|
Apart from the Brancacci chapel, the interest of the Carmine is
mainly
confined to the tomb of the noble and simple-hearted
ex-Gonfaloniere,
Piero Soderini (who died in 1513), in the choir; it was
originally by
Benedetto da Rovezzano, but has been restored. There are
frescoes in
the sacristy, representing the life of St. Cecilia, by one of
Giotto's
later followers, possibly Spinello Aretino, and, in the cloisters,
a
noteworthy Madonna of the same school, ascribed to Giovanni da
Milano.
Beyond the Carmine, westwards, is the Borgo San Frediano, now, as
in
olden time, the poorest part of Florence. It was the ringing of
the
bell of the Carmine that gave the signal for the rising of the
Ciompi
in 1378. Unlike their neighbours, the Augustinians of Santo
Spirito,
the good fathers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel were for the most
part
ardent followers of Savonarola, and, on the first of October 1497,
one
of them preached an open-air sermon near the Porta San Frediano,
in
which he declared that he himself had had a special revelation from
God
on the subject of Fra Girolamo's sanctity, and that all who
resisted the
Friar would be horribly punished; even Landucci admits
that he talked arrant
nonsense, _pazzie_. The parish church of this
district, San Frediano in
Cestello, is quite uninteresting. At the end
of the Via San Frediano is the
great Porta San Frediano, of which more
presently.
The gates and walls
of Oltrarno were built between 1324 and 1327, in
the days of the Republic's
great struggle with Castruccio
Interminelli. Unlike those on the northern
bank, they are still in
part standing. There are five gates on this side of
the river--the
Porta San Niccolo, the Porta San Miniato, the Porta San
Giorgio, the
Porta Romana or Por San Piero Gattolino, and the Porta San
Frediano.
It was all round this part of the city that the imperial army
lay
during the siege of 1529 and 1530.
On the east of the city, on the
banks of the Arno, rises first the
Porta San Niccolo--mutilated and isolated,
but the only one of the
gates that has retained a remnant of its ancient
height and dignity.
In a lunette on the inner side is a fresco of
1357--Madonna and Child
with Saints, Angels and Prophets. Around are carved
the lilies of the
Commune. On the side facing the hill are the arms of the
Parte Guelfa
and of the People, with the lily of the Commune between them.
Within
the gate the Borgo San Niccolo leads to the church of San
Niccolo,
which contains a picture by Neri di Bicci and one of the
Pollaiuoli,
and four saints ascribed to Gentile da Fabriano. It is one of
the
oldest Florentine churches, though not interesting in its
present
state. There is an altogether untrustworthy tradition
that
Michelangelo was sheltered in the tower of this church after
the
capitulation of the city, but he seems to have been more probably
in
the house of a trusted friend. Pope Clement ordered that he should
be
sought for, but left at liberty and treated with all courtesy if
he
agreed to go on working at the Medicean monuments in San Lorenzo;
and,
hearing this, the sculptor came out from his hiding place. It may
be
observed that San Niccolo was a most improbable place for him to
have
sought refuge in, as Malatesta Baglioni had his headquarters close
by.
Beyond the Porta San Niccolo is the Piano di Ripoli, where the
Prince
of Orange had his headquarters. Before his exile Dante possessed
some
land here. It was here that the first Dominican house was
established
in Tuscany under St Dominic's companion, Blessed John of Salerno.
Up
beyond the terminus of the tramway a splendid view of Florence can
be
obtained.
Near the Porta San Niccolo the long flight of stairs
mounts up the
hill of _San Francesco e San Miniato_, which commands the city
from
the south-east, to the Piazzale Michelangelo just below the church.
A
long and exceedingly beautiful drive leads also to this Piazzale
from
the Porta Romana--the Viale dei Colli--and passes down again to
the
Barriera San Niccolo by the Viale Michelangelo. This Viale dei
Colli,
at least, is one of those few works which even those folk who make
a
point of sneering at everything done in Florence since the
unification
of Italy are constrained to admire. It would seem that even in
the
thirteenth century there were steps of some kind constructed up
the
hill-side to the church. In that passage from the _Purgatorio_
(canto
xii.) which I have put at the head of this chapter, Dante compares
the
ascent from the first to the second circle of Purgatory to this
climb:
"As on the right hand, to mount the hill where stands the church
which
overhangs the well-guided city, above Rubaconte, the bold
abruptness
of the ascent is broken by the steps that were made in the age
when
the ledger and the stave were safe."[55]
[55] The ledger and
the stave (_il quaderno e la doga_): "In 1299
Messer Niccola Acciaiuoli and
Messer Baldo d' Aguglione abstracted
from the public records a leaf
containing the evidence of a
disreputable transaction, in which they,
together with the Podesta,
had been engaged. At about the same time Messer
Durante de'
Chiaramontesi, being officer of the customs for salt, took away
a
stave (_doga_) from the standard measure, thus making
it
smaller."--_A. J. Butler._
The Piazzale, adorned with bronze
copies of Michelangelo's great
statues, commands one of the grandest views of
Florence, with the
valley of the Arno and the mountains round, that "in
silence listen
for the word said next," as Mrs Browning has it. Up beyond is
the
exceedingly graceful Franciscan church of San Salvadore al
Monte--"the
purest vessel of Franciscan simplicity," a modern Italian poet
has
called it--built by Cronaca in the last years of the
fifteenth
century. It contains a few works by Giovanni della Robbia. It was
as
he descended this hill with a few armed followers that
Giovanni
Gualberto met and pardoned the murderer of his brother; a small
chapel
or tabernacle, on the way up from the convent to San Miniato,
still
marks the spot, but the Crucifix which is said to have bowed down
its
head towards him is now preserved in Santa
Trinita.
[Illustration: THE FORTIFICATIONS OF MICHELANGELO]
This
Monte di San Francesco e di San Miniato overlooks the whole city,
and
Florence lay at the mercy of whoever got possession of it.
