There’s a new  “room” at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, one with a striking visual design to focus the eye on Michelangelo’s Tondo Doni. Also given pride of place is Raphael’s Madonna del Cardellino and other pieces by Raphael and Fra Bartolomeo. Eleven pieces in total have been called ‘bombs in the history of art’ by the Uffizi’s Director, Eike Schmidt.

The works of Michelangelo and Raphael are exhibited together in the same hall, in the large hall number 41 of the west corridor, which until October 2016 hosted the paintings by Sandro Botticelli, re-upholstered in new spaces. So, a new exhibition was born to make the diversity of artistic voices and exchanges between Raphael and Michelangelo, who  were contemporaneously in Florence from 1504 to 1508.

Together with the adjacent Sala di Leonardo, which will open in a few weeks, the new room that unites the masterpieces of Raphael and Michelangelo celebrates the truly unique period in the history of mankind, when in the city, in a few years, the most great artists of the world created the iconic works that today are part of the universal idea of the Renaissance in Italy.