The Uffizi I: The Building and the Collectors
The growth of a gallery--Vasari's Passaggio--Cosimo I--Francis
I--Ferdinand I--Ferdinand II--Cosimo III--Anna Maria Ludovica de'
Medici--Pietro-Leopoldo--The statues of the façade--Art, literature,
arms, science, and learning--The omissions--Florentine rapacity--An
antique custom--Window views--The Uffizi drawings--The best picture.
The foreigner should understand at once that any inquiries into the
history of the Uffizi family--such as for example yield interesting
results in the case of the Pazzi and the Albizzi--are doomed to
failure; because Uffizi merely means offices. The Palazzo degli
Uffizi, or palace of offices, was built by Vasari, the biographer of
the artists, for Cosimo I, who having taken the Signoria, or Palazzo
Vecchio, for his own home, wished to provide another building for the
municipal government. It was begun in 1560 and still so far fulfils
its original purpose as to contain the general post office, while it
also houses certain Tuscan archives and the national library.
A glance at Piero di Cosimo's portrait of Ferrucci in our National
Gallery will show that an ordinary Florentine street preceded the
erection of the Uffizi. At that time the top storey of the building,
as it now exists, was an open terrace affording a pleasant promenade
from the Palazzo Vecchio down to the river and back to the Loggia
de' Lanzi. Beneath this were studios and workrooms where Cosimo's
army of artists and craftsmen (with Bronzino and Cellini as the most
famous) were kept busy; while the public offices were on the ground
floor. Then, as his family increased, Cosimo decided to move, and the
incomplete and abandoned Pitti Palace was bought and finished. In 1565,
as we have seen, Francis, Cosimo's son, married and was installed in
the Palazzo Vecchio, and it was then that Vasari was called upon to
construct the Passaggio which unites the Palazzo Vecchio and the Pitti,
crossing the river by the Ponte Vecchio--Cosimo's idea (borrowed it
is said from Homer's description of the passage uniting the palaces of
Priam and Hector) being not only that he and his son might have access
to each other, but that in the event of danger on the other side of the
river a body of soldiers could be swiftly and secretly mobilized there.
Cosimo I died in 1574, and Francis I (1574-1587) succeeded him not only
in rule but in that patronage of the arts which was one of the finest
Medicean traditions; and it was he who first thought of making the
Uffizi a picture gallery. To do this was simple: it merely meant the
loss of part of the terrace by walling and roofing it in. Ferdinand
I (1587-1609) added the pretty Tribuna and other rooms, and brought
hither a number of the treasures from the Villa Medici at Rome. Cosimo
II (1609-1621) did little, but Ferdinand II (1621-1670) completed
the roofing in of the terraces, placed there his own collection of
drawings and a valuable collection of Venetian pictures which he
had bought, together with those that his wife Vittoria della Rovere
had brought him from Urbino, while his brothers, Cardinal Giovanni
Carlo de' Medici and Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici (the extremely
ugly man with the curling chin, at the head of the Uffizi stairs),
added theirs. Giovanni Carlo's pictures, which mostly went to the
Pitti were varied; but Leopold's were chiefly portraits of artists,
wherever possible painted by themselves, a collection which is steadily
being added to at the present time and is to be seen in several rooms
of the Uffizi, and those miniature portraits of men of eminence which
we shall see in the corridor between the Poccetti Gallery and Salon of
Justice at the Pitti. Cosimo III (1670-1723) added the Dutch pictures
and the famous Venus de' Medici and other Tribuna statuary.
The galleries remained the private property of the Medici family until
the Electress Palatine, Anna Maria Ludovica de' Medici, daughter of
Cosimo III and great niece of the Cardinal Leopold, bequeathed all
these treasures, to which she had greatly added, together with bronzes
now in the Bargello, Etruscan antiquities now in the Archaeological
Museum, tapestries also there, and books in the Laurentian library,
to Florence for ever, on condition that they should never be removed
from Florence and should exist for the benefit of the public. Her
death was in 1743, and with her passed away the last descendant of
that Giovanni de' Medici (1360-1429) whom we saw giving commissions
to Donatello, building the children's hospital, and helping Florence
to the best of his power: so that the first Medici and the last were
akin in love of art and in generosity to their beautiful city.
