---
title: "Igor Mitoraj in Florence — Tindaro Screpolato, Boboli Gardens"
description: "Igor Mitoraj Tindaro Screpolato (1997) permanently displayed in Florence. Private collector buying Mitoraj sculptures."
canonical: https://mitoraj-search.com/mitoraj-florence.html
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: mitoraj-search.com
generator: gen-md-alternates
---

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# Igor Mitoraj in Florence

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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](https://maps.google.com/?q=Boboli+Gardens+Florence+Italy)

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.

## Author’s Photographs — Boboli Gardens, July 2026

Photographs from a private collector’s visit to the Boboli Gardens in July 2026, documenting Mitoraj’s *Tindaro Screpolato* at the Prato dei Castagni from close detail to the surrounding garden. The set includes the foundry stamp cast into the base — **Fonderia d’Arte Del Chiaro**, [Pietrasanta](/mitoraj-pietrasanta.html) — the workshop Mitoraj used almost exclusively from 1983 onward.

**Walkaround — Tindaro Screpolato · 32-sec clip · Boboli Gardens, July 2026**

![View of the Arno river and Ponte Vecchio from the north bank, Florence, July 2026 — a walk toward the Boboli Gardens where Igor Mitoraj's Tindaro Screpolato stands](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-01.webp)

Ponte Vecchio & the Arno Florence · July 2026

![Tindaro Screpolato (1997) by Igor Mitoraj — the 407 cm bronze silhouetted against the sun in the Boboli Gardens, the cracked surface visible through backlit haze, a couple resting to the right for scale](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-02.webp)

Backlit silhouette Boboli Gardens · midday sun

![Distant portrait view of Mitoraj's Tindaro Screpolato at the Prato dei Castagni, Boboli Gardens, seen across the gravel path with the sculpture and its Corten plinth centred against a clear Florentine sky](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-03.webp)

Approach from the path Prato dei Castagni · long view

![Igor Mitoraj's Tindaro Screpolato (1997) shot head-on from the visitor path, the cracked bronze face of Tyndareus rising above its Corten plinth in the Boboli Gardens, Florence](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-04.webp)

Head-on portrait Front elevation · long view

![Extreme close detail of the cracked bronze surface of Tindaro Screpolato — the deliberately fractured patina in blues, greens and browns that Mitoraj used to evoke an archaeological ruin](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-05.webp)

Patina at close range Surface detail · blue-green oxidation

![Tindaro Screpolato (1997) by Igor Mitoraj — close detail of the deliberately fractured bronze surface treatment, Boboli Gardens, Florence](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-06.webp)

Cracked bronze surface Surface detail

![Detail of an Igor Mitoraj bronze torso figure set in an architectural niche, chest bandaged in cloth, framed by roughly textured bronze uprights — photographed during the same July 2026 Florence visit](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-07.webp)

Bronze torso in niche Companion Mitoraj detail · chest binding

![Detail of a smaller Mitoraj bronze figure — a headless torso with a wrapped waistband — set within a scored bronze frame, Florence, July 2026](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-08.webp)

Wrapped torso figure Companion Mitoraj detail · waist binding

![Wide detail of a monumental Mitoraj bronze relief flanked by two vertical piers with small torso sculptures at each base, deep chiaroscuro across the fractured surface](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-09.webp)

Relief and piers Companion Mitoraj work · frontal view

![Wide low-angle view of the base of Tindaro Screpolato in the Boboli Gardens — the massive cracked bronze curving overhead as a young family with a pushchair walks beneath, umbrella pines beyond](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-10.webp)

Base and passers-by Scale reference · visitors below

![Tindaro Screpolato seen from the side across the Boboli path, its cracked profile rising above the hedge line under a clear sky, gravel walkway leading in from the left](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-11.webp)

Side view from the path Prato dei Castagni · morning

![Distant three-quarter view of Igor Mitoraj's Tindaro Screpolato in the Boboli Gardens, framed by cypress and holm oak, a solitary visitor seated at right](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-12.webp)

