Igor Mitoraj in Florence

In the Boboli Gardens of Florence — one of the great Renaissance landscape gardens of Europe — stands a permanent work by Igor Mitoraj that many visitors encounter by chance. Tindaro Screpolato (Tyndareus Cracked), cast in 1997 and measuring over four metres in height, is part of the permanent collection of the Uffizi Galleries. Mitoraj donated it himself, after a major retrospective he held at the Boboli Gardens and Florence's National Archaeological Museum. It is among the most public of his permanent works — visible to the hundreds of thousands who walk through the gardens each year.

📍 Giardini di Boboli, Prato dei Castagni, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Tindaro Screpolato (Tyndareus Cracked) — 1997

Bronze · 407 × 272 × 250 cm · Permanent · Uffizi Galleries Collection

The sculpture presents an enormous, cracked face — the face of Tyndareus, King of Sparta in Greek mythology, husband of Leda, and mortal father of Clytemnestra. The surface is deliberately fractured, as if the bronze were an ancient fragment excavated from the earth: a technique Mitoraj used throughout his career to suggest the passage of time and the layering of civilisations over one another.

Placed to the left of the Prato dei Castagni (Chestnut Lawn) in the upper reaches of the Boboli Gardens, it is positioned towards the Museum of Porcelain — in a landscape of cypresses, ilex oaks and stone paths that has been maintained since the sixteenth century. The bronze face emerges from the garden as if it had always been there: a piece of mythology growing out of a Medici garden.

Dimensions: 407 × 272 × 250 cm. Uffizi Galleries inventory no. 1914 no. 2098.

→ Boboli Gardens on Google Maps

Mitoraj spent his career giving mythological figures the appearance of excavated ruins. In Florence, the Uffizi placed one of those ruins in a garden older than the myths themselves.

Tyndareus & the Mythology

Tyndareus was a mortal king — not a god — which gives him a particular place in Mitoraj's iconography. His wife Leda was visited by Zeus in the form of a swan; from those unions came Castor and Pollux, Helen of Troy, and Clytemnestra. Tyndareus himself was mortal and aged; the cracked surface of the sculpture reflects this human fragility against divine power.

The title Screpolato — cracked, fissured — is characteristic of Mitoraj's later bronze work. He treated his surfaces as if they were archaeological finds: bandaged, broken, reassembled from fragments. The enormous scale (over four metres) means the face reads differently from every distance — as an abstract mass from far away, as a specific and damaged portrait up close.

The Boboli Gardens

The Boboli Gardens were laid out from 1549 for Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de' Medici, behind the Palazzo Pitti. They extend across a hillside south of the Arno, covering approximately nine hectares, and contain fountains, grottoes, statues and avenues of cypress and ilex that have barely changed since the seventeenth century. The gardens are managed as part of the Uffizi Galleries complex and are open to the public daily.

The garden's own permanent sculpture collection — mostly Baroque works — makes Mitoraj's donation a continuation of a tradition rather than an interruption of it. Tindaro Screpolato sits among its stone predecessors without incongruity: one more damaged figure in a landscape full of them.

Visiting Florence

The Boboli Gardens are entered from the Piazza de' Pitti (south of the Arno, a short walk from Ponte Vecchio). Entry is included with the combined Uffizi/Pitti ticket. The gardens open daily; hours vary seasonally. The Prato dei Castagni, where the Mitoraj bronze stands, is in the upper section of the gardens — allow 20–30 minutes to walk up from the main entrance. The view from the upper gardens over Florence, with the dome of the Duomo visible, is among the finest in the city.

Own a Mitoraj Work?

I buy Mitoraj bronzes, lithographs and drawings directly from private sellers — anywhere in Europe, no commission, complete discretion.

Contact Me Directly