Day 37 - Uffizi Museum

One of the main reasons for coming to Florence was for this Museum. It ranks up there with the best of them and quite well known. It was best to book before hand so I did that yesterday so I rocked up a bit before 9am, got my ticket and walked straight in. This post is probably a little heavy on the art side of things so hopefully I won't bore too many non art people.

The other day I mentioned that Florence got wealthy through banking during the 12-1400s so was very encouraging to the arts (and could afford to be). Thus one day, they decided to start a museum of the best works and the Uffizi is what has resulted.

Generally the collection goes in chronological order from the 1300s to beginning of 1700s. The collection had 3 Leonardo da Vinci's (remember there are only about 15 paintings attributed to him with a significant number in the Lourve) which were great to see. Loved the couple of works by Bottichelli - such as Primavera and the Birth of Venus.

It also had an early Michangelo painting of the Holy Family. The brightness of the colours radiating from this work was quite something, considering at the time he was more known as a sculptor and not a painter. The Raphael's were interesting to see but apart from the couple in the Vatican, Raphael hasn't really appealled much to me.

Next up was Titian and again seeing his paintings in the flesh have turned me into an even bigger fan of his. Today I saw a couple of his really important works and he just has a wonderful touch of the female form. Correggio is another artist whose name I only knew but not his body of work. Every time I turn around, I find I'm taken by his work and something I will look into further when back home.

There was the famous ancient Roman Medici Venus and the thing that really struck me about this marble carving was just how far forward she is leaning, it seems much greater than the dodgy copy in one of the art schools in Australia.

Last up were the Caravaggio's which are always great to see, and more of his important pieces. Still, in the same room was one of his 'followers' in Artemesia Gentileschi with her other version of Judith Slaying Holofernes (the version that was in the Sydney Caravaggio show was the one were the sword was only roughed in, this one has the full detail). I only know a couple of her works but I like the edge she has and think her 'caravaggio' style is probably better than his.

So 6 hours later the brain was hurting and time to leave. Definately one of the great art collections and cool to see so many pieces that I knew in some detail. The other great thing, and not many museums I say it about was that you weren't allowed to take pictures. Thus you didn't have tourists being pains in the butts to get their horrible looking snapshots.