Florence now fell into the hands of the ablest and most ruthless
of all her rulers, Cosimo I. (the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere),
who united Medicean craft with the brutality of the Sforzas,
conquered Siena, and became the first Grand Duke of Tuscany. At the opening
of his reign the Florentine exiles, headed by the Strozzi and by
Baccio Valori, attempted to recover the State, but were defeated by
Cosimo's mercenaries. Their leaders were relentlessly put to death; and
Filippo Strozzi, after prolonged torture, was either murdered in prison
or committed suicide. A word will be said presently, in chapter ix.,
on Cosimo's descendants, the Medicean Grand Dukes who reigned in
Tuscany for two hundred years.
The older generation of artists had
passed away with the Republic. After the siege Michelangelo alone remained,
compelled to labour upon the Medicean tombs in San Lorenzo, which have become
a monument, less to the tyrants for whom he reared them, than to the _saeva
indignatio_ of the great master himself at the downfall of his country. A
madrigal of his, written either in the days of Alessandro or at the
beginning of Cosimo's reign, expresses what was in his heart. Symonds
renders it:--
"Lady, for joy of lovers numberless Thou
wast created fair as angels are; Sure God hath fallen asleep in heaven
afar, When one man calls the bliss of many his."
But the last
days and last works of Michelangelo belong to the story of Rome rather than
to that of Florence. Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo (1494-1557), who had been
Andrea del Sarto's scholar, and whose earlier works had been painted before
the downfall of the Republic, connects the earlier with the later
Cinquecento; but of his work, as of that of his pupil Angelo Bronzino
(1502-1572), the portraits alone have any significance for us now. Giorgio
Vasari (1512-1574), although painter and architect--the Uffizi and part of
the Palazzo Vecchio are his work--is chiefly famous for his delightful series
of biographies of the artists themselves. Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), that
most piquant of personalities, and the Fleming Giambologna or Giovanni da
Bologna (1524-1608), the master of the flying Mercury, are the last
noteworthy sculptors of the Florentine school. When
Michelangelo--_Michel, piu che mortale, Angel divino_, as Ariosto calls
him--passed away on February 18th, 1564, the Renaissance was over as far as
Art was concerned. And not in Art only. The dome of St Peter's, that
was slowly rising before Michelangelo's dying eyes, was a visible sign
of the new spirit that was moving within the Church itself, the
spirit that reformed the Church and purified the Papacy, and which
brought about the renovation of which Savonarola had
prophesied.
CHAPTER V
_The Palazzo Vecchio--The Piazza
della Signoria--The Uffizi_
"Ecco il Palagio de' Signori si
bello che chi cercasse tutto l'universo, non credo ch'e trovasse
par di quello." --_Antonio Pucci._
[Illustration: THE
PALAZZO VECCHIO]
At the eastern corner of the Piazza della
Signoria--that great square over which almost all the history of Florence may
be said to have passed--rises the Palazzo Vecchio, with its great projecting
parapets and its soaring tower: the old Palace of the Signoria, originally
the Palace of the Priors, and therefore of the People. It is often
stated that the square battlements of the Palace itself represent the
Guelfs, while the forked battlements of the tower are in some mysterious
way connected with the Ghibellines, who can hardly be said to have
still existed as a real party in the city when they were built; there is,
it appears, absolutely no historical foundation for this legend.
The Palace was commenced by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1298, when,
in consequence of the hostility between the magnates and the people,
it was thought that the Priors were not sufficiently secure in the
Palace of the Cerchi; and it may be taken to represent the whole course
of Florentine history, from this government of the Secondo Popolo, through
Savonarola's Republic and the Medicean despotism, down to the unification of
Italy. Its design and essentials, however, are Arnolfo's and the people's,
though many later architects, besides Vasari, have had their share in the
completion of the present building. Arnolfo founded the great tower of the
Priors upon an older tower of a family of magnates, the Foraboschi, and it
was also known as the Torre della Vacca. When, in those fierce democratic
days, its great bell rang to summon a Parliament in the Piazza, or to call
the companies of the city to arms, it was popularly said that "the
cow" was lowing. The upper part of the tower belongs to the
fifteenth century. Stupendous though the Palazzo is, it would have been
of vaster proportions but for the prohibition given to Arnolfo to
raise the house of the Republic where the dwellings of the Uberti had
once stood--_ribelli di Firenze e Ghibellini_. Not even the heroism
of Farinata could make this stern people less "fierce against my
kindred in all its laws," as that great Ghibelline puts it to Dante in
the _Inferno_.
The present steps and platform in front of the Palace
are only the remnants of the famous Ringhiera constructed here in the
fourteenth century, and removed in 1812. On it the Signoria used to meet
to address the crowd in the Piazza, or to enter upon their term of office.
Here, at one time, the Gonfaloniere received the Standard of the People, and
here, at a somewhat later date, the batons of command were given to the
condottieri who led the mercenaries in the pay of the Republic. Here the
famous meeting took place at which the Duke of Athens was acclaimed _Signore
a vita_ by the mob; and here, a few months later, his Burgundian followers
thrust out the most unpopular of his agents to be torn to pieces by the
besiegers. Here the Papal Commissioners and the Eight sat on the day of
Savonarola's martyrdom, as told in the last chapter.
The inscription
over the door, with the monogram of Christ, was placed here by the
Gonfaloniere Niccolo Capponi in February 1528, in the last temporary
restoration of the Republic; it originally announced that Jesus Christ had
been chosen King of the Florentine People, but was modified by Cosimo I. The
huge marble group of Hercules and Cacus on the right, by Baccio Bandinelli,
is an atrocity; in Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography there is a rare story of
how he and Baccio wrangled about it in the Duke's presence, on which
occasion Bandinelli was stung into making a foul--but probably
true--accusation against Cellini, which might have had serious consequences.
