As though in contrast with this worldly Pope, on the first
pillars in the aisles are pictures of two ideal pastors; on the left, St
Zenobius enthroned with Eugenius and Crescentius, by an unknown painter of
the school of Orcagna; on the right, a similar but comparatively
modern picture of St Antoninus giving his blessing. In the middle of
the nave, is the original resting-place of the body of Zenobius; here
the picturesque blessing of the roses takes place on his feast-day.
The right and left aisles contain some striking statues and
interesting monuments. First on the right is a statue of a Prophet
(sometimes called Joshua), an early Donatello, said to be the portrait
of Giannozzo Manetti, between the monuments of Brunelleschi and
Giotto; the bust of the latter is by Benedetto da Maiano, and the
inscription by Poliziano. Opposite these, in the left aisle, is a most
life-like and realistic statue of a Prophet by Donatello, said to be
the portrait of Poggio Bracciolini, between modern medallions of De
Fabris and Arnolfo. Further on, on the right, are Hezekiah by Nanni di
Banco, and a fine portrait bust of Marsilio Ficino by Andrea
Ferrucci (1520)--the mystic dreamer caught in a rare moment of inspiration,
as on that wonderful day when he closed his finished Plato, and saw
young Pico della Mirandola before him. Opposite them, on the left, are
David by Ciuffagni, and a bust of the musician Squarcialupi by Benedetto
da Maiano. On the last pillars of the nave, right and left, stand
later statues of the Apostles--St Matthew by Vincenzo de' Rossi, and
St James by Jacopo Sansovino.
Under Brunelleschi's vast dome--the
effect of which is terribly marred by miserable frescoes by Vasari and
Zuccheri--are the choir and the high altar. The stained glass in the windows
in the drum is from designs of Ghiberti, Donatello (the Coronation), and
Paolo Uccello. Behind the high altar is one of the most solemn and pathetic
works of art in existence--Michelangelo's last effort in sculpture,
the unfinished Deposition from the Cross; "the strange spectral wreath
of the Florence Pieta, casting its pyramidal, distorted shadow, full
of pain and death, among the faint purple lights that cross and
perish under the obscure dome of Santa Maria del Fiore."[42] It is a group
of four figures more than life-size; the body of Christ is received in the
arms of His mother, who sustains Him with the aid of St Mary Magdalene and
the standing Nicodemus, who bends over the group at the back with a
countenance full of unutterable love and sorrow. Although, in a fit of
impatience, Michelangelo damaged the work and allowed it to be patched up by
others, he had intended it for his own sepulchre, and there is no doubt that
the Nicodemus--whose features to some extent are modelled from his
own--represents his own attitude as death approached. His sonnet to Giorgio
Vasari is an expression of the same temper, and the most precious commentary
upon his work:--
[42] _Modern Painters_, vol. ii. "Of Imagination
Penetrative."
Now hath my life across a stormy sea, Like a
frail bark reached that wide port where all Are bidden, ere the final
reckoning fall Of good and evil for eternity. Now know I well
how that fond phantasy, Which made my soul the worshipper and
thrall Of earthly art, is vain; how criminal Is that which
all men seek unwillingly. Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly
dressed, What are they when the double death is nigh? The
one I know for sure, the other dread. Painting nor sculpture now can
lull to rest My soul that turns to His great Love on high,
Whose arms, to clasp us, on the Cross were spread. (_Addington
Symonds' translation._)
The apse at the east end, or tribuna di San
Zenobio, ends in the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, which is also the shrine
of Saint Zenobius. The reliquary which contains his remains is the work of
Lorenzo Ghiberti, and was finished in 1446; the bronze reliefs set forth
his principal miracles, and there is a most exquisite group of
those flying Angels which Ghiberti realises so wonderfully. Some of
the glass in the windows is also from his design. The seated statues
in the four chapels, representing the four Evangelists, were originally on
the facade; the St. Luke, by Nanni di Banco, in the first chapel on the
right, is the best of the four; then follow St. John, a very early Donatello,
and, on the other side, St. Matthew by Ciuffagni and St. Mark by Niccolo da
Arezzo (slightly earlier than the others). The two Apostles standing on guard
at the entrance of the tribune, St. John and St. Peter, are by Benedetto da
Rovezzano. To right and left are the southern and northern sacristies. Over
the door of the southern sacristy is a very beautiful bas-relief by Luca
della Robbia, representing the Ascension (1446), like a Fra Angelico in
enamelled terracotta; within the sacristy are two kneeling Angels also by
Luca (1448), practically his only isolated statues, of the greatest
beauty and harmony; and also a rather indifferent St. Michael, a late work
of Lorenzo di Credi. Over the door of the northern sacristy is
the Resurrection by Luca della Robbia (1443), perhaps his earliest
extant work in this enamelled terracotta. The bronze doors of this
northern sacristy are by Michelozzo and Luca della Robbia, assisted by Maso
and Giovanni di Bartolommeo, and were executed between 1446 and 1467.
They are composed of ten reliefs with decorative heads at the corners
of each, as in Lorenzo Ghiberti's work. Above are Madonna and Child
with two Angels; the Baptist with two Angels; in the centre the
four Evangelists, each with two Angels; and below, the four Doctors,
each with two Angels. M. Reymond has shown that the four latter are
the work of Michelozzo. Of Luca's work, the four Evangelists are
later than the two topmost reliefs, and are most beautiful; the Angels
are especially lovely, and there are admirable decorative heads
between. Within, are some characteristic _putti_ by Donatello.
