The South Corridor (or Second Corridor)

La scultura

Sculpture

The extension of the ancient sculptural decoration into the second and third corridors was completed at the end of the 17th century, thanks both to the acquisition of important new groups of works on the Roman art market and to the transfer of sculptures already owned by the Medici family but previously used to decorate Villa Medici in Rome. Between the 1570s and 1580s, in this magnificent complex built on the Pincian Hill, Ferdinando de' Medici, who before becoming Grand Duke served as a cardinal, created an extraordinary collection of antiquities distinguished by both quantity and quality. Among its masterpieces were the Niobids, the Medici Venus, the Wrestlers, and the White Marsyas. The transfer of these sculptures to Florence, begun during the reign of Cosimo III, but was completed only under the Lorraine dynasty, between 1770 and 1780.

The South Corridor in particular was intended to display the great ancient bronzes, such as the Chimera, a masterpiece of Etruscan bronze work dating from the early 4th century BCE, and the Orator, a rare example of official statuary from the early 1st century BCE. These pieces were the pride of the Medici collections, together with other precious examples of Roman bronze sculpture, such as the Idolino and the Minerva of Arezzo. After centuries on display in the Gallery, they were transferred during the final decades of the 19th century to the National Archaeological Museum of Florence, where they remain today.

The corridor itself still preserves its original series of marble sculptures, among which stands out one of the rare Greek originals in the Uffizi collections, the so-called Dying Alexander: a magnificent head actually depicting a Triton or another sea divinity, created by a workshop in Asia Minor during the 2nd century BCE.

At the centre of the setting, almost as if recalling the former presence of the Chimera, stands one of the Uffizi’s rare marbles preserved in a fragmentary state: the body of a she-wolf carved in porphyry, a precious example of Roman sculpture from the 2nd century CE, long kept at Villa Medici.

Also of exceptional interest is the statue of a Muse displayed along the southern side, signed on its base by the sculptor Atticus of Aphrodisia, a rare example of a pagan subject sculpture datable to the late 4th century CE.

The ceiling frescoes

The second and shortest corridor of the Gallery, which overlooks the Arno River and Ponte Vecchio, was actually the last to be decorated, at the order of Cosimo III de’ Medici. Between 1696 and 1699, the Grand Duke commissioned the painters Giuseppe Nicola Nasini, Tommaso Nasini, and Giuseppe Tonelli to create an iconography in continuity with that of the third corridor, completed during the second half of the 17th century. This later scheme, however, differed considerably from the earlier decoration of the first corridor.

In the ceilings of the second corridor, the didactic and celebratory character clearly predominates, though expressed through a language radically different from that of the 16th century. The grotesque style was definitively abandoned in favour of religious subjects, with the celebration of Florentine saints and, more generally, Tuscan exemplars of faith and moral rigor. This program culminates in the glorification of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, personified as Virtues.

The paintings in the Jovian and Aulica series

In the left end, closest to the East corridor, there are still portraits painted by Cristofano dell'Altissimo, among which the portrait of Albrecht Dürer is particularly noteworthy. Dürer is the only artist represented in the Florentine series besides Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

The portraits of the popes and of the ruling families of Austria and England are later works, mostly executed by the rather mediocre painter Carlo Ventura Sacconi and his workshop during the third decade of the 18th century, when the collection was considerably enlarged at the request of Cosimo II and Gian Gastone de' Medici. The portrait of the Cardinal Innocenzo Cybo, on the other hand, was commissioned in 1606 from Francesco Bianchi Buonavita, who had trained in the Grand Ducal workshops.

The Aulica Series in the second corridor continues to celebrate the genealogy of the Medici family during the 17th century, with portraits including those of Ferdinando II and of Mary, Queen of France. In particular, it commemorates the union between the Medici and the della Rovere families, represented here by Federico Ubaldo, the last duke of the Urbino dynasty, and by Vittoria della Rovere, his daughter, who married Ferdinando II. Through her dowry, she brought from Urbino to Florence the priceless art collections of the della Rovere family, including paintings by Piero della Francesca, Raphael, and Titian, works that still represent cornerstones of the Uffizi collections today.