Posted on 26-2-2004
Uffizi
to double in size as Italy tries to outdo Louvre
John Hooper in Rome
Italy is to try to turn the Uffizi gallery in Florence into
Europe's premier art museum, with an ambitious 56m euro (£38m)
scheme to double its exhibition space.
Giuliano Urbani, Italy's culture minister, said the enlarged
gallery would surpass "even the Louvre".
By the time work is completed, visitors to the extensively
remodelled Uffizi will be able to see 800 new works, including
many now confined to the gallery's storerooms for lack of space.
The project - the outcome of nine months of intensive work
by a team of architects, engineers and technicians - is a centrepiece
of the cultural policy of Silvio Berlusconi's government.
With refurbishment plans also afoot for the Accademia in Venice
and the Brera in Milan, Italy is bent on securing its share
of a market for cultural tourism that is threatened not just
by the Louvre, but also by the "art triangle" of Madrid,
which takes in the Prado, the Thyssen collection and the Reina
Sofia museum of art.
Schemes for the expansion of the Uffizi's exhibition space
stretch back almost 60 years. The latest was mooted in the mid-1990s.
But the one adopted by the present Italian government has reached
a far more advanced stage than any of its forerunners. Roberto
Cecchi, the government official in charge of the project, told
the Guardian yesterday that all that remained to do was to tender
for contracts.
"Everything should be under way by the summer", he
said. The target date for completion of the project is 2006.
But the first changes will be seen as early as next week when
a collection of pictures by Caravaggio and his school, including
the artist's Bacchus, currently crammed into a tiny room on
the second floor, is to be moved to more expansive premises
on the first.
Mr Cecchi said the biggest problem faced by his team was "inserting
a museum into a building that is itself a monument". The
horseshoe-shaped Palazzo degli Uffizi, begun in 1560, was designed
by the artist and historian Giorgio Vasari.
The latest plans are bound to stir controversy, involving as
they do the creation of new stairwells and lifts in the heart
of the building. There has already been an outcry over one proposed
element, a seven-storey, canopy-like structure for a new exit
by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki.
But Mr Urbani said in Florence on Tuesday that part of the
scheme was "subject to further evaluation".
At the heart of the plan is the opening up of the first floor
of the vast building, which for decades was occupied by the
local branch of the national archives.
This will allow visitors to follow a more extensive, and ordered,
itinerary that would turn the Uffizi into what Antonio Paolucci,
Tuscany's top art official, called "a textbook of art history".
As at present, visitors will be channelled to the second floor,
where they will be able to study early works by Cimabue and
Giotto before moving on to admire the gallery's extraordinary
collection of renaissance masterpieces, including Botticelli's
Primavera.
But most of what was painted after 1500 is to be moved down
a storey to new exhibition space, and on the ground floor there
will be a more extensive collection than at present of modern
art. The overall increase in exhibition space will be from 6,000sq
metres to almost 13,000.
Asked if the expansion might not increase the risk of inducing
Stendhal's syndrome - the disorientation, noted by the French
novelist, in those who encounter dozens of Italian Renaissance
masterpieces - Mr Cecchi replied fatalistically: "Yes.
It'll double it".
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