After a nice breakfast at a restaurant on the Piazza della
Signoria, we met with our art tour guide, Maurizio Tocchione, to visit the
Uffizi and the Vasari Corridor, which connects the Uffizi with the Pitti
Palazzo. Maurizio began by showing us a
scratched picture of a face on a stone of the west side of the Palazzo Vecchio,
which he described as Michelangelo’s worst artwork! The entrance for our private tour was a door
on the north side of the Palazzo, past the guards and into a large marble
stairwell with portraits and busts of various Medici and Habsburg rulers. The walls were painted a sort of pale lime
green, which Maurizio called “Lorraine Green” indicating the décor changes in
the Uffizi after Francis Stephen I of Habsburg-Lorraine took over as Duke of
Tuscany in 1738. [Historical note: Tuscany had been a dukedom ruled almost
continuously by the Medici family since the mid 1400’s, but the last Medici
ruler died in 1737, and Francis was granted Tuscany in compensation for loosing
Lorraine in the Treaty of Vienna, which ended the War of Polish
Succession. It’s all very complicated.]
Maurizio opened our eyes to see the transition in painting
styles from the Medieval to the Early Renaissance, by showing us “Madonna
Enthroned” of Giotto (circa 1260), much more naturalistic than the adjacent painting
of the Madonna by Cimabue, separated by less than 30 years. It was said of Giotto that he painted just
what he saw in Nature, and if he made a mistake it was because there was a
mistake in Nature. Heresy! Giotto the
innovator began to use natural colors for the heavens instead of the icon-like gold
leaf of earlier medieval artists. We saw
paintings of such vivid colors it was hard to believe they were more than 700
years old.
The upper level of the Ponte Vecchio is called the Vasari
Corridor and was designed by the architect and painter Giorgio Vasari for the
Grand Duke Cosimo I as a safe passage to walk from the Uffizi complex to the
new Medici apartments in the Pitti Palace without going out in the streets
among possibly hostile crowds. The longest
section of the corridor at 400 meters is filled with portraits of artists starting
from around 1300 and ending in the mid 1800’s.
I recognized a portrait of Maria Cosway, a painter of miniatures and
friend of Thomas Jefferson.
We bade farewell to Maurizio, with our heads fairly bursting
with all the information he had given us, and after a snack on the Uffizi
terrace, went to the Palazzo Vecchio for a self-tour. Again the halls were decorated with the Medici
coat-of-arms of a shield arranged with six balls, the upper one with the French
fleur-de-lis. Maurizio told us this privilege
was granted to Lorenzo Medici (the Magnificent) in 1469 by the French King
Louis XI in recognition of their alliance. Maurizio told us this was a way of
dating the decorations in Medici architecture.
The Palazzo Vecchio had been the governmental building for the Republic
of Florence, and the first room, called “Room of the 500” was enormous, with
walls covered in frescoes of medieval and renaissance battle scenes. We walked through the rooms, each one more
lavishly decorated than the last. After
what could only be described as sensory overload, we climbed the tower of the
Palazzo to get the most amazing views of the city of Florence.
If you plan to visit Florence, I very strongly recommend booking
an Art Tour with Maurizio Tocchioni, an art and architecture scholar, and
native of Florence with a great command of English!
Maurizio Tocchioni
Art Tours in Florence Tuscany
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