The East Corridor (or First Corridor)

Sculpture

From 1589 onwards, the East Corridor came to house some of the finest classical sculptures owned by the Medici family and previously kept in Pitti Palace or in other dynastic residences. Over the course of the 17th century, the collection continued to expand significantly, and it eventually spread into the second and third corridors, reaching nearly one hundred statues alongside more than one hundred and forty busts.

For centuries, this collection of ancient art represented the main attraction for both Italian and foreign visitors of the Uffizi, which throughout Europe was renowned as the “Gallery of Statues” par excellence. The display arrangement still visible today differs little from the one adopted in the 16th and 17th centuries and is based on a rhythmic alternation between full-length statues and pairs of busts. Most of the statues, acquired by the Medici on the Roman antiquities market between the 16th and early 18th centuries, are Imperial Roman reinterpretations or copies of celebrated Greek prototypes dating from the Classical and Hellenistic periods. It should not be forgotten, however, that the sculptures as they appear today are always the result of restorations and additions, sometimes quite extensive, carried out by Renaissance and Baroque sculptors specializing in the restoration of ancient marbles.

From the late 16th century onward, artists such as Giovanni Caccini and Valerio Cioli gave completeness and full readability to works that had often been unearthed in fragmentary and damaged conditions, which, according to the taste of the time, made them unsuitable for display.

The full-length statues, which include faithful replicas of classical archetypes such as the Doryphoros and the monumental black marble Ares, are accompanied by an exceptional series of Roman portraits offering a comprehensive overview of the evolution of Roman art from the 1st century BCE to Late Antiquity

The ceiling frescoes

The ceilings of the first corridor of the Uffizi Gallery are decorated with grotesque frescoes, a style characterized by the depiction of imaginary, monstrous and metamorphic figures, often suspended on thin wires. This artistic language enjoyed great popularity between the 15th and 16th centuries following the accidental rediscovery of Nero’s Domus Aurea in Rome. When the ancient grotesques decorating the imperial residence came back to light, they profoundly fascinated Renaissance artists. Many painters, especially Raphael and his workshop, began reproducing them with great success, contributing to their renewed popularity in the modern age. The grotesque frescoes running along the corridor are organized according to a precise and highly sophisticated iconographic and ideological scheme conceived by the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, also with clear propagandistic intentions. The earliest grotesques were commissioned in 1581 by Francesco I de' Medici, who entrusted the decoration of the first fourteen bays to the workshop of Antonio Tempesta, while the following thirty-two bays, extending to the end of the corridor, were assigned to the workshop of Alessandro Allori. Each individual bay is devoted to a distinct subject, allegory, or symbolic theme. The key to interpreting each composition is the central figure, around which a multitude of smaller surrounding figures interact in an intricate network of visual references and symbolic meanings.

Together, the bays, which were intended to produce a genuine, figurative discourse addressed to the visitor, create a narrative in images unfolding around four major themes in a clear and sequential order. The first eight bays celebrate the Medici family. The following group, extending to the fifteenth bay, is dedicated to cosmological and natural themes. A subsequent section explores an unusually rare iconography for Medici patronage: the theme of love, closely connected to the celebration of the marriage between Francesco I and his second wife, Bianca Cappello. Finally, from the twenty-fifth bay until the end, the frescoes celebrate the Virtues, represented as moral qualities capable of tempering two opposing excesses, a theme particularly widespread in the iconographic programs of princely residences of the time.

The paintings of the Jovian and Aulica series

The portraits belonging to the Jovian Collection were installed in the East Corridor from 1587 onwards, under the direct supervision of the painter Cristofano dell'Altissimo. After spending approximately ten years in Como (1552–1562) copying Bishop Paolo Giovio’s collection of Illustrious Men, Cristofano continued to create portraits at the request of the Grand Dukes until the final decade of the century. These works therefore constitute the original 16th-century nucleus of the collection. The portraits were arranged in a chronological order based on the historical period of the sitters and were divided by profession or social role (rulers, popes, men of letters, and military leaders). Remarkable is the series dedicate to sultans and Eastern rulers, among the first subjects copied in Como because of their fame and rarity.

The portraits of the Aulica Series are instead dedicated entirely to the celebration of the Medici dynasty, bringing together seamlessly the two branches of the family. On one side is the main branch, beginning with Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, the first prominent member of the family in the mid-14th century and father of Cosimo the Elder. This branch concludes with Piero the Unfortunate, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and includes distinguished figures such as Catherine de' Medici and Popes Leo X and Clement VII.