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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