Florence – Uffizi Gallery (Madonna Pisa)

When I was in the National Gallery of Art in Bucharest last week I struggled on occasion to find out much about the artworks, either at the site or on-line. The Uffizi Gallery is the reverse, hundreds of their works have their own Wikipedia pages, research documents and endless commentaries about their heritage.

This artwork was painted between 1250 and 1260, although some think it’s very slightly later, although it’s not known who the creator was, but it may have been Maestro della Sant’Agata. The painting is named after Luigi Pisa, who was a previous owner of the work, and whose heirs gave it to the Uffizi Gallery in 1933 and it has been on display since 1948.

This was how the painting looked before 2015, in its unrestored state. Personally, as a non-art expert, I prefer this to how it looks now, it has heritage, authenticity and a sense of history to it. The current heavily restored painting is almost faultless, but I’m sure many like seeing how it might once have looked and it’s certainly now much cleaner.

The Virgin Mary has long fingers and the gaze of Jesus and his mother deliberately don’t meet. The painting is in Room 1 of the Uffizi, a newly re-opened room which houses some of the oldest paintings which have mostly been recently restored.