[53] The identification of each science and its representative
is rather doubtful, especially in the celestial series. From altar
to centre, Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic are represented by
Aelius Donatus, Cicero and Aristotle (or Zeno); Music, Astronomy,
Geometry, Arithmetic by Tubal Cain, Zoroaster (or Ptolemy), Euclid
and Pythagoras. From window to centre, Civil Law is represented
by Justinian, Canon Law by Innocent III., Philosophy apparently
by Boethius; the next four seem to be Contemplative, Moral, Mystical
and Dogmatic Theology, and their representatives Jerome, John of
Damascus, Basil and Augustine--but, with the exception of St. Augustine,
the identification is quite arbitrary. Possibly if the Logician is
Zeno, the Philosopher is not Boethius but Aristotle; the figure
above, representing Philosophy, holds a mirror which seems to symbolise
the divine creation of the cosmic Universe.
On the opposite wall is
the Church militant and triumphant. Before Santa Maria del Fiore, here
symbolising the Church militant, sit the two ideal guides of man, according
to the dual scheme of Dante's _De Monarchia_--the Pope and the Emperor. On
either side are seated in a descending line the great dignitaries of the
Church and the Empire; Cardinal and Abbot, King and Baron; while all around
are gathered the clergy and the laity, religious of every order, judges and
nobles, merchants and scholars, with a few ladies kneeling on the right,
one of whom is said to be Petrarch's Laura. Many of these figures
are apparently portraits, but the attempts at identification--such as
that of the Pope with Benedict XI., the Emperor with Henry
VII.--are entirely untrustworthy. The Bishop, however, standing at the head
of the clergy, is apparently Agnolo Acciaiuoli, Bishop of Florence;
and the French cavalier, in short tunic and hood, standing opposite to
him at the head of the laity (formerly called Cimabue), is
said--very questionably--to be the Duke of Athens. At the feet of the
successors of Peter and Cæsar are gathered the sheep and lambs of Christ's
fold, watched over by the black and white hounds that symbolise
the Dominicans. On the right, Dominic urges on his watchdogs against
the heretical wolves who are carrying off the lambs of the flock;
Peter Martyr hammers the unbelievers with the weapon of argument
alone; Aquinas convinces them with the light of his philosophic doctrine.
But beyond is Acrasia's Bower of Bliss, a mediaeval rendering of
what Spenser hereafter so divinely sung in the second book of the
_Faerie Queene_. Figures of vice sit enthroned; while seven damsels,
Acrasia's handmaidens, dance before them; and youth sports in the shade of
the forbidden myrtles. Then come repentance and the confessional;
a Dominican friar (not one of the great Saints, but any humble priest
of the order) absolves the penitents; St Dominic appears again, and
shows them the way to Paradise; and then, becoming as little children,
they are crowned by the Angels, and St. Peter lets them through the
gate to join the Church Triumphant. Above in the Empyrean is the Throne
of the Lord, with the Lamb and the four mystical Beasts, and the
Madonna herself standing up at the head of the Angelic Hierarchies.
In
the great cloisters beyond, the Ciompi made their headquarters in 1378, under
their Eight of Santa Maria Novella; and, at the request of their leaders, the
prior of the convent sent some of his preachers to furnish them with
spiritual consolation and advice.
Passing through the Piazza--where
marble obelisks resting on tortoises mark the goals of the chariot races held
here under Cosimo I. and his successors, on the Eve of St. John--and down the
Via della Scala, we come to the former Spezeria of the convent, still a
flourishing manufactory of perfumes, liqueurs and the like, though no longer
in the hands of the friars. In what was once its chapel, are frescoes
by Spinello Aretino and his pupils, painted at the end of the
Trecento, and representing the Passion of Christ. They are inferior
to Spinello's work at Siena and on San Miniato, but the Christ bearing the
Cross has much majesty, and, in the scene of the washing of the feet, the
nervous action of Judas as he starts up is finely conceived.
The famous
Orti Oricellari, the gardens of the Rucellai, lie further down the Via della
Scala. Here in the early days of the Cinquecento the most brilliant literary
circles of Florentine society met; and there was a sort of revival of the old
Platonic Academy, which had died out with Marsilio Ficino. Machiavelli wrote
for these gatherings his discourses on Livy and his Art of War. Although
their meetings were mainly frequented by Mediceans, some of the younger
members were ardent Republicans; and it was here that a conspiracy was
hatched against the life of the Cardinal Giulio dei Medici, for which
Jacopo da Diacceto and one of the Alamanni died upon the scaffold. In
later days these Orti belonged to Bianca Cappello. At the corner of
the adjoining palace is a little Madonna by Luca della Robbia; and
further on, in a lunette on the right of the former church of San Jacopo
in Ripoli, there is a group of Madonna and Child with St. James and
St. Dominic, probably by Andrea della Robbia. In the Via di
Palazzuolo, the little church of San Francesco dei Vanchetoni contains two
small marble busts of children, exceedingly delicately modelled, supposed
to represent the Gesu Bambino and the boy Baptist; they are ascribed
to Donatello, but recent writers attribute them to Desiderio
or Rossellino.
