Divina Simulacra | Uffizi
The main statues of the ancient Medici collection are now on display on the ground floor of the Uffizi
The Uffizi's most famous ancient statues - like the Medici Venus, or the Wrestlers, the Marsya and the Knife Grinder- are exhibited outside their historical locations. For a short time they will be placed in the ground floor rooms of the Vasarian museum, in these spacious rooms, visitors can see and admire them up close, in all their beauty.
The aim of 'Divina Simulacra' is in fact to return masterpieces to the full enjoyment of the public, some of which are difficult to appreciate in their most striking details, and to propose juxtapositions between the different sculptures, which would be impossible to realise in the context of the ordinary exhibition. For the first time individual replicas of classical marble groups are puto on show together: for example, the Dancing Faun of the Tribuna is reunited with the Seated Nymph placed in the second corridor, so as to recompose the group of the 'Invitation to Dance', one of the masterpieces of Hellenistic statuary of the Micro-Asiatic area.
The Medici Venus is finally visible again from close up and no longer from a considerable distance, as for years the ban on public access to the Tribuna had imposed; and she is again surrounded by those effigies of Venus, such as the Venus Aurea and the Caelestis, which, until the end of the 18th century, crowned her inside the Tribuna, so much so as to suggest to visitors the impression that this environment was 'a little Temple inhabited by Goddesses' (according to Edward Wright, 1730).
