Giuseppe Zocchi’s 'View of the Piazza della Signoria, with the Palazzo Vecchio and the Loggia dei Lanzi' is a masterpiece of eighteenth-century Italian vedute painting and possibly the finest depiction of the artistic heart of Florence. Looking south, the pinkish clouds and long shadows from the right set the scene in the late afternoon. The Palazzo Vecchio, Uffizi and Loggia dei Lanzi are exactingly drawn, and the miraculous assemblage of sixteenth-century sculptures that populate the Piazza are instantly recognisable: Giambologna’s 'Equestrian Monument of Cosimo I' (1594), Bartolomeo Ammannati’s 'Fountain of Neptune' (1575), Michelangelo’s 'David' (1504), Baccio Bandielli’s 'Hercules and Cacus' (1534), Benvenuto Cellini’s 'Perseus with the Head of Medusa' (1554), and Giambologna’s 'Abduction of the Sabine Women' (1583).

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