Framed by cypresses Long view · garden setting

![Mitoraj's Tindaro Screpolato photographed from the walkway, the enormous bronze head in half-profile, cracked ridges catching the sun on its right side](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-13.webp)

Half-profile in light Right side · direct sun

![Portrait of Tindaro Screpolato from the front of the Prato dei Castagni, the bronze silhouette rising above trimmed hedges, small info plaque visible at the foot of the plinth](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-14.webp)

With info plaque Front · with signage

![Ground-level view of Tindaro Screpolato at the far end of a Boboli walkway, cracked bronze catching side light against dark garden foliage](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-15.webp)

End of the walkway Approach · side light

![Wide landscape view of Igor Mitoraj's Tindaro Screpolato standing on its Corten plinth at the Prato dei Castagni, the Tuscan hills of Florence visible in the far distance](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-16.webp)

With the Florentine hills Boboli terrace · distant view

![Official Uffizi Galleries information plaque at the base of Tindaro Screpolato — bilingual Italian and English text describing Igor Mitoraj's 1997 bronze donation to the Boboli Gardens](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-17.webp)

Uffizi info plaque Bilingual signage · base

![Dramatic close-up of the face of Tindaro Screpolato shot from below — the nose, cheek and jaw of Tyndareus reading as an eroded cliff of cracked bronze against a clear blue sky](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-18.webp)

Face from below Profile detail · upward angle

![Panoramic view from the upper Boboli Gardens with Tindaro Screpolato at right and the terrace of potted lemon trees stretching left towards a distant, hazy view of Florence](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-19.webp)

Terrace and cityscape Upper Boboli · lemon garden

![Foundry stamp cast into the base of Tindaro Screpolato — Fonderia d'Arte Del Chiaro, Pietrasanta, Lucca, Italy — provenance detail on Igor Mitoraj's Boboli Gardens bronze](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-20.webp)

Foundry stamp Fonderia d’Arte Del Chiaro, Pietrasanta

![Angled close view of the Fonderia d'Arte Del Chiaro foundry mark cast into the base of Tindaro Screpolato — the small bronze plaque set against the deeply scored casting surface](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-21.webp)

Del Chiaro plaque Foundry mark in context

![Igor Mitoraj's incised signature on the base of Tindaro Screpolato — MITORAJ 97 carved into the bronze between areas of fissured patina](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-22.webp)

Artist signature MITORAJ · 97 incision

![Straight-on view of the incised MITORAJ 97 signature on Tindaro Screpolato — the artist's mark cut into a smoother patch of bronze surrounded by the sculpture's characteristic cracked patina](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-23.webp)

Signature, straight on Incised bronze · 1997 date

![Angled close-up of the MITORAJ 97 signature on the base of Tindaro Screpolato in the Boboli Gardens — evidence of the artist's own hand on the finished cast](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-24.webp)

Signature, angled view Artist's mark · incised

![Detail of a smaller Mitoraj bronze figure — a bandaged torso in an architectural niche seen at close range with dramatic side lighting, photographed on the same Florence visit](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-25.webp)

Torso in relief Companion Mitoraj detail · side light

![Upward view of the underside of the face of Tindaro Screpolato — the chin, jawline and cracked cheek looming against the sky, garden building visible at lower right](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-26.webp)

Beneath the chin Underside · upward view

![Wide landscape framing of the upper Boboli terrace with Tindaro Screpolato just visible at right, the gravel walkway and cypress line stretching away into the garden](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-27.webp)

Along the terrace Boboli walkway · long view

![Broad landscape view showing Tindaro Screpolato at right and the Florentine hills to the left, the sculpture standing above trimmed hedges on the upper Boboli terrace](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-28.webp)

Sculpture and hills Terrace panorama · landscape

![Tindaro Screpolato viewed across a stretch of Boboli lawn from a distance, the cracked bronze face framed by dense summer foliage and a low bench at the right edge](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-29.webp)

