Grand Tour

Speaking of Palazzo Vecchio in 1828, A. C. Valéry makes clear the way that travelers perceived the aura of power given off by the places in which it had been exercised for centuries. In that «old, sturdy, severe and picturesque palace», the vast Sala del Consiglio was «still a reminder of the republican customs and habits of this state and the forms of its government». His subsequent reaction to Palazzo Pitti confirms that this propensity to see signs of the shift in power with the establishment of the grand duchy in its civil architecture was not incidental but recurrent. In fact, if compared with the «old and bold republican Palazzo della Signoria, constructed in a limited space prescribed by the people», the palace used as the grand-ducal residence seemed to «express very well the political contrast between the two eras, and the architecture of its long façade is as sad, haughty, heavy and uniform as is absolute power». In his Journal the abbà Saint-Non (1761) commenced his description of the city with Palazzo Pitti, «one of its principal buildings,» saying that it was the property of the grand duke and duchess, who lived there when they were in Florence, but dwelling instead on his appreciation of «one of the finest collections of pictures in Europe». In 1764, on the other hand, Gibbon focused more closely on the architecture of the palace, customary residence of the rulers of Tuscany ever since Cosimo the Great had acquired it from the Pitti family, while expressing his amazement at the fact that despite «having been the property of the Medici for two centuries, it has preserved the memory of its former owners and has not changed its name from Pitti to Medici». His view of the building is a complex but on the whole positive one, judging the architecture «beautiful, but that sort of beauty which befits ruling houses, grand and severe rather than light and graceful».
As well as Palazzo Vecchio and Palazzo Pitti, the Galleria degli Uffizi, although later regarded as part of the city's artistic heritage, was in effect seen as a symbol of power. Mary Montagu (1740) makes this clear in an extract from one of her letters: «I at once paid a visit to the Gallery, to that wonderful museum of the most precious relics of antiquity, and which alone is sufficient to immortalize the illustrious House of the Medici, by whom it was built and embellished as we see it today». It was on this artistic penchant that de Brosses also founded his contrast between the Medici and Lorraine, whom he claimed were disliked by the people: «in my view, the Medici were a highly commendable family for their love of beautiful things [...] Florence has truly suffered a very great loss in their passing».