The Marzocco on the left, the emblematical lion of Florence, is a
copy from Donatello.
The court is the work of Michelozzo, commenced in
1434, on the return of the elder Cosimo from exile. The stucco ornamentations
and grotesques were executed in 1565, on the occasion of the marriage
of Francesco dei Medici, son of Cosimo I., with Giovanna of Austria;
the faded frescoes are partly intended to symbolise the ducal
exploits, partly views of Austrian cities in compliment to the bride. The
bronze boy with a dolphin, on the fountain in the centre of the court,
was made by Andrea Verrocchio for Lorenzo the Magnificent; it is
an exquisite little work, full of life and motion--"the little boy who for
ever half runs and half flits across the courtyard of the Palace, while the
dolphin ceaselessly struggles in the arms, whose pressure sends the water
spurting from the nostrils."[27]
[27] Mr Armstrong in his _Lorenzo de'
Medici_.
On the first floor is the _Sala del Consiglio Grande_,
frequently called the _Salone dei Cinquecento_. It was mainly constructed in
1495 by Simone del Pollaiuolo, called Cronaca from his capacity of
telling endless stories about Fra Girolamo. Here the Greater Council
met, which the Friar declared was the work of God and not of man. And
here it was that, in a famous sermon preached before the Signoria and
chief citizens on August 20th, 1496, he cried: "I want no hats, no
mitres great or small; nought would I have save what Thou hast given to
Thy saints--death; a red hat, a hat of blood--this do I desire." It
was supposed that the Pope had offered to make him a cardinal. In
this same hall on the evening of May 22nd, 1498, the evening before
their death, Savonarola was allowed an hour's interview with his
two companions; it was the first time that they had met since
their arrest, and in the meanwhile Savonarola had been told that the
others had recanted, and Domenico and Silvestro had been shown what
purported to be their master's confession, seeming, in part at least, to
abjure the cause for which Fra Domenico was yearning to shed his blood. A
few years later, in 1503, the Gonfaloniere Piero Soderini intrusted
the decoration of these walls to Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo;
and it was then that this hall, so consecrated to liberty, became
_la scuola del mondo_, the school of all the world in art; and
Raphael himself was among the most ardent of its scholars. Leonardo drew
his famous scene of the Battle of the Standard, and appears to
have actually commenced painting on the wall. Michelangelo sketched
the cartoon of a group of soldiers bathing in the Arno, suddenly
surprised by the sound of the trumpet calling them to arms; but he did
not proceed any further. These cartoons played the same part in the art
of the Cinquecento as Masaccio's Carmine frescoes in that of the preceding
century; it is the universal testimony of contemporaries that they were the
supremely perfect works of the Renaissance. Vasari gives a full description
of each--but no traces of the original works now remain. One episode from
Leonardo's cartoon is preserved in an engraving by Edelinck after a copy,
which is hardly likely to have been a faithful one, by Rubens; and there is
an earlier engraving as well. A few figures are to be seen in a drawing at
Venice, doubtfully ascribed to Raphael. Drawings and engravings of
Michelangelo's soldiers have made a portion of his composition
familiar--enough at least to make the world realise something of the extent
of its loss.
On the restoration of the Medici in 1512, the hall was used
as a barracks for their foreign soldiers; and Vasari accuses
Baccio Bandinelli of having seized the opportunity to destroy
Michelangelo's cartoon--which hardly seems probable. The frescoes which now
cover the walls are by Vasari and his school, the statues of the Medici
partly by Bandinelli, whilst that of Fra Girolamo is modern. It was in
this hall that the first Parliament of United Italy met, during the
short period when Florence was the capital. The adjoining rooms,
called after various illustrious members of the Medicean family, are
adorned with pompous uninspiring frescoes of their exploits by Vasari; in
the Salotto di Papa Clemente there is a representation of the siege
of Florence by the papal and imperial armies, which gives a fine idea
of the magnitude of the third walls of the city, Arnolfo's walls,
though even then the towers had been in part shortened.
On the second
floor, the hall prettily known as the Sala dei Gigli contains some frescoes
by Domenico Ghirlandaio, executed about 1482. They represent St Zenobius in
his majesty, enthroned between Eugenius and Crescentius, with Roman heroes as
it were in attendance upon this great patron of the Florentines. In a
lunette, painted in imitation of bas-relief, there is a peculiarly beautiful
Madonna and Child with Angels, also by Domenico Ghirlandaio. This room is
sometimes called the Sala del Orologio, from a wonderful old clock that once
stood here. The following room, into which a door with marble framework
by Benedetto da Maiano leads, is the audience chamber of the Signoria;
it was originally to have been decorated by Ghirlandaio,
Botticelli, Perugino, and Filippino Lippi--but the present frescoes are
by Salviati in the middle of the sixteenth century. Here, on the
fateful day of the _Cimento_ or Ordeal, the two Franciscans, Francesco
da Puglia and Giuliano Rondinelli, consulted with the Priors and
then passed into the Chapel to await the event. Beyond is the
Priors' Chapel, dedicated to St Bernard and decorated with frescoes
in imitation of mosaic by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (Domenico's son). Here
on the morning of his martyrdom Savonarola said Mass, and, before actually
communicating, took the Host in his hands and uttered his famous
prayer:--
"Lord, I know that Thou art that very God, the Creator of the
world and of human nature. I know that Thou art that perfect,
indivisible and inseparable Trinity, distinct in three Persons, Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost. I know that Thou art that Eternal Word, who didst
descend from Heaven to earth in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Thou didst
ascend the wood of the Cross to shed Thy precious Blood for us,
miserable sinners. I pray Thee, my Lord; I pray Thee, my Salvation; I pray
Thee, my Consoler; that such precious Blood be not shed for me in vain,
but may be for the remission of all my sins. For these I crave Thy
pardon, from the day that I received the water of Holy Baptism even to
this moment; and I confess to Thee, Lord, my guilt. And so I crave
pardon of Thee for what offence I have done to this city and all this
people, in things spiritual and temporal, as well as for all those
things wherein of myself I am not conscious of having erred. And humbly do
I crave pardon of all those persons who are here standing round. May they
pray to God for me, and may He make me strong up to the last end, so that the
enemy may have no power over me. Amen."