Varchi in his
history apologises for those architects who built the
walls of the city by
reminding us that, in their days, artillery was
not even dreamed of, much
less invented. Michelangelo armed the
campanile of San Miniato, against which
the fiercest fire of the
imperialists was directed, and erected bastions
covering the hill,
enclosing it, as it were, within the walls up from the
Porta San
Miniato and down again to the Porta San Niccolo. It was intrusted
to
the guard of Stefano Colonna, who finally joined Malatesta Baglioni
in
betraying the city. Some bits of Michelangelo's work remain near
the
Basilica, which itself is one of the most venerable edifices of
the
kind in Tuscany; the earliest Florentine Christians are said to
have
met here in the woods, during the reign of Nero, and here
Saint
Miniatus, according to tradition the son of an Armenian king, lived
in
his hermitage until martyred by Decius outside the present Porta
alla
Croce. In the days of Gregory the Great, San Frediano of Lucca
came
every year with his clergy to worship the relics of Miniatus;
a
basilica already stood here in the time of Charlemagne; and the
present
edifice is said to have been begun in 1013 by the Bishop
Alibrando, with the
aid of the Emperor St Henry and his wife
Cunegunda. It was held by the
Benedictines, first the black monks and
then the Olivetans who took it over
from Gregory XI. in 1373. The new
Bishops of Florence, the first time they
set foot out of the city,
came here to sing Mass. In 1553 the monastery was
suppressed by Duke
Cosimo I., and turned into a fortress.
San Miniato
al Monte is one of the earliest and one of the finest
examples of the Tuscan
Romanesque style of architecture. Both interior
and exterior are adorned with
inlaid coloured marble, of simple
design, and the fine "nearly classical"
pillars within are probably
taken from some ancient Roman building. Fergusson
remarks that, but
for the rather faulty construction of the facade, "it would
be
difficult to find a church in Italy containing more of
classical
elegance, with perfect appropriateness for the purposes of
Christian
worship." In the crypt beneath the altar is the tomb of San
Miniato
and others of the Decian martyrs. The great mosaic on the upper
part
of the apse was originally executed at the end of the
thirteenth
century. The Early Renaissance chapel in the nave was constructed
by
Michelozzo in 1448 for Piero dei Medici, to contain
Giovanni
Gualberto's miraculous Crucifix. In the left aisle is the Cappella
di
San Jacopo with the monument of the Cardinal James of Portugal,
who
"lived in the flesh as if he were freed from it, like an Angel
rather
than a man, and died in the odour of sanctity at the early age
of
twenty-six," in 1459. This tomb by Antonio Rossellino is the third
of
the "three finest Renaissance tombs in Tuscany," the other two
being
those of Leonardo Bruni (1444) by Antonio's brother Bernardo,
and
Carlo Marsuppini by Desiderio (1453), both of which we have seen
in
Santa Croce. Mr Perkins observes that the present tomb preserves
the
golden mean in point of ornament between the other two. The
Madonna
and Child with the Angels, watching over the young Cardinal's
repose,
are especially beautiful. The Virtues on the ceiling are by Luca
della
Robbia, and the Annunciation opposite the tomb by
Alessio
Baldovinetti. The Gothic sacristy was built for one of the
great
Alberti family, Benedetto di Nerozzo, in 1387, and decorated
shortly
after with a splendid series of frescoes by Spinello Aretino,
setting
forth the life of St. Benedict. These are Spinello's noblest works
and
the last great creation of the genuine school of Giotto.
Especially
fine are the scenes with the Gothic king Totila, and the death
and
apotheosis of the Saint, which latter may be compared with
Giotto's
St. Francis in Santa Croce. The whole is like a painted chapter of
St.
Gregory's Dialogues.
[Illustration: PORTA SAN
GIORGIO]
The Porta San Miniato, below the hill, almost at the foot of
the
Basilica, is little more than a gap in the wall. On both sides are
the
arms of the Commune and the People, the Cross of the latter
outside
the lily of the former. Upwards from the Porta San Miniato to
the
Porta San Giorgio a glorious bit of the old wall remains, clad
inside
and out with olives, running up the hillside of San Giorgio; even
some
remnants of the old towers are standing, two indeed having been
only
partially demolished. Beneath the former Medicean fortress and
upper
citadel of Belvedere stands the Porta San Giorgio. This,
although
small, is the most picturesque of all the gates of Florence. On
its
outer side is a spirited bas-relief of St. George and the Dragon
in
stone--of the end of the fourteenth century--over the lily of
the
Commune; in the lunette, on the inner side, is a fresco painted
in
1330--probably by Bernardo Daddi--of Santa Maria del Fiore
enthroned
with the Divine Babe between St. George and St. Leonard. This was
the
only gate held by the nobles in the great struggle of 1343, when
the
banners of the people were carried across the bridge in triumph,
and
the Bardi and Frescobaldi fought from street to street; through it
the
magnates had secretly brought in banditti and retainers from
the
country, and through it some of the Bardi fled when the people
swept
down upon their palaces. Inside the gate the steep Via della Costa
San
Giorgio winds down past Galileo's house to Santa Felicita. Outside
the
gate the Via San Leonardo leads, between olive groves and
vineyards,
into the Viale dei Colli. In the curious little church of San
Leonardo
in Arcetri, on the left, is an old _ambone_ or pulpit from
the
demolished church of San Piero Scheraggio, with ancient
bas-reliefs.
This pulpit is traditionally supposed to have been a part of
the
spoils in the destruction of Fiesole; it appears to belong to
the
latter part of the twelfth century.
The great Porta Romana, or
Porta San Piero Gattolino, was originally
erected in 1328; it is still of
imposing dimensions, though its
immediate surroundings are somewhat prosaic.
