Galleria degli Uffizi

“ Passing through the end corridor, where the beautiful Matrona reclines so placidly on her couch against the light, and where we have such pleasant views of the Ponte Vecchio, the Trinita bridge, the Arno, and the Apennines, so fresh and real and soothing after so much paint, we come to the rooms containing the famous collection of self-painted portraits, which, moved hither from Rome, has been accumulating in the Uffizi for many years and is still growing, to be invited to contribute to it being one of the highest honours a painter can receive. ”

“ The trouble is that the Uffizi is so vast, and the Renaissance seems to be so eminently the only proper study of mankind when one is here, that to attune oneself to the enjoyment of antique sculpture needs a special effort which not all are ready to make.
In the centre of the next room is the punctual Hermaphrodite without which no large Continental gallery is complete. But more worthy of attention is the torso of a faun on the left, on a revolving pedestal which (unlike those in the Bargello, as we shall discover) really does revolve and enables you to admire the perfect back. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Even giving up the Duomo and Santa Croce to Mr. Ruskin as very ill-arranged edifices, the list of the Florentine treasures is almost inexhaustible. Those long outer galleries of the Uffizi had never beguiled me more; sometimes there were not more than two or three figures standing there, Baedeker in hand, to break the charming perspective. One side of this upstairs portico, it will be remembered, is entirely composed of glass; a continuity of old-fashioned windows, draped with white curtains of rather primitive fashion, which hang there till they acquire a perceptible tone. ”

“ Adjoining is a superb equestrian statue of Cosmo, by Bologna. The horse is admirable. To the left of the statue is the Palazzo Uguccione (considered to have been designed by Raphael) , built in 1551. Adjoining the Loggia dei Lanzi are the extensive buildings “degli Uffizi,” the great storehouse of art treasures. On both sides of the Piazza, along the basement floor, extends a wide and lofty colonnade, by Vasari (1560-74) , ornamented with 24 statues of the most eminent Italians. On the same side as the Loggia is the Post-Office (Reale Poste) . Florence: National Library. ”

“ We linger long in the Tribune, loath to leave these superb creations, that reveal new beauties the longer we gaze upon them. On the walls of this room hang works from the pencils of Titian, Michael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, Guido, and Vandyke. You are surrounded by priceless gems of art, the choicest works of the whole Uffizi collection. ”

“ It is painted in a soft, harmonious style, but not masterly as regards chiaroscuro. It might be by Francia Bigio, as it has something of the manner of his master, Albertinelli.
Another now in the Uffizi is a most life-like portrait of sombre colouring, but not highly finished. Here we have the same black cap and long hair; the dress is a painter's blouse of a blue-grey, which well brings out the flesh tints. The face is intelligent, but not refined; the clear dark eyes bespeak the artist spirit, but the full mobile mouth tells the material nature of the man. ”

“ We would pass by dozens of pictures by inferior artists, completely unmoved; then, suddenly, a thrilling vision of beauty would glow upon us, and we would acknowledge ourselves to be in a royal presence-chamber.
Such a presence-chamber is the Tribune in the Uffizi palace. We came upon many marble Venuses before we arrived in this Tribune, a large, octagon room, with a domed ceiling, blue, flecked with gold stars; but we passed them all by—until finally we entered the reverent stillness which is kept about the Venus of Venuses. ”

“ But the easiest plan is to commence with the Uffizi, and to descend towards the Pitti gallery by the stair at the top of the western gallery. The only part of the way in which it is possible to go wrong, is where (after having passed through the gallery of birds, fishes, and plants, admirably drawn in 1695 by Bart. Legozzi, and a small room with a few beautiful miniature paintings representing scenes in the life of our Lord,) we come to a common stone staircase, which, to enter the Pitti galleries, ascend, but to go out, descend. ”

“ The Pitti Palace is of course a collection of masterpieces; they jostle each other in their splendour, they perhaps even, in their merciless multitude, rather fatigue our admiration. The Uffizi is almost as fine a show, and together with that long serpentine artery which crosses the Arno and connects them, making you ask yourself, whichever way you take it, what goal can be grand enough to crown such a journey, they form the great central treasure-chamber of the town. ”

“ At the door of the Ufizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statues of a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulated grime,—they hardly suggest human beings—yet these ridiculous creatures have been thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidious generation. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallery that exists in the world—the Tribune—and there, against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses—Titian's Venus. ”

“ Florence is naturally far richer than we, but although only now and then have we the advantage, we can valuably supplement in a great many cases. And the National Gallery keeps up its quality throughout—it does not suddenly fall to pieces as the Uffizi does. Thus, I doubt if Florence with all her Andreas has so exquisite a thing from his hand as our portrait of a "Young Sculptor," so long called a portrait of the painter himself; and we have two Michelangelo paintings to the Uffizi's one. ”

“ A more mature and more celebrated “Adoration of the Magi” than either of those in the National Gallery is that now in the Uffizi, which Botticelli painted for Giovanni Lami, probably in 1477, and which was originally placed over an altar against the front wall of the church of Sta Maria Novella to the right inside the main entrance. ”

