Art & Architecture: Baroque and the rest

In the long, dark night of later Florentine art a few artists stand out – the often whimsical architect and engineer Bernardo Buontalenti; Pietro Tacca, Giambologna’s pupil with a taste for the grotesque and the more conventional court sculptor, Giovan Battista Foggini; the charming Baroque fresco master Pietro da Cortona; the very pious Carlo Dolci and the strange Francesco Furini. Gherardo Silvani even introduced some Roman Baroque in church of San Gaetano, but it looks overwrought and guilty of trying too hard in Florence.

You can visit the Villa Corsini a Castello or the Museo di Casa Martelli to see how the upper crust lived in Baroque times, and perhaps hear some Puccini in the latter.