Bargello National Museum Tickets
Bargello National Museum Ticket Reservation
Address: Via del Proconsolo 4 - Firenze
Opening hours: daily, 8.15-13.50. The ticket office closes at 13.20. From 22 March to 18 August the museum is also open in the afternoon.
Closing: on the 1st, 3rd and 5th Monday and 2nd and 4th Sunday of each month; New Year’s Day, May 1st and Christmas Day.
The medieval palace was in the past the seat of the chief of the military police, or Bargello; it was restored in the second half of the 19th century and became a museum of Renaissance statuary and of minor arts. The collections of statues, starting from Quattrocento artworks by Donatello, Ghiberti Luca della Robbia, includes masterpieces by Michelangelo, as the Bacchus and the Brutus, and reaches the end of the 16th century, with Cellini and Giambologna. The large section dedicated to minor arts displays among other precious items, the outstanding collection of ivories, the Renaissance maiolica from Urbino, jewellery and objects decorated in enamel.
Focus on Michelangelo's early masterpieces: the Baccus
The Baccus at the Bargello Museum
Michelangelo was undoubtedly helped by being received into the circle of Cardinal Riario, which also included several Florentine bankers who had settled in the Papal city.
Among these Jacopo Galli in particular was a very active patron of Michelangelo. The banker, highly influential in Rome, owned a magnificent house in the city whose garden, a real outdoor “antiquarium”, contained a fine collection of ancient and modern works of art, as shown by a 16th century drawing by the Flemish artist Maarten Van Heemskerck. In this garden filled with antiquities Jacopo Galli had placed a sculpture by Michelangelo, the Baccus, as can be seen in the drawing.
The statue (now in the Bargello Museum in Florence) had been sculpted for Riario and then sold to Galli when the Cardinal no longer wanted it. Galli also purchased another work by Michelangelo, known from the ancient sources as an Apollo or Cupid, which recent studies have identified as the Young Bowman now located ina building accupied by the Cultural Bureau of French Embassy in New York.
Lastly, it was Galli who obtained for the sculptor the commission for the Pietà of Saint Peter’s in the Vatican, the first truly famous work by Michelangelo, the masterpiece that consacrated him as a great artist in the eyes of his contemporaries.
How to choose the correct ticket
Half price ticket: for 18-24 year olds from the European Union.
Free ticket (reservation only)
All visitors under 18 years old from any country (children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult.
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