CHAPTER XXIII

The Pitti

Luca Pitti’s pride—­Preliminary caution—­A terrace view—­A collection but not a gallery—­The personally-conducted—­Giorgione the superb—­Sustermans—­The “Madonna del Granduca”—­The “Madonna della Sedia”—­From Cimabue to Raphael—­Andrea del Sarto—­Two Popes and a bastard—­The ill-fated Ippolito—­The National Gallery—­Royal apartments—­“Pallas Subduing the Centaur”—­The Boboli Gardens.

The Pitti approached from the Via Guicciardini is far liker a prison than a palace.  It was commissioned by Luca Pitti, one of the proudest and richest of the rivals of the Medici, in 1441.  Cosimo de’ Medici, as we have seen, had rejected Brunelleschi’s plans for a palazzo as being too pretentious and gone instead to his friend Michelozzo for something that externally at any rate was more modest; Pitti, whose one ambition was to exceed Cosimo in power, popularity, and visible wealth, deliberately chose Brunelleschi, and gave him carte blanche to make the most magnificent mansion possible.  Pitti, however, plotting against Cosimo’s son Piero, was frustrated and condemned to death; and although Piero obtained his pardon he lost all his friends and passed into utter disrespect in the city.  Meanwhile his palace remained unfinished and neglected, and continued so for a century, when it was acquired by the Grand Duchess Eleanor of Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I, who though she saw only the beginnings of its splendours lived there awhile and there brought up her doomed brood.  Eleanor’s architect—­or rather Cosimo’s, for though the Grand Duchess paid, the Grand Duke controlled—­was Ammanati, the designer of the Neptune fountain in the Piazza della Signoria.  Other important additions were made later.  The last Medicean Grand Duke to occupy the Pitti was Gian Gastone, a bizarre detrimental, whose head, in a monstrous wig, may be seen at the top of the stairs leading to the Uffizi gallery.  He died in 1737.

As I have said in chapter VIII, it was by the will of Gian Gastone’s sister, widow of the Elector Palatine, who died in 1743, that the Medicean collections became the property of the Florentines.  This bequest did not, however, prevent the migration of many of the best pictures to Paris under Napoleon, but after Waterloo they came back.  The Pitti continued to be the home of princes after Gian Gastone quitted a world which he found strange and made more so; but they were not of the Medici blood.  It is now a residence of the royal family.

The first thing to do if by evil chance one enters the Pitti by the covered way from the Uffizi is, just before emerging into the palace, to avoid the room where copies of pictures are sold, for not only is it a very catacomb of headache, from the fresh paint, but the copies are in themselves horrible and lead to disquieting reflections on the subject of sweated labour.  The next thing to do, on at last emerging,