3. The Via Maggio's name is abbreviated from Maggiore which indicates its original importance as a main thoroughfare. On the Oltrarno, it joins the PONTE SANTA TRINITA to the Piazza San Felice, close by the PITTI PALACE. There had long stood palaces on this street; but when Eleonora di Toledo moved into the Pitti, it became especially fashionable. As well as the PALAZZO RICASOLI and PALAZZO DI BIANCA CAPPELLO, the principal palaces in the street are the Palazzo Peruzzi de' Medici (formerly Delci), recently restored; No. 42, Palazzo Corsini Suarez, which was rebuilt by Gherardo Silvani and is now partially occupied by the Gabinetto G. P. Vieusseux's Servizio Conservazione. Palazzo Ridolfi, No. 13, is attributed to Santi di Tito. Next door is the early-fifteenth-century Palazzo di Cosimo Ridolfi.
4. The Mint, or Zecca, stood behind the LOGGIA DEI LANZI. Vasari demolished most of it to make way for the UFFIZI, but left parts of the walls, which he fused with the new building. The first florins were minted here in 1252.
5. The large Romanesque church of San Pier Scheraggio was founded in a flurry of church building between 1050 and 1070. The priori used to meet here before the PALAZZO DELLA SIGNORIA was built. The church was situated at the south end of what was to become the PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA. The Via della Ninna, which runs eastwards out of the piazza, takes its name from the Madonna della Ninna (meaning sleeping child) which Cimabue painted for the church. On this street can still be seen some of the columns which Vasari incorporated into the fabric of the UFFIZI.
6. The ground plan of the Uffizi is a long rectangle open at one end with rooms and galleries of assorted shapes and sizes projecting outwards. In the enclosed regular space, variously described as a piazza or a courtyard, nineteenth-century statues of eminent Tuscans, mostly writers and artists, are set in the niches cut out of the loggia pilasters.
On the outside of the Uffizi, which now houses one of the world's greatest art collections, can be seen the remains of SAN PIER SCHERAGGIO and the MINT. Bernardo Buontalenti designed the bizarre Porta delle Suppliche at the end of the Via Lambertesca. The broken pediment with the two halves placed back to back was his invention. Florentines could post
The Uffizi
petitions through a slot in this Door of Supplications; and Francesco I would secretly watch the petitioners through the peephole in the space provided between the two wings of the pediment. Bandini sculpted the bust of Francesco set in between the two halves.
A door towards the southern end of the west loggia opens into the CORRIDOIO VASARIANO. The gallery was temporarily closed after a bomb attack in May 1993.
7. The Accademia del Disegno, the first academy of art in Europe, is housed in the PALAZZO DELL'ARTE DEI BECCAI, No. 4 Via Orsanmichele. Its founding is indicative of the transformation in the social status of the artist: the previous centuries had regarded the artist as a tradesman whose shop was expected to execute works to order, but by the time this Accademia was founded, in 1563, the artist was capable of being described as ‘divine’, as Michelangelo was. He and Cosimo I were the first Academicians elected by the Academy's founding members.
8. After his death in Rome in 1564, Michelangelo's body was brought to Florence for burial in SANTA CROCE. His tomb, designed by Vasari, is at the west end of the south aisle opposite a relief by Antonio Rossellino of the Madonna del Latte on the first pillar. Below this relief is the tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici's friend, Francesco Nori, who was killed in the DUOMO by Giuliano de' Medici's murderer in the Pazzi Conspiracy. Three houses on the site of Casa Buonarroti, No. 70 Via Ghibellina, were bought by Michelangelo in 1508. They were converted into one house by Michelangelo's nephew, Leonardo, to whom they were bequeathed. Leonardo's son, also named Michelangelo, converted them into a gallery. This was opened to the public in 1858 by his descendant, the last of his line. As well as drawings and sculptures by Michelangelo, including his earliest known work, The Madonna of the Steps, the museum contains works of art collected by the later members of his family.
9. The windowless Studiolo di Francesco I is approached from the SALA DEL MAGGIOR CONSIGLIO. It was created by Vasari to a scheme suggested by Vincenzo Borghini. The walls are covered with Mannerist paintings. Among the many artists whose work can be seen here are Alessandro Allori, Ammannati, Giambologna and Vasari. The portraits of Cosimo I and Eleonora of Toledo on the barrel vault are by Bronzino. A staircase leads up to Cosimo I's study, the Tesoretto.
