At a table in trattoria 4 Leoni, a regular tavern for workers in the center of Florence, diners attend with interest when they hear a name.
It is that of the German Eike Schmidt, until not long ago, director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, one of the most important museums in the world, home to Renaissance masterpieces by Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci. During his eight years at the helm of the Uffizi, Schmidt has been known for his tenacious methods of building the center’s brand and advertising it with the help of influencers, increasing it from one million to five million visitors each year. After his term ended, he was appointed director of the Capodimonte museum in Naples, but it seems that he would prefer to stay in Florence.
“He has done well, but I don’t see myself as having the strength to give the cross to a right-wing candidate. Let someone else assume that responsibility,” says an art historian, who knows him well. “It would be better to go to Naples. He has too big an ego and cares too much about appearances,” comments his tablemate, who had worked with the German.
Schmidt, born in Freiburg but recently naturalized Italian, is considering ceasing to be known in Florence as director of its largest museum to try to become its mayor. Brothers of Italy, the party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni believes that it would be an optimal option to take from the left one of the last red bastions in Tuscany and, without a doubt, the most important. In recent years, important cities in the region have become governed by the right, such as Pisa, Siena or Massa. But not Florence, birthplace of Matteo Renzi, which remains impregnable. At least, until June, when municipal elections are held.
“Yes, it is very likely,” declared the leader of the Brothers of Italy in Florence, Alessandro Draghi, asked if the former director of the Uffizi would be his candidate at the polls. In public, Schmidt says that he has not yet made a decision – when asked by this newspaper, he neither confirms nor denies that he is considering it – but he is already acting as mayor. “Arriving from the Santa María Novella station from time to time people greet me as director and I say, ‘director of Capodimonte’. There are also those who greet me as mayor, but I say that this is not a certain fact,” he said on Tuesday. In fact, this same week he began to attack the current mayor, Dario Nardella, of the Democratic Party (PD) for a huge vacation advertisement in the Canary Islands in the Plaza de la República. “It is a shame. I have nothing against Spain, but I do have nothing against an administration that authorizes something like that,” he declared to the media.
The internal polls of Brothers of Italy place support for an independent candidate like the German – who declares himself centrist and anti-fascist – at around 30% of the votes, an important starting point. “In a city like Florence the right can only play this party if it looks for a candidate who is not closely linked to the party, because they do not have a ruling class prepared for it either,” explains the director of La Nazione, the main newspaper in Florence, Agnese Pini. “In this sense, Schmidt is a particularly interesting candidate because he has not only taken care of one of the largest museums in the world, but from a media point of view he has entered into internal battles in the city, always on the issue of degradation and of public decorum,” he points out.
During his tenure at the Uffizi, Schmidt has carried out a campaign of profound remodeling of the museum’s proposal – he placed magnificent works such as The Spring and The Birth of Venus in central spaces – and recovered from Germany some of the works that disappeared during the Nazi occupation. He also experimented with a system to reduce queues with an algorithm based on artificial intelligence. But above all, he was popular for his interventionism in the life of the city.
When he was named the first foreigner to direct a large Italian museum, one of his first measures was to place a loudspeaker next to the museum box office to discourage tourists, in a message in different languages, from buying tickets from the scammers who were dedicated to to resell tickets at exorbitant prices, up to 60 euros for passes that cost just 20. He was immediately fined 295 euros for advertising on public roads without having received permission, so he went before the City Council to pay the fine of his own. pocket. Last summer, some vandals painted graffiti on the columns of the Vasarian corridor and did not remain silent in asking for exemplary sentences. “We need the heavy hand of the law!” He claimed. Later, he hired armed guards to monitor the center’s exterior. And he is not the only foreign museum director with the intention of taking center stage in the city. Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Accademia Gallery – which houses Michelangelo’s David – recently compared Florence to a “whore” due to the impact of mass tourism.
“Schmidt did well at the Uffizi, but it is not clear if he would do well as a politician,” says Ido Rossi, a retiree who walks in the Piazza della Signoria, a symbol of the city’s power. Fabrizio, a taxi driver who decorates his seats with the Florentine fleur-de-lis, is not so clear. “For me a mayor should have been born in Florence. Not even Nardella is well, because she was born in Torre del Greco (Naples),” he protests, saying that if it were up to him he would return to the golden age of the Medici.
This will be his Achilles heel if he ends up deciding, because many accuse him of only knowing the center of Florence and not having visited the outskirts, where most Florentines live. “He knows the peripheries like I know Lapland,” Nardella attacked.