The
side apses, which represent the right and left transepts, guarded by
sixteenth century Apostles, and with frescoed Saints and Prophets in the
chapels by Bicci di Lorenzo, are quite uninteresting.
By the door that
leads out of the northern aisle into the street, is a wonderful picture,
painted in honour of Dante by order of the State in 1465, by Domenico di
Michelino, a pupil of Fra Angelico, whose works, with this exception, are
hardly identified. At the time that this was painted, the authentic portrait
of Dante still existed in the (now lost) fresco at Santa Croce, so we may
take this as a fairly probable likeness; it is, at the same time, one of the
earliest efforts to give pictorial treatment to the _Purgatorio_. Outside the
gates of Florence stands Dante in spirit, clothed in the simple red robe of
a Florentine citizen, and wearing the laurel wreath which was denied
to him in life; in his left hand he holds the open volume of the
_Divina Commedia_, from which rays of burning light proceed and illumine
all the city. But it is not the mediæval Florence that the divine
singer had known, which his ghost now revisits, but the Florence of
the Quattrocento--with the completed Cathedral and the cupola
of Brunelleschi rising over it, with the Campanile and the great tower
of the Palazzo della Signoria completed--the Florence which has just
lost Cosimo dei Medici, Pater Patriae, and may need fresh guidance,
now that great mutations are at hand in Italy. With his right hand
he indicates the gate of Hell and its antechamber; but it is not
the torments of its true inmates that he would bid the Florentines
mark, but the shameful and degrading lot of the cowards and neutrals,
the trimmers, who would follow no standard upon earth, and are
now rejected by Heaven and Hell alike; "the crew of caitiffs hateful
to God and to his enemies," who now are compelled, goaded on by
hornets and wasps, to rush for ever after a devil-carried ensign,
"which whirling ran so quickly that it seemed to scorn all pause."
Behind, among the rocks and precipices of Hell, the monstrous fiends
of schism, treason and anarchy glare through the gate, preparing to
sweep down upon the City of the Lily, if she heeds not the lesson. In
the centre of the picture, in the distance, the Mountain of
Purgation rises over the shore of the lonely ocean, on the little island
where rushes alone grow above the soft mud. The Angel at the gate,
seated upon the rock of diamond, above the three steps of
contrition, confession, and satisfaction, marks the brows of the penitent
souls with his dazzling sword, and admits them into the terraces of
the mountain, where Pride, Anger, Envy, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust
(the latter, in the purifying fire of the seventh terrace, merely indicated
by the flames on the right) are purged away. On the top of the mountain Adam
and Eve stand in the Earthly Paradise, which symbolises blessedness of this
life, the end to which an ideal ruler is to lead the human race, and the
state of innocence to which the purgatorial pains restore man. Above and
around sweep the spheres of the planets, the lower moving heavens, from which
the angelic influences are poured down upon the Universe beneath their
sway.
Thirteen years after this picture was painted, the Duomo saw
Giuliano dei Medici fall beneath the daggers of the Pazzi and
their confederates on Sunday, April 26th, 1478. The bell that rang for
the Elevation of the Host was the signal. Giuliano had been moving
round about the choir, and was standing not far from the picture of
Dante, when Bernardo Baroncelli and Francesco Pazzi struck the first
blows. Lorenzo, who was on the opposite side of the choir, beat off
his assailants with his sword and then fled across into the
northern sacristy, through the bronze gates of Michelozzo and Luca
della Robbia, which Poliziano and the Cavalcanti now closed against
the conspirators. The boy cardinal, Raffaello Sansoni, whose visit to
the Medicean brothers had furnished the Pazzi with their chance, fled
in abject terror into the other sacristy. Francesco Nori, a
faithful friend of the Medici, was murdered by Baroncelli in defending
his masters' lives; he is very probably the bare-headed figure
kneeling behind Giuliano in Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi in
the Uffizi.[43]
[43] The Duomo has fairer memories of the Pazzi,
than this deed of blood and treachery. Their ancestor at the Crusades had
carried the sacred fire from Jerusalem to Florence, and still, on Easter
Eve, an artificial dove sent from the high altar lights the car of
fireworks in the Piazza--the Carro dei Pazzi--in front of the church, in
honour of their name.
But of all the scenes that have passed beneath
Brunelleschi's cupola, the most in accordance with the spirit of Dante's
picture are those connected with Savonarola. It was here that his most famous
and most terrible sermons were delivered; here, on that fateful
September morning when the French host was sweeping down through Italy, he
gazed in silence upon the expectant multitude that thronged the
building, and then, stretching forth his hands, cried aloud in a terrible
voice the ominous text of Genesis: "Behold I, even I, do bring a flood
of waters upon the earth;" and here, too, the fatal riot commenced
which ended with the storming of the convent. And here, in a gentler
vein, the children of Florence were wont to await the coming of their
father and prophet. "The children," writes Simone Filipepi, "were placed
all together upon certain steps made on purpose for them, and there
were about three thousand of them; they came an hour or two before
the sermon; and, in the meanwhile, some read psalms and others said
the rosary, and often choir by choir they sang lauds and psalms
most devoutly; and when the Father appeared, to mount up into the
pulpit, the said children sang the _Ave Maris Stella_, and likewise the
people answered back, in such wise that all that time, from early
morning even to the end of the sermon, one seemed to be verily in
Paradise."
