Beyond the Via del Proconsolo the Borgo, now called of the
Albizzi, was originally the Borgo di San Piero--a suburb of the old city,
but included in the second walls of the twelfth century. The present
name records the brief, but not inglorious period of the rule of
the oligarchy or Ottimati, before Cosimo dei Medici obtained
complete possession of the State. It was formerly called the Corso di Por
San Piero. The first palace on the right (De Rast or Quaratesi) was
built for the Pazzi by Brunelleschi, and still shows their armorial
bearings by Donatello. They had another palace further on, on the
left, opposite the Via dell'Acqua. Still further on (past the
Altoviti palace, with its caricatures) is the palace of the Albizzi family,
on the left, as you approach the Piazza. Here Maso degli Albizzi, and then
Rinaldo, lived and practically ruled the state. Giuliano dei Medici alighted
here in 1512. At the end of the Borgo degli Albizzi is now the busy, rather
picturesque little Piazza di San Piero Maggiore, usually full of stalls and
trucks. St. Peter's Gate in Dante's time lay just beyond the church, to the
left. In this Piazza also the Donati had houses; and it was through this gate
that Corso Donati burst into Florence with his followers on the morning of
November 5th, 1301; "and he entered into the city like a daring and bold
cavalier," as Dino Compagni--who loves a strong personality even on the
opposite side to his own--puts it. The Bianchi in the Sesto largely
outnumbered his forces, but did not venture to attack him, while the
populace bawled _Viva il Barone_ to their hearts' content. He
incontinently seized that tall tower of the Corbizzi that still rises
opposite to the facade of the church, at the southern corner of the Piazza in
the Via del Mercatino, and hung out his banner from it. Seven years
later he made his last stand in this square and round this tower, as we
have told in chapter ii. Of the church of San Piero Maggiore, only
the seventeenth century facade remains; but of old it ranked as the
third of the Florentine temples. According to the legend, it was on his
way to this church that San Zenobio raised the French child to life in
the Borgo degli Albizzi, opposite the spot where the Palazzo Altoviti
now stands. It is said to have been the only church in Florence free
from the taint of simony in the days of St. Giovanni Gualberto, and of
old had the privilege of first receiving the new Archbishops when
they entered Florence. The Archbishop went through a curious and
beautiful ceremony of mystic marriage with the Abbess of the Benedictine
convent attached to the church, who apparently personified the diocese
of Florence. Every year on Easter Monday the canons of the Duomo came here
in procession; and on St. Peter's day the captains of the Parte Guelfa
entered the Piazza in state to make a solemn offering, and had a race run in
the Piazza Santa Croce after the ceremony. The artists, Lorenzo di Credi,
Mariotto Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo and Luca della Robbia were buried
here. Two of the best pictures that the church contained--a Coronation of the
Madonna ascribed to Orcagna and the famous Assumption said by Vasari to have
been painted by Botticelli for Matteo Palmieri (which was supposed to
inculcate heretical neoplatonic doctrines concerning the human soul and
the Angels in the spheres), are now in the National Gallery of
London.
It was in this Piazza that the conspirators resolved to
assassinate Maso degli Albizzi. Their spies watched him leave his palace,
walk leisurely towards the church and then enter an apothecary's
shop, close to San Piero. They hurried off to tell their associates,
but when the would-be assassins arrived on the scene, they found that Maso
had given them the slip and left the shop.
Turning down the Via del
Mercatino and back to the Badia along the Via Pandolfini, we pass the palace
which once belonged to Francesco Valori, Savonarola's formidable adherent.
Here it was on that terrible Palm Sunday, 1498, when Hell broke loose, as
Landucci puts it, that Valori's wife was shot dead at a window, while her
husband in the street below, on his way to answer the summons of the
Signoria, was murdered near San Procolo by the kinsmen of the men whom he had
sent to the scaffold.
The Badia shares with the Baptistery and San
Miniato the distinction of being the only Florentine churches mentioned by
Dante. In Cacciaguida's days it was close to the old Roman wall; from
its campanile even in Dante's time, Florence still "took tierce and
nones "; and, at the sound of its bells, the craftsmen of the Arts went
to and from their work. Originally founded by the Countess Willa in
the tenth century, the Badia di San Stefano (as it was called) that
Dante and Boccaccio knew was the work of Arnolfo di Cambio; but it
was entirely rebuilt in the seventeenth century, with
consequent destruction of priceless frescoes by Giotto and Masaccio. The
present graceful campanile is of the fourteenth century. The relief in
the lunette over the chief door, rather in the manner of Andrea
della Robbia, is by Benedetto Buglione. In the left transept is the
monument by Mino da Fiesole of Willa's son Hugo, Margrave of Tuscany, who
died on St. Thomas' day, 1006. Dante calls him the great baron;
his anniversary was solemnly celebrated here, and he was supposed to
have conferred knighthood and nobility upon the Della Bella and
other Florentine families. "Each one," says Cacciaguida, "who beareth
aught of the fair arms of the great baron, whose name and worth the
festival of Thomas keepeth living, from him derived knighthood and
privilege" (_Paradiso_ xvi.). In a chapel to the left of this monument
is Filippino Lippi's picture of the Madonna appearing to St.