The new Austrian Grand Dukes continued to add to the Uffizi,
particularly Pietro-Leopoldo (1765-1790), who also founded the
Accademia. To him was due the assembling, under the Uffizi roof,
of all the outlying pictures then belonging to the State, including
those in the gallery of the hospital of S. Maria Nuova, which owned,
among others, the famous Hugo van der Goes. It was he also who
brought together from Rome the Niobe statues and constructed a room
for them. Leopold II added the Iscrizioni.
It was as recently as 1842 to 1856 that the statues of the great
Florentines were placed in the portico. These, beginning at the Palazzo
Vecchio, are, first, against the inner wall, Cosimo Pater (1389-1464)
and Lorenzo the Magnificent (1450-1492); then, outside: Orcagna;
Andrea Pisano, of the first Baptistery doors; Giotto and Donatello;
Alberti, who could do everything and who designed the façade of
S. Maria Novella; Leonardo and Michelangelo. Next, three poets, Dante
(1265-1321), Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), and Giovanni Boccaccio
(1313-1375). Then Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), the statesman,
and Francesco Guicciardini (1482-1540), the historian. That completes
the first side.
At the end are Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1516), the explorer, who gave
his name to America, and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the astronomer;
and above is Cosimo I, the first Grand Duke.
On the Uffizi's river façade are four figures only--and hundreds of
swallows' nests. The figures are Francesco Ferrucci, who died in 1530,
the general painted by Piero di Cosimo in our National Gallery, who
recaptured Volterra from Pope Clement VII in 1529; Giovanni delle Bande
Nere (1500-1527), father of Cosimo I, and a great fighting man; Piero
Capponi, who died in 1496, and delivered Florence from Charles VIII in
1494, by threatening to ring the city bells; and Farinata degli Uberti,
an earlier soldier, who died in 1264 and is in the "Divina Commedia"
as a hero. It was he who repulsed the Ghibelline suggestion that
Florence should be destroyed and the inhabitants emigrate to Empoli.
Working back towards the Loggia de' Lanzi we find less-known names:
Pietro Antonio Michele (1679-1737), the botanist; Francesco Redi
(1626-1697), a poet and a man of science; Paolo Mascagni (1732-1815),
the anatomist; Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603), the philosopher;
S. Antonio (died 1461), Prior of the Convent of S. Marco and Archbishop
of Florence; Francesco Accorso (1182-1229), the jurist; Guido Aretino
(eleventh century), musician; and Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1572),
the goldsmith and sculptor. The most notable omissions are Arnolfo
and Brunelleschi (but these are, as we have seen, on the façade of
the Palazzo de' Canonici, opposite the south side of the cathedral),
Ghiberti, Fra Angelico, and Savonarola. Personally I should like to
have still others here, among them Giorgio Vasari, in recognition
of his enthusiastic and entertaining biographies of the Florentine
artists, to say nothing of the circumstance that he designed this
building.
Before we enter any Florentine gallery let me say that there is only
one free day and that the crowded Sabbath. Admittance to nearly all is
a lira. Moreover, there is no re-admission. The charge strikes English
visitors, accustomed to the open portals of their own museums and
galleries, as an outrage, and it explains also the little interest in
their treasures which most Florentines display, for being essentially
a frugal people they have seldom seen them. Visitors who can satisfy
the authorities that they are desirous of studying the works of art
with a serious purpose can obtain free passes; but only after certain
preliminaries, which include a seance with a photographer to satisfy
the doorkeeper, by comparing the real and counterfeit physiognomies,
that no illicit transference of the precious privilege has been
made. Italy is, one knows, not a rich country; but the revenue which
the gallery entrance-fees represent cannot reach any great volume,
and such as it is it had much better, I should say, be raised by
other means. Meanwhile, the foreigner chiefly pays it. What Giovanni
de' Medici and Lorenzo de' Medici, and--even more--what Anna Maria
Ludovica de' Medici, who bequeathed to the State these possessions,
would think could they see this feverish and implacable pursuit of
pence, I have not imagination, or scorn, enough to set down.