In the Borgo Ognissanti, where the Swiss of Charles
VIII. in 1494, forcing their way into the city from the Porta al Prato, were
driven back by the inhabitants, are the church of Ognissanti and
the Franciscan convent of San Salvadore. The church and convent
originally belonged to the Frati Umiliati, who settled here in 1251, were
largely influential in promoting the Florentine wool trade, and
exceedingly democratic in their sympathies. Their convent was a great place
for political meetings in the days of Giano della Bella, who used to
walk in their garden taking counsel with his friends. After the siege
they were expelled from Florence, and the church and convent made over
to the Franciscans of the Osservanza, who are said to have brought
hither the habit which St. Francis wore when he received the Stigmata.
The present church was built in the second half of the sixteenth
century, but contains some excellent pictures and frescoes belonging to
the older edifice. Over the second altar to the right is a frescoed
Pieta, one of the earliest works of Domenico Ghirlandaio, with above it
the Madonna taking the Vespucci family under her protection--among
them Amerigo, who was to give his name to the new continent of
America. Further on, over a confessional, is Sandro Botticelli's St.
Augustine, the only fresco of his still remaining in Florence; opposite to
it, over a confessional on the left, is St. Jerome by
Domenico Ghirlandaio; both apparently painted in 1480. In the left transept
is a Crucifix ascribed to Giotto; Vasari tells us that it was the original
of the numerous works of this kind which Puccio Capanna and others of his
pupils multiplied through Italy. In the sacristy is a much restored fresco of
the Crucifixion, belonging to the Trecento. Sandro Botticelli was buried in
this church in 1510, and, two years later, Amerigo Vespucci in 1512. In the
former Refectory of the convent is a fresco of the Last Supper, painted by
Domenico Ghirlandaio in 1480, and very much finer than his similar work in
San Marco. In the lunette over the portal of the church is represented
the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, by Giovanni della Robbia.
The
Borgo Ognissanti leads hence westward into the Via del Prato, and through the
Porta al Prato, one of the four gates of the third wall of the city, begun by
Arnolfo in 1284; now merely a mutilated torso of Arnolfo's stately structure,
left stranded in the prosaic wilderness of the modern Viale. The fresco in
the lunette is by Michele di Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. Down towards the Arno a
single tower remains from the old walls, mutilated, solitary and degraded so
as to look a mere modern bit of masonry.
Beyond are the Cascine
Gardens, stretching for some two miles between the Arno and the Mugnone,
delicious to linger in, and a sacred place to all lovers of English poetry.
For here, towards the close of 1819, "in a wood that skirts the Arno, near
Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at
once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the
autumnal rains," Shelley wrote the divinest of all English lyrics: the _Ode
to the West Wind_.
"Make me thy lyre, even as the forest
is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of
thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal
tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, My
spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the
universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by
the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished
hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my
lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far
behind?"
[Illustration: IN THE BOBOLI
GARDENS]
CHAPTER XII
_Across the Arno_
"Come a man
destra, per salire al monte, dove siede la Chiesa che
soggioga la ben guidata sopra Rubaconte, si rompe del montar
l'ardita foga. per le scalee che si fero ad etade ch'era
sicuro il quaderno e la doga." --_Dante._
Across the
river, partly lying along its bank and partly climbing up St. George's hill
to the south, lies what was the Sesto d'Oltrarno in the days when old
Florence was divided into sextaries, and became the Quartiere di Santo
Spirito when the city was reorganised in quarters after the expulsion of the
Duke of Athens. It was not originally a part of the city itself. At the time
of building the second walls in the twelfth century (_see_ chapter i.), there
were merely three _borghi_ or suburbs beyond the Arno, inhabited by the
poorest classes, each of the three beginning at the head of the Ponte
Vecchio; the Borgo Pidiglioso to the east, towards the present Via dei
Bardi and Santa Lucia, where the road went on to Rome by way of Figline
and Arezzo; the Borgo di Santa Felicita, to the south, ending in a gate
at the present Piazza San Felice, where the road to Siena commenced;
and the Borgo San Jacopo to the west, with a gate in the present
Piazza Frescobaldi, on the way to Pisa. A few rich and noble families
began to settle here towards the beginning of the thirteenth century.
When the dissensions between Guelfs and Ghibellines came to a head in
1215, the Nerli and Rossi were Guelfs, the Gangalandi, Ubbriachi
and Mannelli, Ghibellines; and these were then the only nobles of
the Oltrarno, although Villani tells us that "the Frescobaldi and
the Bardi and the Mozzi were already beginning to become powerful."
The _Primo Popolo_ commenced to wall it in, in 1250, with the stones
from dismantled feudal towers; and it was finally included in the
third circle of the walls at the beginning of the fourteenth
century--a point to which we shall return.
As we saw in chapter iii.,
it was in the Oltrarno that the nobles made their last stand against the
People in 1343, when the Nerli held the Ponte alla Carraia, the Frescobaldi
and Mannelli the Ponte di Santa Trinita, and the Rossi and Bardi defended the
Ponte Vecchio and the Ponte Rubaconte, with the narrow streets between. In
the following century it was the headquarters of the faction opposed to the
Medici, the Party of the Mountain, as it was called, from the lofty
position of Luca Pitti's great palace. A century more, and it became the
seat of government under the Medicean Grand Dukes, and the whole
was crowned by the fortress of the Belvedere which Buontalenti built
in 1590 for Ferdinand I.