“ If at any time I become less sensible of it, it will be my deterioration, not any defect in the statue.
I looked at many of the pictures, and found myself in a favorable mood for enjoying them. It seems to me that a work of art is entitled to credit for all that it makes us feel in our best moments; and we must judge of its merits by the impression it then makes, and not by the coldness and insensibility of our less genial moods.
After leaving the Uffizi Palace, . . . . I went into the Museum of Natural History, near the Pitti Palace. ”

“ To come in the Uffizi upon a Dutch collection, to see the boors of Jan Steen, the tavern peasants of Heemskerck, the pancake-seller of Gerard Dou, the mushrooms and butterflies of Marcellis Ottone, is to have, first a shock of discord and then a breath of fresh air and to grow suddenly conscious of the artificial atmosphere of all this Renaissance art. Where it does not reek of the mould of crypts or the incense of cathedrals or the pot-pourri of the cloister, it is redolent of marmoreal salons, it is the art of the Magnificent Ones. ”

“ At the doors of the beautiful buildings are little turnstiles, at which there sit a great many men in uniform, to whom the visitor pays a ten-penny fee. Inside, in the vaulted and frescoed chambers, the art of Italy lies buried, as in a thousand mausoleums. It is well taken care of; it is constantly copied; sometimes it is "restored"—as in the case of that beautiful boy-figure of Andrea del Sarto, at Florence, which may be seen at the gallery of the Uffizi, with its honourable duskiness quite peeled off and heaven knows what raw, bleeding cuticle laid bare. ”

“ It often has occurred to me while wandering through various European galleries that the work of the early Italian painters might easily be adapted to the uses of stage decoration. Florence is full of this sort of thing, but three pictures I remember especially—three pictures of the fifteenth century, by an unknown painter. They are [156] small and they hang, with other pictures between them, in one of the long galleries of the Uffizi. Two of them represent feasts. The simplicity and coloring of the architecture and the costumes would be joyously in keeping with certain plays of Shakespeare. ”

“ A small and charming strip of an oblong “Annunciation” at the Louvre is generally accepted as his work, done soon after 1470; a very highly wrought drawing at the Uffizi, corresponding on a larger scale to the head of the Virgin in the same picture, seems rather to be a copy by a later hand. This little Louvre “Annunciation” is not very compatible in style with another and larger, much-debated “Annunciation” at the Uffizi, which manifestly came from the workshop of Verrocchio about 1473-1474, and which many critics claim confidently for the young Leonardo. ”

“ When the palace was completed early in 1559 Giovanni begged to be allowed to occupy part of the Piazza by putting steps outside his door “according to the design, and to give greater beauty to the house.” The permission must have been granted, as in a drawing of the façade by the younger Vasari in the351 Uffizi, there are five steps leading up to the front door. These have gradually disappeared owing to the rise in the level of the Piazza. Giovanni Uguccione died in December, 1559, leaving the house to his widow Nannina, daughter of Palla Rucellai, and afterwards to his nephews. ”

“ Wind and rain and the salt sea air have entirely ruined these frescoes now, and there are but few of Giorgione's pictures left to us, but that perhaps makes them all the more precious in our eyes.
Even his drawings are rare, and the one you see here is taken from a bigger sketch in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence. It shows a man in Venetian dress helping two women to mount one of the niches of a marble palace in order to see some passing show, and to be out of the way of the crowd. ”

“ The charm, as I said, seems to be moral rather than intellectual; for in the gem-room of the Uffizi you may see fifty designs, elaborated on a small scale, that have just as much merit as the design of the Campanile. If it were only five inches long, it might be a case for some article of toilet; being two hundred feet high, its prettiness develops into grandeur as well as beauty, and it becomes really one of the wonders of the world. The design of the Pantheon, on the contrary, would retain its sublimity on whatever scale it might be represented. ”

“ The Uffizi and Pitti collections of paintings are absolutely the most amazing I saw abroad. There are other wonderful collections, the Louvre being absolutely unbelievable for size; but here the art is so uniformly relative to Italy, so identified with the Renaissance, so suggestive of the influence and the patronage which gave it birth. The influence of religion, the wealth of the Catholic Church, the power of individual families such as the Medici and the Dukes of Venice are all clearly indicated. ”

“ With the aid of coins [17] and a relief preserved in the Uffizi at Florence [18] it is possible to make a sufficiently accurate restoration of the temple. [19] It consisted of a circular cella, surrounded by eighteen columns, with screens between them; the circular podium, about 10 ft. high, still exists, mainly of concrete with some foundations of tufa blocks, which may belong to the original structure. ”

“ Within a few years of the same date (1485–1488) should apparently be placed that second masterpiece of fanciful classicism done for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s villa at Castello, the “Birth of Venus,” now in the Uffizi, the design of which seems to have been chiefly inspired by the “Stanze” of Poliziano, perhaps also by the Pervigilium Veneris; together with the scarcely less admirable “Mars and Venus” of the National Gallery, conceived in the master’s peculiar vein of virile sanity mingled with exquisite caprice ”

“ She returned to Venice in 1721, visited Modena and Vienna, and was everywhere received with much enthusiasm. Toward the end of her life she became blind through overwork. There are one hundred and forty-three of her drawings in the gallery in Dresden, and the Louvre, Uffizi, and Saint Petersburg galleries own others. ”