Description
The Loggia della Signoria, also called the Loggia dei Lanzi, is a Gothic portico overlooking Piazza della Signoria, in Florence, next to Palazzo Vecchio. Today it is an open-air museum: under its three arches stand original sculptures, from the classical age and Mannerism, visible day and night, free of charge.
The showpiece is Benvenuto Cellini's bronze Perseus, 3.20 meters tall with its pedestal: the hero holds Medusa's head in his left arm. It has stood here since 1554, and has moved from there only once, for a restoration, in 1999.
Next to it is Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine Women, a marble masterpiece of 1583, a tangle of bodies spiraling upward. By the same sculptor, Hercules and the Centaur Nessus (1599) captures the movement of the centaur's taut body, beaten by the hero.
Then there are two Roman statues, Patroclus and Menelaus, and six female figures near the back wall, perhaps from Trajan's Forum: the third from the left represents Thusnelda, a barbarian prisoner. Guarding the stairs, two marble lions, one Roman and one from 1600.
A high fever, a storm that lowered the fire of the furnace, the metal that seemed not to be enough. To save the casting of his Perseus, Cellini tells us, he threw all the household dishes into the bronze. Then the workshop caught fire. The statue came out almost whole in a single cast, a challenge thought impossible.
The loggia was not built for statues. Built between 1376 and 1382, it served the Republic for popular assemblies and public ceremonies, under cover. It was the Medici who changed its job: Cosimo I made it one of the first exhibition spaces in the world.
The works carried a message. Perseus beheading Medusa was the duke cutting short the Republic, and the serpents were the city's eternal quarrels. The name “dei Lanzi” comes from the Landsknechts of Cosimo I's guard, who were quartered here.
The round arches, unusual in a Gothic building, most likely inspired Brunelleschi for the Ospedale degli Innocenti.
Don't miss
• Cellini's Perseus.
• The Rape of the Sabine Women.
• Hercules and the Centaur Nessus.
• The six Roman statues of women.
Did you know?
• An inscription records that only in 1750 did Florence adopt January 1 as New Year's Day: until then it was celebrated on March 25.
• In A Room with a View, the film by James Ivory, Lucy faints right under the loggia after witnessing a murder.
The showpiece is Benvenuto Cellini's bronze Perseus, 3.20 meters tall with its pedestal: the hero holds Medusa's head in his left arm. It has stood here since 1554, and has moved from there only once, for a restoration, in 1999.
Next to it is Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine Women, a marble masterpiece of 1583, a tangle of bodies spiraling upward. By the same sculptor, Hercules and the Centaur Nessus (1599) captures the movement of the centaur's taut body, beaten by the hero.
Then there are two Roman statues, Patroclus and Menelaus, and six female figures near the back wall, perhaps from Trajan's Forum: the third from the left represents Thusnelda, a barbarian prisoner. Guarding the stairs, two marble lions, one Roman and one from 1600.
A high fever, a storm that lowered the fire of the furnace, the metal that seemed not to be enough. To save the casting of his Perseus, Cellini tells us, he threw all the household dishes into the bronze. Then the workshop caught fire. The statue came out almost whole in a single cast, a challenge thought impossible.
The loggia was not built for statues. Built between 1376 and 1382, it served the Republic for popular assemblies and public ceremonies, under cover. It was the Medici who changed its job: Cosimo I made it one of the first exhibition spaces in the world.
The works carried a message. Perseus beheading Medusa was the duke cutting short the Republic, and the serpents were the city's eternal quarrels. The name “dei Lanzi” comes from the Landsknechts of Cosimo I's guard, who were quartered here.
The round arches, unusual in a Gothic building, most likely inspired Brunelleschi for the Ospedale degli Innocenti.
Don't miss
• Cellini's Perseus.
• The Rape of the Sabine Women.
• Hercules and the Centaur Nessus.
• The six Roman statues of women.
Did you know?
• An inscription records that only in 1750 did Florence adopt January 1 as New Year's Day: until then it was celebrated on March 25.
• In A Room with a View, the film by James Ivory, Lucy faints right under the loggia after witnessing a murder.