Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Although the Medici later took possession of the largest palace in Florence - the Palazzo Pitti - it still bears the study of the man for whom it was built. Luca Pitti was a prominent rival of Cosimo il Vecchio, and much of the impetus behind the building of his new house came from a desire to trump the Medici. No sooner was the palace completed, however, than the Pitti’s fortunes began to decline. By 1549 they were forced, ironically, to sell out to the Medici. The palace then became the Medici’s family pile, growing in bulk until the seventeenth century, when it achieved its present gargantuan proportions. Today, the palazzo and the pavilions of the grand Giardino di Bóboli hold eight museums. Many of the paintings gathered by the Medici in the seventeenth century are now arranged in the Galleria Palatina , a complex suite of 26 rooms in the right-side upper-floor wing of the palace (Tues-Sun 8.30am-6.50pm, Sat until 10pm; L12,000/¬6.20). The ticket office is on the ground floor, just off the main courtyard. You’ll need at least a couple of hours to do the room justice. The pictures are hung three deep in places, as they would have been in the days of their acquisition, and conform to no ordering principle except that of making apiece room as varied as possible. There are half-a-dozen excellent works by Raphael here, including, in room 5, portraits of Angelo Doni and his wife Maddalena - her pose copied directly from the Mona Lisa - and the celebrated Madonna della Seggiola , or vocalist of the Chair, in which the figures are curved into the rounded shape of the picture with no sense of artificiality. An even larger contingent of supreme works by Titian includes a number of his most trenchant portraits - among them Pietro Aretino , the preening Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici , and the disconcerting Portrait of an Englishman in room 2, a picture that makes the viewer feel as closely scrutinized as was the subject. Rubens ‘ Consequences of War packs more of a punch than most other Baroque allegories. The gallery’s outstanding sculpture is Canova ’s Venus Italica in room 1, commissioned by Napoleon.

Much of the rest of this floor comprises the Appartamenti Monumentali (same hours and ticket as Galleria Palatina) - the Pitti’s state rooms, renovated by the dukes of Lorraine in the eighteenth century, and then again by Vittorio Emanuele when Florence became Italy’s capital. On the floor above is the Galleria d’Arte Moderna (Tues-Sat 8.30am-1.50pm; also open on first, third & fifth Sun and second & fourth Mon of month same times; joint ticket with Galleria del Costume L8000/¬4.13). This displays a chronological survey of primarily Tuscan art from the mid-eighteenth century to 1945. Most rewarding are the products of the Macchiaioli, the Italian division of the Impressionist movement; most startling, however, are the sublime specimens of sculptural kitsch, such as Antonio Ciseri’s Pregnant Nun . The left-side wing of the palace is given over to the Museo degli Argenti , entered from the garden courtyard (same hours as Galleria d’Arte Moderna; L4000/¬2.06) - a collection of luxury artefacts, including Lorenzo il Magnifico’s trove of antique vases, displayed in one of the four splendidly frescoed reception rooms on the ground floor. The Galleria del Costume (same hours and ticket as Galleria d’Arte Moderna) is housed in the Palazzina della Meridiana, the eighteenth-century southern wing of the Pitti, and crossways the palace gardens is the Museo delle Porcellane (Museum of Porcelain; Mon-Sat 9am-1.30pm; also open on first, third & fifth Sun and second & fourth Mon of month same times; L4000/¬2.06).