Florence, Prison Gallery lighting system renovation begins

The renovation of the lighting system in the Prison Gallery at the Accademia Gallery in Florence will start on Monday, March 14. After the thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century rooms, it was the turn of the Transept and now the area that houses Michelangelo Buonarroti’s masterpieces is being tackled. Here, this past year, among Michelangelo’s great sculptures, part of Lorenzo Bartolini’s plaster busts, usually kept in the Gipsoteca, the last of the Gallery’s rooms to be the subject of the major renovation works, have been displayed in a new arrangement.

In order to make the new installations, which will be placed on the side cornices, the 19th-century female busts will have to be moved and the structures made to display them removed. The plaster casts will then be secured, ready for inspection and maintenance before finding their original location, along with Bartolini’s other works, in a completely renovated Gipsoteca. In the Prison Gallery, operations will then proceed to protect the panel paintings on the walls and Michelangelo’s sculptures with temporary structures made ad hoc to protect them.

The new lighting aims to enhance the preserved works and encourage energy savings and efficiency through the use of the latest LED technology. The project was overseen, as a sponsor, by Enel X, the Enel Group’s line dedicated to public and artistic lighting, digital and innovative services, and is part of a larger intervention affecting other areas of the museum.

“We are finally moving toward completion,” says Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Accademia Gallery in Florence, with Cecilie Hollberg. “As far as the lighting system is concerned, we are gradually approaching the Tribuna and the David, the heart of our museum. We are also completing work in the Gipsoteca. In this room, which ideally recreates Lorenzo Bartolini’s studio, we will rearrange the 450 works including portrait busts, bas-reliefs, and sculptures of various sizes, as well as the collection of 19th-century paintings preserved here. Soon we will be ready to offer the new Accademia Gallery of Florence to the public.”

Image: the Prison Gallery. Photo by Massimo Sestini

Florence, Prison Gallery lighting system renovation begins

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