Beyond the Priors' chapel are the
apartments of Duke Cosimo's Spanish wife, Eleonora of Toledo, with a little
chapel decorated by Bronzino. It was in these rooms that the Duchess stormed
at poor Benvenuto Cellini, when he passed through to speak with the Duke--as
he tells us in his autobiography. Benvenuto had an awkward knack of
suddenly appearing here whenever the Duke and Duchess were particularly
busy; but their children were hugely delighted at seeing him, and little
Don Garzia especially used to pull him by the cloak and "have the
most pleasant sport with me that such a _bambino_ could have."
A room
in the tower, discovered in 1814, is supposed to be the Alberghettino, in
which the elder Cosimo was imprisoned in 1433, and in which Savonarola passed
his last days--save when he was brought down to the Bargello to be tortured.
Here the Friar wrote his meditations upon the _In te, Domine, speravi_ and
the _Miserere_--meditations which became famous throughout Christendom. The
prayer, quoted above, is usually printed as a pendant to the
_Miserere_.
On the left of the palace, the great fountain with Neptune
and his riotous gods and goddesses of the sea, by Bartolommeo Ammanati and
his contemporaries, is a characteristic production of the
later Cinquecento. No less characteristic, though in another way, is
the equestrian statue in bronze of Cosimo I., as first Grand Duke
of Tuscany, by Giovanni da Bologna; the tyrant sits on his steed, gloomily
guarding the Palace and Piazza where he has finally extinguished the last
sparks of republican liberty. It was finished in 1594, in the days of his son
Ferdinand I., the third Grand Duke.
At the beginning of the Via Gondi,
adjoining the custom-house and now incorporated in the Palazzo Vecchio, was
the palace of the Captain, the residence of the Bargello and Executor of
Justice. It was here that the Pazzi conspirators were hung out of the windows
in 1478; here that Bernardo del Nero and his associates were beheaded in
1497; and here, in the following year, the examination of Savonarola and
his adherents was carried on. Near here, too, stood in old times
the Serraglio, or den of the lions, which was also incorporated by
Vasari into the Palace; the Via del Leone, in which Vasari's rather
fine rustica facade stands, is named from them still.
The Piazza saw
the Pisan captives forced ignominiously to kiss the Marzocco in 1364, and to
build the so-called Tetto dei Pisani, which formerly stood on the west,
opposite the Palace. In this Piazza, too, the people assembled in parliament
at the sounding of the great bell. In the fifteenth century, this simply
meant that whatever party in the State desired to alter the government, in
their own favour, occupied the openings of the Piazza with troops; and the
noisy rabble that appeared on these occasions, to roar out their assent to
whatever was proposed, had but little connection with the real People of
Florence. Among the wildest scenes that this Piazza has witnessed were
those during the rising of the Ciompi in 1378, when again and again
the populace surged round the Palace with their banners and wild
cries, until the terrified Signoria granted their demands. Here, too,
took place Savonarola's famous burnings of the Vanities in Carnival
time; large piles of these "lustful things" were surmounted by
allegorical figures of King Carnival, or of Lucifer and the seven deadly
sins, and then solemnly fired; while the people sang the _Te Deum_,
the bells rang, and the trumpets and drums of the Signoria pealed
out their loudest. But sport of less serious kind went on
here too--tournaments and shows of wild beasts and the like--things
that the Florentines dearly loved, and in which their rulers found
it politic to fool them to the top of their bent. For instance, on
June 25th, 1514, there was a _caccia_ of a specially magnificent kind;
a sort of glorified bull-fight, in which a fountain surrounded by
green woods was constructed in the middle of the Piazza, and two lions,
with bears and leopards, bulls, buffaloes, stags, horses, and the like
were driven into the arena. Enormous prices were paid for seats;
foreigners came from all countries, and four Roman cardinals were
conspicuous, including Raphael's Bibbiena, disguised as Spanish gentlemen.
Several people were killed by the beasts. It was always a sore point with
the Florentines that their lions were such unsatisfactory brutes and
never distinguished themselves on these occasions; they were no match
for your Spanish bull, at a time when, in politics, the bull's master
had yoked all Italy to his triumphal car.
The _Loggia dei Priori_, now
called the _Loggia dei Lanzi_ after the German lancers of Duke Cosimo who
were stationed here, was originally built for the Priors and other
magistrates to exercise public functions, with all the display that mediæval
republics knew so well how to use. It is a kind of great open vaulted hall; a
throne for a popular government, as M. Reymond calls it. Although frequently
known as the Loggia of Orcagna, it was commenced in 1376 by Benci di
Cione and Simone Talenti, and is intermediate in style between Gothic
and Renaissance (in contrast to the pure Gothic of the Bigallo).
