Sculptures from the Boboli Gardens

The Boboli Gardens are an integral part of the Palazzo Pitti complex. Work on the garden began in 1549 in close coordination with the work of transforming the Palazzo Pitti into the grand-ducal residence, as initiated by Cosimo I. But a series of enlargements and reorganizations periodically remodelled the Gardens also in the following centuries. Some of these interventions comprised the installation of statues and sculptures, both antique and modern, in fountains, along the ilex-walks, in grottoes and elsewhere in the park. The result is that the Gardens remain to this day an extraordinary open-air gallery of sculptures, which the Photo Library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, in liaison with the Administration of the Boboli Gardens, began to document in 2008. This online exhibition presents a first part of the photographic campaign, which focused on some of the most outstanding statues: those that, for conservational reasons, have had to be placed in a closed environment – in the so-called Stanzonaccio, a service building abutting onto the western wall of the Gardens, dating to the 17th century and used as a store since 2002 – and have in part been replaced by copies. The high resolution digital photographs, which we are pleased to invite you jointly to consult, permit you virtually to examine in close up, and zoom into the marble surfaces of works that are currently not accessible to the public – and it is just in this that the added value of the exhibition we are here presenting consists.

go to Online Exhibition