Infirm and languid visitors should get it clearly into their heads (1)
that the tour of the Uffizi means a long walk and (2) that there is
a lift. You find it in the umbrella room--at every Florentine gallery
and museum is an official whose one object in life is to take away your
umbrella--and it costs twopence-halfpenny and is worth far more. But
walking downstairs is imperative, because otherwise one would miss
Silenus and Bacchus, and a beautiful urgent Mars, in bronze, together
with other fine sculptured things.
One of the quaintest symbols of conservatism in Florence is the
scissors of the officials who supply tickets of entrance. Apparently
the perforated line is unknown in Italy; hence the ticket is divided
from its counterfoil (which I assume goes to the authorities in
order that they may check their horrid takings) by a huge pair
of shears. These things are snip-snapping all over Italy, all day
long. Having obtained your ticket you hand it to another official at a
turn-stile, and at last you are free of cupidity and red tape and may
breathe easily again and examine the products of the light-hearted,
generous Renaissance in the right spirit.
One should never forget, in any gallery of Florence, to look out
of the windows. There is always a courtyard, a street, or a spire
against the sky; and at the Uffizi there are the river and bridges
and mountains. From the loggia of the Palazzo Vecchio I once saw a
woman with some twenty or thirty city pigeons on the table of her
little room, feeding them with maize.
Except for glimpses of the river and the Via Guicciardini which it
gives, I advise no one to walk through the passage uniting the Pitti
and the Uffizi--unless of course bent on catching some of the ancient
thrill when armed men ran swiftly from one palace to the other to quell
a disturbance or repulse an assault. Particularly does this counsel
apply to wet days, when all the windows are closed and there is no
air. A certain interest attaches to the myriad portraits which line
the walls, chiefly of the Medici and comparatively recent worthies;
but one must have a glutton's passion either for paint or history to
wish to examine these. As a matter of fact, only a lightning-speed
tourist could possibly think of seeing both the Uffizi and the Pitti
on the same day, and therefore the need of the passage disappears. It
is hard worked only on Sundays.
The drawings in the cases in the first long corridor are worth close
study--covering as they do the whole range of great Italian art: from,
say, Uccello to Carlo Dolci. But as they are from time to time changed
it is useless to say more of them. There is also on the first landing
of the staircase a room in which exhibitions of drawings of the Old
Masters are held, and this is worth knowing about, not only because
of the riches of the portfolios in the collection, but also because
once you have passed the doors you are inside the only picture gallery
in Florence for which no entrance fee is asked. How the authorities
have come to overlook this additional source of revenue, I have no
notion; but they have, and visitors should hasten to make the most
of it for fear that a translation of these words of mine may wander
into bad hands.
To name the most wonderful picture in the Uffizi would be a very
difficult task. At the Accademia, if a plebiscite were taken, there is
little doubt but that Botticelli's "Primavera" would win. At the Pitti
I personally would name Giorgione's "Concert" without any hesitation at
all; but probably the public vote would go to Raphael's "Madonna della
Sedia". But the Uffizi? Here we are amid such wealth of masterpieces,
and yet when one comes to pass them in review in memory none stands
out as those other two I have named. Perhaps Botticelli would win
again, with his "Birth of Venus". Were the Leonardo finished ... but
it is only a sketch. Luca Signorelli's wild flowers in No. 74 seem to
abide with me as vividly and graciously as anything; but they are but a
detail and it is a very personal predilection. Perhaps the great exotic
work painted far away in Belgium--the Van der Goes triptych--is the
most memorable; but to choose an alien canvas is to break the rules of
the game. Is it perhaps the unfinished Leonardo after all? If not, and
not the Botticelli, it is beyond question that lovely adoring Madonna,
so gentle and sweet, against the purest and bluest of Tuscan skies,
which is attributed to Filippino Lippi: No. 1354.