The sculptures above, frequently ascribed to Agnolo Gaddi and representing
the Virtues, are now assigned to Giovanni d'Ambrogio and Jacopo di Piero, and
were executed between 1380 and 1390. Among the numerous statues that now
stand beneath its roof (and which include Giambologna's Rape of the Sabines)
are two of the finest bronzes in Florence: Donatello's _Judith and
Holofernes_, cast for Cosimo the elder, and originally in the Medicean
Palace, but, on the expulsion of the younger Piero, set up on the Ringhiera
with the threatening inscription: _exemplum Salutis Publicae_; and Benvenuto
Cellini's _Perseus with the head of Medusa_, cast in 1553 for the Grand
Duke Cosimo (then only Duke), and possibly intended as a kind of
despotic counter-blast to the Judith. The pedestal (with the exception of
the bas-relief in front, of which the original is in the Bargello) is
also Cellini's. Cellini gives us a rare account of the exhibiting of
this Perseus to the people, while the Duke himself lurked behind a
window over the door of the palace to hear what was said. He assures us
that the crowd gazed upon him--that is, the artist, not the
statue--as something altogether miraculous for having accomplished such a
work, and that two noblemen from Sicily accosted him as he walked in
the Piazza, with such ceremony as would have been too much even
towards the Pope. He took a holiday in honour of the event, sang psalms
and hymns the whole way out of Florence, and was absolutely convinced
that the _ne plus ultra_ of art had been reached.
But it is of
Savonarola, and not of Benvenuto Cellini, that the Loggia reminds us; for
here was the scene of the _Cimento di Fuoco_, the ordeal of fire, on April
7th, 1498. An immense crowd of men filled the Piazza; women and children were
excluded, but packed every inch of windows, roofs, balconies. The streets and
entrances were strongly held by troops, while more were drawn up round the
Palace under Giovacchino della Vecchia. The platform bearing the intended
pyre--a most formidable death-trap, which was to be fired behind the
champions as soon as they were well within it--ran out from the
Ringhiera towards the centre of the Piazza. In spite of the strict
proclamation to armed men not to enter, Doffo Spini appeared with three
hundred Compagnacci, "all armed like Paladins," says Simone Filipepi,[28]
"in favour of the friars of St Francis." They entered the Piazza with
a tremendous uproar, and formed up under the Tetto dei Pisani,
opposite the Palace. Simone says that there was a pre-arranged plot, in
virtue of which they only waited for a sign from the Palace to cut
the Dominicans and their adherents to pieces. The Loggia was divided
into two parts, the half nearer the Palace assigned to the Franciscans,
the other, in which a temporary altar had been erected, to the
Dominicans. In front of the Loggia the sun flashed back from the armour of
a picked band of soldiers, under Marcuccio Salviati, apparently
intended as a counter demonstration to Doffo Spini and his young
aristocrats. The Franciscans were first on the field, and quietly took
their station. Their two champions entered the Palace, and were seen no
more during the proceedings. Then with exultant strains of the
_Exsurgat Deus_, the Dominicans slowly made their way down the Corso
degli Adimari and through the Piazza in procession, two and two.
Their fierce psalm was caught up and re-echoed by their adherents as
they passed. Preceded by a Crucifix, about two hundred of these black
and white "hounds of the Lord" entered the field of battle, followed
by Fra Domenico in a rich cope, and then Savonarola in full vestments with
the Blessed Sacrament, attended by deacon and sub-deacon. A band of devout
republican laymen, with candles and red crosses, brought up the rear.
Savonarola entered the Loggia, set the Sacrament on the altar, and solemnly
knelt in adoration.
[28] Botticelli's brother and an ardent Piagnone,
whose chronicle has been recently discovered and published by Villari and
Casanova. The Franciscans were possibly sincere in the business, and mere
tools in the hands of the Compagnacci; they are not likely to have been
privy to the plot.
Then, while Fra Girolamo stood firm as a column,
delay after delay commenced. The Dominican's cope might be enchanted, or his
robe too for the matter of that, so Domenico was hurried into the Palace
and his garments changed. The two Franciscan stalwarts remained in
the Priors' chapel. In the meanwhile a storm passed over the city. A
rush of the Compagnacci and populace towards the Loggia was driven back
by Salviati's guard. Domenico returned with changed garments, and
stood among the Franciscans; stones hurtled about him; he would enter
the fire with the Crucifix--this was objected to; then with
the Sacrament--this was worse. Domenico was convinced that he would
pass through the ordeal scathless, and that the Sacrament would not
protect him if his cause were not just; but he was equally convinced that
it was God's will that he should not enter the fire without it.
Evening fell in the midst of the wrangling, and at last the Signoria
ordered both parties to go home. Only the efforts of Salviati and his
soldiery saved Savonarola and Domenico from being torn to pieces at the
hands of the infuriated mob, who apparently concluded that they had
been trifled with. "As the Father Fra Girolamo issued from the Loggia
with the Most Holy Sacrament in his hands," says Simone Filipepi, who
was present, "and Fra Domenico with his Crucifix, the signal was
given from the Palace to Doffo Spini to carry out his design; but he, as
it pleased God, would do nothing." The Franciscans of Santa Croce
were promised an annual subsidy of sixty pieces of silver for their
share in the day's work: "Here, take the price of the innocent blood
you have betrayed," was their greeting when they came to demand it.
In
after years, Doffo Spini was fond of gossiping with Botticelli and his
brother, Simone Filipepi, and made no secret of his intention of killing
Savonarola on this occasion. Yet, of all the Friar's persecutors, he was the
only one that showed any signs of penitence for what he had done. "On the
ninth day of April, 1503," writes Simone in his Chronicle, "as I, Simone di
Mariano Filipepi, was leaving my house to go to vespers in San Marco, Doffo
Spini, who was in the company of Bartolommeo di Lorenzo Carducci, saluted me.
