Ereignisse in Florenz und Umgebung: detail

Vom 04 Januar 2010 bis 31 Dezember 2010

Restoration of the Laocoonte in the Uffizi Gallery

Restoration of the Laocoonte by Baccio Bandinelli
and antique marble Farnese Hercules and Wild Boar

The customary generosity of the Amici degli Uffizi and Friends of the Uffizi Gallery, Inc. - through the caring sensibility of President Countess Maria Vittoria Rimbotti, of the board and all the members, towards the needs and projects of the Gallery ? could not have been better employed than in the restoration of these three ancient marbles.
Along with the surprising recovery of the Wild Boar?s quivering vitality and the recovered nimbleness of the Hercules ?Farnese type?, the renovated splendor of the
Laocoon marble group by Baccio Bandinelli is particularly satisfactory.
Our Laocoon differs from the original only for the raised arm dramatically fighting the coiling snake, and for Bandinelli?s inventions of pope Clemente VII?s emblem and the frontal illusionistic parchment that should have consigned untraced inscriptions. It mirrors the epochal event that took by storm early sixteenth-century art, that 1506 finding on the Opium Hill, almost too good to be true, so much so that not long ago a daring blitz-attribution tried to ascribe the three entangled figures to none other than Michelangelo. So powerful is still the Laocoon spell half a millennium after the discovery, just imagine what it could be like in the Rome of Pope Giulio II.
In the Medici palace where it landed after hindrances and changed destinations, it superbly epitomized the continuity between the splendor of Imperial Rome and the magnificence of Medicean Florence.
In the Uffizi, at the end of the third corridor, it provides a sublime climax to the ancient statues parade, introducing the extraordinary urban view beyond the glass wall:
Palazzo Vecchio, the Duomo, Orsanmichele.


Cristina Acidini



It is difficult to imagine how a Humanist could envision an ancient sculpture only through the descriptions handed down by Pliny. But in a season when the ancient was a model for the present (and even for everyday?s life) those stories must have caused vivid dreams. And so rapt and thorough were those humanists in reading the Plinian pages that they were likely to have formed an accurate and faithful idea of many celebrated yet still unknown marbles.
When, in January 1506, the pointed forms of a monumental group started to appear near the Domus Aurea, Giuliano da Sangallo immediately recognized the signs of the very same Laocoon so highly praised by Pliny. Michelangelo, then in Rome, was hastily summoned, and treasured the discovery so much that soon after he gave to one of his nudes in the Tondo Doni the posture of the Trojan priest. It was the beginning of the fortune of an ancient sculpture that is still an emblem of pathos, strength, languor, poignant lyricism. Some fifteen years afterwards Baccio Bandinelli would start his imposing, majestic replica that now shines again along with the other restored sculptures: the ancient copy of the Farnese Hercules, that inspired innumerable modern artists as the model hero at rest, and the Wild Boar, one of the most famed marbles of the Medicean collection. The enterprise, that has renovated the whole head of the third gallery, has been generously supported by the Amici degli Uffizi and Friends of the Uffizi Gallery, Inc.


Antonio Natali
Director of the Uffizi Gallery



The completion of this ambitious restoration project makes me very excited and proud of this remarkable further accomplishment of our Association, once again generously supported by our American partners Friends of the Uffizi Gallery, Inc. I am most grateful to the Gallery Direction that has granted us the opportunity to pursue our mission to preserve and promote our artistic heritage, and deeply appreciate our American benefactors? sensibility in sharing our ideals and our love for art.
The restoration of the Laocoon and all the sculptures of the head of the third Gallery is the fulfillment of our longstanding commitment to the enhancement of the Uffizi ancient marbles, and thanks to our American Friends? donations eight statues of the third corridor and all the marbles of the Lorraine vestibule have already been restored, besides some very important paintings such as Filippo Lippi?s Camaldoli Altarpiece and the Ognissanti Polyptych by Giovanni da Milano.
This responsiveness and generosity can only encourage us to persevere in our efforts to invest in the culture that is at the roots of our civilization and must not be obscured by neglect.


Maria Vittoria Colonna Rimbotti
President of Amici degli Uffizi and of Friends of the Uffizi Gallery, Inc.