The Opera del Duomo or Cathedral Museum contains, besides
several works of minor importance (including the Madonna from the
second facade), three of the great achievements of Florentine
sculpture during the fifteenth century; the two _cantorie_, or organ
galleries, of Donatello and Luca della Robbia; the silver altar for
the Baptistery, with the statue of the Baptist by Michelozzo, and
reliefs in silver by Antonio Pollaiuolo and Andrea Verrocchio,
representing the Nativity of the Baptist by the former, the dance of the
daughter of Herodias and the Decollation of the Saint by the
latter.
The two organ galleries, facing each other and finished
almost simultaneously (about 1440), are an utter contrast both in spirit
and in execution. There is nothing specially angelic or devotional
about Donatello's wonderful frieze of dancing genii, winged boys that
might well have danced round Venus at Psyche's wedding-feast, but would
have been out of place among the Angels who, as the old mystic puts
it, "rejoiced exceedingly when the most Blessed Virgin entered
the Heavenly City." The beauty of rhythmic movement, the joy of living
and of being young, exultancy, _baldanza_--these are what they express
for us. Luca della Robbia's boys and girls, singing together and
playing musical instruments, have less exuberance and motion, but more
grace and repose; they illustrate in ten high reliefs the verses of
the psalm, _Laudate Dominum in sanctis ejus_, which is inscribed upon
the Cantoria; and those that dance are more chastened in their joy,
more in the spirit of David before the Ark. But all are as wrapt
and absorbed in their music, as are Donatello's in their wild
yet harmonious romp.
In detail and considered separately, Luca's more
perfectly finished groups, with their exquisite purity of line, are decidedly
more lovely than Donatello's more roughly sketched, lower and flatter
bas-reliefs; but, seen from a distance and raised from the ground, as they
were originally intended, Donatello's are decidedly more effective as
a whole. It is only of late years that the reliefs have been remounted and
set up in the way we now see; and it is not quite certain whether their
present arrangement, in all respects, exactly corresponds to what was
originally intended by the masters. It was in this building, the Opera del
Duomo, that Donatello at one time had his school and studio; and it was here,
in the early years of the Cinquecento, that Michelangelo worked upon the
shapeless mass of marble which became the gigantic
David.
[Illustration: CROSS OF THE FLORENTINE PEOPLE (FROM OLD HOUSE ON
NORTH SIDE OF DUOMO)]
[Illustration: ARMS OF THE MEDICI FROM THE
BADIA AT FIESOLE.]
CHAPTER IX.
_The Palazzo
Riccardi--San Lorenzo--San Marco._
Per molti, donna, anzi per mille
amanti, creata fusti, e d'angelica forma. Or par che'n ciel si
dorma, s'un sol s'appropria quel ch'e dato a tanti.
(_Michelangelo Buonarroti_).
The Via dei Martelli leads from the
Baptistery into the Via Cavour, formerly the historical Via Larga. Here
stands the great Palace of the Medici, now called the Palazzo Riccardi from
the name of the family to whom the Grand Duke Ferdinand II. sold it in the
seventeenth century.
The palace was begun by Michelozzo for Cosimo the
Elder shortly before his exile, and completed after his return, when it
became in reality the seat of government of the city, although the Signoria
still kept up the pretence of a republic in the Palazzo Vecchio. Here Lorenzo
the Magnificent was born on January 1st, 1449, and here the most
brilliant and cultured society of artists and scholars that the world had
seen gathered round him and his family.[44] Here, too, after the
expulsion of Lorenzo's mad son, Piero, in 1494, Charles VIII. of France
was splendidly lodged; here Piero Capponi tore the dishonourable
treaty and saved the Republic, and here Fra Girolamo a few days
later admonished the fickle king. On the return of the Medici, the
Cardinal Giovanni, the younger Lorenzo, and the Cardinal Giulio
successively governed the city here; until in 1527 the people drove out the
young pretenders, Alessandro and Ippolito, with their guardian, the
Cardinal Passerini. It was on this latter occasion that Piero's
daughter, Madonna Clarice, the wife of the younger Filippo Strozzi, was
carried hither in her litter, and literally slanged these boys and
the Cardinal out of Florence. She is reported, with more vehemence
than delicacy, to have told her young kinsmen that the house of Lorenzo
dei Medici was not a stable for mules. During the siege, the people
wished to entirely destroy the palace and rename the place the Piazza
dei Muli.
[44] It should be observed that Lorenzo was not specially
called the "Magnificent" by his contemporaries. All the more prominent
members of the Medicean family were styled _Magnifico_ in the same
way.
After the restoration Alessandro carried on his abominable
career here, until, on January 5th, 1537, the dagger of another Lorenzo
freed the world from an infamous monster. Some months before,
Benvenuto Cellini came to the palace, as he tells us in his autobiography,
to show the Duke the wax models for his medals which he was
making. Alessandro was lying on his bed, indisposed, and with him was
only this Lorenzino or Lorenzaccio, _quel pazzo malinconico filosafo
di Lorenzino_, as Benvenuto calls him elsewhere. "The Duke,"
writes Benvenuto, "several times signed to him that he too should urge me
to stop; upon which Lorenzino never said anything else, but:
'Benvenuto, you would do best for yourself to stay.' To which I said that I
wanted by all means to return to Rome. He said nothing more, and
kept continually staring at the Duke with a most evil eye. Having
finished the medal and shut it up in its case, I said to the Duke: 'My Lord,
be content, for I will make you a much more beautiful medal than I
made for Pope Clement; for reason wills that I should do better, since
that was the first that ever I made; and Messer Lorenzo here will give
me some splendid subject for a reverse, like the learned person
and magnificent genius that he is.' To these words the said
Lorenzo promptly answered: 'I was thinking of nothing else, save how to
give thee a reverse that should be worthy of his Excellency.' The
Duke grinned, and, looking at Lorenzo, said: 'Lorenzo, you shall give
him the reverse, and he shall make it here, and shall not go
away.' Lorenzo replied hastily, saying: 'I will do it as quickly as
I possibly can, and I hope to do a thing that will astonish the
world.' The Duke, who sometimes thought him a madman and sometimes a
coward, turned over in his bed, and laughed at the words which he had said
to him. I went away without other ceremonies of leave-taking, and
left them alone together."