Bernard, painted in 1480, one of the most beautiful renderings of
an exceedingly poetical subject. For Dante, Bernard is _colui ch'abbelliva
di Maria, come del sole stella mattutina_, "he who drew light from Mary, as
the morning star from the sun." Filippino has introduced the portrait of the
donor, on the right, Francesco di Pugliese. The church contains two other
works by Mino da Fiesole, a Madonna and (in the right transept) the
sepulchral monument of Bernardo Giugni, who served the State as ambassador to
Milan and Venice in the days of Cosimo and Piero dei Medici. At the entrance
to the cloisters Francesco Valori is buried.
It was in the Badia (and
not in the Church of San Stefano, near the Via Por Santa Maria, as usually
stated) that Boccaccio lectured upon the _Divina Commedia_ in 1373. Benvenuto
da Imola came over from Bologna to attend his beloved master's readings, and
was much edified. But the audience were not equally pleased, and Boccaccio
had to defend himself in verse. One of the sonnets he wrote on this occasion,
_Se Dante piange, dove ch'el si sia_, has been admirably translated
by Dante Rossetti:--
If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he
be, That such high fancies of a soul so proud Should be laid
open to the vulgar crowd, (As, touching my Discourse, I'm told by
thee),
This were my grievous pain; and certainly My proper
blame should not be disavow'd; Though hereof somewhat, I declare
aloud Were due to others, not alone to me.
False hopes,
true poverty, and therewithal The blinded judgment of a host of
friends, And their entreaties, made that I did thus.
But
of all this there is no gain at all Unto the thankless souls with
whose base ends Nothing agrees that's great or
generous.
[Illustration: ARMS OF THE SESTO DI SAN
PIERO]
CHAPTER VII
_From the Bargello past Santa
Croce_
"Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto, ch'un marmo
solo in se non circonscriva col suo soverchio; e solo a quello
arriva la man che ubbidisce all'intelletto." --_Michelangelo
Buonarroti._
Even as the Palazzo Vecchio or Palace of the Priors is
essentially the monument of the _Secondo Popolo_, so the Palazzo del Podesta
or Palace of the Commune belongs to the _Primo Popolo_; it was commenced
in 1255, in that first great triumph of the democracy, although
mainly finished towards the middle of the following century. Here sat
the Podesta, with his assessors and retainers, whom he brought with him
to Florence--himself always an alien noble. Originally he was the
chief officer of the Republic, for the six months during which he
held office, led the burgher forces in war, and acted as chief justice
in peace; but he gradually sunk in popular estimation before the
more democratic Captain of the People (who was himself, it will
be remembered, normally an alien Guelf noble). A little later,
both Podesta and Captain were eclipsed by the Gonfaloniere of Justice.
In the fifteenth century the Podesta was still the president of the
chief civil and criminal court of the city, and his office was only
finally abolished during the Gonfalonierate of Piero Soderini at
the beginning of the Cinquecento. Under the Medicean grand dukes
the Bargello, or chief of police, resided here--hence the present name
of the palace; and it is well to repeat, once for all, that when
the Bargello, or Court of the Bargello, is mentioned in
Florentine history--in grim tales of torture and executions and the like--it
is not this building, but the residence of the Executore of Justice,
now incorporated into the Palazzo Vecchio, that is usually meant.
It
was in this Palace of the Podesta, however, that Guido Novello resided and
ruled the city in the name of King Manfred, during the short period of
Ghibelline tyranny that followed Montaperti, 1260-1266, and which the Via
Ghibellina, first opened by him, recalls. The Palace was broken into by the
populace in 1295, just before the fall of Giano della Bella, because a
Lombard Podesta had unjustly acquitted Corso Donati for the death of a
burgher at the hands of his riotous retainers. Here, too, was Cante dei
Gabbrielli of Gubbio installed by Charles of Valois, in November 1301, and
from its gates issued the Crier of the Republic that summoned Dante Alighieri
and his companions in misfortune to appear before the Podesta's court. In
one of those dark vaulted rooms on the ground floor, now full of a
choice collection of mediæval arms and armour, Cante's successor, Fulcieri
da Calvoli, tortured those of the Bianchi who fell into his cruel
hands. "He sells their flesh while it is still alive," says Dante in
the _Purgatorio_, "then slayeth them like a worn out brute: many doth
he deprive of life, and himself of honour." Some died under the
torments, others were beheaded.
"Messer Donato Alberti," writes Dino
Compagni, "mounted vilely upon an ass, in a peasant's smock, was brought
before the Podesta. And when he saw him, he asked him: 'Are you Messer Donato
Alberti?' He replied: 'I am Donato. Would that Andrea da Cerreto were here
before us, and Niccola Acciaioli, and Baldo d'Aguglione, and Jacopo da
Certaldo, who have destroyed Florence.'[34] Then he was fastened to the rope
and the cord adjusted to the pulley, and so they let him stay; and the
windows and doors of the Palace were opened, and many citizens called in
under other pretexts, that they might see him tortured and
derided."
