Grand Tour

Speaking of painting in Florence meant speaking of the Uffizi. No other place can rival the sheer number of pages that were devoted to the most famous collection in the world and the multiplicity of approaches to its description offers further proof of its importance, as well as interesting clues to the character of each traveler and the age that he represented. What made the Uffizi such a special place in the eyes of visitors was not just the wealth of objects it contained, but also the conception of a systematically organized exhibition space intended for use by the public. There were some, able to compare the gallery with other museum collections they had seen previously, who expressed their disappointment, at both the poor arrangement of the pictures, reflecting a now outmoded taste, and their very bad state of preservation, with some of them so blackened by time it was not even possible to distinguish the figures. This was the view of the French nobleman Bergeret de Grancourt (1774), although it has to be borne in mind that he, no less than other Grand Tourists, was exploring art in Italy in search of modernity. Incapable of appreciating the past (at the Uffizi he would focus on Rubens and van Dyck rather than on Raphael), he went into raptures over Luca Giordano’s ceiling in Palazzo Riccardi. Many years later (1828), Valéry asserted that «the three corridors and twenty rooms of the gallery are not at all the imposing sight offered by our gallery of the Louvre» and seemed to echo Bergeret, who had declared that « I am looking for a parallel but see nothing that comes close to the gallery in Düsseldorf». But leaving aside technical views of the display and above all the widespread difficulty of interpretation that led to the primitives being almost universally underrated, the magnificence, richness and variety of the gallery meant that it was generally held in high regard.
Thus the description of the Uffizi is one of the places where the author’s descriptive abilities are put to the most severe test and where the reader is most likely to give up, overwhelmed by a torrent of information and words. Almost every piece of travel writing, in fact, whatever its bulk and purpose, had a “detachable” section devoted to the description of the most famous museum in the world. While the structure of these descriptions varied, the Corridoio Vasariano with its self-portraits of the most eminent painters was always included and the octagonal room of the Tribuna, heart of the collection and housing the best-known paintings and sculptures, was given pride of place. An evergreen favorite and wholly immune to the evolution of taste was the Medici Venus, located right at the center of the Tribuna. Many writers expatiated at length on the statue, including Montesquieu (1728) who was entranced by it, although the highly meticulous description of its anatomical details that he provided, reflecting long hours of admiring contemplation, ends up obscuring its ineffable fascination. Also cited were the collections of modern and ancient bronzes, the Studiolo and the Sala della Niobe. An example of great lucidity, clarity and descriptive ability is the one offered by the abbà of Saint-Non (1761), an enthusiastic admirer of the gallery who succeeds in explaining its structure clearly and referring to the masterpieces contained in it in a way that stirs the curiosity and stimulates the imagination (which is after all what readers ask even from the travel book, in order to feel they are playing an active part). The abbà describes the external appearance of the building («it has the shape of a large rectangle, and forms a square flanked on three sides by porticoes») and its internal organization, with the gallery running all round the building and the different rooms that give onto it «and which can be considered authentic independent treasures», listing their contents. He lingers, as was de rigueur, on the Sala della Tribuna, «in which a selection of all the most precious things that the grand dukes have acquired is displayed», enumerating separately «four of the most ancient statues known» (including the Medici Venus), the pictures, of which «there is a masterpiece by each artist, from the Italian as well as Flemish school», and the artifacts, given that «in order to leave nothing to be desired, a large cabinet contains a very great number of vases and bowls made out of very precious raw materials». Finally he adds, opening a chapter on Florentine high craftsmanship, that «the whole second floor of the construction houses craftsmen who prepare those famous works of inlaid semiprecious stone that imitate flowers, shells and animals with an art of great perfection [...]».

The gallery of Palazzo Pitti was another of the collections most often referred to. Visitors were naturally attracted by the objects on display there, as they offered them the possibility of describing the experience to the reader more easily than was the case with individual pieces situated in different places, adopting spatial or chronological or monographic principles, depending on personal choice. Valéry (1828) chose to list them by painters, citing the works in the gallery of the palace (with their titles and the occasional detail: for example, Titian's Portrait of Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici «in Hungarian costume»): those of Salvator Rosa, Titian, Pietro da Cortona, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens and Michelangelo, among others. The abbà of Saint-Non (1761) declared that in Palazzo Pitti the Medici had assembled «one of the finest collections of pictures in Europe, and certainly one of the most carefully selected: they have acquired the best pictures from all the churches and have brought in others by the most famous masters of every school.»

