Sculpture
Florence numbered sculpture as one of the many areas of its preeminence, but travelers did not generally devote their attention to it in an exclusive fashion, but as a corollary to visits where the main focus was on architecture, as with the churches, or on painting, as with the Uffizi.
Here too the Uffizi retained its dominance, with its statues and busts of Roman emperors, its many works of Etruscan sculpture (the Chimera, the Arringatore or “Orator”), Michelangelo’s Bacchus and that not-to-be-missed appointment, in the Sala della Tribuna, with the Knife Grinder, the Wrestlers and above all the Medici Venus, of undying popularity.
Linked to the preeminence of Piazza della Signoria with the imposing Palazzo Vecchio was the preference for the works of sculpture that had made it famous: the two colossal statues at the entrance to the palace, Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules and Michelangelo’s David (it was rare to hear any voices of dissent with the general enthusiasm, but perhaps the most sensational was that of Caylus in 1714: «they are of marble, and worth nothing»), Giambologna’s equestrian statue of Cosimo I and, obviously, Orcagna’s Loggia dei Lanzi, according to Valèry (1828) a «monument of capital importance for the history of art, principal ornament of the grand duke’s square and, it can be said, the most beautiful portico in the world», as well as the fountain of Neptune.
Frequently cited in Pisa was the ancient urn supported by a granite column, «alleged tomb of the daughter of Countess Mathilda, which is in reality an old tomb on which a wild-boar hunt is depicted in bas-relief»: in de Brosses’ view (1740), it was «one of the finest surviving monuments of ancient sculpture».
Special cases were a number of out-of-the-ordinary examples, such as the huge statue of the god of the Apennines at the Villa of Pratolino.