[34] These were the burghers and lawyers of the black
faction, the Podesta's allies and friends. This was in the spring of
1303.
In the rising of the Ciompi, July 1378, the palace was forced
to surrender to the insurgents after an assault of two hours. They let the
Podesta escape, but burnt all books and papers, especially those of the hated
Arte della Lana. At night as many as the palace could hold quartered
themselves here.
[Illustration: BARGELLO COURTYARD AND
STAIRCASE]
The beautiful court and stairway, surrounded by statues and
armorial bearings, the ascent guarded by the symbolical lion of Florence
and leading to an open loggia, is the work of Benci di Cione and Neri
di Fioraventi, 1333-1345. The palace is now the National Museum
of Sculpture and kindred arts and crafts. Keeping to the left, round
the court itself, we see a marble St. Luke by Niccolo di Piero
Lamberti, of the end of the fourteenth century, from the niche of the Judges
and Notaries at Or San Michele; a magnificent sixteenth
century portalantern in beaten iron; the old marble St. John
Evangelist, contemporaneous with the St. Luke, and probably by Piero di
Giovanni Tedesco, from the niche of the Arte della Seta at Or San Michele;
some allegorical statues by Giovanni da Bologna and Vincenzo Danti,
in rather unsuccessful imitation of Michelangelo; a dying
Adonis, questionably ascribed to Michelangelo. And, finally (numbered
18), there stands Michelangelo's so-called "Victory," the triumph of
the ideal over outworn tyranny and superstition; a radiant youth, but
worn and exhausted by the struggle, rising triumphantly over a shape
of gigantic eld, so roughly hewn as to seem lost in the mist from
which the young hero has gloriously freed himself.[35]
[35] Such, at
least, seems the more obvious interpretation; but there is a certain
sensuality and cruelty about the victor's expression, which, together with
the fact that the vanquished undoubtedly has something of Michelangelo's
own features, lead us to suspect that the master's sympathies were with the
lost cause.
Also on the ground floor, to the left, are two rooms full of
statuary. The first contains nothing important, save perhaps the Madonna
and Child with St. Peter and St. Paul, formerly above the Porta Romana.
In the second room, a series of bas-reliefs by Benedetto da
Rovezzano, begun in 1511 and terribly mutilated by the imperial soldiery
during the siege, represent scenes connected with the life and miracles
of St. Giovanni Gualberto, including the famous trial of Peter
Igneus, who, in order to convict the Bishop of Florence of simony,
passed unharmed through the ordeal of fire. Here is the unfinished bust
of Brutus (111) by Michelangelo, one of his latest works, and
a significant expression of the state of the man's heart, when he
was forced to rear sumptuous monuments for the new tyrants who
had overthrown his beloved Republic. Then a chimney-piece by Benedetto
da Rovezzano from the Casa Borgherini, one of the most sumptuous pieces of
domestic furniture of the Renaissance; a very beautiful tondo of the Madonna
and Child with the little St. John (123) by Michelangelo, made for
Bartolommeo Pitti early in the Cinquecento; the mask of a grinning faun with
gap-teeth, traditionally shown as the head struck out by the boy Michelangelo
in his first visit to the Medici Gardens, when he attracted the attention of
Lorenzo the Magnificent--but probably a comparatively modern work suggested
by Vasari's story; a sketch in marble for the martyrdom of St. Andrew,
supposed to be a juvenile work of Michelangelo's, but also doubtful. Here too
is Michelangelo's drunken Bacchus (128), an
exquisitely-modelled intoxicated vine-crowned youth, behind whom a sly little
satyr lurks, nibbling grapes. It is one of the master's earliest works,
very carefully and delicately finished, executed during his first visit
to Rome, for Messer Jacopo Galli, probably about 1497. Of this
statue Ruskin wrote, while it was still in the Uffizi: "The white
lassitude of joyous limbs, panther-like, yet passive, fainting with their
own delight, that gleam among the Pagan formalisms of the Uffizi,
far away, separating themselves in their lustrous lightness as the
waves of an Alpine torrent do by their dancing from the dead stones,
though the stones be as white as they." Shelley, on the contrary, found
it "most revolting," "the idea of the deity of Bacchus in the
conception of a Catholic." Near it is a tondo of the Virgin and Child with
the Baptist, by Andrea Ferrucci.