On the fatal night Lorenzino lured the Duke
into his own rooms, in what was afterwards called the Strada del Traditore,
which was incorporated into the palace by the Riccardi. Alessandro, tired
out with the excesses of the day, threw himself upon a bed; Lorenzino
went out of the room, ostensibly to fetch his kinswoman, Caterina
Ginori, whose beauty had been the bait; and he returned with the
bravo Scoroncocolo, with whose assistance he assassinated him. Those who
saw Sarah Bernhardt in the part of "Lorenzaccio," will not easily
forget her rendering of this scene. Lorenzino published an Apologia, in
which he enumerates Alessandro's crimes, declares that he was no
true offspring of the Medici, and that his own single motive was
the liberation of Florence from tyranny. He fled first to
Constantinople, and then to Venice, where he was murdered in 1547 by the
agents of Alessandro's successor, Cosimo I., who transferred the ducal
residence from the present palace first to the Palazzo Vecchio, and then
across the river to the Pitti Palace.
With the exception of the
chapel, the interior of the Palazzo Riccardi is not very suggestive of the
old Medicean glories of the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent. There is a fine
court, surrounded with sarcophagi and statues, including some of the old
tombs which stood round the Baptistery and among which Guido Cavalcanti used
to linger, and some statues of Apostles from the second facade of the
Duomo. Above the arcades are eight fine classical medallions by
Donatello, copied and enlarged from antique gems. The rooms above have
been entirely altered since the days when Capponi defied King Charles,
and Madonna Clarice taunted Alessandro and Ippolito; the large
gallery, which witnessed these scenes, is covered with frescoes by
Luca Giordano, executed in the early part of the seventeenth century.
The Chapel--still entirely reminiscent of the better Medici--was
painted by Benozzo Gozzoli shortly before the death of Cosimo the Elder,
with frescoes representing the Procession of the Magi, in a
delightfully impossible landscape. The two older kings are the Patriarch
Joseph of Constantinople, and John Paleologus, Emperor of the East, who
had visited Florence twenty years before on the occasion of the
Council (Benozzo, it must be observed, was painting them in 1459, after
the fall of Constantinople); the third is Lorenzo dei Medici himself, as
a boy. Behind follow the rest of the Medicean court, Cosimo himself
and his son, Piero, content apparently to be led forward by this mere
lad; and in their train is Benozzo Gozzoli himself, marked by the
signature on his hat. The picture of the Nativity itself, round which
Benozzo's lovely Angels--though very earthly compared with
Angelico's--seem still to linger in attendance, is believed to have been one
by Lippo Lippi, now at Berlin.
In the chapter _Of the Superhuman
Ideal_, in the second volume of _Modern Painters_, Ruskin refers to these
frescoes as the most beautiful instance of the supernatural landscapes of the
early religious painters:--
"Behind the adoring angel groups, the
landscape is governed by the most absolute symmetry; roses, and pomegranates,
their leaves drawn to the last rib and vein, twine themselves in fair and
perfect order about delicate trellises; broad stone pines and tall
cypresses overshadow them, bright birds hover here and there in the serene
sky, and groups of angels, hand joined with hand, and wing with wing,
glide and float through the glades of the unentangled forest. But behind
the human figures, behind the pomp and turbulence of the kingly
procession descending from the distant hills, the spirit of the landscape
is changed. Severer mountains rise in the distance, ruder prominences and
less flowery vary the nearer ground, and gloomy shadows remain unbroken
beneath the forest branches."
Among the manuscripts in the _Biblioteca
Riccardiana_, which is entered from the Via Ginori at the back of the palace,
is the most striking and plausible of all existing portraits of Dante. It is
at the beginning of a codex of the Canzoni (numbered 1040), and appears to
have been painted about 1436.
From the palace where the elder Medici
lived, we turn to the church where they, and their successors of the younger
line, lie in death. In the Piazza San Lorenzo there is an inane statue of the
father of Cosimo I., Giovanni delle Bande Nere, by Baccio Bandinelli. Here,
in June 1865, Robert Browning picked up at a stall the "square old
yellow Book" with "the crumpled vellum covers," which gave him the story
of _The Ring and the Book_:--
"I found this
book, Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just, (Mark the
predestination!) when a Hand, Always above my shoulder, pushed me
once, One day still fierce 'mid many a day struck calm, Across a
square in Florence, crammed with booths, Buzzing and blaze, noon-tide
and market-time, Toward Baccio's marble--ay, the basement ledge
O' the pedestal where sits and menaces John of the Black Bands with the
upright spear, 'Twixt palace and church--Riccardi where they
lived, His race, and San Lorenzo where they
lie.