Across the lawn Distant framing · foliage

![Tindaro Screpolato (1997) by Igor Mitoraj — full view of the 407 cm bronze on its plinth at the Prato dei Castagni, Boboli Gardens, Florence](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-30.webp)

Full view at the Prato dei Castagni Bronze · 407 cm · 1997

![Front elevation of Igor Mitoraj's Tindaro Screpolato showing the full facial profile in sunlight, the bronze silhouetted between two dark cypresses in the Boboli Gardens](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-31.webp)

Between the cypresses Front · framed by trees

![Tindaro Screpolato glimpsed between citrus foliage and the terracotta pots of the Boboli lemon garden, the bronze rising above a hedge in soft midday light](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-32.webp)

Through the lemons Citrus garden · framed view

![Tindaro Screpolato seen from the upper Boboli lawn with a potted lemon tree in the foreground, cypresses framing the cracked bronze against a clear sky](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-33.webp)

With potted lemon Lemon garden · foreground

![Igor Mitoraj's Tindaro Screpolato photographed from the lawn with a lone figure standing at its base — the human scale making clear the four-metre height of the bronze](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-34.webp)

Human scale Boboli lawn · with visitor

![Tindaro Screpolato seen from the citrus grove on the upper Boboli terrace, the sculpture framed by potted lemon trees and cypresses, distant hills faintly visible](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-35.webp)

From the citrus grove Lemon terrace · long view

![Landscape view across the Boboli lemon-tree lawn with terracotta pots in the foreground and the cracked profile of Tindaro Screpolato visible in the middle distance](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-36.webp)

Lemon lawn panorama Upper Boboli · wide framing

![Tindaro Screpolato (1997) by Igor Mitoraj — dramatic upward angle against the sun, Boboli Gardens, Florence](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-37.webp)

Against the sun Upper Boboli · morning light

![Tindaro Screpolato shot against the sun with the bronze in near silhouette, strong lens flare crowning the head and the umbrella pines of the Boboli Gardens spreading right](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-38.webp)

Umbrella pines behind Contre-jour · sun crown

![Side profile of Tindaro Screpolato against a high summer sun, the cracked surface catching light on its left flank while the outline reads as an eroded ancient fragment](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-39.webp)

Left flank in light Contre-jour · side view

![Another contre-jour view of Tindaro Screpolato with the sun almost directly above the sculpture, hedges and umbrella pines forming the darker frame around the bronze](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-40.webp)

Sun overhead Contre-jour · noon light

![Rear three-quarter view of Tindaro Screpolato in the Boboli Gardens with visitors passing along the walkway at left and an orange safety mesh marking a nearby garden works site](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-41.webp)

Rear three-quarter Back angle · with visitors

![Back view of Tindaro Screpolato on its Corten plinth, the reverse of the cracked bronze mask facing the garden works fence, umbrella pines rising behind](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-42.webp)

Reverse elevation Rear view · Corten plinth

![Rear elevation of Tindaro Screpolato photographed from further along the path, the back of the bronze reading as an abstract cracked mass against summer sky](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-43.webp)

From behind, distant Rear · abstract mass

![Tindaro Screpolato (1997) by Igor Mitoraj — side view showing the sculpture and its Corten plinth, Boboli Gardens, Florence](https://mitoraj-search.com/images/mitoraj-florence-44.webp)

Side view with plinth Boboli Gardens · July 2026

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## About This Collection

This site documents one private collector's search for works by Igor Mitoraj (1944–2014) — the Polish-French sculptor celebrated for his fractured classical figures in bronze and marble. Mitoraj studied in Kraków under Tadeusz Kantor, trained in Paris at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, and established his permanent studio in Pietrasanta, Tuscany in 1983. His work is held in public collections across Europe and the Americas, and his auction record — €6.89 million for a monumental *Tindaro Screpolato* at Sotheby's Paris in 2019 — places him among the most sought-after post-war European sculptors. If you have a Mitoraj work available, please use the contact button to get in touch.

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