The Madonna del Baldacchino, one of Raphael’s masterpieces, will return from Palazzo Pitti to the city where it was welcomed for over a century, from the artist’s death until the end of the seventeenth century, Pescia. Three months, from 29 April to 30 July 2023, in the spaces of the Cathedral of Pescia, in dialogue with the faithful late seventeenth-century copy commissioned by the Florentine painter Pier Dandini to replace it upon his return to Florence. It is the special project of the Uffizi Diffuse. The Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia and Pescia Foundation fully supported and financed the ambitious operation of the Galleries. The Madonna del Baldacchino is currently in the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, where it underwent numerous diagnostic investigations to assess its state of health. The work, this is the response of the specialists, is in good condition, perfectly capable of traveling and only needed a very slight consolidation intervention in the highest portion of the wooden support.
History
Made by the genius from Urbino between 1506 and 1508 on commission from the Dei family, the only work performed in Florence, the large altarpiece was conceived for the Church of Santo Spirito in Florence, where it never went. Around the death of Raphael in 1520, it came into possession of his friend and executor Baldassarre Turini (1481-1543), a leading exponent of the community of Pescia, as well as a high prelate of the Holy See in the early sixteenth century. Once in the city of Valdinievole, the painting was placed in the Cathedral, on the high altar of the Turini chapel-mausoleum which Baldassarre himself had built between the 1630s and 1640s, also to worthily house the prestigious work. The Madonna del Baldacchino remained there for a century and a half, until 1697: in that year it was purchased by the Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici, who brought it back to Florence to the palace of Palazzo Pitti, its current home still today, where the absolute protagonist among the masterpieces of the Palatine Gallery. In its place was placed the copy painted by Pier Dandini: this painting too has been checked and restored in recent months, in preparation for the evocative exhibition that will soon see the two Madonnas looking each other in the eyes in the spaces of the Pescia cathedral.
November 28, 2022 | 12:42
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