"That memorable day, (June was the
month, Lorenzo named the Square) I leaned a little and overlooked my
prize By the low railing round the fountain-source Close to the
statue, where a step descends: While clinked the cans of copper, as
stooped and rose Thick-ankled girls who brimmed them, and made
place For market men glad to pitch basket down, Dip a broad
melon-leaf that holds the wet, And whisk their faded
fresh."
[Illustration: THE TOMB OF GIOVANNI AND PIERO DEI
MEDICI BY ANDREA VERROCCHIO (In San Lorenzo)]
The unsightly
bare front of San Lorenzo represents several fruitless and miserable years of
Michelangelo's life. Pope Leo X. and the Cardinal Giulio dei Medici
commissioned him to make a new facade, in 1516, and for some years he
consumed his time labouring among the quarries of Carrara and Pietrasanta,
getting the marble for it and for the statues with which it was to be
adorned. In one of his letters he says: "I am perfectly disposed (_a me basta
l'animo_) to make this work of the facade of San Lorenzo so that, both in
architecture and in sculpture, it shall be the mirror of all Italy; but the
Pope and the Cardinal must decide quickly, if they want me to do it or not";
and again, some time later: "What I have promised to do, I shall do by
all means, and I shall make the most beautiful work that was ever made
in Italy, if God helps me." But nothing came of it all; and in after years
Michelangelo bitterly declared that Leo had only pretended that he wanted the
facade finished, in order to prevent him working upon the tomb of Pope
Julius.
"The ancient Ambrosian Basilica of St. Lawrence," founded
according to tradition by a Florentine widow named Giuliana, and consecrated
by St. Ambrose in the days of Zenobius, was entirely destroyed by fire
early in the fifteenth century, during a solemn service ordered by
the Signoria to invoke the protection of St. Ambrose for the
Florentines in their war against Filippo Maria Visconti. Practically the
only relic of this Basilica is the miraculous image of the Madonna in
the right transept. The present church was erected from the designs
of Filippo Brunelleschi, at the cost of the Medici (especially Giovanni di
Averardo, who may be regarded as its chief founder) and seven
other Florentine families. It is simple and harmonious in structure;
the cupola, which is so visible in distant views of Florence, looking like
a smaller edition of the Duomo, unlike the latter, rests directly upon the
cross. This appears to be one of the modifications from what Brunelleschi had
intended.
The two pulpits with their bronze reliefs, right and left, are
the last works of Donatello; they were executed in part and finished
by his pupil, Bertoldo. The marble singing gallery in the left aisle (near
a fresco of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, by Bronzino) is also the joint
work of Donatello and Bertoldo. In the right transept is a marble tabernacle
by Donatello's great pupil, Desiderio da Settignano. Beneath a porphyry slab
in front of the choir, Cosimo the Elder, the Pater Patriae, lies; Donatello
is buried in the same vault as his great patron and friend. In the Martelli
Chapel, on the left, is an exceedingly beautiful Annunciation by Fra Filippo
Lippi, a fine example of his colouring (in which he is decidedly the best of
all the early Florentines); Gabriel is attended by two minor Angels,
squires waiting upon this great Prince of the Archangelic order, who are
full of that peculiar mixture of boyish high spirits and
religious sentiment which gives a special charm of its own to all that
Lippo does.
The _Sagrestia Vecchia_, founded by Giovanni di Averardo,
was erected by Brunelleschi and decorated by Donatello for Cosimo the Elder.
In the centre is the marble sarcophagus, adorned with _putti_
and festoons, containing the remains of Giovanni and his wife
Piccarda, Cosimo's father and mother, by Donatello. The bronze doors
(hardly among his best works), the marble balustrade before the altar,
the stucco medallions of the Evangelists, the reliefs of patron saints
of the Medici and the frieze of Angels' heads are all Donatello's; also an
exceedingly beautiful terracotta bust of St. Lawrence, which is one of his
most attractive creations. In the niche on the left of the entrance is the
simple but very beautiful tomb of the two sons of Cosimo, Piero and
Giovanni--who are united also in Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi as the
two kings--and it serves also as a monument to Cosimo himself; it was made by
Andrea Verrocchio for Lorenzo and Giuliano, Piero's sons. The remains of
Lorenzo and Giuliano rested together in this sacristy until they were
translated in the sixteenth century. In spite of a misleading modern
inscription, they were apparently not buried in their father's grave, and
the actual site of their former tomb is unknown. They now lie together
in the _Sagrestia Nuova_. The simplicity of these funereal monuments
and the _pietas_ which united the members of the family so closely,
in death and in life alike, are very characteristic of these
earlier Medicean rulers of Florence.
