posted by Lourdes Flores on News, Uncategorized

For the first time, the Uffizi Gallery is opening an exhibition dedicated to ceroplastic sculpture. If you’re wondering what that is precisely, it is works of art using wax as their medium and you must definitely go see this exhibition if you’re here in Florence. The exhibit opens tomorrow, December 18th, and runs until April 12th, 2026, and it will open up a world in art history that has now been lost.

The title of the exhibition in Italian plays on the word “c’era” which means “once upon” and “cera” which is wax. In English, you could translate it into “Once Upon a Time. The Medici and the Arts of Wax Sculpture” for a more precise play of the words in the title. The show includes works from the Medici collection from between the 16th and 17th centuries of masterpieces created in this material, wax, largely “lost” due to its perishability but also because creations in this material never were considered to be part of the “major arts” as was painting and sculpture.

Consider how wax must have been easier and simpler to use to create soft faces and bodies under the skilled hands of Renaissance sculptors, certainly simpler than stone and iron. This organic material, with its malleable nature, lent itself to imitating the characteristics of skin in sculptures like no other. Its production was widespread but largely lost, and the aim of this exhibition is to raise awareness of this medium at the height of its splendor, with the Medici family’s collection of works created with wax. Unfortunately, in 1783, Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine auctioned these works, and most were lost. But why were these works in this medium ignored for much of art history?

In the context of a forgotten history, now rediscovered and reinterpreted in all its wonder, the exhibition will showcase works once exhibited in the Tribune of the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti, removed from the collections at the end of the 18th century, now returning to the museum for the first time after centuries. Around 90 works will be on display, including many on loan from other museums, including waxes, paintings, sculptures, cameos, and works in pietra dura. In the first room, you’ll find funeral masks—including the famous plaster funeral mask of Lorenzo the Magnificent, created by the sculptor Orsino Benintendi.

You’ll also find polychrome waxes, where the color is incorporated into the material, small portraits, “beauties in wax,” actual paintings, and approximately half of the works created by the great master of this medium, Gaetano Giulio Zumbo, who worked in Florence between 1690 and 1695 for Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici. Many of the works were restored specifically for the exhibition.

The exhibition is located on the ground floor, in new exhibition spaces in the West Wing, recently completed. For the first time, the exhibition can be visited separately from the Uffizi Gallery museum tour, with a separate ticket.

Once Upon a Time.
The Medici and the Arts of Wax Sculpture

Uffizi, Exhibition Rooms in West Wing (Ala di ponente)
From December 18, 2025 to April 12, 2026
(8:15 am – 6:00 pm, with last admission at 5:30 pm)

€10 | full price
€7 | for those with a valid admission ticket to any Uffizi Gallery museum circuit, for the same day as the exhibition.

Damned Soul, attributed to Giulio de Grazia, c. 1600-1620