The extraordinary self-portraits’ collection of Uffizi Gallery has migrated from the Vasari Corridor, its historical venue (currently undergoing important structural interventions) and is now set up in 12 rooms located on the first floor of the Gallery.
The 250 artworks exhibited (paintings, sculptures, drawings and also videos), dated from the XIV century to our days, will be rotating in order to give each piece of the collection the rightful enphasis. The Gaddi brothers, Andrea del Sarto and Vasari, Guido Reni, Rubens and Luca Giordano; but also Pietro da Cortona, Bernini, Canova, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Velàzquez, Rosalba Carriera, Delacroix, Liotard, Ingres. And then Fattori, Marino Marini, Elizabeth Chaplin, Chagall, Morandi and Guttuso, until our contemporaries: Pistoletto, Ai Weiwei, Yan Pei-Ming (currently exhibiting at Palazzo Strozzi), are just some of the great artists represented by this exhibition.
The person who started gathering self-portraits was Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici, a distinguished collector and an important figure for the history of Uffizi. This artistic heritage, exhibited from 1973 to 2016 in the Vasari Corridor, has been increasingly growing during the years thanks to new invaluable acquisitions and especially thanks to the donations of artists themselves.