The cloisters of San Lorenzo,
haunted by needy and destitute cats, were also designed by Brunelleschi. To
the right, after passing Francesco da San Gallo's statue of Paolo Giovio, the
historian, who died in 1559, is the entrance to the famous Biblioteca
Laurenziana. The nucleus of this library was the collection of codices formed
by Niccolo Niccoli, which were afterwards purchased by Cosimo the
Elder, and still more largely increased by Lorenzo the Magnificent; after
the expulsion of Piero the younger, they were bought by the Friars of
San Marco, and then from them by the Cardinal Giovanni, who
transferred them to the Medicean villa at Rome. In accordance with Pope
Leo's wish, Clement VII. (then the Cardinal Giulio) brought them back
to Florence, and, when Pope, commissioned Michelangelo to design
the building that was to house them. The portico, vestibule and
staircase were designed by him, and, in judging of their effect, it must
be remembered that Michelangelo professed that architecture was not
his business, and also that the vestibule and staircase were intended
to have been adorned with bronzes and statues. It was commenced in
1524, before the siege. Of the numberless precious manuscripts which
this collection contains, we will mention only two classical and
one mediæval; the famous Pandects of Justinian which the Pisans took
from Amalfi, and the Medicean Virgil of the fourth or fifth century;
and Boccaccio's autograph manuscript of Dante's Eclogues and
Epistles. This latter codex, shown under the glass at the entrance to
the Rotunda, is the only manuscript in existence which contains
Dante's Epistles to the Italian Cardinals and to a Florentine Friend. In
the first, he defines his attitude towards the Church, and declares
that he is not touching the Ark, but merely turning to the kicking oxen
who are dragging it out of the right path; in the second, he
proudly proclaims his innocence, rejects the amnesty, and refuses to return
to Florence under dishonourable conditions. Although undoubtedly
in Boccaccio's handwriting, it has been much disputed of late years as
to whether these two letters are really by Dante. There is not a
single autograph manuscript, nor a single scrap of Dante's handwriting
extant at the present day.
* * * *
*
From the Piazza Madonna, at the back of San Lorenzo, we enter a
chilly vestibule, the burial vault of less important members of the
families of the Medicean Grand Dukes, and ascend to the _Sagrestia
Nuova_, where the last male descendants of Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo
the Magnificent lie. Although the idea of adding some such mausoleum
to San Lorenzo appears to have originated with Leo X., this New
Sacristy was built by Michelangelo for Clement VII., commenced while he
was still the Cardinal Giulio and finished in 1524, before the Library was
constructed. Its form was intended to correspond with that of Brunelleschi's
Old Sacristy, and it was to contain four sepulchral monuments. Two of these,
the only two that were actually constructed, were for the younger Lorenzo,
titular Duke of Urbino (who died in 1519, the son of Piero and nephew of Pope
Leo), and the younger Giuliano, Duke of Nemours (who died in 1516, the third
son of the Magnificent and younger brother of Leo). It is not quite certain
for whom the other two monuments were to have been, but it is
most probable that they were for the fathers of the two Medicean
Popes, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother the elder Giuliano,
whose remains were translated hither by Duke Cosimo I. and rediscovered
a few years ago. Michelangelo commenced the statues before the
third expulsion of the Medici, worked on them in secret while he
was fortifying Florence against Pope Clement before the siege,
and returned to them, after the downfall of the Republic, as the
condition of obtaining the Pope's pardon. He resumed work, full of bitterness
at the treacherous overthrow of the Republic, tormented by the heirs
of Pope Julius II., whose tomb he had been forced to abandon,
suffering from insomnia and shattered health, threatened with death by
the tyrant Alessandro. When he left Florence finally in 1534, just
before the death of Clement, the statues had not even been put into
their places.
Neither of the ducal statues is a portrait, but they
appear to represent the active and contemplative lives, like the Leah and
Rachel on the tomb of Pope Julius II. at Rome. On the right sits
Giuliano, holding the baton of command as Gonfaloniere of the Church.
His handsome sensual features to some extent recall those of
the victorious youth in the allegory in the Bargello. He holds his
baton somewhat loosely, as though he half realised the baseness of
the historical part he was doomed to play, and had not got his heart
in it. Opposite is Lorenzo, immersed in profound thought, "ghastly as
a tyrant's dream." What visions are haunting him of the sack of Prato, of
the atrocities of the barbarian hordes in the Eternal City, of the doom his
house has brought upon Florence? Does he already smell the blood that his
daughter will shed, fifty years later, on St. Bartholomew's day? Here he
sits, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it:--
"With everlasting
shadow on his face, While the slow dawns and twilights
disapprove The ashes of his long extinguished race, Which
never more shall clog the feet of men."
"It fascinates and is
intolerable," as Rogers wrote of this statue. It is, probably, not due to
Michelangelo that the niches in which the dukes sit are too narrow for them;
but the result is to make the tyrants seem as helpless as their victims, in
the fetters of destiny. Beneath them are four tremendous and terrible
allegorical figures: "those four ineffable types," writes Ruskin, "not of
darkness nor of day--not of morning nor evening, but of the departure and
the resurrection, the twilight and the dawn of the souls of men."
Beneath Lorenzo are Dawn and Twilight; Dawn awakes in agony, but her
most horrible dreams are better than the reality which she must
face; Twilight has worked all day in vain, and, like a helpless Titan,
is sinking now into a slumber where is no repose. Beneath Giuliano are Day
and Night: Day is captive and unable to rise, his mighty powers are uselessly
wasted and he glares defiance; Night is buried in torturing dreams, but
Michelangelo has forbidden us to wake her:--
"Grato mi e il sonno, e
piu l'esser di sasso; mentre che il danno e la vergogna dura,
non veder, non sentir, m'e gran ventura; pero non mi destar; deh, parla
basso!"[45]
[45] "Grateful to me is sleep, and more the being stone;
while ruin and shame last, not to see, not to feel, is great good fortune
to me. Therefore wake me not; ah, speak low!"