At the top of the picturesque and
richly ornamented staircase, to the right of the loggia on the first floor,
opens a great vaulted hall, where the works of Donatello, casts and
originals, surround a cast of his great equestrian monument to Gattamelata at
Padua--a hall of such noble proportions that even Gattamelata looks
insignificant, where he sits his war-horse between the Cross of the People
and the Lily of the Commune. Here the general council of the Commune met--the
only council (besides the special council of the Podesta) in which the
magnates could sit and vote, and it was here, on July 6th, 1295, that
Dante Alighieri first entered public life; he spoke in support of
the modifications of the Ordinances of Justice--which may have
very probably been a few months before he definitely associated
himself with the People by matriculating in the Arte dei Medici e
Speziali. Among the casts and copies that fill this room, there are
several original and splendid works of Donatello; the Marzocco, or
symbolical lion of Florence protecting the shield of the Commune, which
was formerly in front of the Palace of the Priors; the bronze David,
full of Donatello's delight in the exuberance of youthful manhood
just budding; the San Giovannino or little St. John; the marble
David, inferior to the bronze, but heralding Michelangelo; the bronze bust
of a youth, called the son of Gattamelata; Love trampling upon a
snake (bronze); St. George in marble from Or San Michele, an
idealised condottiere of the Quattrocento; St. John the Baptist from
the Baptistery; and a bronze relief of the Crucifixion. The coloured
bust is now believed by many critics to be neither the portrait of
Niccolo da Uzzano nor by Donatello; it is possibly a Roman hero by
some sculptor of the Seicento.
The next room is the audience chamber
of the Podesta. Besides the Cross and the Lilies on the windows, its walls
and roof are covered with the gold lion on azure ground, the arms of the Duke
of Athens. They were cancelled by decree of the Republic in 1343, and renewed
in 1861; as a patriotically worded tablet on the left, under the
window, explains. Opening out of this is the famous Chapel of
the Podesta--famous for the frescoes on its walls--once a prison. From
out of these terribly ruined frescoes stands the figure of Dante
(stands out, alas, because completely repainted--a mere _rifacimento_
with hardly a trace of the original work left) in what was once
a _Paradiso_; the dim figures on either side are said to
represent Brunette Latini and either Corso Donati or Guido Cavalcanti. In
spite of a very pleasant fable, it is absolutely certain that this is not
a contemporaneous portrait of Dante (although it may be regarded as
an authentic likeness, to some extent) and was not painted by Giotto;
the frescoes were executed by some later follower of Giotto (possibly
by Taddeo Gaddi, who painted the lost portraits of Dante and Guido
in Santa Croce) after 1345. The two paintings below on either
side, Madonna and Child and St. Jerome, are votive pictures commissioned
by pious Podestas in 1490 and 1491, the former by Sebastiano Mainardi, the
brother-in-law of Domenico Ghirlandaio.
The third room contains small
bronze works by Tuscan masters of the Quattrocento. In the centre,
Verrocchio's David (22), cast for Lorenzo dei Medici, one of the masterpieces
of the fifteenth century. Here are the famous trial plates for the great
competition for the second bronze gates of the Baptistery, announced in 1401,
the Sacrifice of Abraham, by Brunelleschi and Ghiberti respectively; the
grace and harmony of Ghiberti's composition (12) contrast strongly with
the force, almost violence, the dramatic action and movement
of Brunelleschi's (13). Ghiberti's, unlike his rival's, is in one
single piece; but, until lately, there has been a tendency to underrate
the excellence of Brunelleschi's relief. Here, too, are
Ghiberti's reliquary of St. Hyacinth, executed in 1428, with two
beautiful floating Angels (21); several bas-reliefs by Bertoldo,
Donatello's pupil and successor; the effigy of Marino Soccino, a lawyer of
Siena, by the Sienese sculptor Il Vecchietta (16); and, in a glass
case, Orpheus by Bertoldo, Hercules and Antæus by Antonio Pollaiuolo,
and Love on a Scallop Shell by Donatello. The following room
contains mostly bronzes by later masters, especially Cellini, Giovanni
da Bologna, Vincenzo Danti. The most noteworthy of its contents
are Daniele Ricciarelli's striking bust of Michelangelo (37);
Cellini's bronze sketch for Perseus (38), his bronze bust of Duke Cosimo
I. (39), his wax model for Perseus (40), the liberation of Andromeda, from
the pedestal of the statue in the Loggia dei Lanzi (42); and above all,
Giovanni da Bologna's flying Mercury (82), showing what exceedingly beautiful
mythological work could still be produced when the golden days of the
Renaissance were over. It was cast in 1565, and, like many of the best
bronzes of this epoch, was originally placed on a fountain in one of the
Medicean villas.
On the second floor, first a long room with seals, etc.,
guarded by Rosso's frescoed Justice. Here, and in the room on the left, is a
most wonderful array of the works in enamelled terra cotta of the
Della Robbias--Luca and Andrea, followed by Giovanni and their imitators.