10. The Villa Pratolino, designed by Buontalenti in 1569, was fifteen years in the making. Galileo stayed here in 1605–6 when tutor in the Grand Duke's family. It was demolished in 1822.
11. The Palazzo di Bianca Cappello, No. 26 VIA MAGGIO, was restored in 1987. The graffiti decoration is attributed to Bernardino Poccetti.
12. The Villa di Castello was bought by Lorenzo de' Medici's cousins, Giovanni and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, in the late 1470s. Botticelli's Primavera, Birth of Venus and Pallas and the Centaur all hung here until 1761. Inherited by Giovanni delle Bande Nere, the villa was restored by Cosimo I, who employed Bronzino and Pontormo here. The gardens were laid out by Niccolò Tribolo (who created the Grand Fountain) and his successor, Bernardo Buontalenti. The bronze figures of Hercules and Antaeus made for this fountain are by Ammannati, who also created the figure of Appennino. Giambologna's bronze birds from the Grotto are now in the BARGELLO. The villa, which was remodelled and redecorated for the House of Savoy, is now the headquarters of the Accademia della Crusca, founded in 1582 for the study of the Italian language and the compilation of a dictionary. Crusca means bran and is probably a reference to the separation of the good and bad in language. The Academy's seats were made in the shape of panniers used for carrying bread. Also to be seen here are plaques bearing the mottoes of old cruscanti.
13. The Medici Venus is exhibited in the Tribuna created by Buontalenti in 1585–9. The walls are covered with portraits of various members of the Medici family, including Pontormo's celebrated posthumous portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio and many of later Medici by Bronzino. The pietre dure table in the middle of the room was made in the mid seventeenth century in the OPIFICIO DELLE PIETRE DURE.
14. Ferdinando I, like his brother, Francesco, had a passion for pietre dure and founded the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in 1588. It occupies premises at No. 78 Via degli Alfani. There is a little museum here (closed for reconstruction at the time of writing), as well as a workshop where craftsmen restore works of art in pietre dure as well as other materials.
15. Giambologna's statue of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I was finished in 1608 by his pupil, Tacca, who designed the plinth with its fantastic sea creatures. The Piazza Santissima Annunziata in which it stands is probably the first example of town planning in Florence. When the OSPEDALE DEGLI INNOCENTI was completed on the east side of the square in 1444, Antonio da Sangallo the Elder copied the arcade in his Loggia dei Serviti opposite. At the north end of the square, the delicate arcade was used again by Giambattista Caccini in 1600 as a model for the façade of SANTISSIMA ANNUNZIATA. At the south end stands the PALAZZO GRIFONI. Just outside the piazza is the Chiostro di San Pierino. The glazed terracotta lunette above the entrance depicting the Annunciation and two members of the Compagnia della Santissima Annunziata is by Santi Buglioni. The frescoes in the cloister are by Bernardino Poccetti among others.
16. The Palazzo Bellini is at No. 26. After Giambologna's death, his pupil Tacca lived here. Borgo Pinti extends from the eastern end of the Via dell' Oriuolo to Piazza Donatello. Existing palaces in the street are Palazzo Roffia at No. 13 and Palazzo Caccini (also known as Geddes di Filicaia) at No. 33. Both are of the seventeenth century. Palazzo Ximenes at No. 68 belonged to the Sangallo family in the fifteenth century. Palazzo della Gherardesca opposite PALAZZO SALVIATI at the Piazza Donatello end was built by Giuliano da Sangallo for Bartolomeo Scala and enlarged in the eighteenth century by Antonio Ferri. The large garden extends to the Kunthistorisches Institut at No. 44 Via Giuseppe Giusti. The institute has recently acquired the nearby Casa di Andrea del Sarto (No. 22 Via Gino Cap
poni) where the artist died in 1530. After his death the house was bought by the Roman artist, Federigo Zuccari, who had a studio in the strange building with odd reliefs at No. 43 Via Giuseppe Giusti.
17. The Forte di Belvedere, also known as the Forte di San Giorgio, was designed by Buontalenti. Approached either by way of the Via di Belvedere and the PORTA SAN GIORGIO, or through the BOBOLI GARDENS, its grounds were
Piazza Santissima Annunziata, façade of the Ospedale degli Innnocenti
Forte di Belvedere, Palazzetto
opened to the public in 1958. They provided a magnificent setting for an exhibition of the work of Henry Moore who, a frequent visitor to the white marble quarries at Carrara, gave to Florence – which he said he had loved since his first visit in 1925 – the statue of a warrior in the first cloister of SANTA CROCE. The Via di San Leonardo which winds up from the Belvedere towards Arcetri leads to the church of San Leonardo in Arcetri, which has an early-thirteenth-century pulpit from the demolished SAN PIER SCHERAGGIO and paintings by Neri di Bicci. Tchaikovsky stayed at No. 64 Via di San Leonardo in 1878, a year for him of prolific composition.
