The initial nucleus of the collection of the Gallery, created in 1581 by Cosimo’s son, the Grand Duke Francesco I, consisted of Medici collections that had been begun in the fifteenth century, which were displayed in the “Tribuna” and the following rooms. The works were not restricted to statues and paintings, there were also drawings, miniatures, gems, scientific instruments and objects of ethnographic and naturalistic interest, such as stuffed animals, as well as tapestries and weapons. The collection was augmented in the seventeenth century with the Della Rovere legacy and the arrival of antique statues from Rome. When the Medici dynasty came to an end in 1737, the last heir Anna Maria Luisa saved the family collections from the uncertain destiny of the Medici private property by securing them for the city of Florence, with the proviso that they were not to be exported. Such conditions clearly also covered the heritage of the Uffizi. In 1765, when Florence was governed by the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, the Museum which had up to then been the private collection of the ruling family was opened to the public. New schemes of organisation and arrangement were conceived and, in line with the classification criteria of the Enlightenment, only the paintings and some of the sculptures remained at the Uffizi, while the other collections (weapons, scientific instruments, bronzes, antiquities, etc. ) over time went to make up the fundamental nuclei of other Florentine museums (the Museum of Natural History, the Archaeological Museum, the Museum of the History of Science). The suppression of churches and convents between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also brought numerous important works to the Uffizi. At the beginning of the twentieth century, several important paintings were also purchased from other museums, such as the Accademia, in order to fill gaps so that the Uffizi might become the “Italian National Gallery”.

 

 

Today, the collection of the Uffizi is made up of paintings of the Florentine and Tuscan school from the thirteenth century to the Renaissance and beyond, including, among others, works by Giotto, Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Lippi, Botticelli, Leonardo and Michelangelo. Italian painting in general is well-documented, through Piero della Francesca, Mantenga, Bellini, Raphael, Titian and Caravaggio. The collection of antique sculpture, mostly of the Roman period, is of notable importance.