Bartolommeo turned to me, and said that Fra Girolamo and the Piagnoni had
spoilt and undone the city; whereupon many words passed between him and
me, which I will not set down here. But Doffo interposed, and said that
he had never had any dealings with Fra Girolamo, until the time when, as a
member of the Eight, he had to examine him in prison; and that, if he had
heard Fra Girolamo earlier and had been intimate with him, 'even as Simone
here'--turning to me--'I would have been a more ardent partisan of his than
even Simone, for nothing save good was ever seen in him even unto his
death.'"
THE UFFIZI
Beyond the Palazzo Vecchio, between the
Piazza and the Arno, stands the Palazzo degli Uffizi, which Giorgio Vasari
reared in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, for Cosimo I. It
contains the Archives, the Biblioteca Nazionale (which includes the Palatine
and Magliabecchian Libraries, and, like all similar institutions in Italy,
is generously thrown open to all comers without reserve), and, above all, the
great picture gallery commenced by the Grand Dukes, usually simply known as
the Uffizi and now officially the Galleria Reale degli Uffizi, which,
together with its continuation in the Pitti Palace across the river, is
undoubtedly the finest collection of pictures in the
world.
[Illustration: LOOKING THROUGH VASARI'S LOGGIA,
UFFIZI]
Leaving the double lines of illustrious Florentines, men great in
the arts of war and peace, in their marble niches watching over
the pigeons who throng the Portico, we ascend to the picture gallery
by the second door to the left.[29]
[29] The following notes make no
pretence at furnishing a catalogue, but are simply intended to indicate the
more important Italian pictures, especially the principal masterpieces of,
or connected with the Florentine school.
RITRATTI DEI
PITTORI--PRIMO CORRIDORE.
On the way up, four rooms on the right contain
the Portraits of the Painters, many of them painted by themselves. In the
further room, Filippino Lippi by himself, fragment of a fresco (286). Raphael
(288) at the age of twenty-three, with his spiritual, almost
feminine beauty, painted by himself at Urbino during his Florentine
period, about 1506. This is Raphael before the worldly influence of Rome
had fallen upon him, the youth who came from Urbino and Perugia to
the City of the Lilies with the letter of recommendation from
Urbino's Duchess to Piero Soderini, to sit at the feet of Leonardo
and Michelangelo, and wander with Fra Bartolommeo through the cloisters
of San Marco. Titian (384), "in which he appears, painted by himself,
on the confines of old age, vigorous and ardent still, fully
conscious, moreover, though without affectation, of pre-eminent genius
and supreme artistic rank" (Mr C. Phillips). Tintoretto, by himself
(378); Andrea del Sarto, by himself (1176); a genuine portrait
of Michelangelo (290), but of course not by himself; Rubens, by
himself (228). An imaginary portrait of Leonardo da Vinci (292), of a
much later period, may possibly preserve some tradition of the
"magician's" appearance; the Dosso Dossi is doubtful; those of Giorgione
and Bellini are certainly apocryphal. In the second room are two
portraits of Rembrandt by himself. In the third room Angelica Kauffmann
and Vigee Le Brun are charming in their way. In the fourth room,
English visitors cannot fail to welcome several of their own painters of
the nineteenth century, including Mr Watts.
Passing the Medicean busts
at the head of the stairs, the famous Wild Boar and the two Molossian Hounds,
we enter the first or eastern corridor, containing paintings of the earlier
masters, mingled with ancient busts and sarcophagi. The best specimens of the
Giotteschi are an Agony in the Garden (8), wrongly ascribed to Giotto
himself; an Entombment (27), ascribed to a Giotto di Stefano, called
Giottino, a painter of whom hardly anything but the nickname is known;
an Annunciation (28), ascribed to Agnolo Gaddi; and an altar-piece
by Giovanni da Milano (32). There are some excellent early
Sienese paintings; a Madonna and Child with Angels, by Pietro
Lorenzetti, 1340 (15); the Annunciation, by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi
(23); and a very curious picture of the Hermits of the Thebaid (16), a kind
of devout fairy-land painted possibly by one of the Lorenzetti, in
the spirit of those delightfully naive _Vite del Santi Padri_.
Lorenzo Monaco, or Don Lorenzo, a master who occupies an intermediate
position between the Giotteschi and the Quattrocento, is represented by
the Mystery of the Passion (40), a symbolical picture painted in 1404, of
a type that Angelico brought to perfection in a fresco in San Marco;
the Adoration of the Magi (39, the scenes in the frame by a later
hand), and Madonna and Saints (41). The portrait of Giovanni dei Medici
(43) is by an unknown hand of the Quattrocento. Paolo Uccello's Battle
(52) is mainly a study in perspective. The Annunciation (53), by Neri
di Bicci di Lorenzo, is a fair example of one of the least
progressive painters of the Quattrocento. The pictures by Alessio
Baldovinetti (56 and 60) and Cosimo Rosselli (63 and 65) are tolerable
examples of very uninteresting fifteenth century masters. The allegorical
figures of the Virtues (69-73), ascribed to Piero Pollaiuolo, are
second-rate; and the same may be said of an Annunciation (such is the real
subject of 81) and the Perseus and Andromeda pictures (85, 86, 87) by Piero
di Cosimo. But the real gem of this corridor is the Madonna and Child
(74), which Luca Signorelli painted for Lorenzo dei Medici, a picture which
profoundly influenced Michelangelo; the splendidly modelled nude figures of
men in the background transport us into the golden
age.
TRIBUNA.
