tuscany together with all of Italy!”

“The success of the first edition of this project,” says the president of Fondazione CR Firenze, Luigi Salvadori, “has confirmed the goodness of the operation, which moreover has distant origins. It is in fact the expansion and further enhancement of one of our territorial marketing projects that was born more than 15 years ago and that we have called, not by chance, Piccoli Grandi Musei. The pandemic has rekindled the pleasure and desire for a ’slow’ tourism that wishes to indulge in that constellation of small towns where the work of man is an inextricable ingredient from the natural environment. The new exhibitions that are part of the new edition wish to enrich this process by offering the opportunity to learn about and admire masterpieces of great value that, in many cases, have been relocated to the places for which they were born. We believe that, once again, the various exhibitions will succeed in multiplying the number of visitors to the individual realities, as was the case in the first edition of the project, and we thank the Uffizi Galleries for wanting to share this beautiful adventure with us.”

The project is also realized thanks to the collaboration with Unicoop Firenze. For all information about the exhibitions please consult the dedicated website. Also available inside are some video documentaries recounting the exhibitions of the first edition.

Pictured: Masaccio, Triptych of Saint Juvenal (1422; tempera on panel with gold background, 108 x 65 cm; Cascia di Reggello, Masaccio Museum)

From Arezzo to Anghiari, Uffizi brings eight new exhibitions to Tuscany

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