What You LIKED/HATED About the Pitti Palace
 

Will be in Florence in a couple of weeks; have done the Uffizi, etc.,etc., but never the Pitti. Have read very mixed reviews and I realize it is ENTIRELY subjective but would appreciate any comments from others here. Have read the gardens are in sad shape and can be missed. We can certainly find other spots to visit if we have to but this is the one museum in Florence we have yet to see.

Thanks.

I was underwhelmed by both the palace and the gardens, Dukey. Maybe we were suffering from art fatigue. After all, we had been doing at least three museums/churches per day (between gelato research stops), and we visited Pitti/Boboli near the end of our week. However, I think the problem was that it was a mish-mash of stuff.

I was not impressed with either the palace or the gardens.

Have you done the Branccaci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine church, San Miniato or Santo Spirito?

I visited the Boboli Gardens in 1983, and was so unimpressed that on a dozen subsequent visits to Florence, I've never paid to visit the gardens again.

I also visited the Pitti Palace in 1983, and have returned only twice to visit particular galleries. Here's an excerpt from my trip report of my visit in 2008:

***After lunch we head to the Palazzo Pitti to visit the Galleria d’Arte Moderna. The name may be misleading since the museum was established around World War I and consists of art considered modern then. R wanted us to view in particular the collection of works by the artists of the Macchiaioli movement. This term was new to me (Even though I’ve visited these galleries before, I was clueless about these artists), so I will quote from Wikipedia: “The Macchiaioli were a group of Italian painters from Tuscany, active in the second half of the nineteenth century, who, breaking with the antiquated conventions taught by the Italian academies of art, painted outdoors in order to capture natural light, shade, and colour. The Macchiaioli were forerunners of the Impressionists who, beginning in the 1860s, would pursue similar aims in France. The most notable artists of this movement were Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini.” I enjoyed these works and R’s impressions of them as we visited the galleries.

We also visited the Galleria Palatina, which has the occasional wonder mixed into crowded ill-lit salons. It’s like a hidden-picture game: see if you can spot the Botticelli or Raffaello hiding in the dark over-stuffed rooms. I’m not usually troubled by jetlag -- perhaps the bed is working against me as well -- but I find myself feeling as though I could fall asleep standing up while touring these galleries.***

All of the above replies are helpful, believe me. Adrienne, to answer your question: yes. But I enjoy just walking AROUND in Florence.

I have a rental car reserved so we can drive on to our hotel (out in the fabulously scenic countryside depending on one's definition) from Florence; we arrive at 10:00 AM by rail from Verona and I think the plan now is to store the luggage for a while at SMN, do SOMETHING on foot and then retrieve the luggage, pick up the car, and drive south.

There's always that hunger to "do something different" although there are lots of sights I could visit again, and again, and again and in this case perhaps that's enough...but just wanted some feedback to help me/us make a decision so again, these comments have been VERY helpful and thank you.

What I hate is Palazzo Pitti itself, in the first place. I think it's the ugliest palace I've seen anywhere, in Florence, in Italy or elsewhere. Inside, I know just the Galleria Palatina, and I couldn't agree more with what ellenem wrote - a brilliant description! Personally, I went in order to see the Caravaggio they have. It wasn't there (lent to an exhibition abroad). True, they have some of the best Raffaelos there. But it's almost impossible to see the forest for the trees.

Dukey, did you notice there has been a vivid discussion on your Tuscany/Umbria daytrips thread?

Franco,

Thank you for your comments.

I appreciated seeing the Raphael's and Titian's Mary Magdalene, but the format of the Palatine Gallery is confusing, in that I don't think there is a format. The art seems to be hung in a random fashion. I too didn't see the Caravaggio I was hoping to find. I wished I had gone instead to the Brancacci Chapel. Have you been to Santa Maria Novella?

The art in the Palatine does have a format-- the "salon style" favored 100 years or more ago, which piles many images one on top or around one another. Today's taste prefers a gallery style, with pieces aligned in sequence, making it easier to contemplate an individual artwork, but requiring more space to display the same number of items.

If you haven't seen it, the Brancacci Chapel gets my vote as well. I also always stop at Santa Felicita to visit the Pontormos in the chapel just inside on the right—beautiful, quick, and free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capponi_Chapel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposit...ross_(Pontormo)

Yes, I realize that. I just meant that they were not grouped by artist, subject matter or time period.

They were probably hung based on how the size fit next to one another!

Didn't care much for the palace but Boboli gardens are lovely, from a garden designer's perspective.

Hi dukey,

it took us so long to find our way into the boboli gardens that we were too exhausted to "do" the pitti palace as well.

we were underwhelmed by the gardens when we found them - from a simple garden lover's perspective, it was badly maintained, not vey interesting, and we found it very difficult to find our way out again!

if you want to get some air, i suggest going up to Fiesole, walking up to the monastery of san fransisco, and then walking back through the gardens to the roman amphitheatre.

My favorite thing about the Pitti Palace is the terrific enoteca across the street. :)

Dukey, this website has many photos from different perspectives in the Boboli Gardens.

http://www.30fps.com/boboli/html/25pittiPCEn.html

Dukey,

I visited many years ago (1996). I liked what I saw of the palazzo. Was disappointed that the "costume museum" was closed, I would have really enjoyed that. Didn't care for the gardens at all. Shabby, unmaintained. Not what I was expecting at all. We were there mid-March.

On the other hand, LOVED Villa d'Este in Tivoli! Exactly what I thought an Italian Renaissance garden should be, plus the fountains were a wonderful, delightful experience. Everyone was walking around with smiles on the faces, and I'm not sure they even realized how happy they looked.

Go there instead!

As an art historian, I find this thread rather interesting. I have always told visitors that the Pitti Palace and Palatine Galleries are really for arts enthusiasts, because indeed it's not that easy to grasp.

Ellenem has a written great description of the galleries and her experience there, and also correctly notes that the logic of the display is not one we use today. I had the privilege of being taken around the Palatine Gallery (that's the part with the late renaissance and baroque paintings) by the then-curator of the museum in 1999 and I have never looked at it the same way since he explained why it was hung this way.

Basically, the whole POINT of this gallery is the way it's hung. It's not about hunting for the name-brand painting, but about the balance and pattern in the walls. If you step back you'll see that the frames all match and each wall of each room (especially in the first few smaller rooms) is planned so that around a doorway there will be symmetrical sizes and numbers of paintings in matching frames. The layout is historical, ie. they cannot change it because it was hung this way back in the 18th century by the Lorena family. Even the coloured cloth that hangs behind the paintings is historic; then needed they have replaced it with custom made cloth to match the originals.

The Galleria di arte moderna is indeed not properly translated into the English "modern art" because in Italian art history, "modern" is the period from the 18th century until the 1960s.

There is a costume gallery at the Pitti Palace for anyone particularly interested in fashion history.

And finally there are occasional special exhibits - this summer's special exhibit on Caravaggio's influence in Florence is split between the pitti and the uffizi. ALso on now til next april is a show called "Vinum Nostrum" about wine in the ancient Mediterannean.

As for the Boboli, it's just a garden, albeit a historic one, but not really all that exciting IMO.