Page:Passages from the French and Italian note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne 2 of 2.pdf/9



June 8th—I went this morning to the Uffizzi gallery. The entrance is from the great court of the palace, which communicates with Lung’ Arno at one end, and with the Grand Ducal Piazza at the other. The gallery is in the upper story of the palace, and in the vestibule are some busts of the princes and cardinals of the Medici family,—none of them beautiful, one or two so ugly as to be ludicrous, especially one who is all but buried in his own wig. I at first travelled slowly through the whole extent of this long, long gallery, which occupies the entire length of the palace on both sides of the court, and is full of sculpture and pictures. The latter, being opposite to the light, are not seen to the best advantage; but it is the most Meet collection, in a chronological series, that I have seen, comprehending specimens of all the masters since painting began to he an art. Here are Giotto, and Cimabue, and Botticelli, and Fra Angelica, and Filippo Lippi, and a hundred