The Chianti area, with its ancient history strung between Florence and Siena for centuries, enters the most important museum in the world. The ambassadress of art treasures is an almost unknown 12th century Madonna, a precious wooden panel with a strong chromatic impact, which reached the Uffizi from the Casale villa near Greve, the heart of the Florentine Chianti area. In front of this holy image, the doors of the Gallery open, and the upper floors house the much more famous and impressive Madonnas by Cimabue, Duccio and Giotto, which mark the shift to the “Latin language”.
The four lunettes which encircle the Madonna represent a Procession of people parading in the streets of Florence and reaching the places which are the symbols of religious and political powers to recall those processions that, from the 14th century, saw another icon, the miraculous Madonna of Impruneta, being carried around in the streets of the Grand Duchy capital in cases of war, famine or plague; exactly as one reads in the 1734 Memorie by Canon Giovan Battista Casotti. Fairs and feasts also developed around the most venerated basilicas: an example of this is supplied by Filippo Napoletano’s painting of the Impruneta Fair a popular feast which the Grand Dukes themselves did not disdain attending, to emphasize the close ties between the capital and its Tuscan dominion, between the Florentine collections and the works scattered in the area of Florence.