Allori Loggia

Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici ordered this vault for a loggia that opened onto the Boboli garden, in the wing of Palazzo Pitti kept for visiting cardinals and foreign princes. Allori started painting in 1587. That October Ferdinando's brother, Grand Duke Francesco, died, the cardinal left Rome to rule Tuscany, and by 1589 he had given up the red hat and married. None of that reached the ceiling in time, which is why the coat of arms at its centre, lifted by angels, is still a cardinal's. Allori opened the vault into a painted terrace: birds of many kinds around the arms, women leaning on a balustrade going about ordinary business, candelabra crowded with flowers. Cleaning in the 1990s brought the colour back and showed that the painted balustrade repeats the real one outside.