It will be remembered
that it was for these two young men, to whom Michelangelo has thus reared the
noblest sepulchral monuments of the modern world, that Leo X. desired to
build kingdoms and that Machiavelli wrote one of the masterpieces of Italian
prose--the _Principe_. Giuliano was the most respectable of the elder
Medicean line; in Castiglione's _Cortigiano_ he is an attractive figure,
the chivalrous champion of women. It is not easy to get a definite idea
of the character of Lorenzo, who, as we saw in chapter iv., was
virtually tyrant of Florence during his uncle's pontificate. The
Venetian ambassador once wrote of him that he was fitted for great deeds,
and only a little inferior to Cæsar Borgia--which was intended for
very high praise; but there was nothing in him to deserve
either Michelangelo's monument or Machiavelli's dedication. He usurped
the Duchy of Urbino, and spent his last days in fooling with a jester.
His reputed son, the foul Duke Alessandro, lies buried with him here
in the same coffin.
Opposite the altar is the Madonna and Child, by
Michelangelo. The Madonna is one of the noblest and most beautiful of all the
master's works, but the Child, whom Florence had once chosen for her King,
has turned His face away from the city. A few years later, and Cosimo
I. will alter the inscription which Niccolo Capponi had set up on
the Palazzo Vecchio. The patron saints of the Medici on either side,
Sts. Cosmas and Damian, are by Michelangelo's pupils and assistants,
Fra Giovanni Angiolo da Montorsoli and Raffaello da Montelupo.
Beneath these statues lie Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother, the
elder Giuliano. Their bodies were removed hither from the Old Sacristy
in 1559, and the question as to their place of burial was finally set
at rest, in October 1895, by the discovery of their bodies. It is probable
that Michelangelo had originally intended the Madonna for the tomb of his
first patron, Lorenzo.
In judging of the general effect of this
_Sagrestia Nuova_, which is certainly somewhat cold, it must be remembered
that Michelangelo intended it to be full of statues and that the walls were
to have been covered with paintings. "Its justification," says Addington
Symonds, "lies in the fact that it demanded statuary and colour for
its completion." The vault was frescoed by Giovanni da Udine, but is
now whitewashed. In 1562, Vasari wrote to Michelangelo at Rome on
behalf of Duke Cosimo, telling him that "the place is being now used
for religious services by day and night, according to the intentions
of Pope Clement," and that the Duke was anxious that all the
best sculptors and painters of the newly instituted Academy should
work upon the Sacristy and finish it from Michelangelo's designs.
"He intends," writes Vasari, "that the new Academicians shall complete
the whole imperfect scheme, in order that the world may see that, while
so many men of genius still exist among us, the noblest work which
was ever yet conceived on earth has not been left unfinished." And
the Duke wants to know what Michelangelo's own idea is about the
statues and paintings; "He is particularly anxious that you should be
assured of his determination to alter nothing you have already done
or planned, but, on the contrary, to carry out the whole work according to
your conception. The Academicians, too, are unanimous in their hearty desire
to abide by this decision."[46]
[46] Given in Addington Symonds' _Life
of Michelangelo_.
In the _Cappella dei Principi_, gorgeous with its
marbles and mosaics, lie the sovereigns of the younger line, the Medicean
Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the descendants of the great captain Giovanni delle
Bande Nere. Here are the sepulchral monuments of Cosimo I. (1537-1574);
of his sons, Francesco (1574-1587) and Ferdinand I. (1587-1609); and
of Ferdinand's son, grandson and great-grandson, Cosimo II.
(1609-1621), Ferdinand II. (1627-1670), Cosimo III. (1670-1723). The statues
are those of Ferdinand I. and Cosimo II.
Cosimo I. finally transformed
the republic into a monarchy, created a new aristocracy and established a
small standing army, though he mainly relied upon Spanish and German
mercenaries. He conquered Siena in 1553, and in 1570 was invested with the
grand ducal crown by Pius V.--a title which the Emperor confirmed to his
successor. Although the tragedy which tradition has hung round the end of the
Duchess Eleonora and her two sons has not stood the test of historical
criticism, there are plenty of bloody deeds to be laid to Duke Cosimo's
account during his able and ruthless reign. Towards the close of his life he
married his mistress, Cammilla Martelli, and made over the government to
his son. This son, Francesco, the founder of the Uffizi Gallery and of
the modern city of Leghorn, had more than his father's vices and
hardly any of his ability; his intrigue with the beautiful Venetian,
Bianca Cappello, whom he afterwards married, and who died with him,
has excited more interest than it deserves. The Cardinal Ferdinand,
who succeeded him and renounced the cardinalate, was incomparably the
best of the house--a man of magnanimous character and an
enlightened ruler. He shook off the influence of Spain, and built an
excellent navy to make war upon the Turks and Barbary corsairs. Cosimo II.
and Ferdinand II. reigned quietly and benevolently, with no ability
but with plenty of good intentions. Chiabrera sings their praises
with rather unnecessary fervour. But the wealth and prosperity of
Tuscany was waning, and Cosimo III., a luxurious and selfish bigot, could
do nothing to arrest the decay. On the death of his miserable
and contemptible successor, Gian Gastone dei Medici in 1737, the
Medicean dynasty was at an end.
Stretching along a portion of the Via
Larga, and near the Piazza di San Marco, were the famous gardens of the
Medici, which the people sacked in 1494 on the expulsion of Piero. The Casino
Mediceo, built by Buontalenti in 1576, marks the site. Here were placed some
of Lorenzo's antique statues and curios; and here Bertoldo had his
great art school, where the most famous painters and sculptors came to
bask in the sun of Medicean patronage, and to copy the antique. Here
the boy Michelangelo came with his friend Granacci, and here
Andrea Verrocchio first trained the young Leonardo. In this garden,
too, Angelo Poliziano walked with his pupils, and initiated
Michelangelo into the newly revived Hellenic culture. There is nothing now
to recall these past glories.