In the best work of Luca and Andrea--and there is much of their very
best and most perfect work in these two rooms--religious devotion
received its highest and most perfect expression in sculpture. Their
Madonnas, Annunciations, Nativities and the like, are the sculptural
counterpart to Angelico's divinest paintings, though never quite attaining to
his spiritual insight and supra-sensible gaze upon life. Andrea's work
is more pictorial in treatment than Luca's, has less vigour and even
at times a perceptible trace of sentimentality; but in sheer beauty
his very best creations do not yield to those of his great master
and uncle. Both Luca and Andrea kept to the simple blue and white--in
the best part of their work--and surrounded their Madonnas with
exquisite festoons of fruit and leaves: "wrought them," in Pater's words,
"into all sorts of marvellous frames and garlands, giving them their
natural colours, only subdued a little, a little paler than
nature."
To the right of the first Della Robbia room, are two more rooms
full of statuary, and one with a collection of medals, including
that commemorating Savonarola's Vision of the Sword of the Lord. In
the first room--taking merely the more important--we may see
Music, wrongly ascribed to Orcagna, probably earlier (139); bust of
Charles VIII. of France (164), author uncertain; bust in terra cotta of
a young warrior, by Antonio Pollaiuolo (161), as grandly insolent
and confident as any of Signorelli's savage youths in the
Orvieto frescoes. Also, bust of Matteo Palmieri, the humanist and
suspected heretic, by Antonio Rossellino (160); bust of Pietro Mellini
by Benedetto da Maiano (153); portrait of a young lady, by Matteo Civitali
of Lucca (142); a long relief (146) ascribed to Verrocchio and representing
the death of a lady of the Tornabuoni family in child-birth, which Shelley
greatly admired and described at length, under the impression that he was
studying a genuine antique: "It is altogether an admirable piece," he says,
"quite in the spirit of Terence." The uncompromising realism of the male
portraiture of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is fully
illustrated in this room, and there is at the same time a peculiar tenderness
and winsomeness in representing young girls, which is
exceedingly attractive.
In the next room there are many excellent
portraits of this kind, named and unnamed. Of more important works, we should
notice the San Giovannino by Antonio Rossellino, and a tondo by the same
master representing the Adoration of the Shepherds; Andrea
Verrocchio's Madonna and Child; Verrocchio's Lady with the Bouquet (181),
with those exquisite hands of which Gabriele D'Annunzio has almost
wearied the readers of his _Gioconda_; by Matteo Civitali of Lucca,
Faith gazing ecstatically upon the Sacrament. By Mino da Fiesole are
a Madonna and Child, and several portrait busts--of the elder Piero
dei Medici (234) and his brother Giovanni di Cosimo (236), and of
Rinaldo della Luna. We should also notice the statues of Christ and
three Apostles, of the school of Andrea Pisano; portrait of a girl
by Desiderio da Settignano; two bas-reliefs by Luca della
Robbia, representing the Liberation and Crucifixion of St. Peter, early
works executed for a chapel in the Duomo; two sixteenth century
busts, representing the younger Giuliano dei Medici and Giovanni delle
Bande Nere; and, also, a curious fourteenth century group (222)
apparently representing the coronation of an emperor by the Pope's
legate.
In the centre of the room are St. John Baptist by Benedetto da
Maiano; Bacchus, by Jacopo Sansovino; and Michelangelo's second David
(224), frequently miscalled Apollo, made for Baccio Valori after the siege
of Florence, and pathetically different from the gigantic David of
his youth, which had been chiselled more than a quarter of a
century before, in all the passing glory of the Republican
restoration.
* * * * *
When the
Duke of Athens made himself tyrant of Florence, King Robert urged him to take
up his abode in this palace, as Charles of Calabria had done, and leave the
Palace of the People to the Priors. The advice was not taken, and, when the
rising broke out, the palace was easily captured, before the Duke and his
adherents in the Palazzo Vecchio were forced to surrender. Passing along the
Via Ghibellina, we presently come on the right to what was originally the
_Stinche_, a prison for nobles, _in qua carcerentur et custodiantur
magnates_, so called from a castle of the Cavalcanti captured by the Neri in
1304, from which the prisoners were imprisoned here: it is now a part of
the Teatro Pagliano. Later it became the place of captivity of the
lowest criminals, and a first point of attack in risings of the populace.
It contains, in a lunette on the stairs, a contemporary
fresco representing the expulsion of the Duke of Athens on St. Anne's
Day, 1343. St. Anne is giving the banners of the People and of the
Commune to a group of stern Republican warriors, while with one hand
she indicates the Palace of the Priors, fortified with the tyrant's
towers and battlements. By its side rises a great throne, from which the
Duke is shrinking in terror from the Angel of the wrath of God; a
broken sword lies at his feet; the banner of Brienne lies dishonoured in
the dust, with the scales of justice that he profaned and the book of
the law that he outraged. In so solemn and chastened a spirit could
the artists of the Trecento conceive of their Republic's deliverance.
The fresco was probably painted by either Giottino or Maso di Banco;
it was once wrongly ascribed to Cennino Cennini, who wrote the
_Treatise on Painting_, which was the approved text-book in the studios
and workshops of the earlier masters.
