Trends in Taste

I took a quick walk through the city to see the Duomo and the Battistero. Once more, a completely new world opened up before me, but I did not wish to stay long. The location of the Boboli Gardens is marvellous. I hurried out of the city as quickly as I entered it. Goethe, on Florence in Italian Journey

Goethe, the father of the Italian Grand Tour, en route from Venice to Rome, had little time for the city that likes to call itself ‘The Capital of Culture’. Like most travellers in the 18th and early 19th centuries, he knew nothing of Giotto, Masaccio, Botticelli, or Piero della Francesca; it was Roman statues that wowed him, the very same ones the modern visitor to the Uffizi passes without a second glance. Shelley managed to fill pages on his visits to the museum without mentioning a single painting.