When Lorenzo de’ Medici died in April 1492, his family had the palace on Via Larga inventoried room by room. More than five centuries later, the Uffizi Galleries are using that list to put his collection back together. Magnifico 1492, at Palazzo Pitti from 3 December 2026 to 1 March 2027, brings more than 100 works from museums in Italy and abroad to show what Lorenzo owned, and where each piece stood.
The palace on Via Larga is today’s Palazzo Medici Riccardi, on Via Cavour. Its inventory lists paintings and sculpture alongside vases, gems, cameos, coins, manuscripts and maps. The exhibition sets out to show the collection as a whole rather than a run of highlights, and to ask why the family collected at all: for pleasure and learning, but also to build the reputation and influence that kept them in power. The Uffizi’s director, Simone Verde, describes it as the result of new, previously unpublished research.
The Battle of San Romano, together again
The headline loan is Paolo Uccello’s Battle of San Romano, three panels showing the 1432 battle between Florence and Siena. The inventory places them in Lorenzo’s own room. They were separated long ago and now belong to three museums: the Uffizi, the National Gallery in London and the Louvre. Seeing them side by side again, with their rearing horses and broken lances, is the reason many people will make the trip.
From the courtyard and the study
Smaller loans fill in the rooms around them. A gilded copper spiritello, made by a collaborator after a model by Donatello, comes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; it once stood on the fountain in the palace courtyard. A manuscript of Petrarch’s Trionfi comes from the Bibliothèque nationale de France: Lorenzo is said to have commissioned its miniatures and binding for his study. The setting suits the subject. The Treasury of the Grand Dukes, where the show is held, already keeps several of Lorenzo’s carved hardstone vases, marked with his name.
Plan your visit
Magnifico 1492 is in the Treasury of the Grand Dukes, on the ground floor of Palazzo Pitti, from 3 December 2026 to 1 March 2027. It is open Tuesday to Sunday from 8:15 to 18:30, with last entry at 17:30. Tickets can be booked on the Uffizi Galleries website from 2 November. To see the house the collection came from, walk across the river to Palazzo Medici Riccardi, where Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes still cover the walls of the family chapel.
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Villa Cora
Surrounded by rose gardens and overlooking the Boboli Gardens.
