Looking round the room, after Rubens has been dismissed, it is too evident that the best of the Uffizi collection is behind us.  There are interesting portraits here, but biographically rather than artistically.  Here are one or two fine Sustermans’ (1597-1681), that imported painter whom we shall find in such rare form at the Pitti.  Here, for example, is Ferdinand II, who did so much for the Uffizi and so little for Galileo; and his cousin and wife Vittoria della Rovere, daughter of Claudia de’ Medici (whose portrait, No. 763, is on the easel), and Federigo della Rovere, Duke of Urbino.  This silly, plump lady had been married at the age of fourteen, and she brought her husband a little money and many pictures from Urbino, notably those delightful portraits of an earlier Duke and Duchess of Urbino by Piero della Francesca, and also the two Titian “Venuses” in the Tribuna.  Ferdinand II and his Grand Duchess were on bad terms for most of their lives, and she behaved foolishly, and brought up her son Cosimo III foolishly, and altogether was a misfortune to Florence.  Sustermans the painter she held in the highest esteem, and in return he painted her not only as herself but in various unlikely characters, among them a Vestal Virgin and even the Madonna.

Here also is No. 196, Van Dyck’s portrait of Margherita of Lorraine, whose daughter became Cosimo III’s wife—­a mischievous, weak face but magnificently painted; and No. 1536, a vividly-painted elderly widow by Jordaens (1593-1678); and on each side of the outrageous Rubens a distinguished Dutch gentleman and lady by the placid, refined Mierevelt.

The two priceless rooms devoted to Iscrizioni come next, but we will finish the pictures first and therefore pass on to the Sala di Baroccio.  Federigo Baroccio (1528-1612) is one of the later painters for whom I, at any rate, cannot feel any enthusiasm.  His position in the Uffizi is due rather to the circumstance that he was a protege of the Cardinal della Rovere at Rome, whose collection came here, than to his genius.  This room again is of interest rather historically than artistically.  Here, for example, are some good Medici portraits by Bronzino, among them the famous Eleanora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I, in a rich brocade (in which she was buried), with the little staring Ferdinand I beside her.  Eleanora, as we saw in chapter V. was the first mistress of the Pitti palace, and the lady who so disliked Cellini and got him into such trouble through his lying tongue.  Bronzino’s little Maria de’ Medici—­No. 1164—­is more pleasing, for the other picture has a sinister air.  This child, the first-born of Cosimo I and Eleanora, died when only sixteen.  Baroccio has a fine portrait—­Francesco Maria II, last Duke of Urbino, and the grandfather of the Vittoria della Rovere whom we saw in the Sala di Rubens.  Here also is a portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent by Vasari, but it is of small value since Vasari was not born till after Lorenzo’s death.  The