Many a Pope and Emperor
has passed through here, to or from the eternal city;
the marble
tablets on either side record the entrance of Leo X. in 1515, on
his
way from Rome to Bologna to meet Francis I. of France, and of
Charles
V. in 1536 to confirm the infamous Duke Alessandro on the
throne--a
confirmation which the dagger of Lorenzino happily annulled in
the
following year. It was here that Pope Leo's brother, Piero dei
Medici,
had made his unsuccessful attempt to surprise the city on April
28th
1497, with some thousand men or more, horse and foot. A countryman
at
daybreak had seen them resting and breakfasting on the way, some
few
miles from the city; by taking short cuts over the country, he
evaded
their scouts who were intercepting all persons passing northwards,
and
reached Florence with the news just at the morning opening of
the
gate. The result was that the Magnifico Piero and his braves found
it
closed in their faces and the forces of the Signoria guarding
the
walls, so, after ignominiously skulking for a few hours out of
range
of the artillery, they fled back towards Siena.
Near the Porta
Romana the Viale dei Colli commences to the left, as
the Viale Machiavelli;
and, straight on, the beautifully shady
Stradone del Poggio Imperiale runs up
to the villa of that name, built
for Maria Maddalena of Austria in 1622. The
statues at the beginning
of the road were once saints on the second facade of
the Duomo. It was
on the rising ground that divides the Strada Romana from
the present
Stradone that the famous convent of Monticelli stood, recorded
in
Dante's _Paradiso_ and Petrarca's _Trionfo della Pudicizia_, in
which
Piccarda Donati took the habit of St. Clare, and from which she
was
dragged by her brother Corso to marry Rossellino della
Tosa:--
"Perfetta vita ed alto merto inciela
donna piu su,
mi disse, alla cui norma
nel vostro mondo giu si veste e
vela,
perche in fino al morir si vegghi e dorma
con quello
sposo ch'ogni voto accetta,
che caritate a suo piacer
conforma.
Dal mondo, per seguirla, giovinetta
fuggi'mi, e
nel suo abito mi chiusi,
e promisi la via della sua setta.
Uomini poi, a mal piu ch'al bene usi,
fuor mi rapiron della dolce
chiostra;
e Dio si sa qual poi mia vita fusi."[56]
[56]
"Perfected life and high desert enheaveneth a lady more aloft,"
she said,
"by whose rule down in your world there are who clothe and
veil
themselves,
That they, even till death, may wake and sleep with that
Spouse who
accepteth every vow that love hath made conform with his
good
pleasure.
From the world, to follow her, I fled while yet a
girl, and in her
habit I enclosed myself, and promised the way of her
company.
Thereafter men more used to ill than good tore me away from
the sweet
cloister; and God doth know what my life then
became."--_Paradiso_
iii. Wicksteed's translation.
It was at Poggio
Imperiale, then called the Poggio dei Baroncelli,
that a famous combat took
place during the early days of the siege, in
which Ludovico Martelli and
Dante da Castiglione fought two
Florentines who were serving in the imperial
army, Giovanni Bandini
and Bertino Aldobrandini. Both Martelli, the original
challenger, and
Aldobrandini were mortally wounded. Martelli's real motive in
sending
the challenge is said to have been that he and Bandini were rivals
for
the favours of a Florentine lady, Marietta de' Ricci. Among the
many
beautiful villas and gardens which stud the country beyond
Poggio
Imperiale, are Galileo's Tower, from which he made his
astronomical
observations, and the villa in which he was visited by Milton.
Near
Santa Margherita a Montici, to the east, is the villa in which
the
articles of capitulation were arranged by the Florentine
ambassadors
with Ferrante Gonzaga, commander of the Imperial troops, and
Baccio
Valori, commissary of the Pope. But already Malatesta had opened
the
Porta Romana and turned his artillery against the city which he
had
solemnly sworn to defend.
Beyond the Porta Romana the road to the
right of Poggio Imperiale
leads to the valley of the Ema, above which the
great Certosa rises on
the hill of Montaguto. Shortly before reaching the
monastery the Ema
is crossed--an insignificant stream in which Cacciaguida
(in
_Paradiso_ xvi.) rather paradoxically regrets that Buondelmonte
was
not drowned on his way to Florence: "Joyous had many been who now
are
sad, had God committed thee unto the Ema the first time that
thou
camest to the city." The Certosa itself, that "huge
battlemented
convent-block over the little forky flashing Greve," as Browning
calls
it, was founded by Niccolo Acciaiuoli, the Florentine Grand
Seneschal
of Naples, in 1341; it is one of the finest of the later
mediæval
monasteries. Orcagna is said to have built one of the side chapels
of
the church, which contains a fine early Giottesque altarpiece; and in
a
kind of crypt there are noble tombs of the Acciaiuoli--one, the
monument of
the founder, being possibly by Orcagna, and one of the
later ones ascribed
(doubtfully) to Donatello. In the chapter-house
are a Crucifixion by Mariotto
Albertinelli, and the monument of
Leonardo Buonafede by Francesco da San
Gallo. From the convent and
further up the valley, there are beautiful views.
About three miles
further on is the sanctuary and shrine of the Madonna dell'
Impruneta,
built for the miraculous image of the Madonna, which was carried
down
in procession to Florence in times of pestilence and
danger.
Savonarola especially had placed great faith in the miraculous
powers
of this image and these processions; and during the siege it
remained
in Florence ceremoniously guarded in the Duomo, a kind of
mystic
Palladium.
