Tuscany Villa Rental
Pitti Palace, Florence:
This one-time residence of the Medici family is a treasure trove: there ore royal aportments, galferies of modern art, costume, silverware and porcefoin. Bul above all there is the Galleria Patatina, frescoed by Pietro da Cortona, and second only to the Uffizi. It contains one of the world's best collections of Q. Raphaels and Titians. The paintings are stili hung 19th-century style, when "Does that Tintoretto match the room's decor?" or "Let's put all the round ones together" mattered more than any didadic arrangement
Pitti Palace, Florence
Top 9 Pitti Sight:
01 - La Velata
Raphael did many portraits, usually of Maodonnas, and several of his best are in these collections.
La Velata (1516) is his masterplece of the form, demonstrating his mastery of colour, light and form. The sitter, is most likely La Fornarina, Raphael's Roman girlfriend.
02 - Consequence of War Venus tries to stop Mars going to war,while a Fate pulls him towards it (1638; rrght) This was an agelng Rubens's piea against his homeland becoming embroiled in the Thirty Years'War{1618-48).
03 - Consequence of War Venus tries to stop Mars going to war,while a Fate pulls him towards it (1638; rrght) This was an agelng Rubens's piea against his homeland becoming embroiled in the Thirty Years'War{1618-48).
04 - Green Roorn, the Royal Apartrnents
The best-preserved room in the royal apartments (Appartamenti Reali) contalns such lavish furnishings as an ebony cablnet inlaid with semi-precious stone sand bronze. The ceiling of the Green Room is set with trompe l'oeil stuccoes and a canvas by Luca Giordano.
05 - Ammannati's Courtyard
Mannerist architecture was a robust, oversized retake on the Renaissance. Bartolomeo Ammannati expounded this in dramatic, heavily rusticated Classical orders (1560-70)
06 - The Tuscan Maremma
On these second floor,the modern art museum's masterpiece is a work (1850) by Giovanni Fattori. He was the greatest of the Macchaioli, a 19th-century Tuscan school with paral-lels to lmpressionism
07 - Boboli Gardens
The Renaissance gardenwith B-aroque and Rococo touches has cypress avenues, hidden statues and burbling fountains.
08 - Grotta Grande
Mannerist cavern dripping with stylized stalactlles, Giambologna statues and plaster casts of Michelangelo's Siaves
09 - Three Ages of Man
The attribulion of this allegorical work of 1500 to Giorgione is not certain, but it is a beautiful piece nonetheless, with a strong sense of color and composition. Compare it with the Baroque Four Ages of Man(1637),whlch was frescoed by Pietro da Cortona on the ceiling of the Sala della Stuia.
Sala di Giove
This room holds two Pitti Top 10s: Raphael's La Velata and Glorglone's Three Ages of Man. Early Renaissance masterpieces include Perugino’s Madonna del Sacco. A subtle study of spatial relationships, and a small, wrinkly St Jerome either by Verrocchio or Piero di Pollaiuolo. Andrea del Sarto painted St John the Baptist (1523) in a Classical style, but his Annunciation (1512) is prato-Mannerist. Fra' Bartolomeo's Lamentation of the Dead Christ (1512) and Bronzino's Guidobaldo Della Rovere (1532) are High Renaissance works that anticipate the Baroque.
Sala di Saturno
Raphael's entire career is covered here. From the Leonardesque Madonna del Granduca (1506) to his late Vision of Ezekiel (1518) Among his other Madonnas and portraits, seek out the Mona Lisa-inspired Maddalena Doni 115061, which heavily influenced Renaissance portraiture, Raphael's Umbrian teacher Perugino painted a strikingly composed Lamentation of the Dead Christ (14951. Fra' Bartolomeo's Stupor Mundi(1516) and del Sarto's fresh Annunciation and Dispute of the Trinity (1517) then round out the room
Sala di Apollo
Titian finds a home here: his Mary Magdalene (below) hangs near his Portrait of an Englishman (1540). Influential works abound: Andrea del Sarto's Pietà (1522) and Holy Family (1523) helped found the Mannerist style. The tight, focused power of the Sacred Conversation (1522), by del Sarto's student Rosso Fiorentino, was affected when the painting was later artificially extended to fit a large Baroque frame. The Classical style of Bolognese artists Guido Reni (a late Cleopatra) and Guercino (an early Resurrection of Tabitha) helped inform the burgeoning Baroque.
Sala di Venere
The centrepiece of the room is a Venus carved by Canova to replace the ancient original Napoleon had shipped to Paris (now in the Uffizi). Titian steals the show with The Concert (1510; his elder, Giorgione, may have contributed), a Portrait of Julius Il (1545) copied from Raphael, and the celebrated Portrait of Pietro Aretino (1545). Rubens's bucolic Return from the Hayfields is often overlooked.
Sala di Marte
Rubens dominates with The Consequences of War (1638) and Four Philosophers (1612). Which includes portraits of himself (far left) and his brother. The fine portrait collection includes the penetrating Portrait of a Man (1550), which is attributed to Veronese, Luigi Conaro (1560). which is now attributed to Tintoretto, Ippolito de' Medici (1532) by Titian and Cardinal Bentivoglio by Van Dyck.
Later Works
After Napoleon 5 Bathroom, the quality really peters out, though the names - Tintoretto, Rubens, Botticelli, Pontormo - remain major. The only masterworks are Raphael's Madonna dell'Impannata (1514) and a Filippo Lippi Madonna and Child (1450). The museum's oldest painting, Compare Signorelli's Sacra Famiglia, which influenced Michelangelo's in the Uffizi, with that of Beccafumi - a Mannerist take informed by Michelangelo's work.
Sala dell'lIIiade
Raphael's unusual, almost Flemish-style portrait of a pregnant woman, La Gravida (1506), is the star of the room. Andrea del Sarto is represented by a pair of Assumptions (1523 and 1526). Artemisia Gentileschi is also represented: she was the Baroque's only noted female biblical characters and Judith, in her works.
Galleria delle Statue
Paintings are on temporary display in this long entrance hall, but a few have been here for years, including Caravaggio's violent genre scene The Tooth puller (officially an Uffizi painting). And an early Rubens Risen Christ. Don't miss the gorgeous 19th-century - table in pietre dure - the Fiorentine art of inlaid stone.
Sala dell'Educazione di Giove
Two works of particular note here: Caravaggio's Sleeping Cupid (1608) is a study in realism and chiaroscuro. Christofano Allori's Judith Beheading Holofernes has double meanings: every face is a portrait. Judith is the artist's girlfriend, the old woman looking on bears the face of her mother, and Holofernes' decapitated head is Allori's self-portrait.
Sala della Stufa
and Napoleon's Bathroom
The Sala della Stufa preserves Pietro da Cortona frescoes and 1640 majolica flooring. Napoleon's Empire-style bathroom is one of the few Pitti remnants of the Frenchman's brief Italian reign