The other cities of Tuscany also had their favorite places, although the reasons for the choice varied greatly between texts. Over and above these personal variations, however, what stands out with the same overwhelming force as the Uffizi is the profile of Pisa’s celebrated monumental cemetery, monopolizing the attention of writers. The frescoes in particular take up pages and pages of detailed and sometimes tedious descriptions. The voices, numerous but uniform, reflect with eloquent monotony the disparaging view of “primitive” art, a conviction that is all the more striking here when compared with similar but less unanimous expressions in other places and in Florence itself. From the inevitable reference to the legend of the soil the Pisans had brought from Palestine (which is why the cemetery is known as the Campo Santo, or “Holy Field”) and that was believed to cause bodies to decay in the space of just twenty-four hours, they move on to the description, not of the architectural structure, in any case very simple, but of the works of art, sculptures and above all paintings, inside the Camposanto. The cloister it formed was paved with marble and the walls were covered with frescoes, whose attributions, traditionally repeated from text to text (Giotto, Orcagna, Benozzo Gozzoli), were late in receiving scientific confirmation. The descriptions often state that one side was decorated with scenes from the life of the Fathers, the other with episodes from the Old Testament. “Old-fashioned” paintings in any case, which for this reason prompted highly negative judgments. Montesquieu, in 1728, held that it was the right place «to see clearly the bad taste of that time»; de Brosses (1740) declared that the painters had represented «the stories of the Bible in an extremely bizarre and ridiculous way, utterly unattractive but very curious»; Cochin (1749-51) went so far as to make an explicit connection between age and ugliness: «this cloister is decorated with ancient pictures, dating from the dawn of painting, and therefore of poor quality». Nonetheless they made a powerful impression and were frequently mentioned in accounts. Some less biased observers ventured to give descriptions of then: «[in it] is represented the death of man and the state to which corpses are reduced: we see three gaping tombs; in the first there is a body beginning to decompose; in the other one almost completely decomposed, and starting to lose its flesh; in the third nothing is left but bare bones. Several knights apparently of high rank are examining these corpses; one of them is holding his nose; it is clear that they are discussing the effect of the earth in this cemetery, which is said to have been brought from Jerusalem: a singular relic, but one wholly in keeping with the taste of the 12th century» (Richard, 1761). Until signs of a change in attitude began to appear in the writings, and Gibbon (1764) was able to declare: «they are ugly works, but it is necessary to go back to the time in which they were rare and precious. The taste and greatness of a State consists in encouraging the best artists of the period». And could concede that: «however dry the manner, faulty the execution, generally clumsy the drawing and unnatural the color, there is nevertheless merit in the expression and the whole thing stands as a curious monument to the efforts made by this noble art, immediately after its revival». With Lalande (1765) it seems that an appreciation was beginning to dawn: «[...] one already notes in them a very good handling of drapery and drawing of the folds, although still meager, and features not devoid of realism in the head; among the other subjects [...] the bashful girl of Campo Santo is particularly noteworthy; this is a girl looking at a naked young man while pretending to cover her face [...].»; And Forsyth (1802) even complains of the poor state of those precious vestiges: «Some of these frescos have been exposed to the open air for 500 years, and the earliest works are mouldering away from moisture. What pity that a country full of antiquaries and engravers ahould let such monuments perish without a remembrance!». He also appended a polemical note that gives us a good idea of the “thirst” for the antique displayed by visitors to Italy: «How superior these to the coarse remains of Anglo-Gothic art, which our draughtsmen are condemned to search out for those old mumbling collectors who are for ever picking the bare bone of antiquity!». From that time on the attitude shifted from denigration to one of at least curiosity (as in the highly technical description left by Rehfues, 1802), with that typical concession to the historicity of the past, a necessary step in creating the beauty of subsequent art, that became a common excuse for the inclusion of works of art from antiquity in a catalogue of places “to be seen”. Thus Castellan (1804) asserts that he went to Pisa with the almost sole purpose of visiting the Camposanto, because in it «we can get a precise idea of the rebirth of painting» thanks to the contiguity of the works of the early modern painters assembled there. This contiguity «allows us to grasp the derivation of pictorial ideas and their successive development [into a] model for the great artists of the 16th century, to whom they supplied the means that were needed to raise painting to the highest degree of perfection [...]».