Museum
"La Specola"
The new exhibition sections
In this page
Mineralogy
The mineralogical collections returning to the La Specola Museum after more than a century and a half of "exile" represent a heritage of exceptional historical and scientific interest.
In the "Imperial and Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History" in Via Romana, which was opened for public use on 21 February 1775 by Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine, many valuable specimens from the collections collected by the Medici between the 15th and 18th centuries found their home, including some hardstone objects (lapis lazuli, jade, jasper, agate...) of exceptional artistry acquired by Lorenzo the Magnificent and perhaps even by his father Piero the Gouty. This original core of La Specola's mineralogical collections is housed in a dedicated room in the new exhibition itinerary.
Also part of the collections (and on display in the exhibition itinerary) are other artifacts of extraordinary historical value, such as those referable to the collection that the great scientist and father of modern mineralogy Niels Stensen (Niccolò Stenone) put together in the second half of the seventeenth century at the behest of Grand Duke Cosimo III.
After ups and downs, the mineralogical collections of the Natural History Museum of Florence were moved to the Via La Pira location in 1881 to return, now, after more than a century, to their original home.
The exhibition itinerary of the new layout, divided into six rooms, allows visitors to admire beautiful specimens, some of them truly unique in the world: the enormous crystals of topaz, aquamarine, tourmaline from Elba and Brazil, the samples of hematite and pyrite from Elba and southern Tuscany... A fantastic play of colors and shapes: the most varied, capable of satisfying the aesthetic taste of every visitor, regardless of their scientific knowledge.
After an initial section devoted to meteorites and the evolution of minerals since the birth of our Planet, we enter the Hall dedicated to illustrating the properties and classification of minerals. There are two drawers under each display case: those who wish to do so can open them and find detailed scientific explanations of the specimens on display above (left drawer) or stories, histories, and curious happenings in the one on the right. This display is intended to ideally reconnect with the truly avant-garde display methods of Pietro Leopoldo's Enlightenment-inspired Museum. In the section devoted to anatomical waxes, each case has a small drawer containing a reproduction and explanation of the corresponding wax.
Through a corridor in which scientific instruments are displayed and some of the great protagonists in the history of Florentine mineralogy are recalled, one enters the room dedicated to illustrating Italian mineralogy through the display of very fine specimens, from sulfur native to Sicily to minerals from the Elban collection.
The itinerary continues with an immersion in a kind of "Wunderkammer" that collects splendid artifacts from the Collection of worked stones from the Medici era.
We then return to the first room and, through a dedicated tour, illustrate some of our minerals' endless applications to meet our Society's needs, with a special emphasis on the indispensable need for ethically and socially sustainable exploitation.
Art and Science: educational models
The new section, "Art and Science: educational models," consists of 7 thematic rooms carved out within as many rooms on the second floor of the building, totaling more than 200 sqm of new exhibition space. The most significant novelty for the public is the Florentine Botanical Wax Collection, consisting of plants, fruits, and plates of plant anatomy, histology, and pathology of exceptional realism and extraordinary beauty, which, after more than a century, is once again open to the public. The tour, which illustrates the genesis and didactic value of naturalistic and anatomical models, takes visitors through a chronological and narrative line beginning in the seventeenth century, with a room dedicated to the works of Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, including Baroque allegorical theaters, moving on to the production of the Florentine Officina Ceroplastica, founded in 1771, with works of great value such as Luigi Calamai's well-known Demountable Venus and the trunk of a young man, and with those mentioned above, extraordinary collection of wax plants and fruits displayed in a particularly evocative and engaging setting. The itinerary continues through two rooms devoted to enlarged models, with a rich repertoire of plates of plant anatomy and physiology, the production of which began following advances in optics due to Giovan Battista Amici; still life paintings by Bartolomeo Bimbi, and finally, a room devoted to naturalistic and anatomical models produced in materials other than wax, including two anatomical statues and other detachable models in wood, evidence of a limited production of the Museum's own Workshop, and an anatomical statue in papier-mâché by L. T. J. Auzoux, as well as works in glass, plaster, and other materials.
In addition to the seven rooms that make up the new section called "Art and Science," there is an eighth room, also located on the second floor but opposite the vestibule, which repurposes the historical comparative anatomy waxes displaying works that have not been available for several years. This room is the entrance to the Museum's historical tour of anatomical waxes and zoology.