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." |
|
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