At the head of the Ponte Vecchio, to right
and left, the Borgo San Jacopo and the Via dei Bardi still retain something
of their old characteristics and mediæval appearance. In the former
especially are some fine towers remaining of the Rossi, Nerli, Barbadori, and
other families; particularly one which belonged to the Marsili, opposite
the church of San Jacopo. A side street, the Via dei Giudei,
once inhabited by Jews, is still very picturesque. The little church of
San Jacopo, originally built in the eleventh century, but
entirely reconstructed in more recent times, still possesses an old
Romanesque portico. In this church some of the more bitter spirits among
the nobles held a council in 1294, and unanimously decided to murder
Giano della Bella. "The dogs of the people," said Messer Berto
Frescobaldi, who was the spokesman, "have robbed us of honour and office, and
we cannot enter the Palace. If we beat one of our own servants, we
are undone. Wherefore, my lords, it is my rede that we should come
forth from this servitude. Let us take up arms and assemble in the
piazza; let us slay the plebeians, friends and foes alike, so that never
again shall we or our children be subjected to them." His plan,
however, seemed too dangerous to the other nobles. "If our design failed,"
said Messer Baldo della Tosa, "we should all be killed"; and it was
decided to proceed by more prudent means, and to disorganise the People
and undermine Giano's credit with them, before taking further
action.
At the end of the Borgo San Jacopo, the Frescobaldi had their
palaces in the piazza which still bears their name, at the head of the
Ponte Santa Trinita. Here Charles of Valois took up his headquarters
in November 1301, with the intention of keeping this portion of the
city in case he lost his hold of the rest. Opposite the bridge the
Capponi had their palace; the heroic Piero Capponi lived here; and then
the Gonfaloniere Niccolo, who, accused of favouring the Medici,
was deprived of his office, and died broken-hearted just before the
siege.
On the left of the Ponte Vecchio the Via dei Bardi, where the
nobles and retainers of that fierce old house made their last stand
against the People after the Frescobaldi had been forced to surrender,
has been much spoilt of recent years, though a few fine palaces
remain, and some towers, especially two, of the Mannelli and Ridolfi, at
the beginning of the street. In the Via dei Bardi, the fine Capponi
Palace was built for Niccolo da Uzzano at the beginning of the
Quattrocento. The church of Santa Lucia has a Della Robbia relief over the
entrance, and a picture of the school of Fra Filippo in the interior. The
street ends in the Piazza dei Mozzi, opposite the Ponte alle Grazie or
Ponte Rubaconte, where stands the Torrigiani Palace, built by
Baccio d'Agnolo in the sixteenth century.
From the Ponte Vecchio the
Via Guicciardini leads to the Pitti Palace, and onwards to the Via Romana and
great Porta Romana. In the Piazza Santa Felicita a column marks the site of
one of St. Peter Martyr's triumphs over the Paterini; the loggia is by
Vasari; the historian Guicciardini is buried in the church, which contains
some second-rate pictures. Further on, on the right, is the house where
Machiavelli died, a disappointed and misunderstood patriot, in 1527; on the
left is Guicciardini's palace.
The magnificent Palazzo Pitti was
commenced shortly after 1440 by Brunelleschi and Michelozzo, for Luca Pitti,
that vain and incompetent old noble who hoped to eclipse the Medici during
the closing days of the elder Cosimo. Messer Luca grew so confident,
Machiavelli tells us, that "he began two buildings, one in Florence and the
other at Ruciano, a place about a mile from the city; both were in right
royal style, but that in the city was altogether greater than any other
that had ever been built by a private citizen until that day. And
to complete them he shrank from no measures, however extraordinary;
for not only did citizens and private persons contribute and aid him
with things necessary for the building, but communes and corporations
lent him help. Besides this, all who were under ban, and whosoever
had committed murder or theft or anything else for which he feared
public punishment, provided that he were a person useful for the work,
found secure refuge within these buildings." After the triumph of Piero
dei Medici in 1466, Luca Pitti was pardoned, but ruined.
"Straightway," writes Machiavelli, "he learned what difference there is
between success and failure, between dishonour and honour. A great
solitude reigned in his houses, which before had been frequented by
vast throngs of citizens. In the street his friends and relations
feared not merely to accompany him, but even to salute him, since from
some of them the honours had been taken, from others their property,
and all alike were menaced. The superb edifices which he had
commenced were abandoned by the builders; the benefits which had been
heaped upon him in the past were changed into injuries, honours into
insults. Many of those who had freely given him something of great value,
now demanded it back from him as having been merely lent, and
those others, who had been wont to praise him to the skies, now blamed
him for an ungrateful and violent man. Wherefore too late did he
repent that he had not trusted Niccolo Soderini, and sought rather to
die with honour with arms in hand, than live on in dishonour among
his victorious enemies."
In 1549 the unfinished palace was sold by
Luca Pitti's descendants to Eleonora of Toledo, Duke Cosimo's wife, and it
was finished by Ammanati during the latter half of the sixteenth century; the
wings are a later addition. The whole building, with its huge dimensions
and boldly rusticated masonry, is one of the most monumental and
grandiose of European palaces. It was first the residence of the Medicean
Grand Dukes, then of their Austrian successors, and is now one of the
royal palaces of the King of Italy.
