ut not a gallery--The personally-conducted--Giorgione
the superb--Sustermans--The "Madonna del Granduca"--The "Madonna
della Sedia"--From Cimabue to Raphael--Andrea del Sarto--Two Popes
and a bastard--The ill-fated Ippolito--The National Gallery--Royal
apartments--"Pallas Subduing the Centaur"--The Boboli Gardens.

The Pitti approached from the Via Guicciardini is far liker a prison
than a palace. It was commissioned by Luca Pitti, one of the proudest
and richest of the rivals of the Medici, in 1441. Cosimo de' Medici,
as we have seen, had rejected Brunelleschi's plans for a palazzo
as being too pretentious and gone instead to his friend Michelozzo
for something that externally at any rate was more modest; Pitti,
whose one ambition was to exceed Cosimo in power, popularity, and
visible wealth, deliberately chose Brunelleschi, and gave him carte
blanche to make the most magnificent mansion possible. Pitti, however,
plotting against Cosimo's son Piero, was frustrated and condemned to
death; and although Piero obtained his pardon he lost all his friends
and passed into utter disrespect in the city. Meanwhile his palace
remained unfinished and neglected, and continued so for a century,
when it was acquired by the Grand Duchess Eleanor of Toledo, the wife
of Cosimo I, who though she saw only the beginnings of its splendours
lived there awhile and there brought up her doomed brood. Eleanor's
architect--or rather Cosimo's, for though the Grand Duchess paid,
the Grand Duke controlled--was Ammanati, the designer of the Neptune
fountain in the Piazza della Signoria. Other important additions were
made later. The last Medicean Grand Duke to occupy the Pitti was Gian
Gastone, a bizarre detrimental, whose head, in a monstrous wig, may
be seen at the top of the stairs leading to the Uffizi gallery. He
died in 1737.

As I have said in chapter VIII, it was by the will of Gian Gastone's
sister, widow of the Elector Palatine, who died in 1743, that the
Medicean collections became the property of the Florentines. This
bequest did not, however, prevent the migration of many of the
best pictures to Paris under Napoleon, but after Waterloo they came
back. The Pitti continued to be the home of princes after Gian Gastone
quitted a world which he found strange and made more so; but they were
not of the Medici blood. It is now a residence of the royal family.

The first thing to do if by evil chance one enters the Pitti by the
covered way fro