The famous Tribuna is supposed to contain the
masterpieces of the whole collection, though the lover of the Quattrocento
will naturally seek his best-loved favourites elsewhere. Of the five
ancient sculptures in the centre of the hall the best is that of the
crouching barbarian slave, who is preparing his knife to flay Marsyas. It is
a fine work of the Pergamene school. The celebrated Venus dei Medici is a
typical Græco-Roman work, the inscription at its base being a comparatively
modern forgery. It was formerly absurdly overpraised, and is in consequence
perhaps too much depreciated at the present day. The remaining three--the
Satyr, the Wrestlers, and the young Apollo--have each been largely and freely
restored.
Turning to the pictures, we have first the Madonna
del Cardellino (1129), painted by Raphael during his Florentine period
when under the influence of Fra Bartolommeo, in 1506 or thereabouts,
and afterwards much damaged and restored: still one of the most
beautiful of his early Madonnas. The St. John the Baptist (1127), ascribed
to Raphael, is only a school piece, though from a design of the master's.
The Madonna del Pozzo (1125), in spite of its hard and over-smooth colouring,
was at one time attributed to Raphael; its ascription to Francia Bigio is
somewhat conjectural. The portrait of a Lady wearing a wreath (1123), and
popularly called the Fornarina, originally ascribed to Giorgione and later to
Raphael, is believed to be by Sebastiano del Piombo. Then come a lady's
portrait, ascribed to Raphael (1120); another by a Veronese master,
erroneously ascribed to Mantegna, and erroneously said to represent the
Duchess Elizabeth of Urbino (1121); Bernardino Luini's Daughter of Herodias
(1135), a fine study of a female Italian criminal of the Renaissance;
Perugino's portrait of Francesco delle Opere, holding a scroll inscribed
_Timete Deum_, an admirable picture painted in oils about the year 1494,
and formerly supposed to be a portrait of Perugino by himself
(287); portrait of Evangelista Scappa, ascribed to Francia (1124); and
a portrait of a man, by Sebastiano del Piombo (3458). Raphael's
Pope Julius II. (1131) is a grand and terrible portrait of the
tremendous warrior Pontiff, whom the Romans called a second Mars. Vasari
says that in this picture he looks so exactly like himself that
"one trembles before him as if he were still alive." Albert
Durer's Adoration of the Magi (1141) and Lucas van Leyden's Mystery of
the Passion (1143) are powerful examples of the religious painting of
the North, that loved beauty less for its own sake than did the
Italians. The latter should be compared with similar pictures by Don Lorenzo
and Fra Angelico. Titian's portrait of the Papal Nuncio Beccadelli
(1116), painted in 1552, although a decidedly fine work, has been
rather overpraised.
Michelangelo's Holy Family (1139) is the only
existing easel picture that the master completed. It was painted for the rich
merchant, Angelo Doni (who haggled in a miserly fashion over the price and
was in consequence forced to pay double the sum agreed upon), about
1504, in the days of the Gonfaloniere Soderini, when Michelangelo
was engaged upon the famous cartoon for the Sala del Maggior
Consiglio. Like Luca Signorelli, Michelangelo has introduced naked
figures, apparently shepherds, into his background. "In the Doni Madonna of
the Uffizi," writes Walter Pater, "Michelangelo actually brings the
pagan religion, and with it the unveiled human form, the
sleepy-looking fauns of a Dionysiac revel, into the presence of the Madonna,
as simpler painters had introduced other products of the earth, birds
or flowers; and he has given to that Madonna herself much of the
uncouth energy of the older and more primitive 'Mighty Mother.'" The
painters introduced into their pictures what they loved best, in earth or
sky, as votive offerings to the Queen of Heaven; and what Signorelli
and Michelangelo best loved was the human form. This is reflected in
the latter's own lines:--
Ne Dio, sua grazia, mi si mostra
altrove, piu che'n alcun leggiadro e mortal velo, e quel sol
amo, perche'n quel si specchia.
"Nor does God vouchsafe to reveal Himself
to me anywhere more than in some lovely mortal veil, and that alone I love,
because He is mirrored therein."
In the strongest possible contrast to
Michelangelo's picture are the two examples of the softest master of the
Renaissance--Correggio's Repose on the Flight to Egypt (1118), and his
Madonna adoring the Divine Child (1134). The former, with its rather out of
place St. Francis of Assisi, is a work of what is known as
Correggio's transition period, 1515-1518, after he had painted his earlier
easel pictures and before commencing his great fresco work at Parma;
the latter, a more characteristic picture, is slightly later and was
given by the Duke of Mantua to Cosimo II. The figures of Prophets by
Fra Bartolommeo (1130 and 1126), the side-wings of a picture now in
the Pitti Gallery, are not remarkable in any way. The Madonna and
Child with the Baptist and St. Sebastian (1122) is a work of
Perugino's better period.
There remain the two famous Venuses of
Titian. The so-called Urbino Venus (1117)--a motive to some extent borrowed,
and slightly coarsened in the borrowing, from Giorgione's picture at
Dresden--is much the finer of the two. It was painted for Francesco Maria
della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, and, although not a portrait of Eleonora
Gonzaga, who was then a middle-aged woman, it was certainly intended to
conjure up the beauty of her youth. What Eleonora really looked like at
this time, you can see in the first of the two Venetian rooms,
where Titian's portrait of her, painted at about the same date, hangs.
The Venus and Cupid (1108) is a later work; the goddess is the likeness
of a model who very frequently appears in the works of Titian and
Palma.
SCUOLA TOSCANA.
On the left we pass out of the Tribuna
to three rooms devoted to the Tuscan school.
The first contains the
smaller pictures, including several priceless Angelicos and Botticellis. Fra
Angelico's Naming of St. John (1162), Marriage of the Blessed Virgin to St.
