Quick look at the Uffizi

21 Settembre
Using our AIFS-provided passes, we cruised through the box office of the Uffizi and up to the top floor for a first look at this famous museum. The Uffizi is U-shaped, or, more precisely, a long rectangular box with one side missing. From the ascensore we traversed roughly half the length of one side of one floor of the box in the hour and a half before closing. This quick look, nevertheless, led us to a group of rooms that are the focus of our Renaissance art course,

• The Sala di Giotto e del Duecento

Containing the Cimabue Santa Trinita Madonna already noted in a previous post, Giotto's Mother and Child Enthroned Among Angels, and the Duccio work of the same title. These are what are referred to by my better half as the "Madonna Hat Trick".
• The Sala di Trecento

Consisting of two rooms, one for Siennese and one for Florentine artists.
In Room 3, the Siennese room, is this Madonna and Child by Tagliacci which was painted around 1334. Although her nose is tilted at the requisite 30 degrees, the features are beginning to look more lifelike than the execrable "Greek" style that Vasari so abhors. Nevertheless, although the baby's right foot seems about the right size for an infant's, the length of his body would suggest a growth spurt that might be more likely at age six or eight. Clearly this artist felt no necessity for painting from life models.
  




• The sala di Gotico, and the Sala del Gotico Internazionale

Containing works from the ongoing exhibition of the international gothic style, to which I plan to devote an entire entry in this journal at a later date.
• The Early Renaissance

Which holds this rather strange work, a collaboration between Masolino and Masaccio, the Madonna and child with St. Anne.  St. Anne, with a very dark face, towers over the composition. While most of the work is attributed to Masaccio, it is interesting to compare the rather gothic cherub at upper left which is said to be by Masolino with the more realistic one on the right by Masaccio. The mother and child, while not "pretty" in a mannerist sense, appear recognisably human, and not merely iconic symbols.