In one of the royal apartments
there is a famous picture of Botticelli's, Pallas taming a Centaur, which
probably refers to the return of Lorenzo the Magnificent to Florence after
his diplomatic victory over the King of Naples and the League, in 1480. The
beautiful and stately Medicean Pallas is wreathed all over with olive
branches; her mantle is green, like that of Dante's Beatrice in the
Earthly Paradise; her white dress is copiously besprinkled with
Lorenzo's crest, the three rings. The Centaur himself is splendidly
conceived and realised--a characteristic Botticellian modification of
those terrible beings who hunt the damned souls of tyrants and
robbers through the river of blood in Dante's Hell. Opposite the Pallas
there is a small tondo, in which the Madonna and four Angels are adoring
the divine Child in a garden of roses and wild strawberries. The
latter was discovered in 1899 and ascribed to Botticelli, but appears to
be only a school piece.
The great glory of the Pitti Palace is its
picture gallery, a magnificent array of masterpieces, hung in sumptuously
decorated rooms with allegorical ceiling-paintings in the overblown and
superficial style of the artists of the decadence--Pietro da Cortona and
others of his kind:--
"Both in Florence and in Rome
The elder race so make themselves at home That scarce we give a glance
to ceilingfuls Of such like as Francesco."
So Robert Browning
writes of one of Pietro's pupils. The Quattrocento is, with a few noteworthy
exceptions, scarcely represented; but no collection is richer in the works of
the great Italians of the Cinquecento at the culmination of the Renaissance.
We can here, as in the Uffizi, merely indicate the more important pictures in
each room. At the top of the staircase is a marble fountain ascribed
to Donatello. The names of the rooms are usually derived from the subjects
painted on the ceilings; we take the six principal
saloons first.
In the _Sala dell' Iliade_.
First, the three
masterpieces of this room. Fra Bartolommeo's great altar-piece painted in
1512 for San Marco (208), representing Madonna and Child surrounded by
Saints, with a group of Dominicans attending upon the mystic marriage of St.
Catherine of Siena, is a splendid picture, but darkened and injured; the two
_putti_, making melody at the foot of Madonna's throne, are quite Venetian in
character.
Titian's Cardinal Ippolito dei Medici (201) is one of the
master's grandest portraits; the Cardinal is represented in Hungarian
military costume. Ippolito, like his reputed father the younger Giuliano,
was one of the more respectable members of the elder branch of the
Medici; he was brought up with Alessandro, but the two youths hated each
other mortally from their boyhood. Young and handsome, cultured and
lavishly generous, Ippolito was exceedingly popular and ambitious, and
felt bitterly the injustice of Pope Clement in making Alessandro lord
of Florence instead of him. Clement conferred an archbishopric and
other things upon him, but could by no means keep him quiet. "Aspiring
to temporal greatness," writes Varchi, "and having set his heart
upon things of war rather than affairs of the Church, he hardly
knew himself what he wanted, and was never content." The Pope, towards
whom Ippolito openly showed his contempt, complained that he could
not exert any control over so eccentric and headstrong a character,
_un cervello eteroclito e cosi balzano_. After the Pope's death,
the Cardinal intrigued with the Florentine exiles in order to
supplant Alessandro, upon which the Duke had him poisoned in 1535, in
the twenty-fifth year of his age. Titian painted him in 1533.
The
famous Concert (185), representing a passionate-faced monk of the Augustinian
order at the harpsichord, while an older and more prosaic ecclesiastic stands
behind him with a viol, and a youthful worldling half carelessly listens, was
formerly taken as the standard of Giorgione's work; it is now usually
regarded as an early Titian. Although much damaged and repainted, it remains
one of the most beautiful of Venetian painted lyrics.
Andrea del
Sarto's two Assumptions, one (225) painted before 1526 for a church at
Cortona, the other (191) left unfinished in 1531, show the artist
ineffectually striving after the sublime, and helplessly pulled down to earth
by the draperies of the Apostles round the tomb. Of smaller works should be
noticed: an early Titian, the Saviour (228); two portraits by Ridolfo
Ghirlandaio (224, 207), of which the latter, a goldsmith, has been ascribed
to Leonardo; a lady known as _La Gravida_ (229), probably by Raphael early in
his Florentine period; Daniele Barbaro by Paolo Veronese (216); Titian's
Philip II. of Spain (200); a male portrait by Andrea del Sarto (184), said,
with little plausibility, to represent himself; a Holy Family (235) by
Rubens.
In the _Sala di Saturno_.
Here are some of the
choicest pictures in the collection, including a whole series of Raphael's.
Raphael's Madonna del Gran Duca (178)--so called from its modern purchaser,
Ferdinand III.--was painted in 1504 or 1505, either before leaving Urbino or
shortly after his arrival in Florence; it is the sweetest and most purely
devotional of all his Madonnas. Morelli points out that it is strongly
reminiscent of Raphael's first master, Timoteo Viti. The portraits of Angelo
Doni and Maddalena Doni (61 and 59) also belong to the beginning of
Raphael's Florentine epoch, about 1505 or 1506, and show how much he felt
the influence of Leonardo; Angelo Doni, it will be remembered, was
the parsimonious merchant for whom Michelangelo painted the Madonna of
the Tribuna. The Madonna del Baldacchino (165) was commenced by Raphael
in 1508, the last picture of his Florentine period, ordered by the Dei for
Santo Spirito; it shows the influence of Fra Bartolommeo in its composition,
and was left unfinished when Pope Julius summoned the painter to Rome; in its
present state, there is hardly anything of Raphael's about it. The beautiful
Madonna della Seggiola (151) is a work of Raphael's Roman period, painted in
1513 or 1514. The Vision of Ezekiel (174) is slightly later, painted in 1517
or thereabout, and shows that Raphael had felt the influence of Michelangelo;
one of the smallest and most sublime of all his pictures; the landscape is
less conventional than we often see in his later works. Neither of the
two portraits ascribed to Raphael in this room (171, 158) can any
longer be accepted as a genuine work of the master.
