Florence: Uffizi exhibits Spanish Royal family at Palazzo Pitti

Florence - The Uffizi Galleries are exhibiting yet another prestigious work purchased in 2016: the portrait by Anton Raphael Mengs (Aussig, 1728 - Rome, 1779) of Ferdinando and Maria Anna, two of the children of Peter Leopold, Archduke of Austria and Tuscany, and Maria Luisa of Bourbon, dressed in contemporary clothes and depicted in a Palazzo Pitti interior. "The task of a living museum - explains the director of the Uffizi Galleries Eike D. Schmidt is to protect the works, preserve historical memory, and transmit culture through exhibits and research, but also to 'make the collections breathe' through targeted additions connected with historical events in the city, the local area, and the very collection within which they are found." The work was not entirely painted at Palazzo Pitti by Anton Raphael Mengs, but it was certainly designed within the grand palace. The young prince and princess lived in the Florentine mansion with their parents, and were greatly cosseted by their governesses and tutors, but most especially by their own parents, while the Boboli gardens provided the spaces for their play and leisure time.

The works on display, which belong to the Prado Museum collections, were painted between April 1770 and January 1771, during Mengs's sojourn in Florence. The portraits show us Peter Leopolds very young children dressed in Spanish royal clothes, complete with the royal insignia (Golden Fleece), wearing the typical attire of royal children, as reported by the Gazzetta Toscana newspaper of September 29, 1770. Once completed and before being packed and shipped to the Spanish Court, the paintings were exhibited for public viewing at Palazzo Pitti, where their sparkling pictorial technique aroused great admiration. The exhibit will be open from today, September 20, 2017, through January 7, 2018.