Between the Porta Romana and Porta San Frediano some
tracts of the
city wall remain, but the whole is painfully prosaic. The Porta
San
Frediano itself is a massive structure, erected between 1324 and
1327,
possibly by Andrea Pisano; it need hardly be repeated that we
cannot
judge of the original mediæval appearance of the gates of
Florence,
with their towers and ante-portals, even from the least mutilated
of
their present remnants. It was through this gate that the
Florentine
army passed in triumph in 1363 with their long trains of
captured
Pisans; and here, after Pisa had shaken off for a while the
yoke,
Charles of France rode in as a conqueror on November 17,
1494,
Savonarola's new Cyrus, and was solemnly received at the gate by
the
Signoria. Within the gate a strip of wall runs down to the river,
with
two later towers built by Medicean grand dukes. At the end is a
chapel
built in 1856, and containing a Pieta from the walls of a
demolished
convent--ascribed without warrant to Domenico
Ghirlandaio.
It was somewhere near here that S. Frediano, coming from
Lucca to pay
his annual visit to the shrine of San Miniato, miraculously
crossed
the Arno in flood. Outside the gate, a little off the Leghorn road
to
the left, is the suppressed abbey of Monte Oliveto, and beyond it,
to
the south, the hill of Bellosguardo--both points from which
splendid
views of Florence and its surroundings are obtained.
These
dream-like glimpses of the City of Flowers, which every coign of
vantage
seems to give us round Florence--might we not, sometimes,
imagine that we had
stumbled unawares upon the Platonic City of the
Perfect? There are two lines
from one of Dante's canzoni in praise of
his mystical lady that rise to our
mind at every turn:--
"Io non la vidi tante volte ancora,
ch'io non trovassi in lei nuova bellezza,"
CHAPTER
XIII
_Conclusion_
The setting of Florence is in every way
worthy of the gem which it
encloses. On each side of the city and throughout
its province
beautiful walks and drives lead to churches, villas and villages
full
of historical interest or enriched with artistic treasures. I can
here
merely indicate a very few such places.
To the north of the city
rises Fiesole on its hill, of which the
historical connection with Florence
has been briefly discussed in
chapter i. At its foot stands the Dominican
convent, in which Fra
Giovanni, whom we know better as the Beato Angelico,
took the habit of
the order, and in which both his brother, Fra Benedetto,
and himself
were in turn priors. Savonarola's fellow martyr, Fra Domenico
da
Pescia, was likewise prior of this house. The church contains a
Madonna
by Angelico, with the background painted in by Lorenzo di
Credi (its
exquisitely beautiful predella is now one of the chief
ornaments of the
National Gallery of London), a Baptism of Christ by
Lorenzo di Credi, and an
Adoration of the Magi designed by Andrea del
Sarto and executed by Sogliani.
A little to the left is the famous
Badia di Fiesole, originally of the
eleventh century, but rebuilt for
Cosimo the Elder by Filippo Brunelleschi.
It was one of Cosimo's
favourite foundations; Marsilio Ficino's Platonic
Academy frequently
met in the loggia with its beautiful view towards the
city. In the
church, Lorenzo's second son, Giovanni, was invested with
the
Cardinalate in 1492; and here, in 1516, his third son, Giuliano,
Duke
of Nemours, the best of the Medici, died. On the way up to
Fiesole
itself is the handsome villa Mozzi, built for Giovanni di Cosimo
de'
Medici by Michelozzo. It was in this villa that the Pazzi
had
originally intended to murder Lorenzo and the elder Giuliano,
but
their plan was frustrated by the illness of Giuliano, which
prevented
his being present.
In Fiesole itself, the remains of the
Etruscan wall and the old
theatre tell of the classical Faesulae; its Tuscan
Romanesque Duomo
(of the eleventh and twelfth centuries) recalls the days
when the city
seemed a rival to Florence itself and was the resort of the
robber
barons, who preyed upon her ever growing commerce. It
contains
sculptures by Mino da Fiesole and that later Fiesolan, Andrea
Ferrucci
(to whom we owe the bust of Marsilio Ficino), and a fine terracotta
by
one of the Della Robbias. From the Franciscan convent, which
occupies
the site of the old Roman citadel, a superb view of Florence and
its
valley is obtained. From Fiesole, towards the south-east, we
reach
Ponte a Mensola (also reached from the Porta alla Croce), the
Mensola
of Boccaccio's _Ninfale fiesolano_, above which is Settignano,
where
Desiderio was born and Michelangelo nurtured, and where Boccaccio
had
a podere. The Villa Poggio Gherardo, below Settignano, shares with
the
Villa Palmieri below Fiesole the distinction of being
traditionally
one of those introduced into the
_Decameron_.
Northwestwards of the Badia of Fiesole runs the road from
Florence to
Bologna, past the village of Trespiano, some three or four miles
from
the Porta San Gallo. In the twelfth century Trespiano was the
northern
boundary of Florentine territory, as Galluzzo--on the way towards
the
Certosa and about two miles from the Porta Romana--was its
southern
limit. Cacciaguida, in _Paradiso_ xvi., refers to this as an
ideal
golden time when the citizenship "saw itself pure even in the
lowest
artizan." A little way north of Trespiano, on the old Bolognese
road,
is the Uccellatoio--referred to in canto xv.--the first point
from
which Florence is visible. Below Trespiano, at La Lastra, rather
more
than two miles from the city, the exiled Bianchi and Ghibellines,
with
auxiliaries from Bologna and Arezzo, assembled in that fatal July
of
1304. The leaders of the Neri were absent at Perugia, and, at the
first
sight of the white standards waving from the hill, terror and
consternation
filled their partisans throughout the city. Had their
enterprise been better
organised, the exiles would undoubtedly have
captured Florence. Seeing that
they were discovered, and urged on by
their friends within the city, without
waiting for the Uberti, whose
cavalry was advancing from Pistoia to their
support and whose
appointed day of coming they had anticipated, Baschiera
della Tosa, in
spite of the terrible heat, ordered an immediate advance upon
the
Porta San Gallo. The walls of the third circle were only in part
built
at that epoch, and those of the second circle still stood with
their
gates. The exiles, for the most part mounted, drew up round San
Marco
and the Annunziata, "with white standards spread, with garlands
of
olive and drawn swords, crying _peace_," writes Dino Compagni, who
was
in Florence at the time, "without doing violence or plundering
anyone.
A right goodly sight was it to see them, with the sign of peace
thus
arrayed. The heat was so great, that it seemed that the very
air
burned." But their friends within did not stir. They forced the
Porta
degli Spadai which stood at the head of the present Via dei
Martelli,
but were repulsed at the Piazza San Giovanni and the Duomo, and
the
sudden blazing up of a palace in the rear completed their rout.
Many
fell on the way, simply from the heat, while the Neri,
becoming
fierce-hearted like lions, as Compagni says, hotly pursued
them,
hunting out those who had hidden themselves among the vineyards
and
houses, hanging all they caught. In their flight, a little way
from
Florence, the exiles met Tolosato degli Uberti hastening up with
his
Ghibellines to meet them on the appointed day. Tolosato, a
fierce
captain and experienced in civil war, tried in vain to rally
them,
and, when all his efforts proved unavailing, returned to
Pistoia
declaring that the youthful rashness of Baschiera had lost him
the
city. Dante had taken no part in the affair; he had broken with
his
fellow exiles in the previous year, and made a party for himself as
he
tells us in the _Paradiso_.
To the west and north-west of Florence
are several interesting villas
of the Medici. The Villa Medicea in Careggi,
the most famous of all,
is not always accessible. It is situated in the
loveliest country,
within a short walk of the tramway station of Ponte a
Rifredi. Built
originally by Michelozzo for Cosimo the Elder, it was almost
burned
down by a band of republican youths shortly before the siege.
Here
Cosimo died, consoling his last hours with Marsilio
Ficino's
Platonics; here the elder Piero lived in retirement, too shattered
in
health to do more than nominally succeed his father at the head of
the
State. On August 23rd 1466, there was an attempt made to murder
Piero
as he was carried into Florence from Careggi in his litter. A band
of
armed men, in the pay of Luca Pitti and Dietisalvi Neroni, lay in
wait
for the litter on the way to the Porta Faenza; but young Lorenzo,
who
was riding on in advance of his father's cortege, came across
them
first, and, without appearing to take any alarm at the
meeting,
secretly sent back a messenger to bid his father take another
way.
Under Lorenzo himself, this villa became the centre of
the
Neo-Platonic movement; and here on November 7th, the day supposed
to
be the anniversary of Plato's birth and death, the famous banquet
was
held at which Marsilio Ficino and the chosen spirits of the
Academy
discussed and expounded the _Symposium_. Here on April 8th 1492,
the
Magnifico died (see chap. iii.). In the same neighbourhood, a
little
further on in the direction of Pistoia, are the villas of Petraia
and
Castello (for both of which _permessi_ are given at the Pitti
Palace,
together with that for Poggio a Caiano), both reminiscent of
the
Medicean grand ducal family; in the latter Cosimo I. lived with
his
mother, Maria Salviati, before his accession to the throne, and
here
he died in 1574.
Also beyond the Porta al Prato (about an hour
and a half by the
tramway from behind Santa Maria Novella), is the Villa
Reale of Poggio
a Caiano, superbly situated where the Pistoian Apennines
begin to rise
up from the plain. The villa was built by Giuliano da San Gallo
for
Lorenzo, and the Magnifico loved it best of all his country houses.
It
was here that he wrote his _Ambra_ and his _Caccia col Falcone_;
in
both of these poems the beautiful scenery round plays its part.
When
Pope Clement VII. sent the two boys, Ippolito and Alessandro,
to
represent the Medici in Florence, Alessandro generally stayed
here,
while Ippolito resided within the city in the palace in the Via
Larga.
When Charles V. came to Florence in 1536 to confirm Alessandro
upon
the throne, he declared that this villa "was not the building for
a
private citizen." Here, too, the Grand Duke Francesco and
Bianca
Cappello died, on October 19th and 20th, 1587, after entertaining
the
Cardinal Ferdinando, who thus became Grand Duke; it was said
that
Bianca had attempted to poison the Cardinal, and that she and
her
husband had themselves eaten of the pasty that she had prepared
for
him. It appears, however, that there is no reason for supposing
that
their deaths were other than natural. At present the villa is a
royal
country house, in which reminiscences of the Re Galantuomo
clash
rather oddly with those of the Medicean Princes. All round runs
a
loggia with fine views, and there are an uninteresting park and
garden.
The classical portico is noteworthy, all the rest being of the
utmost
simplicity.
Within the palace a large room, with a remarkably fine
ceiling by
Giuliano da San Gallo, is decorated with a series of frescoes
from
Roman history intended to be typical of events in the lives of
Cosimo
the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent. Vasari says that, for a
villa,
this is _la piu bella sala del mondo_. The frescoes, ordered by
Pope
Leo X. and the Cardinal Giulio, under the direction of Ottaviano
dei
Medici, were begun by Andrea dei Sarto, Francia Bigio and Jacopo
da
Pontormo, left unfinished for more than fifty years, and then
completed
by Alessandro Allori for the Grand Duke Francesco. The
Triumph of Cicero, by
Francia Bigio, is supposed to typify the return
of Cosimo from exile in 1434;
Caesar receiving tribute from Egypt, by
Andrea del Sarto, refers to the
coming of an embassy from the Soldan
to Lorenzo in 1487, with magnificent
gifts and treasures. Andrea's
fresco is full of curious beasts and birds,
including the long-eared
sheep which Lorenzo naturalised in the grounds of
the villa, and the
famous giraffe which the Soldan sent on this occasion and
which, as Mr
Armstrong writes, "became the most popular character in
Florence,"
until its death at the beginning of 1489. The Regent of France,
Anne
of Beaujeu, made ineffectual overtures to Lorenzo to get him to
make
her a present of the strange beast. This fresco was left
unfinished
on the death of Pope Leo in 1521, and finished by Alessandro
Allori in
1582. The charming mythological decorations between the windows are
by
Jacopo da Pontormo. The two later frescoes by Alessandro
Allori,
painted about 1580, represent Scipio in the house of Syphax
and
Flamininus in Greece, which typify Lorenzo's visit to Ferrante
of
Naples, in 1480, and his presence at the Diet of Cremona in 1483,
on
which latter occasion, as Mr Armstrong puts it, "his good sense
and
powers of expression and persuasion gave him an importance which
the
military weakness of Florence denied to him in the field"--but
the
result was little more than a not very honourable league of
the
Italian powers against Venice. The Apples of the Hesperides, and
the
rest of the mythological decorations in continuation of
Pontormo's
lunette, are also Allori's. The whole has an air of regal
triumph
without needless parade.
The road should be followed beyond
the villa, in order to ascend to
the left to the little church among the
hills. A superb view is
obtained over the plain to Florence beyond the Villa
Reale lying below
us. Behind, we are already among the Apennines. A beautiful
glimpse of
Prato can be seen to the left, four miles away.
Prato
itself is about twelve miles from Florence. It was a gay little
town in the
fifteenth century, when it witnessed "brother Lippo's
doings, up and down,"
and heard Messer Angelo Poliziano's musical
sighings for the love of Madonna
Ippolita Leoncina. A few years later
it listened to the voice of Fra Girolamo
Savonarola, and at last its
bright day of prosperity ended in the horrible
sack and carnage from
the Spanish soldiery under Raimondo da Cardona in 1512.
Its
Duomo--dedicated to St. Stephen and the Baptist--a Tuscan
Romanesque
church completed in the Gothic style by Giovanni Pisano, with a
fine
campanile built at the beginning of the fourteenth century, claims
to
possess a strange and wondrous relic: nothing less than the Cintola
or
Girdle of the Blessed Virgin, delivered by her--according to a
pious
and poetical legend--to St. Thomas at her Assumption, and then
won
back for Christendom by a native of Prato, Michele Dagonari, in
the
Crusades. Be that as it may, what purports to be this relic
is
exhibited on occasions in the Pulpito della Cintola on the exterior
of
the Duomo, a magnificent work by Donatello and Michelozzo, in which
the
former master has carved a wonderful series of dancing genii
hardly, if at
all, inferior to those more famous bas-reliefs executed
a little later for
the cantoria of Santa Maria del Fiore. Within, over
the entrance wall, is a
picture by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio of the Madonna
giving the girdle to the Thomas
who had doubted. And in the chapel on
the left (with a most beautifully
worked bronze screen, with a lovely
frieze of cupids, birds and beasts--the
work of Bruno Lapi and
Pasquino di Matteo, 1444-1461), the Cintola is
preserved amid frescoes
by Agnolo Gaddi setting forth the life of Madonna,
her granting of
Prato's treasure to St Thomas at the Assumption, and its
discovery by
Michele Dagonari.
The church is rich in works of
Florentine art--a pulpit by Mino da
Fiesole and Antonio Rossellino; the
Madonna dell' Ulivo by Giuliano da
Maiano; frescoes said to be in part by
Masolino's reputed master
Starnina in the chapel to the right of the choir.
But Prato's great
artistic glory must be sought in Fra Lippo Lippi's frescoes
in the
choir, painted between 1452 and 1464. These are the great
achievements
of the Friar's life. On the left is the life of St. Stephen, on
the
right that of the Baptist. They show very strongly the influence
of
Masaccio, and make us understand why the Florentines said that
the
spirit of Masaccio had entered into the body of Fra Filippo.
Inferior
to Masaccio in most respects, Filippo had a feeling for facial
beauty
and spiritual expression, and for a certain type of feminine
grace
which we hardly find in his prototype. The wonderful figure of
the
dancing girl in Herod's banquet, and again her naive bearing when
she
kneels before her mother with the martyr's head, oblivious of
the
horror of the spectators and merely bent upon showing us her own
sweet
face, are characteristic of Lippo, as also, in another way,
his
feeling for boyhood shown in the little St. John's farewell to
his
parents. The Burial of St. Stephen is full of fine
Florentine
portraits in the manner of the Carmine frescoes. The
dignified
ecclesiastic at the head of the clergy is Carlo dei Medici,
the
illegitimate son of Cosimo. On the extreme right is Lippo
himself.
Carlo looks rather like a younger, more refined edition of Leo
X.
It was while engaged upon these frescoes that Lippo Lippi
was
commissioned by the nuns of Santa Margherita to paint a Madonna
for
them, and took the opportunity of carrying off Lucrezia Buti,
a
beautiful girl staying in the convent who had sat to him as the
Madonna,
during one of the Cintola festivities. Lippo appears to have
been practically
unfrocked at this time, but he refused the
dispensation of the Pope who
wished him to marry her legally, as he
preferred to live a loose life.
Between the station and the Duomo you
can see the house where they lived and
where Filippino Lippi was born.
Opposite the convent of Santa Margherita is a
tabernacle containing a
wonderfully beautiful fresco by Filippino, a Madonna
and Child with
Angels, adored by St. Margaret and St. Catherine, St. Antony
and St.
Stephen. All the faces are of the utmost loveliness, and
the
Catherine especially is like a foretaste of Luini's famous fresco
at
Milan. In the town picture gallery there are four pictures ascribed
to
Lippo Lippi--all four of rather questionable authenticity--and one
by
Filippino, a Madonna and Child with St. Stephen and the Baptist,
which,
although utterly ruined, appears to be genuine. The Protomartyr
and the
Precursor seem always inseparable throughout the faithful
little city of the
Cintola.
Prato can likewise boast some excellent terracotta works by
Andrea
della Robbia, both outside the Duomo and in the churches of Our
Lady
of Good Counsel and Our Lady of the Prisons. This latter church,
the
Madonna delle Carceri, reared by Giuliano da San Gallo between
1485
and 1491, is perhaps the most beautiful and most truly classical
of
all Early Renaissance buildings in Tuscany.
Ten miles beyond Prato
lies Pistoia, at the very foot of the
Apennines, the city of Dante's friend
and correspondent, Messer Cino,
the poet of the golden haired Selvaggia, he
who sang the dirge of
Caesar Henry; the centre of the fiercest faction
struggles of Italian
history. It was the Florentine traditional policy to
keep Pisa by
fortresses and Pistoia by factions. It lies, however, beyond the
scope
of the present book, with the other Tuscan cities that owned the
sway
of the great Republic. San Gemignano, that most wonderful of all
the
smaller towns of Tuscany, the city of "the fair towers," of Santa
Fina
and of the gayest of mediæval poets, Messer Folgore, comes
into
another volume of this series.
But it is impossible to conclude
even the briefest study of Florence
without a word upon that Tuscan Earthly
Paradise, the Casentino and
upper valley of the Arno, although it lies for
the most part not in
the province of Florence but in that of Arezzo. It is
best reached by
the diligence which runs from Pontassieve over the Consuma
Pass--where
Arnaldo of Brescia, who lies in the last horrible round of
Dante's
Malebolge, was burned alive for counterfeiting the golden florins
of
Florence--to Stia.[57] A whole chapter of Florentine history may
be
read among the mountains of the Casentino, writ large upon its
castles
and monasteries. If the towers of San Gemignano give us still
the
clearest extant picture of the life led by the nobles and
magnates
when forced to enter the cities, we can see best in the Casentino
how
they exercised their feudal sway and maintained for a while
their
independence of the burgher Commune. The Casentino was ruled by
the
Conti Guidi, that great clan whose four branches--the Counts
of
Romena, the Counts of Porciano, the Counts of Battifolle and Poppi,
the
Counts of Dovadola (to whom Bagno in Romagna and Pratovecchio here
appear to
have belonged)--sprang from the four sons of Gualdrada,
Bellincion Berti's
daughter. Poppi remains a superb monument of the
power and taste of these
"Counts Palatine of Tuscany"; its palace on a
small scale resembles the
Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. Romena and
Porciano, higher up stream,
overhanging Pratovecchio and Stia, have
been immortalised by the verse and
hallowed by the footsteps of Dante
Alighieri. Beneath the hill upon which
Poppi stands, an old bridge
still spans the Arno, upon which the last of the
Conti Guidi, the
Count Francesco, surrendered in 1440 to the Florentine
commissary,
Neri Capponi. After the second expulsion of the Medici from
Florence,
Piero and Giuliano for some time lurked in the Casentino,
with
Bernardo Dovizi at Bibbiena.
[57] The lover of Florentine
history cannot readily tear himself away
from the Casentino. The Albergo
Amorosi at Bibbiena, almost at the
foot of La Verna, makes delightful
headquarters. There is an excellent
_Guida illustrata del Casentino_ by C.
Beni. For the Conti Guidi,
Witte's essay should be consulted; it is
translated in _Witte's Essays
on Dante_ by C. M. Lawrence and P. H.
Wicksteed. La Verna will be
fully dealt with in the Assisi volume of this
series, so I do not
describe it here.
Throughout the Casentino Dante
himself should be our guide. There is
hardly another district in Italy so
intimately connected with the
divine poet; save only Florence and Ravenna,
there is, perhaps, none
where we more frequently need to have recourse to the
pages of the
_Divina Commedia_. With the _Inferno_ in our hands, we seek out
Count
Alessandro's castle of Romena and what purports to be the
Fonte
Branda, below the castle to the left, for whose waters--even to
cool
the thirst of Hell--Maestro Adamo would not have given the sight
of
his seducer sharing his agony. With the _Purgatorio_ we trace
the
course of the Arno from where, a mere _fiumicello_, it takes its
rise
in Falterona, and runs down past Porciano and Poppi to sweep away
from
the Aretines, "turning aside its muzzle in disdain." There is
a
tradition that Dante was imprisoned in the castle of Porciano. We
know
that he was the guest of various members of the Conti Guidi
at
different times during his exile; it was from one of their
castles,
probably Poppi, that on March 31st and April 16th, 1311, he
directed
his two terrible letters to the Florentine government and to
the
Emperor Henry. It was in the Casentino, too, that he composed
the
Canzone _Amor, dacche convien pur ch'io mi doglia_, "Love, since
I
needs must make complaint," one of the latest and most perplexing of
his
lyrics.
The battlefield of Campaldino lies beyond Poppi, on the eastern
side
of the river, near the old convent and church of Certomondo,
founded
some twenty or thirty years before by two of the Conti Guidi
to
commemorate the great Ghibelline victory of Montaperti, but now
to
witness the triumph of the Guelfs. The Aretines, under their Bishop
and
Buonconte da Montefeltro, had marched up the valley along the
direction of
the present railway to Bibbiena, to check the ravages of
the Florentines who,
with their French allies, had made their way
through the mountains above
Pratovecchio and were laying waste the
country of the Conti Guidi. It was on
the Feast of St. Barnabas, 1289,
that the two armies stood face to face, and
Dante riding in the
Florentine light cavalry, if the fragment of a letter
preserved to us
by Leonardo Bruni be authentic, "had much dread and at the
end the
greatest gladness, by reason of the varying chances of that
battle."
There are no relics of the struggle to be found in Certomondo; only
a
very small portion of the cloisters remains, and the church
itself
contains nothing of note save an Annunciation by Neri di Bicci.
