Uffizi, 2017: Botticelli

The Uffizi has more Botticelli paintings than any other place I know of, and Botticelli is our favorite Renaissance artist. The Uffizi has made the Birth of Venus pretty much its emblem and it is already pretty much the emblem of the Renaissance. So Botticelli gets a whole post here. Surprisingly, what I'm posting is probably less than half of his work in the Uffizi. Don't worry, though, I'll be posting more as we go along and visit other places.

One of many Annunciations, this one a bit more austere, probably more to Savanrola's 
taste back at San Marco

Another, rather less austere

Primavera

Birth of Venus

His great love, Simonetta Vespucci

Madonna of the Magnificat

Most of Botticelli's paintings are of more pleasant happenings; not so The Calumny 
of Apelles

Simonetta's in there anyway; or the memory of Simonetta...she died quite young

Madonna of the Pomegranate

Madonna and Child Enthroned

He's buried at her feet in the Ognisancti Church down the river

Big crowd for a (relatively) slow day

Adoration; there's a similar painting in the National Gallery in DC

Self-portrait; no one could do more with tempura; interesting
to wonder what he might have achieved in oil...

Uffizi, 2017: 14th Century

They've moved things around, methinks, but it used to be room IV where you could compare the Duccio and the Cimabuie and the Giotto directly and see where things were going, from International Gothic to Renaissance. Still, they're all there, and more, a favorite place in art history...

Duccio's Madonna and Child Enthroned with  Angels, 1285;
in an older post from Siena, I have a clandestine shot of the 
Maesta

Cimabuie's Madonna and Child Enthroned...; 1290-1300;
Cimabuie was Giotto's teacher

Giotto, ditto, 1306-10

Giotto's Badia Polyptych; here, I maintain, you can see the shift from painting of
Byzantine mosaics to a painting of real people, emotion, etc.

Simone Martini's Annunciation, 1333

Spitting it out in gold leaf...

Filippo Lippi's Coronation of the Virgin, 1439

Detail...now full tilt into the Renaissance; Lippi was Botticelli's teacher

Lippi's Madonna and Child with Two Angels

And an Ucello...the Battle of San Romano, 1435

Uffizi, 2017: Reformation Exhibit

November 2nd was our third visit to the Uffizi since retiring. I've looked at my previous Uffizi posts and found very little. The "NO FOTOS!" policy precluded anything much, since the museum in those days fairly swarmed with guards anxious to exert their authority (when not busy texting friends, family, watching YouTube, etc.). This visit was different, of course, and I got the pix I always wanted of so many favorites. In posting now, I'll try for some moderation, but there will be several Uffizi posts this year.

It was the anniversary of Luther's 95 Theses, and the great museum did a special exhibit of its Reformation-era holdings from the north, mostly Cranach and Durer. Cranach and Durer! Two of our favorite non-Italian artists! So I'll begin with them before going to the museum's chronological beginnings, the Duccios, Cimabues, and Giottos.

Cranach's Madonna, Bambino, and San Giovanni,
so to speak; awful lighting, glass, and glare;
nonetheless... 

Show me a more insightful and sympathetic representation
of the Madonna, anywhere

A Cranach Adam and Eve

Original Sin, woodcut

Durer Adam and Eve engraving...Durer was
the first to figure out there was money in
doing prints for the masses rather than one-off
paintings for bishops and princes

Rules of civility were suspended during the Reformation

Cranach's portraits of Luther and Katharina von Bora, Mrs.
Luther

The lack of civility got worse as things moved ahead

There are many things you can't do at the Uffizi, but you can
take pix!

And so we are off, on a relatively uncrowded day

Florence Palazzo Medici-Riccardi

We visited the old Medici palace way back in 2011 (https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2011/06/medici-tombs-palazzo-medici-riccardi.html), and I remember sneaking just one photo from its artistic masterpiece, Benozzo Gozzoli's Magi Chapel, completed in 1459, a multi-wall procession of the Three Kings, well, actually, prominent Florentines/Medici allies, dressed up as the imagined retinue of the Three. It is magnificently well-preserved, detailed, and brilliant, but in 2011, the "NO FOTOS!" policy was in full force. Not so now. Stay as long as you like, take as many pix as you want...I got carried away, of course...

Medici crest...they were apothecaries before they invented banking

Elevation, sort of, showing the rusticated bottom two floors

Interior courtyard, very Rennaissancy

Now in the Magi Chapel...

View of "main" wall; the guy on the white horse, right, is said
by some to be a young Lorenzo the Magnificent; others say he
was way too young to be so pictured and is in the procession
to the left...

Another wall

It's an irregularly-shaped room and has more
than the usual 4 walls

Related, perhaps, to the leopard we did not see in Africa

Lorenzo?

Among the salons; after Vicki tore me away from the little chapel

In the 2011 post I had mis-identified this as a
Botticelli; it is rather a wonderful Filippo Lippi;
the Bambino's pose particularly striking

Hall of mirrors

Sort of

Usual ceiling treatment, dating from the Riccardis, who owned
the place after the Medicis moved out

We are thinking of something like this for Le Duc

In addition to housing the museums, the large old building also
houses provincial government (county) offices; here, the
provincial council chambers, decorated with beautiful 16th
century Florentine tapestries depicting the four seasons

In the basement, a museum of Roman busts, a bit of which is
pictured here