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Buontalenti Finishes the Uffizzi Palace, Florence in the 1500's

There was a growing trend among the new branch of the Medici family that came to power in the XVI century to prefer villas along the edges of the Florentine plain over those of the Mugello, the region of the early Medici. Elsewhere in the region, Cosimo could stay, either privately or with the court, at the ancient Medici estate of San Rossore at Leghorn (restructured as of 1546), at Portoferraio (1548) at Cerreto Guidi (1557), in the palace on the lungarno at Pisa (begun by Bandinelli in 1559, currently the "Palazzo Reale"), at Seravezza (1561), in the Medieval Rocca di Sala at Pietrasanta, at Colle Salvetti and in the palace in Siena.

The Renaissance of the sun, the Burckhartdian certainty of a dominant man is followed by a Renaissance of the night, Shakespearean, troubled by bitterness, aware of its limits.. not even on the hottest day or at the busiest time does a glimmer of light or the echo of a voice (come in). Everything is immobile and static, but not restless. Everything is waiting for an obscure revelation from the earth that leaps across the walls, illuminating the anxious soul in the heart of the night" (E. Battisti).

Within that "city" in the city is the center of Florence after the works sponsored by Cosimo, there is the "world" enclosed by the ancient palace walls, and within that world is the "world" of the "studiolo". In Borghini's Riposo, there are references to other contemporary "scrittoi" in Florence. After Vasari's death, Francesco I commissioned Buontalenti to complete the construction of the Uffizi (about twenty years later in 580).

Buontalenti and Francesco made important changes in both the general concept and the details. In the opening on the old city street on the west (Via Lambertesca) Buontalenti created the "door of the petitions" (1577); Francesco wanted this opening to receive requests from his subjects. Taking an idea from Cosimo's funeral canopy, he introduced the "broken tympanum" into a portal. The result was "majestic but bizarre... and inaccessible" (L. Berti).

Thus, the building originally conceived as the seat of the magistrature now came to house a museum on the top floor The works and the closed rooms complemented each other, projecting onto or overlooking the city or river. Like the wall and empty spaces of the Piazza degli Uffizi that correspond to the wall and great space of the Salone dei Cinquecento, they almost correspond, in a long-distance relationship and different terms, to the sequence of statues and fountains in the ducal square and other "decorated urban sequences" that Cosimo had created in the city.

But beyond this intellectualized relationship that could only be grasped by a select few, the idea of a Gallery was an important moment in the history of Florentine culture. The artwork was no longer bound to the living environment; it was now considered an esthetic object to be grouped with other esthetic objects. The museum, as a temple of art, was born.

In 1584 Buontalenti added the tribune to the Gallery. This was a new version of "studiolo" in the palace, with a precious temple-shaped cabinet or "studiolo" in the middle (comparable with the fifteenth century examples of the temple of the Holy Sepulchre in San Pancrazio or the edicula of the Crucifix in San Miniato).

The Medici theater in the Uffizi was opened in 1586 with a performance of L’Amico Fido in honor of the wedding of Virginia Medici and Cesare D'Este. The performance - preceeded by lengthy rehearsals - cost 25,000 scudi; 400 people worked on it and the technical virtuosity of the six intermez705 was without precedent. That subtle link between science or knowledge and whimsy or creativity that distinguished Buontalenti's work found its ideal outlet in stage settings.

More than the essence and content of the plays themselves, the intermezzos logically assumed major importance. They were conceived as an opportunity to demonstrate stage and staging techniques that knew no limits when it came to developing astonishing effects. The Uffizi also came to house the foundry which, in Cosimo's day, bad been established in Palazzo Vecchio.

The foundry, like the other shops and the Casino became centers of invention and marvelous production under Buontalenti's management: melting rock crystal, producing artificial porcelain, semi-precious stone inlays, attempts to achieve perpetual motion, chemical and biological experiments of all kinds were carried out. Scientific and figurative experimentalism converged in novel results.

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