An exhibition like this can not help but arouse surprise and involve the great international public of the Uffizi Gallery. Indeed, the novelty of the topic picks up the results of by now well-rooted and exemplified specialised studies and transposes them into a very intelligent operation of popularisation. It witnesses the involvement of distinguished personalities like Mina Gregori, Silvia Meloni, Marco Chiarini and Ettore Spalletti (to remain in Florence), and avails of the extensive and valuable collaboration of scholars and researchers. I am grateful to curators Riccardo Spinelli and Carlo Sisi, prime guarantors of the quality of this exhibition of works of art and of the completeness of the artistic and cultural aspirations it represents, for so wisely coordinating the various contributions, in agreement with Uffizi director Antonio Natali and curator of the hosting department, Valentina Conticelli.

To the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze go my thanks for accepting to include the exhibition in the programme “A Year in Art” 2009, in partnership with the Polo Museale Fiorentino, first under the presidency of Edoardo Speranza and then continuing with the equal dedication and involvement of current president Michele Gremigni. My thanks also go to “Firenze Musei”, the operations structure of tried and tested experience in organising exhibition events in the State Museums of Florence.

The Eighteenth Century in Florence: a special century in the arts, but not only. It was the century of political discontinuity, when the Medici dynasty died out after governing Tuscany for two centuries as Dukes and Grand Dukes (preceded by a century of effective republican government), and from Lorraine across the Alps arrived the new sovereigns who later became emperors on the Habsburg throne. It was the century in which following the mature and sumptuous Baroque style of the last Medicis, which had already won consolidated critical acclaim, a conversion of values and languages came about that on the eve of Napoleonic dominion prepared the way for Neoclassicism. Looking through the images of the refined selection of works the curators have chosen (generously loaned by various owners), one immediately perceives the plurality of models and accents: a devout vein full of pietism (so many Transiti!), the lofty level of the statues even in the reduced dimensions of small bronzes, the evergreen sentiment of the Antique, the cryptic bizarreness of the more eccentric, the technical-business novelty of Ginori porcelain from Doccia, the continuation of the princely art of tapestries at the Manufactory founded by the Medicis, the end-of-the-century vedutismo corresponding to a pride widely diffused even in other Italian capitals of the arts, for the glory and beauty of the cities and landscapes modelled by centuries-old History.

And yet, faced with such profound and decisive political upheavals, what prevails is the sense of a continuity without jolts, so solid as to receive and sustain change, supporting itself on the expression of an identity that nothing seemed able to place in doubt. While dynastic change and a long period of weak and uncertain government neither dispersed nor mortified Florentine genius, great merit goes to the “staying power” of a civil and religious fabric in which art patronage became a meritorious and unavoidable good practise. The great families as well as the religious orders (until they were shaken and dimidiated by suppression) kept alive the traditions that prevailed under the Medicis, even boosting the ancient art of wall-painting, making it an instrument for a family’s apotheosis with a celebrative-historical character. A manifesto of aspirations organised and expressed in the language of the allegory, portraying the victory of positive principles over negative principles, the triumph of Truth over Falsehood, of Good over Evil. The noble families, both ancient and recent, continued to be the depositories and promoters of the values the Medicis had privileged, transferring them in turn to the great institutions of an artistic character which continued to implement them: the Academy of the Drawing Arts founded by Cosimo I in 1563, the “Gallery of Works” (the future Opificio delle Pietre Dure under the Lorraines of the Restoration) stably existent as of 1588, the more recent Academy of Fine Arts founded in 1775 and, that same year, La Specola.

All this and much more finds a place in the exhibition, hosted in the rooms offered and willingly accepted by the Uffizi Gallery, and divided into persuasively effective thematic and chronological groups. To the Giunti publishing house goes the merit for the fine catalogue dedicated to painters and sculptors for the most part little known to the general public, indeed much less than the monstres sacres of the Renaissance, too often targeted to obtain certain results. This agile and intelligent balance of studies either completed or underway, will be a cornerstone for those of the future, which will not fail to take new life from this excellent exhibition.

Cristina Acidini
Soprintendente per il Patrimonio Storico, Artistico ed Etnoantropologico e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze