VISITING IL PALAZZO PITTI & IL GIARDINO DI BOBOLI

Visiting Palazzo Pitti & il Giardino Boboli, Firenze

Today, Tonyi Tamaki and her friends have visited the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens in Firenze.

These places are an example of the importance of the city since the Renaissance as an important centre of art and politic power.

Before visiting the palace and the gardens, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 12).

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The Palazzo Pitti is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Tuscany. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker.

The palace was bought by the Medici family in 1549 and became the chief residence of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It grew as a great treasure house as later generations amassed paintings, plates, jewelry and luxurious possessions.

In the late 18th century, the palazzo was used as a power base by Napoleon and later served for a brief period as the principal royal palace of the newly united Italy. The palace and its contents were donated to the Italian people by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919.

Inside Palazzo Pitti, Firenze

The palazzo is now the largest museum complex in Florence. The principal palazzo block, often in a building of this design known as the corps de logis, is 32,000 square metres. It is divided into several principal galleries or museums detailed below.

The construction of this severe and forbidding building was commissioned in 1458 by the Florentine banker Luca Pitti (1398-1472), a principal supporter and friend of Cosimo de' Medici.

The early history of the Palazzo Pitti is a mixture of fact and myth. Pitti is alleged to have instructed that the windows be larger than the entrance of the Palazzo Medici. The 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari proposed that Brunelleschi was the palazzo's architect, and that his pupil Luca Fancelli was merely his assistant in the task, but today it is Fancelli who is generally credited. Besides obvious differences from the elder architect's style, Brunelleschi died 12 years before construction of the palazzo began.

More information: Visit Florence

Though impressive, the original palazzo would have been no rival to the Florentine Medici residences in terms of either size or content. Whoever the architect of the Palazzo Pitti was, he was moving against the contemporary flow of fashion. The rusticated stonework gives the palazzo a severe and powerful atmosphere, reinforced by the three-times-repeated series of seven arch-headed apertures, reminiscent of a Roman aqueduct.

The Roman-style architecture appealed to the Florentine love of the new style all'antica. This original design has withstood the test of time: the repetitive formula of the façade was continued during the subsequent additions to the palazzo, and its influence can be seen in numerous 16th-century imitations and 19th-century revivals. Work stopped after Pitti suffered financial losses following the death of Cosimo de' Medici in 1464. Luca Pitti died in 1472 with the building unfinished.

Inside Palazzo Pitti, Firenze

The building was sold in 1549 by Buonaccorso Pitti, a descendant of Luca Pitti, to Eleonora di Toledo. Raised at the luxurious court of Naples, Eleonora was the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici of Tuscany, later the Grand Duke.

On moving into the palace, Cosimo had Vasari enlarge the structure to fit his tastes; the palace was more than doubled by the addition of a new block along the rear. Vasari also built the Vasari Corridor, an above-ground walkway from Cosimo's old palace and the seat of government, the Palazzo Vecchio, through the Uffizi, above the Ponte Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti. This enabled the Grand Duke and his family to move easily and safely from their official residence to the Palazzo Pitti.

Initially the Palazzo Pitti was used mostly for lodging official guests and for occasional functions of the court, while the Medicis' principal residence remained the Palazzo Vecchio. It was not until the reign of Eleonora's son Francesco I and his wife Johanna of Austria that the palazzo was occupied on a permanent basis and became home to the Medicis' art collection.

More information: Museums in Florence

Land on the Boboli hill at the rear of the palazzo was acquired in order to create a large formal park and gardens, today known as the Boboli Gardens. The landscape architect employed for this was the Medici court artist Niccolò Tribolo, who died the following year; he was quickly succeeded by Bartolommeo Ammanati 

The Boboli Gardens, in Italian Giardino di Boboli, is a park in Florence, that is home to a collection of sculptures dating from the 16th through the 18th centuries, with some Roman antiquities.

Outside Palazzo Pitti, Firenze

The mid-16th-century garden style, as it was developed here, incorporated longer axial developments, wide gravel avenues, a considerable built element of stone, the lavish employment of statuary and fountains, and a proliferation of detail, coordinated in semi-private and public spaces that were informed by classical accents: grottos, nympheums, garden temples and the like. The openness of the garden, with an expansive view of the city, was unconventional for its time. The gardens were very lavish, considering no access was allowed to anyone outside the immediate Medici family, and no entertainment or parties ever took place in the gardens.

The name is a corruption of Bogoli, a family from whom land had been bought to construct the garden.

The garden lacks a natural water source. To water the plants in the garden, a conduit was built from the nearby Arno River to feed water into an elaborate irrigation system.

More information: Florence Art Museums

The primary axis, centered on the rear façade of the palace, rises on Boboli Hill from a deep amphitheater that is reminiscent in its shape of one half of a classical hippodrome or racecourse. At the center of the amphitheater and rather dwarfed by its position is the Ancient Egyptian Boboli obelisk brought from the Villa Medici at Rome. This primary axis terminates in a fountain of Neptune, known to the irreverent Florentines as the Fountain of the Fork for Neptune's trident. The gardens have passed through several stages of enlargement and restructuring work.

 

Visiting Giardino Boboli, Firenze

With the garden project well in hand, Ammanati turned his attentions to creating a large courtyard immediately behind the principal façade, to link the palazzo to its new garden. This courtyard has heavy-banded channelled rustication that has been widely copied, notably for the Parisian palais of Maria de' Medici, the Luxembourg.

In the principal façade Ammanati also created the finestre inginocchiate, replacing the entrance bays at each end. During the years 1558–70, Ammanati created a monumental staircase to lead with more pomp to the piano nobile, and he extended the wings on the garden front that embraced a courtyard excavated into the steeply sloping hillside at the same level as the piazza in front, from which it was visible through the central arch of the basement.

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On the garden side of the courtyard Amannati constructed a grotto, called the grotto of Moses on account of the porphyry statue that inhabits it. On the terrace above it, level with the piano nobile windows, Ammanati constructed a fountain centered on the axis; it was later replaced by the Fontana del Carciofo or Fountain of the Artichoke, designed by Giambologna's former assistant, Francesco Susini, and completed in 1641.

During the 18th century, two perpendicular wings were constructed by the architect Giuseppe Ruggeri to enhance and stress the widening of via Romana, which creates a piazza centered on the façade, the prototype of the cour d'honneur that was copied in France. Sporadic lesser additions and alterations were made for many years thereafter under other rulers and architects.

Claire visits the Giardino di Boboli, Firenze

To one side of the Gardens is the bizarre grotto designed by Bernardo Buontalenti. The lower façade was begun by Vasari but the architecture of the upper storey is subverted by dripping pumice stalactites with the Medici coat of arms at the centre. 

The interior is similarly poised between architecture and nature; the first chamber has copies of Michelangelo's four unfinished slaves emerging from the corners which seem to carry the vault with an open oculus at its centre and painted as a rustic bower with animals, figures and vegetation.

The palazzo remained the principal Medici residence until the last male Medici heir died in 1737. It was then occupied briefly by his sister, the elderly Electress Palatine; on her death, the Medici dynasty became extinct and the palazzo passed to the new Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the Austrian House of Lorraine, in the person of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor. The Austrian tenancy was briefly interrupted by Napoleon, who used the palazzo during his period of control over Italy.

More information: Museums in Florence

When Tuscany passed from the House of Lorraine to the House of Savoy in 1860, the Palazzo Pitti was included. After the Risorgimento, when Florence was briefly the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II resided in the palazzo until 1871. His grandson, Victor Emmanuel III, presented the palazzo to the nation in 1919.

The palazzo and other buildings in the Boboli Gardens were then divided into five separate art galleries and a museum, housing not only many of its original contents, but priceless artefacts from many other collections acquired by the state. The 140 rooms open to the public are part of an interior, which is in large part a later product than the original portion of the structure, mostly created in two phases, one in the 17th century and the other in the early 18th century. Some earlier interiors remain, and there are still later additions such as the Throne Room.

Contemplating the Fountain of Neptune, Firenze

Decorated internally and externally with stalactites and originally equipped with waterworks and luxuriant vegetation, the fountain is divided into three main sections.

The first one was frescoed to create the illusion of a natural grotto, that is a natural refuge to allow shepherds to protect themselves from wild animals; it originally housed The Prisoners of Michelangelo, now replaced by copies, statues that were first intended for the tomb of the Pope Julius II. Other rooms in the Grotto contain Giambologna's famous Bathing Venus and an 18th-century group of Paris and Helen by Vincenzo de' Rossi.

In the hillside above the amphitheatre is a double ramp, leading to the Fountain of Neptune. The main feature is a large basin with a central bronze statue of Neptune (1565-1568) by Stoldo Lorenzi.

The Isolotto is an oval-shaped island in a tree enclosed pond nearly at the end of the alternative Viottolone axis. In the centre of the island is the Fountain of the Ocean, while in the surrounding moat, there are statues of Perseus and Andromedae. The Isolotto was laid out, circa 1618, by Giulio and Alfonso Parigi.

More information: Florence Museum

I am always connected with the Renaissance a lot;

that's why I am connected with Pitti Palace.

Alessandro Michele

SANDRO BOTTICELLI PAINTS 'THE BIRTH OF VENUS'

Sandro Botticelli

Tina Picotes loves art and she is a great follower of Sandro Botticelli. Yesterday, she visited le Gallerie degli Uffizi with her friends and she was the best art guide for them, especially for The Grandma who asked Tina lots of questions.

Today, Tina and her friends have returned to the Gallerie degli Uffizi. It's impossible to see all masterpieces in only one day and they are very interested in the great figure of Botticelli, and especially, in his amazing work The Birth of Venus. Tina has explained lots of things about Botticelli and his works to her friends.

Before returning to the gallery, The Grandma has studied a new chapter of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 49).

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Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (c. 1445-May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli, was a Tuscan painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later in his Vita of Botticelli as a golden age.

Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then, his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting.

As well as the small number of mythological subjects which are his best known works today, he painted a wide range of religious subjects and also some portraits. He and his workshop were especially known for their Madonna and Childs, many in the round tondo shape. Botticelli's best-known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera, both in the Uffizi in Florence. He lived all his life in the same neighbourhood of Florence, with probably his only significant time elsewhere the months he spent painting in Pisa in 1474 and the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1481–82.

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli

Only one of his paintings is dated, though others can be dated from other records with varying degrees of certainty, and the development of his style traced with confidence.

He was an independent master for all the 1470s, growing in mastery and reputation, and the 1480s were his most successful decade, when all his large mythological paintings were done, and many of his best Madonnas. By the 1490s his style became more personal and to some extent mannered, and he could be seen as moving in a direction opposite to that of Leonardo da Vinci, seven years his junior, and a new generation of painters creating the High Renaissance style as Botticelli returned in some ways to the Gothic style.

He has been described as an outsider in the mainstream of Italian painting, who had a limited interest in many of the developments most associated with Quattrocento painting, such as the realistic depiction of human anatomy, perspective, and landscape, and the use of direct borrowings from classical art. His training enabled him to represent all these aspects of painting, without adopting or contributing to their development.

More information: Virtual Uffizi

Botticelli was born in the city of Florence in a house in the street still called Via Borgo Ognissanti. He was to live within a minute or two's walk of this all his life, and to be buried in the Ognissanti, All Saints, parish church. His father was Mariano di Vanni d'Amedeo Filipepi, and Sandro was the youngest of his four children to survive into adulthood, all boys. The date of his birth is not known, but his father's tax returns in following years give his age as two in 1447 and thirteen in 1458 so, allowing for arguments as to what these statements really meant, dates between 1444 and 1446 are given.

From around 1461 or 1462 Botticelli was apprenticed to Fra Filippo Lippi, one of the top Florentine painters of the day, and one often patronized by the Medicis. He was rather conservative in many respects, but gave Botticelli a solid training in the Florentine style and technique of the day, in panel painting, fresco, and drawing.

