Forged in Fire

The exhibition, curated by Uffizi Director Eike Schmidt together with Sandro Bellesi and Riccardo Gennaioli, offers visitors the first full and exhaustive overview of bronze sculpture in the Tuscan capital, an art form that achieved its loftiest expression under the last of the Medici grand dukes in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Bronze sculptures and semi-precious stone inlay works were commonly traded with Europe's other courts as diplomatic gifts – in effect, bargaining chips that were technical and material in nature – and were the object of major commissions from the continent's crowned heads and aristocracy.