|
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