Further down the Via Ghibellina
is the Casa Buonarroti, which once belonged to Michelangelo, and was
bequeathed by his family to the city. It is entirely got up as a museum now,
and not in the least suggestive of the great artist's life, though a tiny
little study and a few letters and other relics are shown. There are,
however, a certain number of his drawings here, including a design for the
facade of San Lorenzo, which is of very questionable authenticity, and
a Madonna. Two of his earliest works in marble are preserved
here, executed at that epoch of his youth when he frequented the house
and garden of Lorenzo the Magnificent. One is a bas-relief of the
Madonna and Child--somewhat in the manner of Donatello--with two Angels at
the top of a ladder. The other is a struggle of the Centaurs and
Lapithae, a subject suggested to the boy by Angelo Poliziano, full of motion
and vigour and wonderfully modelled. Vasari says, "To whoso considers
this work, it does not seem from the hand of a youth, but from that of
an accomplished and past master in these studies, and experienced in
the art." The former is in the fifth room, the latter in the
antechamber. There are also two models for the great David; a bust of the
master in bronze by Ricciarelli, and his portrait by his pupil,
Marcello Venusti. A predella representing the legend of St. Nicholas is
by Francesco Pesellino, whose works are rare. In the third room (among the
later allegories and scenes from the master's life) is a large picture
supposed to have been painted by Jacopo da Empoli from a cartoon by
Michelangelo, representing the Holy Family with the four Evangelists; it is a
peculiarly unattractive work. The cartoon, ascribed to Michelangelo, is in
the British Museum; and I would suggest that it was originally not a
religious picture at all, but an allegory of Charity. The cross in the little
Baptist's hand does not occur in the cartoon.
Almost at the end of the
Via Ghibellina are the Prisons which occupy the site of the famous convent of
_Le Murate_. In this convent Caterina Sforza, the dethroned Lady of Forli and
mother of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, ended her days in 1509. Here the
Duchessina, or "Little Duchess," as Caterina dei Medici was called, was
placed by the Signoria after the expulsion of the Medici in 1527, in order
to prevent Pope Clement VII. from using her for the purpose of a political
marriage which might endanger the city. They seem to have feared especially
the Prince of Orange. The result was that the convent became a centre of
Medicean intrigue; and the Signoria, when the siege commenced, sent Salvestro
Aldobrandini to take her away. When Salvestro arrived, after he had been kept
waiting for some time, the little Duchess came to the grill of the parlour,
dressed as a nun, and said that she intended to take the habit and stay for
ever "with these my reverend mothers." According to Varchi, the poor
little girl--she was barely eleven years old, had lost both parents in
the year of her birth, and was practically alone in the city where
the cruellest threats had been uttered against her--was
terribly frightened and cried bitterly, "not knowing to what glory and
felicity her life had been reserved by God and the Heavens." But
Messer Salvestro and Messer Antonio de' Nerli did all they could to
comfort and reassure her, and took her to the convent of Santa Lucia in
the Via di San Gallo; "in which monastery," says Nardi, "she was
received and treated with the same maternal love by those nuns, until the
end of the war."
In the centre of the oblong Piazza di Santa Croce
rises the statue and monument of Dante Alighieri, erected on the occasion of
the sixth centenary of his birth, in those glowing early days of the
first completion of Italian unity; at its back stand the great Gothic
church and convent, which Arnolfo di Cambio commenced for the Franciscans
in 1294, while Dante was still in Florence--the year before he
entered political life.
The great Piazza was a centre of festivities
and stirring Florentine life, and has witnessed many historical scenes, in
old times and in new, from the tournaments and jousts of the Middle Ages and
early Renaissance to the penitential processions of the victims of
the Inquisition in the days of the Medicean Grand Dukes, from
the preaching of San Bernardino of Siena to the missionary labours of
the Jesuit Segneri. On Christmas Day, 1301, Niccolo dei Cerchi was
passing through this Piazza with a few friends on horseback on his way to
his farm and mill--for that was hardly a happy Christmas for Guelfs of
the white faction in Florence--while a friar was preaching in the
open air, announcing the birth of Christ to the crowd; when Simone
Donati with a band of mounted retainers gave chase, and, when he
overtook him, killed him. In the scuffle Simone himself received a
mortal wound, of which he died the same night. "Although it was a
just judgment," writes Villani, "yet was it held a great loss, for the
said Simone was the most accomplished and virtuous squire in Florence,
and of the greatest promise, and he was all the hope of his father,
Messer Corso." It was in the convent of Santa Croce that the Duke of
Athens took up his abode in 1342, with much parade of religious
simplicity, when about to seize upon the lordship of Florence; here, on
that fateful September 8th, he assembled his followers and adherents in
the Piazza, whence they marched to the Parliament at the Palazzo
Vecchio, where he was proclaimed Signor of Florence for life. But in
the following year, when he attempted to celebrate Easter with great
pomp and luxury, and held grand jousts in this same Piazza for many
days, the people sullenly held aloof and very few citizens entered
the lists.
