Magnifico 1492, a major exhibition dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici at the Uffizi

Paintings, sculptures, and manuscripts bring to life the Magnifico’s collection and the cultural vibrancy of Renaissance Florence

From December 3 to March 1, 2027, Florence will once again engage with one of the figures who most profoundly shaped its identity.

The Uffizi Galleries are dedicating Magnifico 1492 to Lorenzo de’ Medici, an exhibition that will reconstruct, on an unprecedented scale, the artistic, intellectual, and collecting horizons of the most famous member of the Medici dynasty. Over one hundred works, drawn from Italian and international museums and collections, will ideally recreate the extraordinary collection housed in the family palace on Via Larga – now the Palazzo Medici Riccardi – as it was inventoried at the time of Lorenzo’s death. Alongside the great masterpieces of painting and sculpture, the exhibition will feature gems, cameos, vases, coins, manuscripts, and maps: an atlas of knowledge and taste capable of conveying the encyclopedic nature of a culture in which beauty, knowledge, and power were intimately intertwined. The project will also be crowned by the reconstruction of one of the most important cycles in the history of Western art, which the Uffizi will unveil in the coming months. Lorenzo the Magnificent was not merely a statesman and refined patron of the arts. He gathered around him some of the most influential minds of the fifteenth century, from Marsilio Ficino to Angelo Poliziano, from Pico della Mirandola to Botticelli and Michelangelo, making Florence the center of a cultural system destined to profoundly shape the European imagination.

Finally, the exhibition’s title focuses attention on an emblematic date. 1492, the year of Lorenzo’s death and the discovery of the Americas, marks a symbolic turning point between two eras. As Uffizi Director Simone Verde observes, his life ends precisely where “the world of modern history that we still inhabit today begins.” It is on this threshold – between the height of the Renaissance and the dawn of a new era – that the exhibition weaves its narrative.