Andrea del Sarto
and Fra Bartolommeo are likewise represented by masterpieces. The Friar's
Risen Christ with Four Evangelists (159), beneath whom two beautiful _putti_
hold the orb of the world, was painted in 1516, the year before the painter's
death; it is one of the noblest and most divine representations of the
Saviour in the whole history of art. Andrea's so-called _Disputa_ (172), in
which a group of Saints is discussing the mystery of the Blessed Trinity,
painted in 1518, is as superbly coloured as any of the greatest
Venetian triumphs; the Magdalene is again the painter's own wife.
Perugino's Deposition from the Cross (164), painted in 1495, shows the
great Umbrian also at his best.
Among the minor pictures in this room
may be noted a pretty little trifle of the school of Raphael, so often
copied, Apollo and the Muses (167), questionably ascribed to Giulio Romano;
and a Nymph pursued by a Satyr (147), supposed by Morelli to be by Giorgione,
now assigned to Dosso Dossi of Ferrara.
In the _Sala di
Giove_.
The treasure of this room is the _Velata_ (245), Raphael's
own portrait of the woman that he loved, to whom he wrote his sonnets,
and whom he afterwards idealised as the Madonna di San Sisto;
her personality remains a mystery. Titian's _Bella_ (18), a rather
stolid rejuvenation of Eleonora Gonzaga, is chiefly valuable for
its magnificent representation of a wonderful Venetian costume. Here
are three works of Andrea del Sarto--the Annunciation (124), the
Madonna in Glory, with four Saints (123), and St John the Baptist (272);
the first is one of his most beautiful paintings. The picture supposed
to represent Andrea and his wife (118) is not by the master
himself. Bartolommeo's St Mark (125) was painted by him in 1514, to show
that he could do large figures, whereas he had been told that he had
a _maniera minuta_; it is not altogether successful. His Deposition
from the Cross (64) is one of his latest and most earnest religious
works. The Three Fates (113) by Rosso Fiorentino is an undeniably
powerful and impressive picture; it was formerly ascribed to Michelangelo.
The Three Ages (110), ascribed to Lorenzo Lotto here, was by
Morelli attributed to Giorgione, and is now assigned by highly
competent critics to a certain Morto da Feltre, of whom little is known
save that he is said to have been Giorgione's successful rival for
the favours of a ripe Venetian beauty; the picture itself, though
injured by restoration, belongs to the same category as the Concert. "In
such favourite incidents of Giorgione's school," writes Walter
Pater, "music or music-like intervals in our existence, life itself
is conceived as a sort of listening--listening to music, to the reading of
Bandello's novels, to the sound of water, to time as it flies."
In
the _Sala di Marte_.
The most important pictures of this room are:
Titian's portrait of a young man with a glove (92); the Holy Family, called
of the _Impannata_ or "covered window" (94), a work of Raphael's
Roman period, painted by his scholars, perhaps by Giulio Romano;
Cristofano Allori's Judith (96), a splendid and justly celebrated
picture, showing what exceedingly fine works could be produced by
Florentines even in the decadence (Allori died in 1621); Andrea del Sarto's
scenes from the history of Joseph (87, 88), panels for cassoni or
bridal chests, painted for the marriage of Francesco Borgherini
and Margherita Acciaiuoli; a Rubens, the so-called Four Philosophers
(85), representing himself with his brother, and the scholars Lipsius
and Grotius; Andrea del Sarto's Holy Family (81), one of his last
works, painted in 1529 for Ottaviano dei Medici and said to have
been finished during the siege; Van Dyck's Cardinal Giulio
Bentivoglio (82). It is uncertain whether this Julius II. (79) or that in
the Tribuna of the Uffizi is Raphael's original, but the present
picture appears to be the favourite; both are magnificent portraits of
this terrible old warrior pontiff, who, for all his fierceness, was
the noblest and most enlightened patron that Raphael and Michelangelo
had. It was probably at his bidding that Raphael painted Savonarola
among the Church's doctors and theologians in the Vatican.
In the
_Sala di Apollo_ and _Sala di Venere_.
Here, first of all, is Raphael's
celebrated portrait of Pope Julius' unworthy successor, Leo X. (40), the son
of Lorenzo the Magnificent; on the left--that is, the Pope's right hand--is
the Cardinal Giulio dei Medici, afterwards Pope Clement VII.; behind the
chair is the Cardinal Luigi dei Rossi, the descendant of a daughter of Piero
il Gottoso. One of Raphael's most consummate works.
Andrea del Sarto's
Pieta (58) was painted in 1523 or 1524 for a convent of nuns in the Mugello,
whither Andrea had taken his wife and household while the plague raged in
Florence; it is one of his finest works. Titian's Magdalene (67) has been
called by Ruskin a "disgusting" picture; as a pseudo-religious work, it would
be hard to find anything more offensive; but it has undeniably great
technical qualities. His Pietro Aretino (54), on the other hand, is a
noble portrait of an infamous blackguard. Noteworthy are also Andrea
del Sarto's portrait (66), apparently one of his many representations
of himself, and Murillo's Mother and Child (63).
