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Tolik
Tolik
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The Palace Gallery Treasures

  • August 8, 2004
  • Rated 5 of 5 by Tolik from Tampa, Florida
The Palace Gallery Treasures

Although the Pitti Palace doesn’t quite compare to the Doge’s Palace in Venice or the Hermitage in St Petersburg, our family agreed that it was a top sight in Florence. You must see it no matter what. The central door of the palace leads you into the atrium. The splendid court (1560-70) by Ammannati serves as a garden façade to the palace. It is a masterpiece of Florentine Mannerist architecture. The night spectacles were held here from the 16th to the 18th century. The lower fourth side is formed by a terrace with the Fontana del Carciofo. The grotto beneath the terrace has another fountain with a porphyry statue of Moses Roman. The Grand Staircase ascends past the a bronze statue of Genio Mediceo (the rulers were not particularly modest) to the entrance of the Galleria Palatina (Palace Gallery). Passing through the rooms of the planets - Venere's (Venus), Apollo's, Marte's (Mars), Giove's (Jupiter), Saturno's is a beautiful experience. The Gallery is packed with masterpieces by Botticelli, Cavaraggio, Fra Bartolomeo, Rapael, Rubens, Titian, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, Velazquez, Veronese and the others. You'll need at least the best part of the morning to see it properly. When Raphael settled in Florence in 1505, he was besieged with commissions from patrons. There are 15 excellent works by Raphael here, including portraits of Angelo Doni and his wife Maddalena (her pose copied directly from the Mona Lisa). Seven of his paintings grouped in one of the large halls. You will see the celebrated Madonna della Seggiola, or Madonna 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 (25) includes a number of his best portraits. Among them Pietro Aretino, the preening Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and famous Portrait of an Englishman. Rubens' Consequences of War is full of the Baroque allegories. The gallery's outstanding sculpture is Canova's Venus Italica, commissioned by Napoleon as a replacement for the Venice de’Medici. Don’t miss the ceilings by Pietro la Cortone. The Gallery maintains the character of a private princely collection of the 17th - 18th. The arrangement of the pictures which decorate the walls produces a remarkable effect of magnificence. The elaborately carved and gilded frames are remarkably fine.

From journal The Treasures of Florence

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