The Museum of Natural History of Florence participates in the exhibition Islam and Florence. Art and collecting from the Medici to the Twentieth century, with the loan of a jade bowl, which is part of the nucleus of the collections of the first Medicis. This bowl, whose material is of oriental origin, has the inscription LAURMED engraved on the external body with which Lorenzo the Magnificent had marked some pieces in hard stone that he owned.
The precious artefact will be exhibited in the Magliabechiana Hall of the Uffizi.
The exhibition, curated by , Giovanni Curatola and organized by the Uffizi Gallery and the National Museum of Bargello, goes on from 22 June to 23 September 2018.
The initiative is aimed at exploring the conspicuous exchange of artefacts and works of art between one of the capitals of the Italian Renaissance and the world of the Near and Middle East. While between the fifteenth and the early seventeenth century there are many objects of art that arrive Florence as political gifts, but above all as the fruit of purchases and orders from Florentine families, there are however many if not more goods, especially the precious fabrics of the city's manufactures, which are exported in huge quantities to Cairo, Damascus or Istanbul.
To compose a picture of these exchanges, there are textile objects, carpets, ceramics, manuscripts, glass and objects in semi-precious stones from many Italian and foreign museums. The second theme closely related to the first will be tackled in the halls of the Bargello National Museum and will be that of collecting and the antique market between the nineteenth and twentieth century of Islamic objects that have enriched the museum collections of the Bargello Museum, but also of the main European, Eastern and American museums.
Islam and Florence
Art and Collecting from the Medicis to the 20th Century
curated by Giovanni Curatola
Uffizi, Magliabechiana Hall, and National Museum of Bargello
22 June – 23 September 2018