A Wanderer in FlorenceLucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
History
A Wanderer in Florence
Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Florence (Italy) -- Description and travel
Crossing the large Tuscan room again, we come to a little narrow room
filled with what are now called cabinet pictures: far too many to
study properly, but comprising a benignant old man's head, No. 1167,
which is sometimes called a Filippino Lippi and sometimes a Masaccio,
a fragment of a fresco; a boy from the serene perfect hand of Perugino,
No. 1217; two little panels by Fra Bartolommeo--No. 1161--painted for a
tabernacle to hold a Donatello relief and representing the Circumcision
and Nativity, in colours, and at the back a pretty Annunciation in
monochrome; No. 1235, on the opposite wall, a very sweet Mother and
Child by the same artist; a Perseus liberating Andromeda, by Piero
di Cosimo, No. 1312; two or three Lorenzo di Credis; two or three
Alloris; a portrait of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, by Antonio Pollaiuolo;
and three charming little scenes from the lives of S. John the Baptist
and the Virgin, by Fra Angelico, which belong properly to the predella
of an altar-piece that we saw in the first room we entered--No. 1290,
"The Coronation of the Virgin". No. 1162 has the gayest green dress
in it imaginable.
And here we enter the Tribuna, which is to the Uffizi what the Salon
Carré is to the Louvre: the special treasure-room of the gallery,
holding its most valuable pictures. But to-day there are as good works
outside it as in; for the Michelangelo has been moved to another
room, and Botticelli (to name no other) is not represented here at
all. Probably the statue famous as the Venus de' Medici would be
considered the Tribuna's chief possession; but not by me. Nor should
I vote either for Titian's Venus. In sculpture I should choose rather
the "Knife-sharpener," and among the pictures Raphael's "Madonna del
Cardellino," No. 1129. But this is not to suggest that everything
is not a masterpiece, for it is. Beginning at the door leading from
the room of the little pictures, we find, on our left, Raphael's
"Ignota," No. 1120, so rich and unfeeling, and then Francia's portrait
of Evangelista Scappi, so rich and real and a picture that one never
forgets. Raphael's Julius II comes next, not so powerful as the version
in the Pitti, and above that Titian's famous Venus. In Perugino's
portrait of Francesco delle Opere, No. 287, we find an evening sky
and landscape still more lovely than Francia's. This Francesco was
brother of Giovanni delle Corniole, a protégé of Lorenzo de' Medici,
famous as a carver of intaglios, whose portrait of Savonarola in
this medium, now preserved in the Uffizi, in the Gem Room, was said
by Michelangelo to carry art to its farthest possible point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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