Venus and Primavera, a Duel of Gazes
In the new permanent display at the Uffizi in Florence dedicated to Sandro Botticelli, the two most iconic female figures of Renaissance art now look each other in the eye
The most celebrated divinities to emerge from the brush of the great Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli — Venus and Primavera — are now displayed facing one another. The new permanent layout of the spaces devoted to the Florentine genius of fifteenth-century painting at the Uffizi Galleries places them in a direct, unprecedented dialogue.
For the first time, the works are housed in hermetic cases that preserve them in the best possible conditions of safety, removing the large external protective glass panels that altered the direct perception of these monumental paintings hanging on the walls.
For the director of the Uffizi Galleries, Simone Verde, it represents "an important new stage — certainly not the last — of the overall reorganisation of the Galleries announced in 2024, which has already opened many fully renovated spaces, including the Cabinet of Ancient Marbles, the Niobe Room and the Cabinet of Mathematics. The aim of this operation, at once philological, aesthetic and art-historical, is to recompose the vast and precious monumental and collecting heritage of the Medici so that the Galleries, regenerating themselves without betraying their own identity, continue to be what they have always been: the most beautiful museum in the world".