Joseph (1178), and her Death (1184), are excellent examples of his delicate
execution and spiritual expression in his smaller, miniature-like works.
Antonio Pollaiuolo's Labours of Hercules (1153) is one of the masterpieces of
this most uncompromising realist of the Quattrocento. Either by Antonio or
his brother Piero, is also the portrait of that monster of
iniquity, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan (30). Sandro Botticelli's
Calumny (1182) is supposed to have been painted as a thankoffering to a
friend who had defended him from the assaults of slanderous tongues; it is
a splendid example of his dramatic intensity, the very statues in
their niches taking part in the action. The subject--taken from
Lucian's description of a picture by Apelles of Ephesus--was frequently
painted by artists of the Renaissance, and there is a most magnificent
drawing of the same by Andrea Mantegna at the British Museum, which was
copied by Rembrandt. On the judgment-seat sits a man with ears like those
of Midas, into which Ignorance and Suspicion on either side ever
whisper. Before him stands Envy,--a hideous, pale, and haggard man,
seeming wasted by some slow disease. He is making the accusation and
leading Calumny, a scornful Botticellian beauty, who holds in one hand a
torch and with the other drags her victim by the hair to the judge's
feet. Calumny is tended and adorned by two female figures, Artifice
and Deceit. But Repentance slowly follows, in black mourning habit;
while naked Truth--the Botticellian Venus in another form--raises her
hand in appeal to the heavens.
The rather striking portrait of a
painter (1163) is usually supposed to be Andrea Verrocchio, by Lorenzo di
Credi, his pupil and successor; Mr Berenson, however, considers that it is
Perugino and by Domenico Ghirlandaio. On the opposite wall are two very early
Botticellis, Judith returning from the camp of the Assyrians (1156) and the
finding of the body of Holofernes (1158), in a scale of colouring
differing from that of his later works. The former is one of those
pictures which have been illumined for us by Ruskin, who regards it as the
only picture that is true to Judith; "The triumph of Miriam over a
fallen host, the fire of exulting mortal life in an immortal hour, the
purity and severity of a guardian angel--all are here; and as her
servant follows, carrying indeed the head, but invisible--(a mere thing to
be carried--no more to be so much as thought of)--she looks only at
her mistress, with intense, servile, watchful love. Faithful, not in
these days of fear only, but hitherto in all her life, and afterwards
for ever." Walter Pater has read the picture in a different sense,
and sees in it Judith "returning home across the hill country, when
the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come, and the
olive branch in her hand is becoming a burden."
The portrait of Andrea
del Sarto by himself (280) represents him in the latter days of his life, and
was painted on a tile in 1529, about a year before his death, with some
colours that remained over after he had finished the portrait of one of the
Vallombrosan monks; his wife kept it by her until her death. The very
powerful likeness of an old man in white cap and gown (1167), a fresco
ascribed to Masaccio, is more probably the work of Filippino Lippi. The
famous Head of Medusa (1159) must be seen with grateful reverence by all
lovers of English poetry, for it was admired by Shelley and inspired him with
certain familiar and exceedingly beautiful stanzas; but as for its being
a work of Leonardo da Vinci, it is now almost universally admitted to be a
comparatively late forgery, to supply the place of the lost Medusa of which
Vasari speaks. The portrait (1157), also ascribed to Leonardo, is better, but
probably no more authentic. Here is a most dainty little example of Fra
Bartolommeo's work on a small scale (1161), representing the Circumcision and
the Nativity, with the Annunciation in grisaille on the back. Botticelli's
St. Augustine (1179) is an early work, and, like the Judith, shows his
artistic derivation from Fra Lippo Lippi, to whom indeed it was
formerly ascribed. His portrait of Piero di Lorenzo dei Medici (1154),
a splendid young man in red cap and flowing dark hair, has been
already referred to in chapter iii.; it was formerly supposed to be a
likeness of Pico della Mirandola. It was painted before Piero's expulsion
from Florence, probably during the life-time of the Magnificent,
and represents him before he degenerated into the low
tyrannical blackguard of later years; he apparently wishes to appeal to
the memory of his great-grandfather Cosimo, whose medallion he holds,
to find favour with his unwilling subjects. The portraits of Duke Cosimo's
son and grandchild, Don Garzia and Donna Maria (1155 and 1164), by Bronzino,
should be noted. Finally we have the famous picture of Perseus freeing
Andromeda, by Piero di Cosimo (1312). It is about the best specimen of his
fantastic conceptions to be seen in Florence, and the monster itself is
certainly a triumph of a somewhat unhealthy imagination nourished in solitude
on an odd diet.
In the second room are larger works of the great Tuscans.
The Adoration of the Magi (1252) is one of the very few authentic works
of Leonardo; it was one of his earliest productions, commenced in
1478, and, like so many other things of his, never finished. The
St. Sebastian (1279) is one of the masterpieces of that wayward Lombard
or rather Piedmontese--although we now associate him with
Siena--who approached nearest of all to the art of Leonardo, Giovanni
Antonio Bazzi, known still as Sodoma. Ridolfo Ghirlandaio's Miracles
of Zenobius (1277 and 1275) are excellent works by a usually
second-rate master. The Visitation with its predella, by Mariotto
Albertinelli (1259), painted in 1503, is incomparably the greatest picture
that Fra Bartolommeo's wild friend and fellow student ever produced, and one
in which he most nearly approaches the best works of Bartolommeo
himself. "The figures, however," Morelli points out, "are less refined
and noble than those of the Frate, and the foliage of the trees
is executed with miniature-like precision, which is never the case in
the landscapes of the latter." Andrea del Sarto's genial and kindly
St. James with the orphans (1254), is one of his last works; it
was painted to serve as a standard in processions, and has
consequently suffered considerably. Bronzino's Descent of Christ into Hades
(1271), that "heap of cumbrous nothingnesses and sickening
offensivenesses," as Ruskin pleasantly called it, need only be seen to be
loathed. The so-called Madonna delle Arpie, or our Lady of the Harpies, from
the figures on the pedestal beneath her feet (1112), is perhaps the
finest of all Andrea del Sarto's pictures; the Madonna is a highly
idealised likeness of his own wife Lucrezia, and some have tried to
recognise the features of the painter himself in the St. John:--
"You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night. This must suffice me
here. What would one have? In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more
chance-- Four great walls in the New Jerusalem Meted on each
side by the Angel's reed, For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me To
cover--the three first without a wife, While I have mine! So--still they
overcome Because there's still Lucrezia,--as I choose."
