The West Corridor (or Third Corridor)

Sculpture

At the entrance of the third corridor of the Uffizi Gallery stand two statues of Marsyas facing one another, each depicting the satyr tied to a tree at the moment he is being flayed alive by Apollo, who had defeated him in a musical contest. The sculptures are Roman works from the 2nd century CE derived from Hellenistic models.

In the statue on the left, the so-called “Red Marsyas,” is noteworthy the use of a marble veined with purplish shades intended to evoke the appearance of the satyr’s exposed flesh.

The sculpture in front of it, known as the “White Marsyas” after its marble colour, reproduces a model that originally formed part of a larger group including Apollo and a barbarian sharpening the knife, whose iconography is preserved in the famous “Knife Grinder” displayed in the Tribune.

Among the portraits, one of exceptional importance is that of the Emperor Caracalla, which may be dated to the early 3rd century CE. The dramatic twist of the head influenced even Michelangelo, who drew inspiration from it for his Brutus.

At the end of the third corridor stands the statue of the Boar, considered by critics to be the product of a late Hellenistic workshop of the 1st century BCE. It served as the model for the famous bronze “Porcellino” (Piglet), created in the 17th century by the sculptor Pietro Tacca and now preserved in the collections of the Horne Museum.

Badly damaged by the 1762 fire that destroyed a portion of the sculptures originally displayed in this sector, the marble statue is flanked by the Laocoön sculptural group, a careful replica by the 16th-century sculptor Baccio Bandinelli, based on the renowned archetype discovered in Rome in 1506 and now preserved in the Vatican Museums.

The ceiling frescoes

The third corridor was frescoed as part of a major renovation project commissioned by Ferdinando II de' Medici, who in 1655 entrusted its decoration to Jacopo Chiavistelli. He was responsible for the first fifteen bays of the present corridor, while Agnolo Gori, assisted by Cosimo Ulivelli and Andrea Chiavistelli, frescoed the following seventeen bays extending to the end of the corridor.

In 1762, this latter series was completely destroyed by fire, but Grand Duke Peter Leopold of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine promptly entrusted its restoration to the Neoclassical painters Giuliano Traballesi, Giuseppe del Moro, Agostino Fortini, and Giuseppe Maria Terreni. They reproduced the designs of the original 17th-century decorations with considerable fidelity, although in some cases simplifying their compositional richness.

Compared to the complex symbolic network that characterizes the decoration of the first corridor, the frescoes of the third corridor stand out for their explicitly didactic purpose. The figures are accompanied by captions repeated along both long sides and beneath each portrait. While the first corridor, at the time of its decoration, was a private space frequented only by the Grand Duke and his collaborators, seventy years later, when the third corridor was completed, the Gallery had already been opened to selected visitors from outside the court. The decorative program was therefore intended above all to illustrate the history and glories of Tuscany, its cities, and its achievements in the fields of humanistic, artistic, and scientific culture.

The figurative language adopted, however, does not represent a break with that of the first corridor. The Baroque artists also revived grotesque decoration here, adapting themselves to the 16th-century style established by Antonio Tempesta and Alessandro Allori. The compositions of Agnolo Gori remain closer to the earlier models, whereas those by Jacopo Chiavistelli respond more deliberately to Baroque taste, with fictitious architectural frames and complex structures.

The paintings of the Jovian and Aulica series

In the final corridor, continue the series of Eastern sultans, European rulers, military leaders, and men of letters, most of them painted by Carlo Ventura Sacconi and his workshop. Particularly noteworthy are the portraits executed by Pier Dandini during the first decade of the 18th century, including those of the scientists Evangelista Torricelli, Vincenzo Viviani, Francesco Redi, Lorenzo Bellini, and the literary figure Vincenzo da Filicaja.

With the arrival in Florence of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, an additional series with the portraits of the Lorraine family was installed on the side opposite the windows. The proper Jovian Series instead ends with the portraits of the curators and directors of the Grand Ducal Gallery up to the beginning of the 19th century.

The Aulica Series continues in the third corridor with portraits of the last descendants of the Medici family between the 17th and 18th centuries, alongside numerous portraits of foreign rulers from the same period, especially from Central Europe, including members of the imperial House of Habsburg and the ducal houses of Lorraine and Bavaria, and sovereigns of Russia and China.

The sequence concludes, almost as a symbolic tribute to the greatness of Florence, with the ideal portrait of Hugh, Margrave of Tuscany, painted by Cristofano Allori in 1590. The work depicts the “Great Baron” whom Dante Alighieri placed in Paradise: a historical figure surrounded by a legendary aura who, around the year 1000, contributed to the greatness of the March of Tuscany and was the first to transfer the capital of Tuscia to Florence.