The Bargello Museums: five distinct museums with a well-defined character, which compose altogether a unique and multifaceted museum reality, and give shape to the diverse panorama of art and Florentine history before, during, and after the Renaissance. They encompass, under a single denomination, five monumental buildings, symbolic places of the city of Florence and its history, now transformed into museums preserving masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture and other precious art collections.
The Museums of the Bargello constitute the most important collection of Italian sculpture in the world. This is primarily thanks to the extensive collection of Renaissance works at the National Bargello Museum, with its conspicuous heritage of masterpieces by the greatest artists of the 15th and 16th centuries, among whom are Donatello, the Della Robbias, Verrocchio, Michelangelo, Cellini, and Giambologna. Orsanmichele also contributes to this collection with its gallery of monumental statues, created for the external niches of the same building, while at the Museum of the Medici Chapels, the New Sacristy by Michelangelo stands out like a diamond, being one of the greatest masterpieces of sculpture and architecture of the Renaissance and all Western art, captivating visitors with a vision of absolute beauty.
The Bargello Museums also are buildings of great significance in the urban and historical context of the city of Florence. The Bargello, originally the Palazzo del Podestà of Florence (the chief city magistrate), evokes the oldest communal age of the Republic, a time of great economic prosperity but also violent feuds between political factions, famously echoed in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy: on the walls of the Bargello Chapel, Giotto and his workshop frescoed the oldest known portrait of Dante, at the feet of the image of Paradise. On the other hand, the Medici Chapels recall the dominance of the Medici dynasty through the centuries, celebrating the family branch of Lorenzo the Magnificent in Michelangelo’s New Sacristy, and the grand-ducal branch in the Princes Chapel, a triumph of marbles and semi-precious stones crafted in the technique of ‘commesso fiorentino.’ And while Orsanmichele was one of the focal points of public life between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, first as the loggia of the wheat market and then as a highly venerated church built around Orcagna’s splendid tabernacle, Palazzo Davanzati and Casa Martelli, on their side, recount the private life of the city’s wealthy families, the former evoking the medieval-Renaissance era, and the latter leading the visitor into the 17th-18th centuries.
Finally, the Bargello Museums boast an encyclopedic collection of decorative arts. From its foundation in the mid-19th century, the National Bargello Museum was a champion of the contemporary historical-artistic ideals that combined decorative arts with great sculpture, viewing them as a spur to the renewal of modern art, craftsmanship, and industry. Precious ivories, glass, maiolica, enamels, metals, goldsmith’s work, weapons, jewelry, and textiles enriched the museum’s collections in a kaleidoscope of objects diverse in material and technique, but all of excellent craftsmanship. Ad while Palazzo Davanzati offers a journey through furnishings and art objects more directly linked by domestic life, the Medici Chapels offer visitors, before they access the splendor of Michelangelo’s art and the Princes Chapel, the precious collection of reliquaries donated over the centuries by the Medici family to the Basilica of San Lorenzo.