The
full-length portrait of Cosimo the Elder (1267), the Pater Patriae (so the
flattery of the age hailed the man who said that a city destroyed was better
than a city lost), was painted by Pontormo from some fifteenth century
source, as a companion piece to his portrait here of Duke Cosimo I. (1270).
The admirable portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent by Vasari (1269) is
similarly constructed from contemporary materials, and is probably the most
valuable thing that Vasari has left to us in the way of painting. The
unfinished picture by Fra Bartolommeo (1265), representing our Lady enthroned
with St. Anne, the guardian of the Republic, watching over her and
interceding for Florence, while the patrons of the city gather round for
her defence, was intended for the altar in the Sala del Maggior
Consiglio of the Palazzo Vecchio; it is conceived in something of the
same spirit that made the last inheritors of Savonarola's tradition
and teaching fondly believe that Angels would man the walls of
Florence, rather than that she should again fall into the hands of her
former tyrants, the Medici. The great Madonna and Child with four Saints
and two Angels scattering flowers, by Filippino Lippi (1268), was
painted in 1485 for the room in the Palazzo Vecchio in which the Otto
di Pratica held their meetings. The Adoration of the Magi (1257), also
by Filippino Lippi, painted in 1496, apart from its great value as a
work of art, has a curious historical significance; the Magi and
their principal attendants, who are thus pushing forwards to display
their devotion to Our Lady of Florence and the Child whom the
Florentines were to elect their King, are the members of the younger branch
of the Medici, who have returned to the city now that Piero has
been expelled, and are waiting their chance. See how they have
already replaced the family of the elder Cosimo, who occupy this
same position in a similar picture painted some eighteen years before
by Sandro Botticelli, Filippino's master. At this epoch they
had ostentatiously altered their name of Medici and called
themselves Popolani, but were certainly intriguing against Fra Girolamo. The
old astronomer kneeling to our extreme left is the elder Piero
Francesco, watching the adventurous game for a throne that his children
are preparing; the most prominent figure in the picture, from whose head
a page is lifting the crown, is Pier Francesco's son, Giovanni, who
will soon woo Caterina Sforza, the lady of Forli, and make her the
mother of Giovanni delle Bande Nere; and the precious vessel which he is
to offer to the divine Child is handed to him by the younger
Pier Francesco, the father of Lorenzaccio, that "Tuscan Brutus"
whose dagger was to make Giovanni's grandson, Cosimo, the sole lord
of Florence and her empire.[30]
[30] See the Genealogical Table in
Appendix. The elder Pier Francesco was dead many years before this picture
was painted. It was for his other son, Lorenzo, that Sandro Botticelli drew
his illustrations of the _Divina Commedia_.
Granacci's Madonna of
the Girdle (1280), over the door, formerly in San Piero Maggiore, is a good
example of a painter who imitated most of his contemporaries and had little
individuality. On easels in the middle of the room are (3452) Venus, by
Lorenzo di Credi, a conscientious attempt to follow the fashion of the age
and handle a subject quite alien to his natural sympathies--for Lorenzo di
Credi was one of those who sacrificed their studies of the nude
on Savonarola's pyre of the Vanities; and (3436) an Adoration of the Magi,
a cartoon of Sandro Botticelli's, coloured by a later hand, marvellously full
of life in movement, intense and passionate, in which--as though the painter
anticipated the Reformation--the followers of the Magi are fighting furiously
with each other in their desire to find the right way to the Stable of
Bethlehem!
The third room of the Tuscan School contains some of the
truest masterpieces of the whole collection. The Epiphany, by
Domenico Ghirlandaio (1295), painted in 1487, is one of that prosaic
master's best easel pictures. The wonderful Annunciation (1288), in which
the Archangel has alighted upon the flowers in the silence of an
Italian twilight, with a mystical landscape of mountains and rivers,
and far-off cities in the background, may possibly be an early work
of Leonardo da Vinci, to whom it is officially assigned, but is
ascribed by contemporary critics to Leonardo's master, Andrea Verrocchio.
The least satisfactory passage is the rather wooden face and
inappropriate action of the Madonna; Leonardo would surely not have made her,
on receiving the angelic salutation, put her finger into her book to
keep the place. After Three Saints by one of the Pollaiuoli (1301) and
two smaller pictures by Lorenzo di Credi (1311 and 1313), we come to
Piero della Francesca's grand portraits of Federigo of Montefeltro, Duke
of Urbino, and his wife, Battista Sforza (1300); on the reverse, the
Duke and Duchess are seen in triumphal cars surrounded with
allegorical pageantry. Federigo is always, as here, represented in
profile, because he lost his right eye and had the bridge of his nose broken
in a tournament. The three predella scenes (1298) are
characteristic examples of the minor works of Piero's great pupil, Luca
Signorelli of Cortona. |
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