18. Palazzo dei Giudici (formerly Palazzo Castellani) in Piazza dei Giudici now houses the Museo di Storia della Scienza. Among the many scientific instruments on display are those used or designed by Galileo. The library of the Istituto di Storia della Scienza is on the ground floor.
19. Galileo's body was removed from the Novices' Chapel in SANTA CROCE in 1737 and reburied on the north side of the west door. The monument then erected is by Giovanni Battista Foggini. Lorenzo Ghiberti and his son, Vittorio, are buried between the fourth and fifth altars in the north aisle. Machiavelli's monument in Santa Croce is by Innocenzo Spinazzi (1787). It is in the south aisle between Alessandro del Barbiere's Flagellation of Christ on the fourth altar, and Andrea del Minga's Agony in the Garden on the fifth. Dante was buried in Ravenna. His cenotaph in Santa Croce by Stefano Ricci (1829) is in the south aisle between Vasari's Way to Calvary on the second altar and Jacopo Coppi di Meglio's Ecce Homo on the third. The monument outside the Salviati Chapel to the composer Luigi Cherubini (who was born at No. 22 Via Fiesolana) is by Odoardo Fantacchiotti. Leon Battista Alberti's monument, also in the north aisle, is by Lorenzo Bartolini, Carlo Marsuppini's by Desiderio da Settignano.
20. The original wooden Teatro della Pergola, No. 12 Via della Pergola, was built to the designs of Ferdinando Tacca in 1656. It was reconstructed by Bartolomeo Silvestri in the 1820s. One of Eleonora Duse's finest performances, as Rebecca West in Ibsen's Rosmersholm, was given here in 1906. At No. 59 Via della Pergola is the house where Cellini lived and died, and where he cast his Perseus.
21. There had long existed a tradition of informal accademie in Florence, but the Accademia del Cimento was the first devoted to science. With its emphasis on practical research, experimentation (cimento means experiment) and recording of data, it was perhaps the first modern scientific institution in Europe and an important influence on the Royal Society. It published its journal, possibly the first scientific society to do so, in 1667, the year it was dissolved.
22. The collection of self-portraits includes works by Andrea del Sarto, Bernini, Bronzino, Batoni, Rubens, Rembrandt, Zoffany, Hogarth, Romney, Reynolds, Kneller, Lely, David, Corot and Ingres. The collection is not now open to the public.
23. The Medici collection of ivories is now in the MUSEO DEGLI ARGENTI.
24. Via del Cocomero is now Via Ricasoli, between PIAZZA DEL DUOMO and Piazza San Marco. In the small piazza where the street crosses the Via degli Alfani is the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini, which houses a museum of musical instruments, including violins and cellos by Stradivari, and a music library. At the time of writing the building was being restored and the musical instruments were in store. Palazzo dei Pucci, with façades also on Via dei Pucci and Via dei Servi, is one of the biggest palaces in Florence. It is mostly of the sixteenth century with seventeenth-century additions. The family came to prominence in the days of Puccio di Antonio, a pro-Medicean Gonfaloniere. The most recent head of the family was a leading fashion designer. The nearby church of San Michele Visdomini was originally built further south and was demolished in the fourteenth century to make way for the east end of the DUOMO. It was reconstructed here in the 1370s by Giovanni di Lapo Ghini. The façade is by Ammannati. The altarpiece in the second chapel on the right is by Pontormo. The Vices Domini stood in for the Bishops of Florence when they were absent from the city or when the office was vacant. Their office was hereditary and Visdomini had become a family name by the eleventh century, when they enlarged the original church. The Palazzo Incontri opposite was owned by Piero di Cosimo de' Medici. It was rebuilt in the seventeenth century.