Most gorgeous and altogether successful was the tournament
given here by Lorenzo dei Medici in 1467, to celebrate his approaching
marriage with Clarice Orsini, when he jousted against all comers in honour
of the lady of his sonnets and odes, Lucrezia Donati. There was not
much serious tilting about it, but a magnificent display of rich
costumes and precious jewelled caps and helmets, and a glorious
procession which must have been a positive feast of colour. "To follow
the custom," writes Lorenzo himself, "and do like others, I gave
a tournament on the Piazza Santa Croce at great cost and with
much magnificence; I find that about 10,000 ducats were spent on
it. Although I was not a very vigorous warrior, nor a hard hitter,
the first prize was adjudged to me, a helmet inlaid with silver and
a figure of Mars as the crest."[36] He sent a long account of
the proceedings to his future bride, who answered: "I am glad that you
are successful in what gives you pleasure, and that my prayer is
heard, for I have no other wish than to see you happy." Luca Pulci,
the luckless brother of Luigi, wrote a dull poem on the not very
inspiring theme. A few years later, at the end of January 1478, a less
sumptuous entertainment of the same sort was given by Giuliano dei Medici;
and it was apparently on this occasion that Poliziano commenced his
famous stanzas in honour of Giuliano and his lady love,
Simonetta,--stanzas which were interrupted by the daggers of the Pazzi and
their accomplices. It was no longer time for soft song or courtly sport
when prelates and nobles were hanging from the palace windows, and
the thunders of the Papal interdict were about to burst over the city
and her rulers.
[36] Quoted in Mr Armstrong's _Lorenzo de'
Medici_.
Entering the Church through the unpleasing modern facade (which
is, however, said to have followed the design of Cronaca himself,
the architect of the exceedingly graceful convent of San Salvadore
al Monte on the other side of the river), we catch a glow of colour
from the east end, from the stained glass and frescoes in the choir.
The vast and spacious nave of Arnolfo--like his Palazzo Vecchio,
partly spoiled by Vasari--ends rather abruptly in the line of ten
chapels with, in the midst of them, one very high recess which represents
the apse and choir, thus giving the whole the T shape which we find in
the Italian Gothic churches which were reared for the friars preachers
and friars minor. The somewhat unsightly appearance, which many
churches of this kind present in Italy, is due to the fact that Arnolfo and
his school intended every inch of wall to be covered with
significant fresco paintings, and this coloured decoration was seldom
completely carried out, or has perished in the course of time. Fergusson
remarks that "an Italian Church without its coloured decoration is only
a framed canvas without harmony or meaning."
Santa Croce is, in the
words of the late Dean of Westminster, "the recognised shrine of Italian
genius." On the pavement beneath our feet, outstretched on their tombstones,
lie effigies of grave Florentine citizens, friars of note, prelates,
scholars, warriors; in their robes of state or of daily life, in the
Franciscan garb or in armour, with arms folded across their breasts, or still
clasping the books they loved and wrote (in this way the humanists, such
as Leonardo Bruni, were laid out in state after death); the knights
have their swords by their sides, which they had wielded in defence of
the Republic, and their hands clasped in prayer. Here they lie,
waiting the resurrection. Has any echo of the Risorgimento reached them?
In their long sleep, have they dreamed aught of the movement that has
led Florence to raise tablets to the names of Cavour and Mazzini
upon these walls? The tombs on the floor of the nave are mostly of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the second from the central
door is that of Galileo dei Galilei, like the other scholars lying with
his hands folded across the book on his breast, the ancestor of
the immortal astronomer: "This Galileo of the Galilei was, in his
time, the head of philosophy and medicine; who also in the
highest magistracy loved the Republic marvellously." About the middle of
the nave is the tomb of John Catrick, Bishop of Exeter, who had come
to Florence on an embassy from Henry V. of England to Pope Martin V.,
in 1419. But those on the floor at the end of the right aisle and in
the short right transept are the earliest and most interesting to
the lover of early Florentine history; notice, for instance, the
knightly tomb of a warrior of the great Ghibelline house of the Ubaldini,
dated 1358, at the foot of the steps to the chapel at the end of the
right transept; and there is a similar one, only less fine, on the
opposite side. Larger and more pretentious tombs and monuments of more
recent date, to the heroes of Italian life and thought, pass in series
along the side walls of the whole church, between the altars of the
south and north (right and left) aisles.
[Illustration: SANTA
CROCE]
Over the central door, below the window whose stained glass is
said to have been designed by Ghiberti, is Donatello's bronze statue of
King Robert's canonised brother, the Franciscan Bishop St. Louis
of Toulouse. This St. Louis, the patron saint of the Parte Guelfa,
had been ordered by the captains of the Party for their niche at
San Michele in Orto, from which he was irreverently banished shortly
after the restoration of Cosimo dei Medici, when the Parte Guelfa was
forced to surrender its niche. On the left of the entrance should
be noticed with gratitude the tomb of the historian of the
Florentine Republic, the Italian patriot, Gino Capponi.
