Wednesday 10 December 2008

End of the line



Pitti Palace




Gian Gastone de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.




Brian Sewell on the last of the Medici.


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via FoxyTunes

6 comments:

An Aesthete's Lament said...

Have you read the wonderful Acton book about poor Gian Gaston? Marvelous.

HOBAC said...

Started, but haven't finished it yet. Far too many distractions these days.

ArchitectDesign™ said...

omg -that was so wonderful LOL. Sewell's voice and diction though are so marvelous, I would be enthralled with his reading the dictionary.

columnist said...

I visited Florence after Venice, and I'm afraid the architecture, as demonstrated by that of the Pitti Palace, was much too heavy. I wish I'd done it the other way around. However, the treasures in the Uffizi did somewhat make up for it. The climb up through the dome of the Duomo exhausting, and not good for the claustophobic, but the price to pay for the view, and the relative lack of other visitors!

Leroy Fish said...

I loved your post. We visited Pitti Palace last year and weren't given that information! Unfortunately the day we were there I was getting sick but we still managed to see a lot including the gardens. I was intrigued by the grotto with bizarre figures in carved in relief that seem to be growing out of the walls. And now I will never think of the Medici's in quite the same way.

H said...

It's like the 'Last of the Mohicans' for Florentine sodomites. Fab.