Within Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze not only will you find many of Michelangelo's works including the iconic ‘David’ but you can also discover the ‘Gipsoteca Bartolini’ known as the Hall of Models which includes hundreds of plaster cast busts and sculptures.

The gallery showcases the museum’s origins as a teaching gallery and includes many works by Lorenzo Bartolini (who was one of the teaching professors of the Academy), as well as those of his protégé Pampaloni. The gallery is intended to reproduce Bartolini’s art studio and showcases many 19th century models which were often originally intended for sepulchres.

The pieces displayed reflect the movement through the Neoclassicism and Romanticism periods, with many models of important Italian figures lining the shelves. If you look closely, you can see some include darker areas where nails have been used as reference points to transfer the cast to the marble block. In case you didn’t know, the technique of plaster cast modelling is an old and delicate process used by sculptors before they then reproduced it in marble.

Look out for the statue of ‘Maddalena Penitente’ by Pampaloni, displaying a lady holding a cross in one hand and placing her other hand on the top of a skull, connoting feelings of remorse, love and faith. Another interesting piece is ‘Nymph with the Snake’ by Bartolini which was commissioned in 1840 by Marquis Filippo Ala Ponzoni, a well-known Milanese collector.

Further to the Hall of Models, the museum exhibits a vast collection of masterpieces and there’s the museum of musical instruments to explore too!