The Uffizi’s Director Wants to Return Renaissance Artworks to the Churches They Were Originally Made for Hundreds of Years Ago

Should Italian museums return works of Renaissance art to the
churches for which they were originally made? Eike Schmidt, the
director of the Uffizi gallery in
Florence, has been making that case—and has already singled out a
proto-Renaissance masterpiece by Duccio as a possible candidate
to leave the museum.

Encountering religious art in a church can provide context to
help viewers understand works and how they were meant to be seen,
Schmidt says. “Devotional art was not born as a work of art but for
a religious purpose, usually in a religious setting,” he told the
Art
Newspaper.

Duccio’s Rucellai Madonna (1275), which originally
hung in Florence’s Santa Maria Novella church, could be moved as
part of an effort to encourage the public to encounter works beyond
the galleries. Creating a diffuso (or wider museum) could
also better serve public health interests.

After World War II, Italy moved much of its Renaissance art from
Catholic churches to museums for safekeeping. The records regarding
these transfers are limited, but Schmidt, who is also president of
the government’s religious building fund, which oversees churches,
says that roughly 1,000 works of religious art were transferred to
divisions of country’s the cultural ministries.

Therefore, the government has the power to return artworks to
their original homes in houses of worship. Churches may need to
make changes to meet the conservation and security needs of these
works of art, but once that hurdle is cleared, there is little
standing in the way of reuniting Italian religious art with
churches.

The post The Uffizi’s Director Wants to Return Renaissance
Artworks to the Churches They Were Originally Made for Hundreds of
Years Ago appeared first on artnet News.