Beyond the Palazzo Vecchio, between the Piazza and the Arno, stands the Palazzo degli Uffizi, which Giorgio Vasari reared in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, for Cosimo I. It contains the Archives, the Biblioteca Nazionale (which includes the Palatine and Magliabecchian Libraries, and, like all similar institutions in Italy, is generously thrown open to all comers without reserve), and, above all, the great picture gallery commenced by the Grand Dukes, usually simply known as the Uffizi and now officially the Galleria Reale degli Uffizi, which, together with its continuation in the Pitti Palace across the river, is undoubtedly the finest collection of pictures in the world. [Illustration: LOOKING THROUGH VASARI'S LOGGIA, UFFIZI] Leaving the double lines of illustrious Florentines, men great in the arts of war and peace, in their marble niches watching over the pigeons who throng the Portico, we ascend to the picture gallery by the second door to the left.[29] [29] The following notes make no pretence at furnishing a catalogue, but are simply intended to indicate the more important Italian pictures, especially the principal masterpieces of, or connected with the Florentine school. RITRATTI DEI PITTORI--PRIMO CORRIDORE. On the way up, four rooms on the right contain the Portraits of the Painters, many of them painted by themselves. In the further room, Filippino Lippi by himself, fragment of a fresco (286). Raphael (288) at the age of twenty-three, with his spiritual, almost feminine beauty, painted by himself at Urbino during his Florentine period, about 1506. This is Raphael before the worldly influence of Rome had fallen upon him, the youth who came from Urbino and Perugia to the City of the Lilies with the letter of recommendation from Urbino's Duchess to Piero Soderini, to sit at the feet of Leonardo and Michelangelo, and wander with Fra Bartolommeo through the cloisters of San Marco. Titian (384), "in which he appears, painted by himself, on the confines of old age, vigorous and ardent still, fully conscious, moreover, though without affectation, of pre-eminent genius and supreme artistic rank" (Mr C. Phillips). Tintoretto, by himself (378); Andrea del Sarto, by himself (1176); a genuine portrait of Michelangelo (290), but of course not by himself; Rubens, by himself (228). An imaginary portrait of Leonardo da Vinci (292), of a much later period, may possibly preserve some tradition of the "magician's" appearance; the Dosso Dossi is doubtful; those of Giorgione and Bellini are certainly apocryphal. In the second room are two portraits of Rembrandt by himself. In the third room Angelica Kauffmann and Vigée Le Brun are charming in their way. In the fourth room, English visitors cannot fail to welcome several of their own painters of the nineteenth century, including Mr Watts.