The Gallery opens with an illustrious “guest”: a masterpiece by Agnolo Bronzino. In The Portrait of a Young Man with a Lute (1532-1534) Bronzino depicts the poet and musician Giovanni Battista Strozzi. This fascinating early work by the Florentine painter is an excellent example of Mannerism involving an extreme approach to the Renaissance classical canon and visual codes. The painting from the Galleria degli Uffizi is a “guest” at the new opening of the Palazzo Cini at San Vio and provides an ideal dialogue with the portraiture of Bronzino’s master Pontormo, especially the Portrait of Two Friends, one of the Tuscan Renaissance masterpieces in the Cini collection, with which it has deep cultural affinities and subtle symbolic relations. On the grounds of these similarities, the Portrait of Two Friends is currently on show in the marvellous Palazzo Strozzi exhibition entitled: Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Diverging Paths of Mannerism (Florence, 8 March –20 July 2014). The exchange is part of a collaboration between the Giorgio Cini Foundation, the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi aimed at creating a cultural bridge between two great art cities: Venice and Florence.   Picture: Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Lute, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi