The Story of Florence 12

The Story of Florence 12

On this side of the river, those walls of Florence which Lapo Gianni would fain have seen _inargentate_--the third circle reared by Arnolfo and his successors--have been almost entirely destroyed, and their site marked by the broad utterly prosaic Viali. Besides the Porta alla Croce, the Porta San Gallo and the Porta al Prato still stand, on the north and west respectively. The Porta San Gallo was begun from Arnolfo's design in 1284, but not finished until 1327; the fresco in the lunette is by Michele di Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Ridolfo's adopted son. On July 21, 1304, the exiled Bianchi and Ghibellines made a desperate attempt to surprise Florence through this gate, led by the heroic young Baschiera della Tosa. In 1494, Piero dei Medici and his brother Giuliano fled from the people through it; and in 1738 the first Austrian Grand Duke, Francis II., entered by it. The triumphant arch beyond, at which the lions of the Republic, to right and left of the gate, appear to gaze with little favour, marked this latter event. These Austrian Grand Dukes were decidedly better rulers than the Medici, to whom, by an imperial usurpation, they succeeded on the death of Gian Gastone. Leopold I., Ferdinand III., Leopold II., were tolerant and liberal-minded sovereigns, and under them Tuscany became the most prosperous state in Italy: "a Garden of Paradise without the tree of knowledge and without the tree of life." But, when the Risorgimento came, their sway was found incompatible with the aspirations of the Italians towards national unification; the last Grand Duke, after wavering between Austria and young Italy, threw in his lot with the former, and after having brought the Austrians into Tuscany, was forced to abdicate. Thus Florence became the first capital of Victor Emmanuel's kingdom. In the Via di San Gallo is the very graceful Palazzo Pandolfini, commenced in 1520 from Raphael's designs, on the left as we move inwards from the gate. From the Via 27 Aprile, which joins the Via di San Gallo, we enter the former convent of Sta. Appollonia. In what was once its refectory is a fresco of the Last Supper by Andrea del Castagno, with the Crucifixion, Entombment, and Resurrection. Andrea del Castagno impressed his contemporaries by his furious passions and savage intractability of temper, his quality of _terribilita_; although we now know that Vasari's story that Andrea obtained the secret of using oil as a vehicle in painting from his friend, Domenico Veneziano, and then murdered him, must be a mere fable, since Domenico survived Andrea by nearly five years. Rugged unadorned strength, with considerable power of characterisation and great technical dexterity, mark his extant works, which are very few in number. This _Cenacolo_ in the finest of them all; the figures are full of life and character, although the Saviour is unpleasing and the Judas inclines to caricature. The nine figures from the Villa Pandolfini, frescoes transferred to canvas, are also his; Filippo Scolari, known as Pippo Spano (a Florentine connected with the Buondelmonti, but Ghibelline, who became Count of Temesvar and a great Hungarian captain), Farinata degli Uberti, Niccolo Acciaiuoli (a Florentine who became Grand Seneschal of the kingdom of Naples and founded the Certosa), the Cumæan Sibyl, Esther, Queen Tomyris, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The two poets and Boccaccio are the least successful, since they were altogether out of Andrea's line, but there must have been something noble in the man to enable him so to realise Farinata degli Uberti, as he stood alone at Empoli when all others agreed to destroy Florence, to defend her to the last: _Colui che la difese a viso aperto._ A _Cenacolo_ of a very different character may be seen in the refectory of the suppressed convent of Sant' Onofrio in the Via di Faenza. Though showing Florentine influence in its composition, this fresco is mainly Umbrian in character; from a half deciphered inscription on the robe of one of the Apostles (which appears to have been altered), it was once attempted to ascribe it to Raphael. It is now believed to be partly the work of Perugino, partly that of some pupil or pupils of his--perhaps Gerino da Pistoia or Giannicola Manni. It has also been ascribed to Giovanni Lo Spagna and to Raffaellino del Garbo. Morelli supposed it to be the work of a pupil of Perugino who was inspired by a Florentine engraving of the fifteenth century, and suggested Giannicola Manni. In the same street is the picturesque little Gothic church of San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini.   [Illustration: A FLORENTINE SUBURB] At the end of the Via Faenza--where once stood one of Arnolfo's gates--we are out again upon the Viale, here named after Filippo Strozzi. Opposite rises what was the great Medicean citadel, the Fortezza da Basso, built by Alessandro dei Medici to overawe the city. Michelangelo steadfastly refused, at the risk of his life, to have anything to do with it. Filippo Strozzi is said to have aided Alessandro in carrying out this design, and even to have urged it upon him, although he was warned that he was digging his own grave. After the unsuccessful attempt of the exiles to overthrow the newly-established government of Duke Cosimo, while Baccio Valori and the other prisoners were sent to be beheaded or hanged in the Bargello, Filippo Strozzi was imprisoned here and cruelly tortured, in spite of the devoted attempts of his children to obtain his release. Here at length, in 1538, he was found dead in his cell. He was said to have left a paper declaring that, lest he should be more terribly tortured and forced to say things to prejudice his own honour and inculpate innocent persons, he had resolved to take his own life, and that he commended his soul to God, humbly praying Him, if He would grant it no other good, at least to give it a place with that of Cato of Utica. It is not improbable that the paper was a fabrication, and that Filippo had been murdered by orders of the Duke. CHAPTER XI _The Bridges--The Quarter of Santa Maria Novella_      "Sopra il bel fiume d'Arno alla gran villa."          --_Dante._ Outside the portico of the Uffizi four Florentine heroes--Farinata degli Uberti, Piero Capponi, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Francesco Ferrucci--from their marble niches keep watch and ward over the river. This Arno, which Lapo Gianni dreamed of as _balsamo fino_, is spanned by four ancient and famous bridges, and bordered on both banks by the Lungarno. To the east is the Ponte Rubaconte--so called after the Milanese Podesta, during whose term of office it was made--or Ponte alle Grazie, built in 1237; it is mentioned by Dante in Canto xii. of the _Purgatorio_, and is the only existing Florentine bridge which could have actually felt the footsteps of the man who was afterwards to tread scathless through the ways of Hell, "unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume." It has, however, been completely altered at various periods. On this bridge a solemn reconciliation was effected between Guelfs and Ghibellines on July 2, 1273, by Pope Gregory X. The Pope in state, between Charles of Anjou and the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople, blessed his "reconciled" people from the bridge, and afterwards laid the first stone of a church called San Gregorio della Pace in the Piazza dei Mozzi, now destroyed. As soon as the Pope's back was turned, Charles contrived that his work should be undone, and the Ghibellines hounded again out of the city.[49]   [49] Opposite the bridge, at the beginning of the Via dei Benci, is   the palace of the old Alberti family; the remains of their loggia   stand further up the street, at the corner of the Borgo Santa Croce.   In all these streets, between the Lungarno della Borsa and the Borgo   dei Greci, there are many old houses and palaces; in the Piazza dei   Peruzzi the houses, formerly of that family and partly built in the   fourteenth century, follow the lines of the Roman amphitheatre--the   _Parlascio_ of the early Middle Ages. The Palazzo dei Giudici--in the   piazza of that name--was originally built in the thirteenth century,   though reconstructed at a later epoch. Below the Ponte alle Grazie comes the Ponte Vecchio, the Bridge _par excellence_; _il ponte_, or _il passo d'Arno_, as Dante calls it. More than a mere bridge over a river, this Ponte Vecchio is a link in the chain binding Florence to the Eternal City. A Roman bridge stood here of old, and a Roman road may be said to have run across it; it heard the tramp of Roman legionaries, and shook beneath the horses of Totila's Gothic chivalry. This Roman bridge possibly lasted down to the great inundation of 1333. The present structure, erected by Taddeo Gaddi after 1360, with its exquisite framed pictures of the river and city in the centre, is one of the most characteristic bits of old Florence still remaining. The shops of goldsmiths and jewellers were originally established here in the days of Cosimo I., for whom Giorgio Vasari built the gallery that runs above to connect the two Grand Ducal Palaces. Connecting the Porta Romana with the heart of the city, the bridge has witnessed most of the great pageants and processions in Florentine history. Popes and Emperors have crossed it in state; Florentine generals, or hireling condottieri, at the head of their victorious troops; the Piagnoni, bearing the miraculous Madonna of the Impruneta to save the city from famine and pestilence; and Savonarola's new Cyrus, Charles VIII., as conqueror, with lance levelled. Across it, in 1515, was Pope Leo X. borne in his litter, blessing the people to right and left, amidst the exultant cries of _Palle, Palle!_ from the crowd, who had forgotten for the time all the crimes of his house in their delight at seeing their countryman, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, raised to the papal throne. In Dante's day, what remained of the famous statue supposed of Mars, _quella pietra scema che guarda il ponte_, "that mutilated stone which guardeth the bridge," still stood here at the corner, probably at the beginning of the present Lungarno Acciaiuoli. "I was of that city that changed its first patron for the Baptist," says an unknown suicide in the seventh circle of Hell, probably one of the Mozzi: "on which account he with his art will ever make it sorrowful. And were it not that at the passage of the Arno there yet remains some semblance of him, those citizens, who afterwards rebuilt it on the ashes left by Attila, would have laboured in vain." Here, as we saw in chapter i., young Buondelmonte was murdered in 1215, a sacrifice to Mars in the city's "last time of peace," _nella sua pace postrema_.   [Illustration: THE PONTE VECCHIO] Lower down comes the Ponte Santa Trinita, originally built in 1252; and still lower the Ponte alla Carraia, built between 1218 and 1220 in the days of Frederick II., for the sake of the growing commerce of the Borgo Ognissanti. This latter bridge was originally called the Ponte Nuovo, as at that time the only other bridge over the Arno was the Ponte Vecchio. It was here that a terrible disaster took place on May 1st, 1304--a strange piece of grim mediæval jesting by the irony of fate turned to still grimmer earnest. After a cruel period of disasters and faction fights, there had come a momentary gleam of peace, and it was determined to renew the pageants and festivities that had been held in better days on May-day, "in the good time passed, of the tranquil and good state of Florence," each contrada trying to rival the other. What followed had best be told in the words of Giovanni Villani, an eye-witness:-- "Amongst the others, the folk of the Borgo San Frediano, who had been wont of yore to devise the newest and most diverse pastimes, sent out a proclamation, that those who wished to know news of the other world should be upon the Ponte alla Carraia and around the Arno on the day of the calends of May. And they arranged scaffolds on the Arno upon boats and ships, and made thereon the likeness and figure of Hell with fires and other pains and torments, with men arrayed like demons, horrible to behold, and others who bore the semblance of naked souls, that seemed real persons; and they hurled them into those divers torments with loud cries and shrieks and uproar, the which seemed hateful and appalling to hear and to behold. Many were the citizens that gathered here to witness this new sport; and the Ponte alla Carraia, the which was then of wood from pile to pile, was so laden with folk that it broke down in several places, and fell with the people who were upon it, whereby many persons died there and were drowned, and many were grieviously injured; so that the game was changed from jest to earnest, and, as the proclamation had run, so indeed did many depart in death to hear news of the other world, with great mourning and lamentation to all the city, for each one thought that he had lost son or brother." The famous inundation of November 1333 swept away all the bridges, excepting the Ponte Rubaconte. The present Ponte Santa Trinita and Ponte alla Carraia were erected for Duke Cosimo I. by Bartolommeo Ammanati, shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century. Turning from the river at the Ponte Vecchio by the Via Por Sta. Maria, we see on the right the old church of San Stefano, with a completely modernised interior. Here in 1426 Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Niccolo da Uzzano held a meeting of some seventy citizens, and Rinaldo proposed to check the growing power of the populace by admitting the magnates into the government and reducing the number of Arti Minori. Their plan failed through the opposition of Giovanni dei Medici, who acquired much popularity thereby. It should be remembered that it was not here, as usually stated, but in the Badia, which was also dedicated to St. Stephen, that Boccaccio lectured on Dante. Right and left two very old streets diverge, the Via Lambertesca and the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, with splendid mediæval towers. In the former, at the angle of the Via di Por Santa Maria, are the towers of the Girolami and Gherardini, round which there was fierce fighting in the expulsion of the Ghibellines in 1266. Opposite, at the opening of the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, are the towers of the Baldovinetti (the tower of San Zenobio) and of the Amidei--_la casa di che nacque il vostro fleto_, as Cacciaguida puts it to Dante: "the house from which your wailing sprang," whose feud with the Buondelmonti was supposed to have originated the Guelf and Ghibelline factions in Florence. And further down the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, at the opening of the Chiasso delle Misure, is the tall and stately tower of these Buondelmonti themselves, who also had a palace on the opposite side of the street. The old church of the Santissimi Apostoli, in the Piazza del Limbo, has an inscription on its facade stating that it was founded by Charlemagne, and consecrated by Archbishop Turpin, with Roland and Oliver as witnesses. It appears to have been built in the eleventh century, and is the oldest church on this side of the Arno, with the exception of the Baptistery. Its interior, which is well preserved, is said to have been taken by Filippo Brunelleschi as the model for San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito. In it is a beautiful Ciborium by Andrea della Robbia, with monuments of some of the Altoviti family.   [Illustration: THE TOWER OF S. ZANOBI] The Piazza Santa Trinita was a great place for social and other gatherings in mediæval and renaissance Florence. Here on the first of May 1300, a dance of girls was being held to greet the calends of May in the old Florentine fashion, when a band of mounted youths of the Donati, Pazzi and Spini came to blows with a rival company of the Cerchi and their allies; and thus the first blood was shed in the disastrous struggle between the Bianchi and Neri. A few days later a similar faction fight took place on the other side of the bridge, in the Piazza Frescobaldi, on the occasion of a lady's funeral. The great Palazzo Spini, opposite the church, was built at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century by Geri Spini, the rich papal banker and one of the leaders of the "black" faction. Here he received the Pope's ambassadors and made a great display of his wealth and magnificence, as we gather from Boccaccio's _Decameron_, which gives us an amusing story of his friendship with Cisti the baker, and another of the witty repartees of Madonna Oretta, Geri's wife, a lady of the Malaspina. When Charles of Valois entered Florence in November 1301, Messer Geri entertained a portion of the French barons here, while the Prince himself took up his quarters with the Frescobaldi over the river; during that tumultuous period of Florentine history that followed the expulsion of the Bianchi, Geri was one of the most prominent politicians in the State. Savonarola's processions of friars and children used to pass through this piazza and over the bridge, returning by way of the Ponte Vecchio. On the Feast of Corpus Christi, 1497, as the Blessed Sacrament was being borne along, with many children carrying red crosses, they were set upon by some of the Compagnacci. The story is quaintly told by Landucci: "As the said procession was passing over the Bridge of Santa Trinita, certain youths were standing to see it pass, by the side of a little church which is on the bridge on the right hand going towards Santo Spirito. Seeing those children with the crosses, they said: 'Here are the children of Fra Girolamo.' And one of them coming up to them, took one of these crosses and, snatching it out of the hand of that child, broke it and threw it into the Arno, as though he had been an infidel; and all this he did for hatred of the Friar." The column in the Piazza--taken from the Baths of Caracalla at Rome--was set here by Duke Cosimo I., to celebrate his victory over the heroic Piero Strozzi, _il maravigliosissimo bravo Piero Strozzi_ as Benvenuto Cellini calls him, in 1563. The porphyry statue of Justice was set high up on this pedestal by the most unjust of all rulers of Florence, the Grand Duke Francesco I., Cosimo's son. This same piazza witnessed a not over friendly meeting of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Leonardo, at the time that he was engaged upon his cartoon for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, was walking in the square, dressed in his usual sumptuous fashion, with a rose coloured tunic reaching down to his knees; when a group of citizens, who were discussing Dante, called him and asked him the meaning of a passage in question. At that moment Michelangelo passed by, and Leonardo courteously referred them to him. "Explain it yourself," said the great sculptor, "you, who made the model of a horse to cast in bronze, and could not cast it, and to your shame left it in the lurch."[50] And he abruptly turned his back on the group, leaving Leonardo red with either shame or anger.   [50] See Addington Symonds' _Michelangelo_. The horse in question was   the equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza. The church of Santa Trinita was originally built in the Gothic style by Niccolo Pisano, shortly after 1250, in the days of the Primo Popolo and contemporaneously with the Palazzo del Podesta. It was largely altered by Buontalenti in the last part of the sixteenth century, and has been recently completely restored. It is a fine example of Italian Gothic. In the interior, are a Mary Magdalene by Desiderio da Settignano and a marble altar by Benedetto da Rovezzano; and also, in one of the chapels of the right aisle, an Annunciation by Don Lorenzo, one of his best works, with some frescoes, partly obliterated and much "restored," by the same good Camaldolese monk. But the great attraction of this church is the Sassetti Chapel next to the sacristy, which contains a splendid series of frescoes painted in 1485 by Domenico Ghirlandaio. The altar piece is only a copy of the original, now in the Accademia. The frescoes represent scenes from the life of St. Francis, and should be compared with Giotto's simpler handling of the same theme in the Bardi Chapel at Santa Croce. We have the Saint renouncing the world, the confirmation of his rule by Honorius, his preaching to the Soldan, his reception of the Stigmata, his death and funeral (in which the life-like spectacled bishop aroused Vasari's enthusiastic admiration), and the raising to life of a child of the Sassetti family by an apparition of St. Francis in the Piazza outside the church. The last is especially interesting as giving us a picture of the Piazza in its former state, such as it might have been in the Mayday faction fight, with the Spini Palace, the older bridge, and the houses of the Frescobaldi beyond the river. Each fresco is full of interesting portraits; among the spectators in the consistory is Lorenzo the Magnificent; Ghirlandaio himself appears in the death scene; and, perhaps, most interesting of all, if Vasari's identification can be trusted, are the three who stand on the right near the church in the scene of the resuscitation of the child. These three are said to be Maso degli Albizzi, the founder of the party of the Ottimati, those _nobili popolani_ who held the State before they were eclipsed by the Medici; Agnolo Acciaiuoli, who was ruined by adhering to Luca Pitti against Piero dei Medici; and that noblest of all the Medicean victims, Palla Strozzi (_see_ chapter iii.). It should, however, be remembered that Maso degli Albizzi had died nearly seventy years before, and that not even Palla Strozzi can be regarded as a contemporary portrait. The sacristy of this church was founded by the Strozzi, and one of the house, Onofrio, lies buried within it. Extremely fine, too, are the portraits of Francesco Sassetti himself and his wife, kneeling below near the altar, also by Ghirlandaio, who likewise painted the sibyls on the ceiling and the fresco representing the sibyl prophesying of the Incarnation to Augustus, over the entrance to the chapel. The sepulchral monuments of Francesco and his wife are by Giuliano da San Gallo. The famous Crucifix of San Miniato, which bowed its head to San Giovanni Gualberto when he spared the murderer of his brother, was transferred to Santa Trinita in 1671 with great pomp and ceremony, and is still preserved here. In June 1301 a council was held in the church by the leaders of the Neri, nominally to bring about a concord with the rival faction, in reality to entrap the Cerchi and pave the way for their expulsion by foreign aid. Among the Bianchi present was the chronicler, Dino Compagni; "desirous of unity and peace among citizens," and, before the council broke up, he made a strong appeal to the more factious members. "Signors," he said, "why would you confound and undo so good a city? Against whom would you fight? Against your own brothers? What victory shall ye have? Nought else but lamentation." The Neri answered that the object of their council was merely to stop scandal and establish peace; but it soon became known that there was a conspiracy between them and the Conte Simone da Battifolle of the Casentino, who was sending his son with a strong force towards Florence. Simone dei Bardi (who had been the husband of Beatrice Portinari) appears to have been the connecting link of the conspiracy, which the prompt action of the Signoria checked for the present. The evil day, however, was postponed, not averted. Following the Via di Parione we reach the back of the Palazzo Corsini--a large seventeenth century palace whose front is on the Lungarno. Here is a large picture gallery, in which a good many of the pictures are erroneously ascribed, but which contains a few more important works. The two gems of the collection are Botticelli's portrait of a Goldsmith (210), formerly ascribed to one of the Pollaiuoli; and Luca Signorelli's tondo (157), of Madonna and Child with St. Jerome and St. Bernard. A Madonna and Child with Angels and the Baptist (162) by Filippino Lippi, or ascribed to him, is a charming and poetical picture; but is not admitted by Mr Berenson into his list of genuine works by this painter. The supposed cartoon for Raphael's Julius II. is of very doubtful authenticity. The picture of the martyrdom of Savonarola (292) is interesting and valuable as affording a view of the Piazza at that epoch, but cannot be regarded as an accurate historical representation of the event. That seventeenth century reincarnation of Lorenzo di Credi, Carlo Dolci, is represented here by several pictures which are above his usual level; for instance, Poetry (179) is a really beautiful thing of its kind. Among the other pictures is a little Apollo and Daphne (241), probably an early work of Andrea del Sarto. The Raffaellino di Carlo who painted the Madonna and Saints (200), is not to be confused with Filippino's pupil, Raffaellino del Garbo. In the Via Tornabuoni, the continuation of the Piazza Santa Trinita, stands the finest of all Florentine palaces of the Renaissance, the Palazzo Strozzi. It was begun in 1489 for the elder Filippo Strozzi, with the advice and encouragement of Lorenzo the Magnificent, by Benedetto da Maiano, and continued by Simone del Pollaiuolo (called "Cronaca" from his yarning propensities), to whom the cornice and court are due. It was finished for the younger Filippo Strozzi, the husband of Clarice dei Medici, shortly before his fall, in the days of Duke Alessandro. The works in iron on the exterior--lanterns, torch-holders and the like, especially a wonderful _fanale_ at the corner--are by Niccolo Grosso (called "Caparra" from his habit of demanding payment in advance), and the finest things of their kind imaginable. Filippo Strozzi played a curiously inconstant part in the history of the closing days of the Republic. After having been the most intimate associate of his brother-in-law, the younger Lorenzo, he was instrumental first in the expulsion of Ippolito and Alessandro, then in the establishment of Alessandro's tyranny; and finally, finding himself cast by the irony of fate for the part of the last Republican hero, he took the field against Duke Cosimo, only to find a miserable end in a dungeon. One of his daughters, Luisa Capponi, was believed to have been poisoned by order of Alessandro; his son, Piero, became the bravest Italian captain of the sixteenth century and carried on a heroic contest with Cosimo's mercenary troops.   [Illustration: ARMS OF THE STROZZI] Down the Via della Vigna Nuova is another of these Renaissance palaces, built for a similar noble family associated with the Medici,--the Palazzo Rucellai. Bernardo Rucellai--who was not originally of noble origin, but whose family had acquired what in Florence was the real title to nobility, vast wealth in commerce--married Nannina, the younger sister of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and had this palace begun for him in 1460 by Bernardo Rossellino from the design of Leo Battista Alberti,--to whom also the Rucellai loggia opposite is due. More of Alberti's work for the Rucellai may be seen at the back of the palace, in the Via della Spada, where in the former church of San Pancrazio (which gave its name to a _sesto_ in old Florence) is the chapel which he built for Bernardo Rucellai in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. The Via delle Belle Donne--most poetically named of Florentine streets--leads hence into the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella. On the way, where five roads meet, is the Croce al Trebbio, with symbols of the four Evangelists below the Crucifix. It marks the site of one of St Peter Martyr's fiercest triumphs over the Paterini, one of those "marvellous works" for which Savonarola, in his last address to his friars, complains that the Florentines had been so ungrateful towards his Order. But the story of the Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella is not one of persecution, but of peace-making. They played at times as noble a part in mediæval Florence as their brethren of San Marco were to do in the early Renaissance; and later, during the great siege, they took up the work of Fra Girolamo, and inspired the people to their last heroic defence of the Republic. Opposite Santa Maria Novella is the Loggia di San Paolo, designed by Brunelleschi, and erected in 1451, shortly after his death. The coloured terracotta reliefs, by Andrea della Robbia, include two fine portraits of governors of the hospital (not of the Della Robbia themselves, as frequently stated). The relief in a lunette over the door on the right, representing the meeting of St Francis and St Dominic, is one of Andrea's best works:--      "L'un fu tutto serafico in ardore,         l'altro per sapienza in terra fue         di cherubica luce uno splendore.       Dell'un diro, pero che d'ambedue         si dice l'un pregiando, qual ch'uom prende,         perche ad un fine fur l'opere sue."[51]   [51] "The one was all seraphic in his ardour, the other by his          wisdom was on earth a splendour of cherubic light.        "Of one will I discourse, because of both the two he speaketh          who doth either praise, which so he will; for to one end          their works."            --Wicksteed's translation, _Paradiso_ xi. In 1212, three years before the murder of Buondelmonte, the first band of Franciscans had come to Florence, sent thither by St Francis himself from Assisi. A few years later, at the invitation of a Florentine merchant Diodato, who had built a chapel and house as an act of restitution, St Dominic, from Bologna, sent the Blessed John of Salerno with twelve friars to occupy this mission at Ripoli, about three miles beyond where now stands the Gate of S. Niccolo. Thence they extended their apostolic labours into the city, and when St Dominic came, at the end of 1219, they had already made progress. Finally they moved into the city--first to San Pancrazio, and at length settled at Santa Maria tra le Vigne, a little church then outside the walls, where B. Giovanni was installed by the Pope's legate and the bishop in 1221. Before the church, in the present piazza, St Peter Martyr, the "hammer of the heretics," fought the Paterini with both spiritual and material arms. At last, the growth of the order requiring larger room, on St Luke's day, 1278, Cardinal Latino de' Frangipani laid here the first stone of Santa Maria Novella. Where once the little church of Our Lady among the Vines stood outside the second circuit of the city's walls, rises now the finest Italian Gothic church in Florence. Less than a year after it had been commenced, the same Dominican cardinal who had laid the first stone summoned a mass meeting in the Piazza, and succeeded in patching up a temporary peace between Guelfs and Ghibellines, and among the Guelf magnates themselves, 1279. This Cardinal Latino left a memory revered in Florence, and Fra Angelico, in the picture now in our National Gallery, placed him among the glorified saints attending upon the resurrection of Our Lord. Some twenty years later, in November 1301, a parliament was held within the still unfinished church, at which another Papal peacemaker, the infamous Charles of Valois, in the presence of the Priors of the Republic, the Podesta and the Captain, the bishop and chief citizens, received the _balia_ to guard Florence and pacify the Guelfs, and swore on the faith of the son of a king to preserve the city in peace and prosperity. We have seen how he kept his word. Santa Maria Novella, in 1304, was the centre of the sincere and devoted attempts made by Boniface's successor, the sainted Benedict XI., to heal the wounds of Florence; attempts in which, throughout Italy, the Dominicans were his "angels of peace," as he called his missioners. When the Republic finally fell into the hands of Cosimo dei Medici in 1434, the exiled Pope Eugenius IV. was staying in the adjoining monastery; it was here that he made his unsuccessful attempt to mediate, and heard the bitter farewell words of Rinaldo degli Albizzi: "I blame myself most of all, because I believed that you, who had been hunted out of your own country, could keep me in mine."   [Illustration: IN THE GREEN CLOISTERS, S. MARIA NOVELLA] The church itself, striped tiger-like in black and white marble, was constructed from the designs of three Dominican friars, Fra Ristoro da Campi, Fra Sisto, and Fra Giovanni da Campi. Fra Giovanni was a scholar or imitator of Arnolfo di Cambio, and the two former were the architects who restored the Ponte alla Carraia and the Ponte Santa Trinita after their destruction in 1269. The facade (with the exception of the lower part, which belongs to the fourteenth century) was designed by Leo Battista Alberti, whose friends the Rucellai were the chief benefactors of this church; the lovely but completely restored pointed arcades on the right, with niches for tombs and armorial bearings, were designed by Brunelleschi. On the left, though in part reduced to vile usage, there is a bit comparatively less altered. The interior was completed soon after the middle of the fourteenth century, when Fra Jacopo Passavanti--the author of that model of pure Tuscan prose, _Lo Specchio della vera Penitenza_--was Prior of the convent. The campanile is said to have been designed by another Dominican, Fra Jacopo Talenti, the probable architect of the so-called Spanish Chapel in the cloisters on the left of the church, of which more presently. During the great siege of Florence the mantle of Savonarola seemed to have fallen upon the heroic Prior of Santa Maria Novella, Fra Benedetto da Foiano. When the news of the alliance between Pope and Emperor came to Florence, while all Bologna was in festa for the coronation of the Emperor, Varchi tells us that Fra Benedetto delivered a great sermon in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, which was thrown open to all who would come to hear; in which sermon he proved from passages in the Old and New Testaments that Florence would be delivered from all dangers, and then enjoy perpetual perfect felicity in the liberty she so desired. With such grace and eloquence did he speak, that the vast audience was moved to tears and to joy by turns. At the end, "with ineffable gestures and words," he gave to the Gonfaloniere, Raffaello Girolami, a standard upon one side of which was a Christ victorious over the hostile soldiery, and upon the other the red Cross of the Florentine Commune, saying: _Cum hoc et in hoc vinces._ After the capitulation Malatesta Baglioni seized the friar and sent him to Rome, where he was slowly starved to death in the dungeon of Sant' Angelo. The interior was thus not quite finished, when Boccaccio's seven maidens met here on a Wednesday morning in early spring in that terrible year of pestilence, 1348; yet we may readily picture to ourselves the scene described in the introduction to the _Decameron_; the empty church; the girls in their dark mourning garb, after hearing Mass, seated together in a side chapel and gradually passing from telling their beads to discussing more mundane matters; and then, no sooner do three members of the other sex appear upon the scenes than a sudden gleam of gladness lights up their faces, and even the plague itself is forgotten. One of them, indeed, blushed; "she became all crimson in the face through modesty," says Boccaccio, "because there was one of their number who was beloved by one of these youths;" but afterwards found no difficulty in rivalling the others in the impropriety of her talk. Entering the western portal, we find ourselves in a nave of rather large proportions, somewhat dark but not without a glow from the stained glass windows--adapted above all for preaching. As in Santa Croce, it is cut across by a line of chapels, thus giving the whole a T shape, and what represents the apse is merely a deeper and taller recess behind the high altar. There is nothing much to interest us here in the nave or aisles, save, by the side of the central door, one of the very few extant works of Masaccio, a fresco representing the Blessed Trinity adored by the Madonna and St. John, with two kneeling donors--portraits of which no amount of restoration can altogether destroy the truth and grandeur. The Annunciation, on the opposite side of the door, is a mediocre fresco of the fourteenth century. The Crucifix above is one of several works of the kind ascribed to Giotto. It will be best to take the chapels at the end of the nave and in the transepts in the order into which they fall, as illustrating the development of Florentine art. On the right a flight of steps leads up into the Rucellai chapel where, half concealed in darkness, hangs the famous picture once supposed to mark the very birthday of Florentine painting. That Cimabue really painted a glorious Madonna for this church, which was worshipped by a king and hailed with acclamation by a rejoicing people, is to be most firmly and devoutly held. Unfortunately, it seems highly probable that this picture is not Cimabue's Madonna. It is decidedly Sienese in character, and, as there is documentary evidence that Duccio of Siena painted a Madonna for Santa Maria Novella, and as the attendant Angels are in all respects similar to those in Duccio's authenticated works, the picture is probably his. It deserves all veneration, nevertheless, for it is a noble picture in the truest sense of the word. In the same chapel is the monument of the Dominican nun, the Beata Villana, by Bernardo Rossellino. Crossing the church to the chapel in the left transept, the Strozzi Chapel, we mount into the true atmosphere of the Middle Ages--into one of those pictured theatres which set before us in part what Dante gave in full in his _Commedia_. The whole chapel is dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas, the glory of the philosophy of the mediæval world and, above all, of the Dominican order, whose cardinal virtues are extolled in allegorical fashion on the ceiling; but the frescoes are drawn from the work of his greatest Florentine disciple, Dante Alighieri, in whose poem Thomas mainly lives for the non-Catholic world. It contains all Orcagna's extant work in painting. The altar piece, executed by Andrea Orcagna in 1357, is the grandest of its kind belonging to the Giottesque period. Its central motive, of the Saviour delivering the keys to St. Peter and the Summa to St. Thomas, the spiritual and philosophical regimens of the mediæval world, is very finely rendered; while the angelic choir is a foretaste of Angelico. Madonna presents St. Thomas; the Baptist, St. Peter; Michael and Catherine are in attendance upon the Queen of Heaven, Lawrence and Paul upon the Precursor. The predella represents St. Peter walking upon the waves, with on either side an episode in the life of St. Thomas and a miracle of St. Lawrence. The frescoes are best seen on a very bright morning, shortly before noon. The Last Judgment, by Andrea, shows the traditional representation of the Angels with trumpets and with the emblems of the Passion, wheeling round the Judge; and the dead rising to judgment, impelled irresistibly to right or left even before the sentence is pronounced. Above the one band, kneels the white-robed Madonna in intercession--type of the Divine Mercy as in Dante; over the others, at the head of the Apostles, is the Baptist who seems appealing for judgment--type of the Divine Justice. This placing Mary and St John opposite to each other, as in Dante's Rose of Paradise, is typical of Florentine art; Santa Maria del Fiore and San Giovanni are, as it were, inseparable. Among the blessed is Dante, gazing up in fixed adoration at the Madonna, as when following St Bernard's prayer at the close of his Vision; on the other side some of the faces of the lost are a miracle of expression. The Hell on the right wall, by Andrea's brother Leonardo, is more immediately taken from the _Commedia_. The Paradise on the left, or, rather, the Empyrean Heaven--with the faces _suadi di carita_, Angels and Saints absorbed in vision and love of God--is by Andrea himself, and is more directly pictorial than Dante's _Paradiso_ could admit. Christ and the Madonna are enthroned side by side, whereas we do not actually see Him in human form in the _Commedia_,--perhaps in accordance with that reverence which impels the divine poet to make the name _Cristo_ rhyme with nothing but itself. For sheer loveliness in detail, no other fourteenth century master produced anything to compare with this fresco; it may be said to mark the advent of a new element in Italian art. Thence we pass into the early Renaissance with Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, with Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi. In the chapel to the left of the choir hangs Filippo Brunelleschi's famous wooden Crucifix, carved in friendly rivalry with Donatello. The rival piece, Donatello's share in this sculptured _tenzone_, has been seen in Santa Croce. In the choir are frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio, and a fine brass by Lorenzo Ghiberti. These frescoes were begun in 1486, immediately after the completion of the Santa Trinita series, and finished in 1490; and, though devoid of the highest artistic qualities, are eminently characteristic of their epoch. Though representing scenes from the life of the Madonna and the Baptist, this is entirely subordinated to the portrait groups of noble Florentines and their ladies, introduced as usually utterly uninterested spectators of the sacred events. As religious pictures they are naught; but as representations of contemporary Florentine life, most valuable. Hardly elsewhere shall you see so fine a series of portraits of the men and women of the early Renaissance; but they have other things to think of than the Gospel history. Look at the scene of the Angel appearing to Zacharias. The actual event is hardly noticed; hidden in the throng of citizens, too busily living the life of the Renaissance to attend to such trifles; besides, it would not improve their style to read St. Luke. In the Visitation, the Nativity of the Baptist, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, a fashionable beauty of the period sweeps in with her attendants--and it is hardly uncharitable to suppose that, if not herself, at least her painter thought more of her fine clothes than of her devotional aspect. The portraits of the donors, Giovanni Tornabuoni and his wife, are on the window wall. In the scene of the expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, a group of painters stands together (towards the window); the old cleanly-shaven man in a red hat is Alessio Baldovinetti, Ghirlandaio's master; next to him, with a lot of dark hair, dressed in a red mantle and blue vest, is Domenico Ghirlandaio himself; his pupil and brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, and his brother, David Ghirlandaio, are with him--the latter being the figure with shoulder turned and hat on head. In the apparition to Zacharias, among the numerous portraits, a group of four half figures discussing at the foot of the history is of special interest; three of them are said to represent Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landini, and Angelo Poliziano (in the middle, slightly raising his hand); the fourth, turned to speak to Landini, is said by Vasari to be a famous teacher of Greek, Demetrius, but now supposed to be Gentile Becchi, a learned bishop of Arezzo. The stained glass was designed by Filippino Lippi. Under the high altar rests the body of the Blessed John of Salerno, the "Apostle of Florence," who brought the first band of Dominicans to the city. Less admired, but in some respects more admirable, are the frescoes by Filippino Lippi in the chapel on the right of the choir, almost his last works, painted about 1502, and very much injured by restoration. The window is also from his design. The frescoes represent scenes from the lives of St. John and St. Philip, and are remarkable for their lavish display of Roman antiquities, in which they challenge comparison with Andrea Mantegna. The scene of St. Philip exorcising the dragon is especially fine. Observe how the characteristic intensity of the school of Botticelli is shown in the way in which the very statues take part in the action. Mars flourishes his broken spear, his wolves and kites cower to him for protection from the emissaries of the new faith, whose triumph is further symbolised in the two figures above of ancient deities conquered by Angels. An analogous instance will be found in Botticelli's famous Calumny in the Uffizi. In this statue of Mars is seen the last rendering of the old Florentine tradition of their _primo padrone_. Thus, perhaps, did the new pagans of the Renaissance lovingly idealise "that mutilated stone which guards the bridge." The monument of the elder Filippo Strozzi, in the same chapel, is a fine piece of work by Benedetto da Maiano, with a lovely tondo of the Madonna and Child attended by Angels. And we should also notice Giovanni della Robbia's fountain in the sacristy, before passing into the cloisters. Here in the cloisters we pass back again into more purely mediæval thought. Passing some early frescoes of the life of the Madonna--the dream of Joachim, his meeting St. Anne, the Birth and Presentation of the Blessed Virgin--which Ruskin believed to be by Giotto himself--we enter to the left the delicious Green Cloisters; a pleasant lounging place in summer. In the lunettes along the walls are frescoed scenes from Genesis in _terra verde_, of which the most notable are by Paolo Uccello--the Flood and the Sacrifice of Noah. Uccello's interests were scientific rather than artistic. These frescoes are amazingly clever exercises in the new art of perspective, the _dolce cosa_ as he called it when his wife complained of his absorption; but are more curious than beautiful, and hardly inspire us with more than mild admiration at the painter's cleverness in poising the figure--which, we regret to say, he intends for the Almighty--so ingeniously in mid air. But out of these cloisters, on the right, opens the so-called Spanish Chapel--the Cappella degli Spagnuoli--one of the rarest buildings in Italy for the student of mediæval doctrine. Here, as in the Strozzi Chapel, we are in the grasp of the same mighty spirit that inspired the _Divina Commedia_ and the _De Monarchia_, although the actual execution falls far below the design. The chapel--designed by Fra Jacopo Talenti in 1320--was formerly the chapter-house of the convent; it seems to have acquired the title of Spanish Chapel in the days of Duke Cosimo I., when Spaniards swarmed in Florence and were wont to hold solemn festival here on St. James' day. The frescoes that cover its ceiling and walls were executed about the middle of the fourteenth century--according to Vasari by Simone Martini and Taddeo Gaddi, though this seems highly doubtful. Their general design is possibly due to Fra Jacopo Passavanti. They set forth the Dominican ideal, the Church and the world as the Friars Preachers conceived of them, even as Giotto's famous allegories at Assisi show us the same through Franciscan glasses. While Orcagna painted the world beyond the grave in honour of the Angelical Doctor, these artists set forth the present world as it should be under his direction and that of his brothers, the "hounds of the Lord," _domini canes_, who defended the _orto cattolico_. The vaulted roof is divided into four segments; and the picture in each segment corresponds to a great fresco on the wall below. On the wall opposite, as we enter, is represented the supreme event of the world's history, from which all the rest starts and upon which the whole hinges, the Passion of Christ, leading up to the Resurrection on the roof above it. On the segment of the roof over the door is the Ascension, and on the wall below was shown (now much damaged) how the Dominicans received and carried out Christ's last injunction to His disciples. In the left segment of the roof is the Descent of the Holy Spirit; and beneath it, on the wall, the result of this outpouring upon the world of intellect is shown in the triumph of Philosophy in the person of Aquinas, its supreme mediæval exponent. In the right segment is the Ship of Peter; and, on the wall below, is seen how Peter becomes a fisher of men, the triumph of his Church under the guidance of the Dominicans. These two great allegorical frescoes--the triumph of St. Thomas and the _civil briga_ of the Church--are thus a more complete working out of the scheme set forth more simply by Orcagna in his altar piece in the Strozzi Chapel above--the functions delegated by Christ to Peter and St. Thomas--the power of the Keys and the doctrine of the _Summa Theologica_. In the centre of the philosophical allegory, St. Thomas Aquinas is seated on a Gothic throne, with an open book in his hands bearing the text from the Book of Wisdom with which the Church begins her lesson in his honour: _Optavi, et datus est mihi sensus. Invocavi, et venit in me spiritus sapientiae; et praeposui illam regnis et sedibus._[52] Over his head hover seven Angels, invested with the emblems of the three theological and four cardinal virtues; around him are seated the Apostles and Prophets, in support of his doctrine; beneath his feet heresiarchs are humbled--Sabellius and Arius, to wit--and even Averrhoes, who "made the great comment," seems subdued. Below, in fourteen little shrines, are allegorical figures of the fourteen sciences which meet and are given ultimate form in his work, and at the feet of each maiden sits some great exponent of the science. From right to left, the seven liberal arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium lead up to the Science of Numbers, represented on earth by Pythagoras; from left to right, the earthly and celestial sciences lead up to Dogmatic Theology, represented by Augustine.[53]   [52] "I desired, and understanding was given me. I prayed, and the   spirit of Wisdom came upon me; and I preferred her before kingdoms and  thrones."