Primavera by Sandro Botticelli

At the start of 1474 Botticelli was asked by the authorities in Pisa to join the work frescoing the Camposanto, a huge and prestigious project mostly being done by Benozzo Gozzoli, who spent nearly twenty years on it.

The Adoration of the Magi for Santa Maria Novella (c. 1475–76, now in the Uffizi, and the first of 8 Adorations), was singled out for praise by Vasari, and was in a much-visited church, so spreading his reputation. It can be thought of as marking the climax of Botticelli's early style.

In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV summoned Botticelli and other prominent Florentine and Umbrian artists to fresco the walls of the newly completed Sistine Chapel. This large project was to be the main decoration of the chapel; most of the frescos remain, but are now greatly overshadowed and disrupted by Michelangelo's work of the next century, to make room for which some of them were destroyed.

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The masterpieces Primavera (c. 1482) and The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) are not a pair, but are inevitably discussed together; both are in the Uffizi. They are among the most famous paintings in the world, and icons of the Italian Renaissance. As depictions of subjects from classical mythology on a very large scale they were virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity.

Together with the smaller and less celebrated Mars and Venus and Pallas and the Centaur, they have been endlessly analysed by art historians, with the main themes being: the emulation of ancient painters and the context of wedding celebrations, the influence of Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the identity of the commissioners and possible models for the figures.

Dante's Portrait by Botticelli

Botticelli returned from Rome in 1482 with a reputation considerably enhanced by his work there. As with his secular paintings, many religious commissions are larger and no doubt more expensive than before. Altogether more datable works by Botticelli come from the 1480s than any other decade, and most of these are religious.

Botticelli painted a number of portraits, although not nearly as many as have been attributed to him. Many portraits exist in several versions, probably most mainly by the workshop; there is often uncertainty in their attribution.

Often the background changes between versions while the figure remains the same. His male portraits have also often held dubious identifications, most often of various Medicis, for longer than the real evidence supports.

Botticelli had a lifelong interest in the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, which produced works in several media. He is attributed with an imagined portrait. According to Vasari, he wrote a commentary on a portion of Dante, which is also referred to dismissively in another story in the Life, but no such text has survived.

The Medici family were effective rulers of Florence, which was nominally a republic, throughout Botticelli's lifetime up to 1494, when the main branch were expelled. Lorenzo il Magnifico became the head of the family in 1469, just around the time Botticelli started his own workshop. He was a great patron of both the visual and literary arts, and encouraged and financed the humanist and Neoplatonist circle from which much of the character of Botticelli's mythological painting seems to come. In general Lorenzo does not seem to have commissioned much from Botticelli, preferring Pollaiuolo and others, although views on this differ.

Botticelli died of Old Age in Florence. After his death, Botticelli's reputation was eclipsed longer and more thoroughly than that of any other major European artist. His paintings remained in the churches and villas for which they had been created, and his frescos in the Sistine Chapel were upstaged by those of Michelangelo.

More information: Le Gallerie degli Uffizi

Sandro's drawing was much beyond the common level...

[and that other artists] strove to obtain examples.

Giorgio Vasari

GALLERIE DEGLI UFFIZI, ENJOY THE BEST RENAISSANCE

Ready to visit Le Gallerie degli Uffizi, Firenze

Today, The Grandma and her friends have visited Le Gallerie degli Uffizi in Firenze. All of them love art and this visit has been an incredible opportunity to contemplate some of the most important art works of the history.

Visiting this gallery is a must, if you are in Firenze and it is also an homage to all those people who believed in art and worked very hard to promoted it, conserved it and showed to the public.

Before discovering more things about the History of Firenze, The Grandma has studied a new chapter of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 48).

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The Uffizi Gallery, in Italian Galleria degli Uffizi, is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany. One of the most important Italian museums and the most visited, it is also one of the largest and best known in the world and holds a collection of priceless works, particularly from the period of the Italian Renaissance.

