Friday 9 January 2009

Bargello Treats for 2009

Visitors to Florence's Bargello Museum in early 2009 can look forward to a couple of extra treats on top of the usual world-class permanent sculpture collection. Restoration work has finished on Donatello's bronze David, the first free-standing nude since Roman times when it was completed sometime in the 1440s. It will take centre-stage alongside the sculptor's other Bargello works, and earlier (1401) bronze panels by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, in the Salone del Quattrocento.

Meanwhile, April sees the opening of an important exhibition of works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, charting the links between his sculpture and the birth of Baroque portraiture. It follows a major Bernini exhibition at California's Getty Center in 2008.

The Bargello Museum, housed inside a magnificent Gothic fortress on Via del Proconsolo, is worth €4 of your entrance money anytime. It's one Florence stop I recommend highly in the new book, due out in May.

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