[Illustration: THE WELL OF S.
MARCO]
The church of San Marco has been frequently altered and
modernised, and there is little now to remind us that it was here on August
1, 1489, that Savonarola began to expound the Apocalypse. Over
the entrance is a Crucifix ascribed by Vasari to Giotto. On the
second altar to the right is a much-damaged but authentic Madonna and
Saints by Fra Bartolommeo; that on the opposite altar, on the left, is
a copy of the original now in the Pitti Palace. There are some picturesque
bits of old fourteenth century frescoes on the left wall, and beneath them,
between the second and third altars, lie Pico della Mirandola and his friend
Girolamo Benivieni, and Angelo Poliziano. The left transept contains the tomb
and shrine of St Antoninus, the good Dominican Archbishop of Florence, with
statues by Giovanni da Bologna and his followers, and later frescoes. In the
sacristy, which was designed by Brunelleschi, there is a fine bronze
recumbent statue of him. Antoninus was Prior of San Marco in the days of
Angelico, and Vasari tells us that when Angelico went to Rome, to paint for
Pope Eugenius, the Pope wished to make the painter Archbishop of
Florence: "When the said friar heard this, he besought his Holiness to
find somebody else, because he did not feel himself apt to govern
people; but that since his Order had a friar who loved the poor, who was
most learned and fit for rule, and who feared God, this dignity would
be much better conferred upon him than on himself. The Pope, hearing this,
and bethinking him that what he said was true, granted his request freely;
and so Fra Antonino was made Archbishop of Florence, of the Order of
Preachers, a man truly most illustrious for sanctity and learning."
It
was in the church of San Marco that Savonarola celebrated Mass on the day of
the Ordeal; here the women waited and prayed, while the procession set forth;
and hither the Dominicans returned at evening, amidst the howls and derision
of the crowd. Here, on the next evening, the fiercest of the fighting took
place. The attempt of the enemy to break into the church by the sacristy door
was repulsed. One of the Panciatichi, a mere boy, mortally wounded, joyfully
received the last sacraments from Fra Domenico on the steps of the altar, and
died in such bliss, that the rest envied him. Finally the great door of
the church was broken down; Fra Enrico, a German, mounted the pulpit
and fired again and again into the midst of the Compagnacci, shouting
with each shot, _Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine_. Driven from the
pulpit, he and other friars planted their arquebusses beneath the Crucifix
on the high altar, and continued to fire. The church was now so full
of smoke that the friars could hardly continue the defence, until
Fra Giovacchino della Robbia broke one of the windows with a lance.
At last, when the Signoria threatened to destroy the whole convent
with artillery, Savonarola ordered the friars to go in procession from
the church to the dormitory, and himself, taking the Blessed
Sacrament from the altar, slowly followed them.
The convent itself,
now officially the _Museo di San Marco_, originally a house of Silvestrine
monks, was made over to the Dominicans by Pope Eugenius IV., at the instance
of Cosimo dei Medici and his brother Lorenzo. They solemnly took possession
in 1436, and Michelozzo entirely rebuilt the whole convent for them, mainly
at the cost of Cosimo, between 1437 and 1452. "It is believed," says
Vasari, "to be the best conceived and the most beautiful and
commodious convent of any in Italy, thanks to the virtue and industry
of Michelozzo." Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, as the Beato Angelico was called,
came from his Fiesolan convent, and worked simultaneously with Michelozzo for
about eight or nine years (until the Pope summoned him to Rome in 1445 to
paint in the Vatican), covering with his mystical dreams the walls that his
friend designed. That other artistic glory of the Dominicans, Fra
Bartolommeo, took the habit here in 1500, though there are now only a few
unimportant works of his remaining in the convent. Never was there such a
visible outpouring of the praying heart in painting, as in the work of these
two friars. And Antoninus and Savonarola strove to make the spirit world that
they painted a living reality, for Florence and for the Church.
The
first cloister is surrounded by later frescoes, scenes from the life of St.
Antoninus, partly by Bernardino Poccetti and Matteo Rosselli, at the
beginning of the seventeenth century. They are not of great artistic value,
but one, the fifth on the right of the entrance, representing the entry of
St. Antoninus into Florence, shows the old facade of the Duomo. Like gems in
this rather indifferent setting, are five exquisite frescoes by Angelico in
lunettes over the doors; St. Thomas Aquinas, Christ as a pilgrim received by
two Dominican friars, Christ in the tomb, St. Dominic (spoilt), St. Peter
Martyr; also a larger fresco of St. Dominic at the foot of the Cross. The
second of these, symbolising the hospitality of the convent rule, is one
of Angelico's masterpieces; beneath it is the entrance to the
Foresteria, the guest-chambers. Under the third lunette we pass into the
great Refectory, with its customary pulpit for the novice reader:
here, instead of the usual Last Supper, is a striking fresco of St.
Dominic and his friars miraculously fed by Angels, painted in 1536 by
Giovanni Antonio Sogliani (a pupil of Lorenzo di Credi); the Crucifixion
above, with St. Catherine of Siena and St. Antoninus, is said to be by
Fra Bartolommeo. Here, too, on the right is the original framework by Jacopo
di Bartolommeo da Sete and Simone da Fiesole, executed in 1433, for Angelico's
great tabernacle now in the Uffizi. |
|
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기