The Story of Florence 13

	The Story of Florence 13

[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.