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Tribuna of the Uffizi (painting)

The Tribuna of the Uffizi
Johan Zoffany - Tribuna of the Uffizi - Google Art Project.jpg
Artist Johann Zoffany
Year 1772–78
Medium Oil painting
Dimensions 123.5 cm × 155.0 cm (48.6 in × 61.0 in)
Location Royal Collection, Windsor Castle

The Tribuna of the Uffizi (1772–1778) by Johan Zoffany is a painting of the north-east section of the Tribuna room in the Uffizi in Florence, Italy. The painting is part of the United Kingdom's Royal Collection.

Johan Zoffany was a German-born painter who had become successful in London. One of his principal patrons was the Royal family. In the summer of 1772, Zoffany left London for Florence with a commission from Queen Charlotte to paint 'the Florence Gallery'. (Neither she nor her husband George III ever visited Italy in person.) The agreed price was high and Zoffany was paid £300.Felton Hervey, who had a large art collection and who knew the Royal family, met Zoffany in Florence. He was included in a prominent position in the painting by December 1772. Zoffany was still working on the painting late in 1777; he only finally returned to England in 1779. By this time Hervey had died.

Zoffany has varied the arrangement of the artworks and introduced others from elsewhere in the Medici collection. He gained special privileges, with the help of George, 3rd Earl Cowper, and Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet, such as having seven paintings, including Raphael's Madonna della Sedia, temporarily brought in from the Pitti Palace so that he could paint them in situ in the Tribuna. In thanks, Zoffany included a portrait of Cowper looking at his recent acquisition, Raphael's Niccolini-Cowper Madonna (Cowper hoped to sell it on to George III; it is now in the Washington National Gallery of Art), with Zoffany holding it (to the left of the Dancing Faun).

The unframed Samian Sibyl on the floor was acquired for the Medici collection in 1777. It was a workshop copy of the pendant to Guercino's Libyan Sibyl, recently bought by George III, and may be intended as a compliment to him.


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