Today, the Uffizi is one of the most popular tourist attractions of Florence and one of the most visited art museums in the world.

After the ruling house of Medici died out, their art collections were gifted to the city of Florence under the famous Patto di famiglia negotiated by Anna Maria Luisa, the last Medici heiress.

Joseph de Ca'th Lon visits Le Gallerie degli Uffizi

The Uffizi is one of the first modern museums. The gallery had been open to visitors by request since the sixteenth century, and in 1765 it was officially opened to the public, formally becoming a museum in 1865.

The building of Uffizi complex was begun by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for Cosimo I de' Medici so as to accommodate the offices of the Florentine magistrates, hence the name uffizi, offices. The construction was later continued by Alfonso Parigi and Bernardo Buontalenti; it was completed in 1581. The top floor was made into a gallery for the family and their guests and included their collection of Roman sculptures.

More information: Le Gallerie degli Uffizi

The cortile, internal courtyard, is so long, narrow and open to the Arno at its far end through a Doric screen that articulates the space without blocking it, that architectural historians treat it as the first regularized streetscape of Europe.  

Vasari, a painter and architect as well, emphasised its perspective length by adorning it with the matching facades' continuous roof cornices, and unbroken cornices between storeys, as well as the three continuous steps on which the palace-fronts stand. The niches in the piers that alternate with columns of the Loggiato filled with sculptures of famous artists in the 19th century.

Jordi Santanyí visits Micheangelo's Hall

The Uffizi brought together under one roof the administrative offices and the Archivio di Stato, the state archive. 

The project was intended to display prime art works of the Medici collections on the piano nobile; the plan was carried out by his son, Grand Duke Francesco I. He commissioned the architect Buontalenti to design the Tribuna degli Uffizi that would display a series of masterpieces in one room, including jewels; it became a highly influential attraction of a Grand Tour. The octagonal room was completed in 1584.

Over the years, more sections of the palace were recruited to exhibit paintings and sculpture collected or commissioned by the Medici. According to Vasari, who was not only the architect of the Uffizi but also the author of Lives of the Artists, published in 1550 and 1568, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo gathered at the Uffizi for beauty, for work and for recreation.

More information: Visit Uffizi

For many years, 45 to 50 rooms were used to display paintings from the 13th to 18th century. Because of its huge collection, some of the Uffizi's works have in the past been transferred to other museums in Florence -for example, some famous statues to the Bargello.

A project was finished in 2006 to expand the museum's exhibition space some 6,000 metres square to almost 13,000 metres square, allowing public viewing of many artworks that had usually been in storage.

The Grandma & Claire contemplate Galileo's portrait

The Nuovi Uffizi renovation project which started in 1989 was progressing well in 2015 to 2017. It was intended to modernize all of the halls and more than double the display space.

As well, a new exit was planned and the lighting, air conditioning and security systems were updated. During construction, the museum remained open, although rooms were closed as necessary with the artwork temporarily moved to another location. The major modernization project, New Uffizi, had increased viewing capacity to 101 rooms by late 2016 by expanding into areas previously used by the Florence State Archive.

The museum is being renovated to more than double the number of rooms used to display artwork.

On 27 May 1993, the Sicilian Mafia carried out a car bomb explosion in Via dei Georgofili and damaged parts of the palace. The blast destroyed five pieces of art and damaged another 30. Some of the paintings were fully protected by bulletproof glass. The most severe damage was to the Niobe room and classical sculptures and neoclassical interior, which have since been restored, although its frescoes were damaged beyond repair.

In early August 2007, Florence experienced a heavy rainstorm. The Gallery was partially flooded, with water leaking through the ceiling, and the visitors had to be evacuated. There was a much more significant flood in 1966 which damaged most of the art collections in Florence severely, including some of the works in the Uffizi.

More information: Visit Florence

Florence is perhaps best known for being
the seat of Renaissance art, and rightly so:
A greatest-hits collection of artists passed through
its streets -Michelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli,
and Brunelleschi among them.
 

Hanya Yanagihara