Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
played in the church's little-known museum two floors above the church, which is open
only on Mondays.
Museo del Bargello
ART MUSEUM
(
www.polomuseale.firenze.it
; Via del Proconsolo 4; adult/reduced €4/2, temporary exhibitions €6/3;
8.15am-4.20pm Tue-Sun & 1st & 3rd Mon of month, to 2pm winter)
It was behind the stark exterior
of Palazzo del Bargello, Florence's earliest public building, that the
podestà
meted out
justice from the late 13th century until 1502. Today the building safeguards Italy's most
comprehensive collection of Tuscan Renaissance sculpture.
Crowds clamour to see
David
in the Galleria dell'Accademia but few rush to see his
creator's early works, many of which are displayed in the Bargello's downstairs
Sala di
Michelangelo
. The artist was just 21 when a cardinal commissioned him to create the
drunken grape-adorned
Bacchus
(1496-97). Other Michelangelo works to look out for
here include the marble bust of Brutus (c 1539-40), the David/Apollo from 1530-32 and
the large, uncompleted roundel of the
Madonna and Child with the Infant St John
(1503-05, aka the Tondo Pitti).
On the 1st floor, to the right of the staircase, is the
Sala di Donatello
where two versions
of David, a favourite subject for sculptors, are displayed. Donatello fashioned his slender,
youthful dressed image in marble in 1408 and his fabled bronze between 1440 and 1450.
The latter is extraordinary - the more so when you consider it was the first freestanding
naked statue to be sculpted since classical times.
The 2nd floor moves into the 16th century with a superb collection of terracotta pieces
by the prolific della Robbia family.
