PALAZZO UFFIZI

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Title	PALAZZO UFFIZI
View	Loggia (facing Arno River), frontal view, from the south the across Arno River
Notes	government, administrative
Work Type	mixed-use office building artisan workshops piazza
Style/Period	Late Renaissance Mannerist
Creator Name	Vasari, Giorgio
Creator Nationality	Italian
School of Creator	Florentine school
Date.Creator Birth	1511
Date.Creator Death	1574
Contributors to Project	completed by Alfonso Parigi the Elder and Bernardo Buontalenti
Major Design Aspects	linear site responsive incorporates public art
Elements & Spatial Types	court loggia arcade Serliana/Palladian window blind window split pediment
Climate Type	Mediterranean
Country	Italy
City	Florence
State/Province	Tuscany
Alternate Place Names	Piazzetta degli Uffizi
Architectural Material	stone
Patron	Cosimo I de'Medici
Dates	1560-1580
Century	16C
Photographer	Scott Gilchrist, Archivision
Date Photographed	9/30/1994
Subject Information	The Palace of the Uffizi was designed in 1559 and only took its architect, Giorgio Vasari, five years (1560-65) to build; this was the period in which Cosimo de' Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, was steadily consolidating - bureaucratically as well - his recent rise to power. In the shape of a horse-shoe, the Uffizi buildings stretch from Piazza Signoria to the River Arno and are connected to Palazzo Vecchio by a passageway above Via della Ninna and with the Pitti Palace by the Vasari Corridor (1565): they were designed to house the offices' (from here it takes its name) of the thirteen judges who directed the the city administration. The rooms on the ground floor instead were designed as workshops and studios for the court artists and craftsmen specialized in working metals, precious stones, glass, ceramics and tapestries. The ancient Mint, where the florins were coined, was situated on the West side and incorporated into the Palace, together with the 'Fonderia' (or Pharmacy), which specialized in the distillation of perfumes, medicines that were supposed to be miraculous, and poison. (Many of these activities were illustrated by Vasari's students in the paintings on the walls of Francesco I's 'Studiolo' in Palazzo Vecchio). Vasari knocked down all the houses in the quarter of the 'Baldracca' quarter to make room for the new buildings but spared the church of San Pier Scheraggio and incorporated it into the construction; up until the construction of Palazzo Vecchio, this Romanesque basilica (consacrated in 1068) had been used for the City Councils of the Florentine Republic (Dante was a councillor here too)...The design of the huge Uffizi building, which can be considered Vasari's finest masterpiece, is based on the contrast between the white plasterwork and grey local stone (taken from Brunelleschi's construction of the Hospital of the Innocents) and also strongly influenced by Michelangelo's design of the Laurentian Library (window frames in relief and strongly marked mouldings). The architecture of the building gains in slenderness and light thanks to the large number of decorative elements: from the ground-floor loggia with its columns and pilasters, the mezzanine floor with its small square windows placed between corbels, the first floor with its formal, large and balconied windows, to the parapet and columns of the upper loggia and lastly the great overhanging roof. A square (the square of the Uffizi) is created in the interior of the rectangle, which almost becomes a courtyard. When Vasari died (1574), he was substituted by architects Alfonso Parigi and Bernardo Buontalenti, who completed the building by 1580, joining it on the Western side to the Loggia dei Lanzi, where they created a hanging garden on the roof and a little loggia that was destroyed in 1840.' Source: www.mega.it/eng/egui/monu/ufq.htm
Credit Line	Archivision Inc. (all images copyright Scott Gilchrist / Archivision.com)
Collection Title	Archivision (architecture, urban design, gardens, landscapes and public art)
Collection information	Collection administered by the Visual Resources manager, Architecture Library, (402) 472-1193

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