The Uffizi Project

The Uffizi Project presented at the Archaeological Institute of America

By: Kelly McClinton
January 8, 2017

The Virtual World Heritage Laboratory (VWHL), based in the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, in collaboration with partners at the Politecnico di Milano and the University of Florence, will undertake the 3D digitization of the complete collection of Greek and Roman sculpture in the Uffizi, Pitti Palace, and Boboli Gardens on behalf of the Gallerie Degli Uffizi.

Totaling some 1,250 works of art, it is the third-largest collection of its kind in an Italian state museum. Largely assembled by the Medici from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the statues include works of exceptional interest to students of Greek and Roman art, notably the Medici Venus, the Medici Faun, the Niobids, and the Ariadne. The contract was signed by the parties on May 19, 2016, and work commenced on May 23, 2016.

This is a five-year project whose specific goals are: digitization of the entire collection of ancient sculpture in the Uffizi; training of students in the techniques of 3D data capture, digital modeling, and interactive online publication; creation of a limited number of 3D restoration models of works of sculpture of interest to individual project participants; publication of the 3D models created through the project on
(i) the Italian Ministry of Culture’s internal conservation database (SICAR);
(ii) the Uffizi’s public website;
(iii) the VWHL’s publicly available Digital Sculpture Project.

Accompanying each interactive model on the Digital Sculpture Project webpage will be a description of the object, including its state of preservation. Ideally, pertinent bibliography will also be provided.