Drawings from the Uffizi - rivisited

Florence can rightly be considered the capital of drawing. It is here – thanks also to the contribution of Giorgio Vasari – that the idea developed according to which a series of lines, sometimes apparently disordered, drawn on a sheet of paper could have an artistic, and not merely functional, value. The Vasarian concept of 'disegno' as the father of the three arts goes well beyond the material reality of sheets of drawings, nor is it any accident that many collections of drawings were precociously formed in Florence. The most important of these is undoubtedly the grand-ducal collection, the original core of what is now the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi (GDSU), an extraordinary collection and also a catalyst and centre for research on drawing. The presence of the graphic collection of the GDSU was also one of the reasons why the Tuscan city was chosen as its seat at the time of the foundation of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz in 1897, and the study of drawings has always been one of the central aims of the research conducted at the Institute. This communion of aims has recently been renewed with a series of initiatives, including the meetings of the Progetto 'Linea'. It also lies at the basis of the cooperative project for the digitalization and electronic cataloguing of the whole collection, in which the GDSU and the KHI are working together with the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. The present online exhibition is aimed at showing the potential of this project, which far from being limited to the mere registration of data, is opening new avenues of research. The drawings we are presenting here are therefore "revisited": not only through the lens of the digital camera, but especially through the eye of the researchers who have taken them in their hands, studied them and sometimes reclassified them.

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