The Economist celebrates the widespread Uffizi: “Italy invents a new model of museum”

The Italian museum system is not only among the most admired in the world, but today its organization sets the standard. Proof of this is that the English weekly The Economist dedicates an extensive report (complete with video) to the project launched in 2021 by the Uffizi, explaining that «Its innovation can prove to be a model for other galleries»

A large photo of the Madonna del Baldacchino, Raphael’s masterpiece, protagonist of the most recent and perhaps most significant stage of the Uffizi Diffusi project, his return to the Cathedral of Pescia after 300 years, accompanied by the title “The Uffizi is taking its art to the people” ( https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/05/09/the-uffizi-is-taking-its-art-to-the-people). Thus opens the article, just published, with which the authoritative British magazine celebrates the art dissemination project carried out by the Florentine museum. «Its innovation may prove a model for other museums and galleries», the piece continues. Which is accompanied, among other things, by a video in which the image of the Vasari gallery and details of the Madonna del Baldacchino alternate with suggestive views of the villages of the Tuscan territory (https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=ba73pJQTK1s&t=76s).

Today’s The Economist is not the first prestigious recognition for the Uffizi Diffuse from the international press. In 2021, the year the plan was launched, Time Magazine included the Tuscany of the Uffizi widespread among the 100 destinations in the world to visit absolutely in 2022; the project, now also at the center of numerous research and academic studies (including that of the researcher of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa, Serena Giusti, mentioned in the same article in the Economist), has been covered by various other international newspapers, among which also New York Times, Financial Times and Cnn.

Raphael’s Madonna in Pescia
The great altarpiece created by Raphael at the end of his Florentine period, magnificent and unfinished, from the Palatine Gallery of Palazzo Pitti arrives in Pescia in the church that had welcomed it for over a century and a half between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The work is on display until 30 July in the Cathedral of the Tuscan city, compared with the copy commissioned from the Florentine painter Pier Dandini at the end of the 17th century. The historic event is the result of a special project implemented as part of the Uffizi Diffusi program; the ambitious operation is supported by the Caript Foundation.
In view of its “transfer”, the Madonna del Baldacchino was subjected to a very light consolidation intervention in the highest portion of the wooden support and to accurate diagnostic investigations by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence. The response of the specialists established that the work is in good condition, can be moved to Pescia and be exhibited in the church without any problems.

We know a lot about the history of this masterpiece thanks to the testimony of Giorgio Vasari who recalls how Raphael had received the commission for the painting from the Dei family, owner of a chapel in the Florentine church of Santo Spirito. Called to Rome in the autumn of 1508 by Pope Julius II who entrusted him with the decoration of his apartments in the Vatican (now universally known as Raphael’s Rooms), the Urbinate left the altarpiece unfinished which therefore never reached the church and was replaced in 1522 from the Sacra Conversazione by Rosso Fiorentino, also today exhibited in the Palatine Gallery of Palazzo Pitti. After Raphael’s death (or perhaps even before), he arrived in Pescia through Baldassarre Turini, powerful secretary of Leo X and apostolic dater, a great friend of Raphael of whom he was also his executor, scion of one of the most prominent families of Pescia, who assigned it to his family’s chapel in the Cathedral of his hometown. Here it remained until 1697, the year in which it was bought by Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, son of Grand Duke Cosimo III and heir to the grand ducal throne. The sale triggered violent reactions from the inhabitants of Pescia, deeply attached to the cult of the Virgin and to Raphael’s painting, so much so that it was necessary to move it at night to be able to transport it to Florence, replacing it with a copy made by the Florentine Pier Dandini. Arrived at Palazzo Pitti, the altarpiece was hung in Ferdinando’s apartment, in the southern wing of the first floor. To adapt it to the context of the princely collection and to the carved and gilded wooden frame it still possesses, the painting was enlarged in the upper part by the court painter Niccolò Cassana; this explains the crowning of the cone-shaped canopy and the coffered cap that follows that of the Pantheon in Rome. Raphael’s invention is one of his most memorable for the harmony of the figures, the delicacy of the expressions and the ability to build space, airy and monumental but at the same time very measured, elements that prove how autonomously Raphael mastered the models learned in Florence by Fra Bartolomeo, Leonardo and Michelangelo.