The Restitution of a Powerful Gaze

Following the recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, The Medici: Portraits and Politics 1512-1570, where Cellini’s bust of Cosimo 1 de’ Medici, loaned by the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, played such a pivotal role, we thought we should record its return home to Florence and the details of the work involved in bringing to light Cosimo’s silvered eyes to such a spectacular effect.

It is with great pleasure that the Friends of the Bargello offer this short film showing the bust’s reinstallation and restorer Ludovica Nicolai’s description of the work she carried out to return Cosimo’s already powerful gaze to an even more penetrating intensity.