But
about an hour's walk from the battlefield, perhaps a mile from
the
foot of the hill on which Bibbiena stands, is a spot most sacred
to
all lovers of Dante. Here the stream of the Archiano, banked
with
poplars and willows, flows into the Arno; and here, at the close
of
that same terrible and glorious day, Buonconte da Montefeltro died
of
his wounds, gasping out the name of Mary. At evening the
nightingales
are loud around the spot, but their song is less sweet then
the
ineffable stanzas in the fifth canto of the _Purgatorio_ in
which
Dante has raised an imperishable monument to the young
Ghibelline
warrior.
But, more famous than its castles or even its
Dantesque memories, the
Casentino is hallowed by its noble sanctuaries of
Vallombrosa,
Camaldoli, La Verna. Less noted but still very interesting is
the
Dominican church and convent of the Madonna del Sasso, just
below
Bibbiena on the way towards La Verna, hallowed with memories
of
Savonarola and the Piagnoni, and still a place of devout pilgrimage
to
Our Lady of the Rock. There is a fine Assumption in its church,
painted
by Fra Paolino from Bartolommeo's cartoon. Vallombrosa and
Camaldoli, founded
respectively by Giovanni Gualberto and Romualdus,
have shared the fate of all
such institutions in modern Italy.
La Verna remains undisturbed, that
"harsh rock between Tiber and
Arno," as Dante calls it, where Francis
"received from Christ the
final seal;" the sacred mountain from which, on
that September morning
before the dawn, so bright a light of Divine Love
shone forth to
rekindle the mediæval world, that all the country seemed
aflame, as
the crucified Seraph uttered the words of mystery--_Tu sei il
mio
Gonfaloniere_: "Thou art my standard-bearer." To enter the
precincts
of this sacred place, under the arch hewn out from between the
rocks,
is like a first introduction to the spirit of the _Divina
Commedia_.
"Non est in toto sanctior orbe mons."
For here, at
least, is one spot left in the world, where, although
Renaissance and
Reformation, Revolution and Risorgimento, have swept
round it, the Middle
Ages still reign a living reality, in their
noblest aspect, with the
_poverelli_ of the Seraphic Father; and the
mystical light, that shone out on
the day of the Stigmata, still
burns: "while the eternal ages watch and
wait."
[Illustration: FLORENCE]
TABLE OF THE
MEDICI
GIOVANNI DI AVERARDO (GIOVANNI BICCI) 1360-1429, m. Piccarda
Bueri.
____________|______________________(continued
below)
COSIMO (Pater Patriae), 1389-1464, m. Contessina dei
Bardi.
_____________________________|________________
| | |
PIERO (il
Gottoso) GIOVANNI, CARLO,
1416-1469, 1424-1463, (illegitimate),
m.
Lucrezia Tornabuoni. m. Ginevra degli d.
1492.
Alessandri.
___|______________________________________________
| |
| |
LORENZO, GIULIANO, BIANCA,
NANNINA,
(the Magnificent), 1453-1478. m. Guglielmo m.
Bernardo
1449-1492, | dei
Pazzi. Rucellai.
m. Clarice Orsini.
|
| GIULIO (illegitimate),
|
d. 1534,
| (Pope Clement
VII.)
__|_____________________________________________________________
|
| | | |
PIERO, GIOVANNI, GIULIANO, LUCREZIA, MADDALENA,
1471-1503, 1475-1521, (Duke of Nemours), m. Giacomo m.
Franceschetto
m. Alfonsina (Pope Leo X.) 1479-1516, Salviati.
Cibo.
Orsini. m. Filiberta of
|
| Savoy. |
___|________________ | __|_____________
| | | | |
LORENZO, CLARICE, IPPOLITO,[58] MARIA, FRANCESCA,
(titular Duke m. Filippo (Illegitimate), m. Giovanni m. Ottaviano
of Urbino), Strozzi 1511-1535, delle Bande dei Medici.
1492-1519, (Cardinal). Nere. |
m.
Madeleine de Alessandro,
la
Tour d'Auvergne. d.
1605,
_|______________ (Pope
Leo XI.)
| |
ALESSANDRO,[59] CATERINA,
(Illegitimate), 1519-1589,
d. 1537, m. Henri II.
m.
Margherita of France.
of Austria.
[58][59] _The
parentage of Ippolito and Alessandro is somewhat uncertain. The
former was
probably Giuliano's son by a lady of Pesaro, the latter probably
the son
of Lorenzo by a mulatto woman._
-----------continued from above
___________________
|
LORENZO, 1395-1440, m.
Ginevra Cavalcanti.
|
PIERO
FRANCESCO,
d. 1467 (or 1476),
m. Laudomia
Acciaiuoli.
_______________|_______
| |
LORENZO, d.
1503, GIOVANNI, d. 1498,
m. Semiramide Appini. m. Caterina
Sforza.
| |
PIER
FRANCESCO, GIOVANNI, ("delle Bande
d. 1525,
Nere"), 1498-1526,
m. Maria Soderini. m. Maria
Salviati.
__|__________________________ |____________
| | | |
LORENZO,
LAUDOMIA, MADDALENA, COSIMO I.
("Lorenzino" m. Piero m.
Roberto (Grand Duke),
or Strozzi.
Strozzi. 1519-1574,
"Lorenzaccio"),
m. Eleonora of Toledo
1514-1547.
(and Cammilla
Martelli)
_____________________________________|_____
| | | |
FRANCESCO
I., GIOVANNI, GARZIA, FERDINAND I.,
1541-1587, d. 1562. d. 1562. 1549-1609,
m.
Joanna of m. Christina
of
Austria (and
Lorraine.
Bianca
Cappello). ______|
| |
MARIA
COSIMO II.,
m. Henri
IV. 1590-1621,
of
France m. Maria
Maddalena
of
Austria.
|
FERDINAND
II.,
1610-1670.
|
COSIMO
III.,
1642-1723.
|
GIOVANNI
GASTONE,
1671-1737. |
|
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