The monumental Laocoon marble group by Baccio Bandinelli (Firenze 1493-1560), from the Hellenistic original brought to light in Rome on 14 January, 1506 in the vineyard of Felice de Fredis, near Titus Thermae on the Opium Hill, depicts the Trojan priest Laocoon and his two sons ensnared in the toils of the sea serpents sent by Poseidon. In the original, the priest?s right arm was missing, and Vasari?s Life of Baccio Bandinelli tells us he made an arm in wax to replace the lost one and used it as a model for his copy of the Laocoon, commissioned in 1520 by Pope Leo X de? Medici as a gift to King Francis I.
Baccio made his copy using three marble blocks. He decorated the pedestal front with a naturalistic open scroll with folding lines, and the sides with the emblem of pope Clement VII: a transparent globe crossed by a ray of sun that sets fire to a tree, and the pope?s motto ?Candor illaesus?.
At Pope Leo X?s death the commission was suspended, and the sculptor resumed his work in 1523 after Giulio de?Medici was elected as pope Clement VII. In 1525 the group was complete, and so enthusiastic was the pope about the result that he decided to send it to Florence instead, in the Medici Palace where Vasari saw it at the end of the second corridor. It was later transferred to the Casino di San Marco and landed in the Gallery with Cardinal Carlo de? Medici?s inheritance, probably in 1671. A previous restoration was carried out after the sculpture was severely damaged by the fire that devastated the Gallery in 1762.

Francesca de Luca
Curator of the Department of Cinquecento to Seicento Art

Wild Boar

The meticulous care and admirable persistence with which the debris of the Wild Boar were restored after the 1762 fire testify to the renown then enjoyed by the sculpture. Part of the array in the Room of Niches at Palazzo Pitti, where Vasari saw it in 1568, the statue reached the Gallery towards the end of the XVI Century where it was displayed together with the sculpture of a ?peasant in the act of wounding it? that, according to the information handed down by Pirro Ligorio, had been discovered with the Boar among the ruins of a building on the slopes of the Esquiline. Nothing remains to prove that the sculpture of the hunter, given by Pope Pius IV to Cosimo I in 1560 together with the Wild Boar and the two Molossian Hounds now in the Vestibule, formed part of a same group. The loss of the ?peasant?, destroyed in the fire that so havocked the Wild Boar, makes this hypothesis unprovable, even if it seems plausible to imagine that the wild beast might have been conceived to be part of a complex hunting scene.
Such being the case, it comes natural to conjure up one of the myths most frequently represented in Greek and Roman art: the killing of the the Calydonian boar, sent by Artemis to punish King Oeneus of Kalydon, at the hands of the king?s son Meleager.
The animal, maybe captured in the instant of its smelling the hunter?s approach, is represented in such naturalistic detail as to presuppose a careful live study; the uncommon meticulousness with which some not overtly visible details are rendered, such as the teeth or the ear tufts, might hint at the existence of a bronze Hellenistic archetype (end of III-II Century B.C.) of which the Florentine sculpture would be a replica of rare quality and faithfulness, traceable to the early Imperial period.


Farnese Hercules

The Greek sculptor Lysippus radically innovated the traditional iconography of the hero, capturing him not at the moment of his irresistible triumph against the opponent of the day, but in an attitude of exhaustion and pensiveness. Wearied by the effort of shouldering the Earth, while Atlas seeks the three apples of the Hesperides he is holding behind his back, Hercules seems to be meditating on the destiny waiting for him at the end of his twelve labors, conscious of his strength and of his limits. This explains the great favor enjoyed by this version as a model for replicas in the Imperial period, when the new Herculean ideal of Stoic matrix took hold, with the Peloponnesian hero embodying the moral fortitude of the wise man in the face of adversities. Lysippo?s type of sculpture, called Farnese because one of the best replicas belonged to that famed collection, from the end of the II Century A.D. was even used as a support for the busts of emperors, desirous of presenting themselves to their subjects as philanthropic rulers prostrated by the weight of command, exercised for the wellbeing of mankind. This is not the case though of the Florentine statue, to be found until 1787 at Villa Medici in Rome, that has neither the extremely tumid muscularity nor the gigantic size of some of the copies of Antonine Age. On the whole, the Uffizi replica seems to represent the leanness that characterized the lost bronze IV-Century-BC archetype, with a pensive face transpiring the spiritual weariness of the melancholic hero imagined by Lysippo.


Fabrizio Paolucci
Curator of the Department of Ancient marbles



Gruppo marmoreo del Laocoonte
Baccio Bandinelli
Galleria degli Uffizi, Terzo Corridoio
Orario: dalle ore 8.15 alle 18.50, lunedì chiuso.

Informazioni: Welcome desk 055/213560 - 055/284034 Ufficio stampa Amici degli Uffizi:
Davis & Franceschini Lea Codognato, Caterina Briganti
Tel. 055/2347273 ? fax 055/2347361 ? e.mail: davis.franceschini@dada.it


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