This month's museum pick...

Florence's Bargello Museum

By Patrick Totty

In Florence, where art is strewn about as casually and extravagantly as the clothes and possessions in a teenage girl’s room, there is still an underlying sense of order. Rather than trying to be all things to all people, or vying to outdo one another, each of the city’s major museums has a specialty. Visitors who love paintings will go to the Uffizi. Those who are fascinated by modern art or costumes will visit the Pitti Palace. 

For lovers of sculpture, the quintessential Florentine museum is the Bargello, a magnificent civic palace begun in the 13^th  century that later became the residence of the Bargello, Florence’s head cop, and in the 18^th century a prison. In 1865, it was declared a national museum. 

The building, three stories high with a beautiful courtyard and a tower, is tucked away off the main streets, not far from either Il Duomo or the Uffizi, yet much less likely to be as thronged. A ticket reservation system allows visitors, even ones from overseas who have Internet access, to determine way ahead of time when they’d like to visit without having to wait in line or deal with crowds.

The major artists whose works are on display here include Davids by Donatello whose forms trace the emergence of Tuscan sculpture from an elongated gothic style into the more rounded, proportionate, humanistic style of the early Renaissance. Brunelleschi’s magnificent baptistery doors, submitted in a 1401 competition (a competition won by Pisano and Ghiberti) are here, as well works by the Della Robbia brothers, Andrea and Giovanni.

The first floor is dedicated to Tuscan master sculptors, including Michelangelo, Cellini, Bandinelli and Ammannati. Other floors house varied collections that include Renaissance jewelry, enamels and ivories, Venetian glass, Islamic bronzes and wooden sculptures. The museum has so much sculpture on hand that the other art forms preserved here almost function like a palate-cleansing sorbet between courses. In all, the Bargello houses 30,000 pieces of art.