East Corridor

Sculpture

From 1589 onwards, the East Corridor housed some of the finest classical sculptures owned by the Medici family, which had previously been kept at the Palazzo Pitti or in other dynastic residences. The collection, which was expanded during the 17th century, eventually came to occupy the second and third galleries as well, numbering almost one hundred statues and over one hundred and forty busts.

For centuries, this collection of ancient art was the main attraction for Italian and foreign visitors to the Uffizi, a museum known throughout Europe as the ‘Gallery of Statues’ par excellence. The display criteria still in use today do not differ substantially from those of the 16th and 17th centuries and consist of a constant alternation between a full-length figure and two busts. The statues, almost all of which were purchased by the Medici on the antiquities market in Rome between the 16th and early 18th centuries, are for the most part Imperial-era reworkings of Greek prototypes from the Classical and Hellenistic periods.  

The ceiling frescoes

The ceilings of the East Corridor of the Uffizi are decorated with ‘grotesque’ frescoes, a style characterised by the depiction of imaginary, monstrous and metamorphic figures, often balancing on thin wires, which enjoyed particular popularity in the 15th and 16th centuries following the chance discovery of Nero’s Domus Aurea in Rome. When the ancient grotesques that adorned the emperor’s sumptuous residence came to light, they made such an impression on the imagination of Renaissance artists that many painters, notably Raphael and his workshop, began to replicate them, enjoying great success and thus contributing to their renewed popularity in the modern era.

The arrangement of the grotesques along the East Corridor follows a precise and complex iconographic and ideological scheme, intended—not least for propaganda purposes—by the Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

The first and oldest grotesques were commissioned by Francesco I de’ Medici in 1581 and entrusted by him to the workshop of Antonio Tempesta for the creation of the first 14 bays, and to that of Alessandro Allori for the subsequent 32 bays up to the end of the corridor.

The paintings of the Jovian and Aulica series 

The portraits from the Jovian and Aulica series collection were hung in the East Corridor from 1587 onwards, under the direct supervision of the painter Cristofano dell’Altissimo. Having spent around 10 years (1552–1562) in Como copying Bishop Paolo Giovio’s collection of Illustrious Men, he continued to produce portraits until the final decade of the century at the request of the Grand Dukes. This therefore constitutes the original 16th-century core of the collection. The portraits were arranged in chronological order according to the period of the subjects and grouped by their professions (rulers, popes, men of letters, men-at-arms). Of particular note is the series of sultans and Eastern rulers, among the first subjects copied in Como due to their fame and rarity.