25. Although work began in 1605, under the direction of Ferdinando I, to realize Cosimo I's conception of a huge Cappella dei Principi, the
Cappella dei Principi
structure was not finished until 1737, and the decoration of the cupola not completed until 1836. The marble pavement, begun in 1882, was not finished until 1962. Until ready to receive them in the reign of Cosimo III, the bodies of the Grand Dukes and their wives and sons were temporarily buried in the NEW and OLD SACRISTIES. Generations of craftsmen in pietre dure were kept intermittently at work on the elaborate tombs of the three Cosimos, the two Ferdinandos and the Grand Duke Francesco which surround the walls. The two huge gilt bronze statues of Cosimo II and Ferdinando I are by Pietro Tacca and his son, Ferdinando.
The sixteen coats of arms inlaid in the floor in marble, coral, jasper, agate, mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli are of the cities subject to the Grand Duchy. All the Grand Dukes were buried in the crypt below the mausoleum with their jewelled crowns still upon their heads and their sceptres in their hands. All the Grand Duchesses were also buried here, with the one exception of Francesco I's widow, Bianca Cappello. When Buontalenti asked Ferdinando I where his sister-in-law should be buried, the Grand Duke, who had detested her, replied, ‘Wherever you like, we will not have her amongst us.’ The site of her grave is unknown.
26. All that remains of the Benedictine convent of San Piero Maggiore, destroyed in the eighteenth century, is a portico by Matteo Nigetti in BORGO DEGLI ALBIZZI. One of Florence's largest fourteenth-century altarpieces, Jacopo di Cione's Coronation of the Virgin, now in the National Gallery, London, was commissioned for the church. Every new Bishop of Florence would traditionally celebrate his election with the abbess of the adjoining convent, giving her a ring to symbolize the religious unity of the city.
27. Carlo Ginori founded his porcelain factory in 1735. The firm, now known as Richard-Ginori, is still in existence at Sesto Fiorentino. The Museo della Porcellane di Doccia is next to the factory in a building built in 1965 to the designs of Piero Berardi.
28. This unfortunate arch still stands in the Piazza della Libertà (formerly Piazza San Gallo and also known as Piazza Cavour). The sculpture on it is by Marcello Tommasi.
CHAPTER 18 (pages 208–19)
1. The Villa of Poggio Imperiale, beyond the porta romana in the Viale del Poggio Imperiale, was confiscated by Cosimo I from the Salviati family, who had acquired it from the Baroncelli. Remaining in the hands of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, it was enlarged and redecorated in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Napoleon's sister, Elisa Bacciochi, lived here as Grand Duchess of Tuscany. It is now used as a girls' school and for educational and administrative purposes.
2. Mozart stayed at the Albergo Aquila Nera, then at No. 8 Borgo Ognissanti, which is now the Hotel Goldoni.
3. The Villa Palmieri is at No. 126 Via Giovanni Boccaccio. Its garden, now celebrated for its lemon trees, is said to be the scene of one of the stories in the Decameron. In the second half of the fifteenth century the villa belonged to Marco Palmieri. It was owned in the nineteenth century by James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford.
4. In Zoffany's picture of the Tribuna – on the walls of which are shown various works brought from elsewhere – Jam
es Bruce, the African traveller, is seen with his hands behind his back beside the Medici Venus. In front of him, his hand on his sword, wearing a star, is Sir Horace Mann. Talking to him with his right hand on Titian's Venus of Urbino – in Mark Twain's opinion ‘the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses' – is Thomas Patch. Sitting down in front of Patch is the Hon. Felton Hervey. The figure on the far left, beside Cupid and Psyche, is George, 3rd Earl Cowper; next to him, wearing a star, is Sir John Dick, British Consul in Leghorn; to his left is the 6th Earl of Plymouth. The man talking to Plymouth, beside Raphael's Madonna, is Zoffany himself. The picture was painted under the patronage of Queen Charlotte.
5. Palazzo Manetti is at No. 23 Via Santo Spirito. Lord and Lady Holland lived next door at Palazzo Feroni, where G. F. Watts stayed as their guest in 1844–7.
6. The Casa Ambrogi was one of the houses near the south end of PONTE VECCHIO destroyed in 1944. It was here that Horace Walpole and Thomas Gray stayed in 1740.
7. Thomas Patch became an authority on Masaccio and early Florentine art. This picture, commissioned by Lord Grey, is now in the Royal Academy. The man proposing the toast is Sir Charles Bunbury. Sitting at the other end of the table is Sir Henry Mainwaring.
8. Examples of Gori's work can be seen in the MUSEO DELL' OPIFICIO DELLE PIETRE DURE at No. 78 Via degli Alfani.
Florence Page 47