In the _Sala di
Venere_, are a superb landscape by Rubens (14), sometimes called the Hay
Harvest and sometimes the Return of the Contadini; also a fine female
portrait, wrongly ascribed to Leonardo (140); the Triumph of David by Matteo
Rosselli (13). It should be observed that the gems of the collection are
frequently shifted from room to room for the benefit of the
copyist.
The _Sala dell' Educazione di Giove_ and following
rooms.
A series of smaller rooms, no less gorgeously decorated, adjoins
the Sala dell' Iliade. In the _Sala dell' Educazione di Giove_ are:
Fra Bartolommeo's Holy Family with St. Elizabeth (256), over the door;
the Zingarella or Gipsy Girl (246), a charming little idyllic picture
by Boccaccino of Cremona, formerly ascribed to Garofalo; Philip IV.
of Spain (243) by Velasquez. Carlo Dolci's St Andrew (266) is above
his usual level; but it is rather hard to understand how Guido
Reni's Cleopatra (270) could ever be admired.
In the _Sala di
Prometeo_ are some earlier paintings; but those ascribed to Botticelli,
Filippino Lippi, and Ghirlandaio are merely school-pieces. Fra Filippo
Lippi's Madonna and Child with the Pomegranate (343) is a genuine and
excellent work; in the background are seen the meeting of Joachim and Anne,
with the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. Crowe and Cavalcasella observe that
"this group of the Virgin and Child reminds one forcibly of those by
Donatello or Desiderio da Settignano," and it shows how much the painters of
the Quattrocento were influenced by the sculptors; the Madonna's face,
for no obvious reason, is said to be that of Lucrezia Buti, the girl
whom Lippo carried off from a convent at Prato. A curious little
allegory (336) is ascribed by Morelli to Filippino Lippi. We should also
notice the beautiful Madonna with Angels adoring the Divine Child in a
rose garden (347), a characteristic Florentine work of the latter part
of the Quattrocento, once erroneously ascribed to Filippino Lippi; an Ecce
Homo in fresco by Fra Bartolommeo (377); a Holy Family by Mariotto
Albertinelli (365); and a tondo by Luca Signorelli (355), in which St.
Catherine is apparently writing at the dictation of the Divine Child. But the
two gems of this room are the head of a Saint (370) and the portrait of a man
in red dress and hat (375) by one of the earlier painters of the
Quattrocento, probably Domenico Veneziano; "perhaps," writes Mr Berenson,
"the first great achievements in this kind of the Renaissance." Here, too, is
a fine portrait by Lorenzo Costa (376) of Giovanni Bentivoglio.
In the
_Sala del Poccetti_, _Sala della Giustizia_, _Sala di Flora_, _Sala dei
Putti_, the pictures are, for the most part, unimportant. The so-called
portrait of the _bella Simonetta_, the innamorata of Giuliano dei Medici
(353), is not authentic and should not be ascribed to Sandro Botticelli.
There are some fairly good portraits; a Titian (495), a Sebastiano del Piombo
(409), Duke Cosimo I. by Bronzino (403), Oliver Cromwell by Lely (408).
Calumny by Francia Bigio (427) is curious as a later rendering of a theme
that attracted the greatest masters of the Quattrocento (Botticelli,
Mantegna, Luca Signorelli all tried it). Lovers of Browning will be glad to
have their attention called to the Judith of Artemisia Gentileschi (444): "a
wonder of a woman painting too."
A passage leads down two flights of
steps, with occasional glimpses of the Boboli Gardens, through corridors of
Medicean portraits, Florentine celebrities, old pictures of processions in
piazza, and the like. Then over the Ponte Vecchio, with views of the Arno on
either hand as we cross, to the Uffizi.
* * *
* *
Behind the Pitti Palace are the delicious Boboli Gardens,
commenced for Duke Cosimo I., with shady walks and exquisitely framed views
of Florence. In a grotto near the entrance are four unfinished statues
by Michelangelo; they are usually supposed to have been intended for
the tomb of Julius II., but may possibly have been connected with
the projected facade of San Lorenzo.
Nearly opposite the Palazzo Pitti
is the Casa Guidi, where the Brownings lived and wrote. Here Elizabeth
Barrett Browning died in June 1861, she who "made of her verse a golden ring
linking England to Italy"; these were the famous "Casa Guidi windows" from
which she watched the liberation and unification of Italy:--
"I
heard last night a little child go singing 'Neath Casa Guidi windows,
by the church, _O bella liberta, O bella!_--stringing The same
words still on notes he went in search So high for, you concluded the
upspringing Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch Must leave
the whole bush in a tremble green, And that the heart of Italy must
beat, While such a voice had leave to rise serene 'Twixt
church and palace of a Florence street."
The church in question, San
Felice, contains a good picture of St. Anthony, St. Rock and St. Catherine by
some follower of Botticelli and Filippino Lippi; also a Crucifixion of the
school of Giotto. Thence the Via Mazzetta leads into the Piazza Santo
Spirito, at the corner of which is the Palazzo Guadagni, built by Cronaca at
the end of the Quattrocento; with fine iron work, lantern holders and the
like, on the exterior.
The present church of Santo Spirito--the finest
Early Renaissance church in Florence--was built between 1471 and 1487,
after Brunelleschi's designs, to replace his earlier building which had
been burned down in 1471 on the occasion of the visit of Galeazzo
Maria Sforza to Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother. It is a
fine example of Brunelleschi's adaptation of the early basilican type,
is borne upon graceful Corinthian columns and nobly proportioned.
The octagonal sacristy is by Giuliano da San Gallo and Cronaca,
finished in 1497, and the campanile by Baccio d'Agnolo at the beginning of
the sixteenth century.
The stained glass window over the entrance was
designed by Perugino. In the right transept is an excellent picture by
Filippino Lippi; Madonna and Child with the little St. John, St. Catherine
and St. Nicholas, with the donor, Tanai de' Nerli, and his wife. Also in
the right transept is the tomb of the Capponi; Gino, the conqueror of
Pisa and historian of the Ciompi; Neri, the conqueror of the Casentino;
and that great republican soldier and hero, Piero Capponi, who had
saved Florence from Charles of France and fell in the Pisan war. The
vision of St. Bernard is an old copy from Perugino. None of the
other pictures in the church are more than school pieces; there are two
in the left transept ascribed to Filippino's disappointing
pupil, Raffaellino del Garbo--the Trinita with St. Mary of Egypt and
St. Catherine, and the Madonna with Sts. Lawrence, Stephen, John
and Bernard. The latter picture is by Raffaellino di Carlo.
During the
last quarter of the fourteenth century the convent of Santo Spirito--which is
an Augustinian house--was the centre of a circle of scholars, who represent
an epoch intermediate between the great writers of the Trecento and the
humanists of the early Quattrocento. Prominent among them was Coluccio
Salutati, who for many years served the Republic as Chancellor and died in
1406. He was influential in founding the first chair of Greek, and his
letters on behalf of Florence were so eloquent and powerful that the
"great viper," Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, declared that he dreaded one
of them more than many swords. Also Filippo Villani, the nephew of
the great chroniclers, Giovanni and Matteo, who had succeeded Boccaccio
as lecturer on Dante. They met here with other kindred spirits in the cell
of Fra Luigi Marsili, a learned monk and impassioned worshipper of Petrarch,
upon whose great crusading canzone--_O aspettata in ciel, beata e bella_--he
wrote a commentary which is still extant. Fra Luigi died in 1394. A century
later, the monks of this convent took a violent part in opposition to
Savonarola; and it was here, in the pulpit of the choir of the church, that
Landucci tells us that he heard the bull of excommunication read "by a Fra
Leonardo, their preacher, and an adversary of the said Fra
Girolamo,"--"between two lighted torches and many friars," as he rather
quaintly puts it.
"The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up," says
Browning's Lippo Lippi to his captors; and the Via Mazzetta and the Via Santa
Monaca will take us to it. This church of the Carmelites, Santa Maria del
Carmine, was consecrated in 1422; and, almost immediately after, the
mighty series of frescoes was begun in the Brancacci Chapel at the end of
the right transept--frescoes which were to become the school for
all future painting. In the eighteenth century the greater part of
the church was destroyed by fire, but this chapel was spared by
the flames, and the frescoes, though terribly damaged and
grievously restored, still remain on its walls.
This Brancacci Chapel
of the Carmine plays the same part in the history of painting as the bronze
gates of the Baptistery in that of sculpture. It was in that same eventful
year, 1401, of the famous competition between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, that
the new Giotto was born--Tommaso, the son of a notary in Castello San
Giovanni di Valdarno. With him, as we saw in chapter iii., the second great
epoch of Italian painting, the Quattrocento, or Epoch of Character,
opens. His was a rare and piquant personality; _persona astrattissima e
molto a caso_, says Vasari, "an absent-minded fellow and very
casual." Intent upon his art, he took no care of himself and thought nothing
of the ordinary needs and affairs of the world, though always ready to
do others a good turn. From his general negligence and untidiness, he
was nicknamed _Masaccio_--"hulking Tom"--which has become one of the
most honourable names in the history of art. The little chapel in which
we now stand and survey his handiwork, or what remains of it, is
nothing less than the birthplace of modern painting. Sculpture had
indeed preceded painting in its return to nature and in its direct study
of the human form, and the influence of Donatello lies as strongly
over all the painters of the Quattrocento. Vasari even states that
Masolino da Panicale (Masolino = "dear little Tom"), Masaccio's master,
had been one of Ghiberti's assistants in the casting of the bronze
gates, but this is questionable; it is possible that he had been
Ghiberti's pupil, though he learned the principles of painting from
Gherardo Starnina, one of the last artists of the Trecento. It was
shortly after 1422 that Masolino commenced this great series of
frescoes setting forth the life of St. Peter; within the next few
years Masaccio continued his work; and, more than half a century later,
in 1484, Filippino Lippi took it up where Masaccio had left off,
and completed the series.
Masolino's contribution to the whole appears
to be confined to three pictures: St. Peter preaching, with Carmelites in the
background to carry his doctrines into fifteenth century Florence, on the
left of the window; the upper row of scenes on the right wall,
representing St. Peter and St. John raising the cripple at the Beautiful Gate
of the Temple, and the healing of Tabitha (according to others,
the resuscitation of Petronilla); and the narrow fresco of the Fall
of Adam and Eve, on the right of the entrance. Some have also ascribed
to him the striking figure of St. Peter enthroned, attended by Carmelites,
while the faithful approach to kiss his feet--the picture in the corner on
the left which, in a way, sets the keynote to the whole--but it is more
probably the work of Masaccio (others ascribe it to Filippino). Admirable
though these paintings are, they exhibit a certain immaturity as contrasted
with those by Masaccio: in the Raising of Tabitha, for instance, those two
youths with their odd headgear might almost have stepped out of some
Giottesque fresco; and the rendering of the nude in the Adam and Eve, though
wonderful at that epoch, is much inferior to Masaccio's opposite.
Nevertheless, Masolino's grave and dignified figures introduced the type
that Masaccio was soon to render perfect.
From the hand of Masaccio
are the Expulsion from Paradise; the Tribute Money; the Raising of the Dead
Youth (in part); and (probably) the St. Peter enthroned, on the left wall;
St. Peter and St. John healing the sick with their shadow, under Masolino's
Peter preaching (and the figure behind with a red cap, leaning on a stick, is
Masaccio's pious portrait of his master Masolino himself); St. Peter
baptising, St. Peter and St. John giving alms, on the opposite side of the
window. Each figure is admirably rendered, its character perfectly
realised; Masaccio may indeed be said to have completed what Giotto had
begun, and freed Italian art from the mannerism of the later followers
of Giotto, even as Giotto himself had delivered her from
Byzantine formalism. "After Giotto," writes Leonardo da Vinci, "the art
of painting declined again, because every one imitated the pictures
that were already done; thus it went on from century to century
until Tommaso of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio, showed by his perfect
works how those who take for their standard any one but Nature--the
mistress of all masters--weary themselves in vain."[54] This return to
nature is seen even in the landscape, notably in the noble background to
the Tribute Money; but above all, in his study of man and the human
form. "For the first time," says Kugler, "his aim is the study of form
for itself, the study of the external conformation of man. With such
an aim is identified a feeling which, in beauty, sees and preserves
the expression of proportion; and in repose or motion, the expression
of an harmonious development of the powers of the human frame." For
sheer dignity and grandeur there is nothing to compare with it, till we
come to the work of Raphael and Michelangelo in the Vatican;
the composition of the Tribute Money and the Healing of the Sick
initiated the method of religious illustration that reached its
ultimate perfection in Raphael--what has been called giving Greek form
to Hebrew thought. The treatment of the nude especially seemed a
novel thing in its day; the wonderful modelling of the naked youth
shivering with the cold, in the scene of St. Peter baptising, was hailed as
a marvel of art, and is cited by Vasari as one of the _cose rarissime_ of
painting. In the scene of the Tribute Money, the last Apostle on our right
(in the central picture where our Lord and His disciples are confronted by
the eager collector) whose proud bearing is hardly evangelical, is Masaccio
himself, with scanty beard and untidy hair. Although less excellent than the
Baptism as a study of the nude, the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden is a
masterpiece of which it is impossible to speak too highly. Our _primi
parenti_, weighed down with the consciousness of ineffable tragedy, are
impelled irresistibly onward by divine destiny; they need not see the Angel
in his flaming robe on his cloud of fire, with his flashing sword and
out-stretched hand; terrible in his beauty as he is to the spectator, he is
as nothing to them, compared with the face of an offended God and
the knowledge of the _tanto esilio_. Surely this is how Dante
himself would have conceived the scene.
[54] In Richter's _Literary
Works of Leonardo da Vinci_. Leonardo rather too sweepingly ignores the
fact that there were a few excellent masters between the
two.
Masaccio died at Rome in 1428, aged twenty-seven years. In his
short life he had set modern painting on her triumphant progress, and
his frescoes became the school for all subsequent painters, "All
in short," says Vasari, "who have sought to acquire their art in
its perfection, have constantly repaired to study it in this chapel,
there imbibing the precepts and rules necessary to be followed for
the command of success, and learning to labour effectually from
the figures of Masaccio." If he is to rank among "the inheritors
of unfulfilled renown," Masaccio may be said to stand towards Raphael
as Keats towards Tennyson. Masolino outlived his great pupil for
several years, and died about 1435.
The fresco of the Raising up of
the dead Youth, left unfinished by Masaccio when he left Florence for Rome,
was completed by Filippino Lippi (the son of that run-a-way Carmelite in whom
the spirit of Masaccio was said to have lived again), in 1484. The five
figures on the left appear to be from Filippino's hand (the second from the
end is said to be Luigi Pulci, the poet), as also the resuscitated
boy (said to be Francesco Granacci the painter, who was then about
fifteen years old) and the group of eight on the right. Under Masaccio's
Adam and Eve, he painted St. Paul visiting St. Peter in prison;
under Masolino's Fall, the Liberation of Peter by the Angel, two
exceedingly beautiful and simple compositions. And, on the right wall of
the chapel, St. Peter and St. Paul before the Proconsul and
the Crucifixion of St. Peter are also by Filippino. In the
Crucifixion scene, which is inferior to the rest, the last of the three
spectators on our right, wearing a black cap, is Filippino's master,
Sandro Botticelli. In the presence of the Proconsul, the elderly man with
a keen face, in a red cap to the right of the judge, is
Antonio Pollaiuolo; and, on our right, the youth whose head appears in
the corner is certainly Filippino himself--a kind of signature to the whole. |
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