Pitti Palace [antikvár]

Introduction when Luca Pitti died in 1472, the large palace he had built for himself on the slopes of Boboli, south of the Arno, remained unfinished. Unique for its time and « of such size and magnificence that a more exceptional or magnificent Tuscan edifice has yet to be seen » (Vasari), it is not known for certain who was responsible for its design, although Brunelleschi's name is traditionally associated with it and Vasari records that Luca Fanceili supervised the early stages of the building. The palace was acquired in 1550 by Eleonora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo de' Medici, on her husband's advice, and subsequently became the official residence of the Medici rulers. Afterwards, it passed with the Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the House of Lorraine and, finally, on the unification of Italy, to the Royal House of Savoy; consequently, during the course of three centuries, the palace underwent radical changes in size and appearance. The façade of Luca Pitti's palace consisted of two upper floors each with seven windows and three doors on the ground floor (its original appearance is recorded in a few paintings, such as the lunette by Justus Utens, reproduced here), which was later modified when the side doors were replaced by large pcdinicnted windows above lion heads with the Grand-Ducal crown. The garden front was completely altered after 1560 on the construction of the grandiose court with a loggia on three sides and a terrace closing it towards the garden on the fourth. The courtyard, ike the fiftecnth-century façade of the palace, is built in enormous blocks of roughly hewn stone (the so-called Florentine bugnato) with key-stones of the arches decorated with grotesque masks and rams' heads (one of Cosimo I's emblems). The architect was Bartolomeo Ammannati (1511-1592). Cosimo I's intention of transforming the Pitti Palace into a suburban royal palace is confirmed by the fact that he wished to conncct it to the centre of Florentine political life, the Palazzo Vccchio, by means of a corridor built by Giorgio Vasari, which passes over the Ponte Vccchio and through the Uiîizi, then also in the course of being built. Plans to enlarge the palace front, and arrange the square were finally put into execution under Cosimo II (died 1621) by the architects Giulio and Alfonso Parigi. The façade now assumed its present aspect cxccpt for the two wings or rondo, based on a pre-existing plan, which were added by the Lorraine Grand Dukes but only completed in the first half of the nineteenth century (by G. M. Paoletti and P. Poccianti). The same architccts also built the Meridiana Palace which forms the continuation of the palace on the south side. Apart from the building of the courtyard by Ammannati, the most important changes which gave the palace its unique character