In the right
aisle are the tomb and monument of Michelangelo, designed by Giorgio Vasari;
on the pillar opposite to it, over the holy water stoop, a beautiful Madonna
and Child in marble by Bernardo Rossellino, beneath which lies Francesco
Nori, who was murdered whilst defending Lorenzo dei Medici in the Pazzi
conspiracy; the comparatively modern monument to Dante, whose bones rest at
Ravenna and for whom Michelangelo had offered in vain to raise a worthy
sepulchre. Two sonnets by the great sculptor supply to some extent in verse
what he was not suffered to do in marble: I quote the finer of the two,
from Addington Symonds' excellent translation:--
From Heaven his
spirit came, and, robed in clay, The realms of justice and of mercy
trod: Then rose a living man to gaze on God, That he might
make the truth as clear as day. For that pure star, that brightened with
its ray The undeserving nest where I was born, The whole
wide world would be a prize to scorn: None but his Maker can due
guerdon pay. I speak of Dante, whose high work remains
Unknown, unhonoured by that thankless brood Who only to just men deny
their wage. Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,
Against his exile coupled with his good I'd gladly change the world's
best heritage.
Then comes Canova's monument to Vittorio Alfieri, the
great tragic dramatist of Italy (died 1803); followed by an eighteenth
century monument to Machiavelli (died 1527), and the tomb of Padre Lanzi,
the Jesuit historian of Italian art. The pulpit by a pillar in the nave
is considered the most beautiful pulpit in Italy, and is,
perhaps, Benedetto da Maiano's finest work; the bas-reliefs in
marble represent scenes from the life of St. Francis and the martyrdom
of some of his friars, with figures of the virtues below. Beyond
Padre Lanzi's grave, over the tomb of the learned Franciscan Fra
Benedetto Cavalcanti, are two exceedingly powerful figures of saints in
fresco, the Baptist and St. Francis; they have been ascribed to
various painters, but are almost certainly the work of Domenico Veneziano,
and closely resemble the figures of the same saints in his
undoubtedly genuine picture in the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco in the Uffizi.
The adjacent Annunciation by Donatello, in _pietra serena_, was also
made for the Cavalcanti; its fine Renaissance architectural setting
is likewise Donatello's work. Above it are four lovely wooden Putti,
who seem embracing each other for fear of tumbling off from their
height; originally there were six, and the other two are preserved in
the convent. M. Reymond has shown that this Annunciation is not an
early work of the master's, as Vasari and others state, but is of the
same style and period as the Cantoria of the Duomo, about 1435. Lastly,
at the end of the right aisle is the splendid tomb of Leonardo Bruni (died
1444), secretary of the Republic, translator of Plato, historian of Florence,
biographer of Dante,--the outstretched recumbent figure of the grand old
humanist, watched over by Mary and her Babe with the Angels, by Bernardo
Rossellino. A worthy monument to a noble soul, whose memory is dear to every
lover of Dante. Yet we may, not without advantage, contrast it with the
simpler Gothic sepulchres on the floor of the transepts,--the marble slabs
that cover the bones of the old Florentines who, in war and peace, did the
deeds of which Leonardo and his kind wrote.
The tombs and monuments in
the left aisle are less interesting. Opposite Leonardo Bruni's tomb is that
of his successor, Carlo Marsuppini, called Carlo Aretino (died 1453), by
Desiderio da Settignano; he was a good Greek scholar, a fluent orator and
a professed Pagan, but accomplished no literary work of any value; utterly
inferior as a man and as an author to Leonardo, he has an even more gorgeous
tomb. In this aisle there are modern monuments to Vespasiano Bisticci and
Donatello; and, opposite to Michelangelo's tomb, that of Galileo himself
(died 1642), with traces of old fourteenth century frescoes round it, which
may, perhaps, symbolise for us the fleeting phantoms of mediæval thought
fading away before the advance of science.
In the central chapel of
the left or northern transept is the famous wooden Crucifix by Donatello,
which gave rise to the fraternal contest between him and Brunelleschi.
Brunelleschi told his friend that he had put upon his cross a contadino and
not a figure like that of Christ. "Take some wood then," answered the nettled
sculptor, "and try to make one thyself." Filippo did so; and when it was
finished Donatello was so stupefied with admiration, that he let drop all the
eggs and other things that he was carrying for their dinner. "I have had all
I want for to-day," he exclaimed; "if you want your share, take it: to
thee is it given to carve Christs and to me to make contadini." The
rival piece may still be seen in Santa Maria Novella, and there is not
much to choose between them. Donatello's is, perhaps, somewhat
more realistic and less refined.
The first two chapels of the left
transept (fifth and fourth from the choir, respectively,) contain fourteenth
century frescoes; a warrior of the Bardi family rising to judgment, the
healing of Constantine's leprosy and other miracles of St. Sylvester,
ascribed to Maso di Banco; the martyrdom of St. Lawrence and the martyrdom of
St. Stephen, by Bernardo Daddi (the painter to whom it is attempted
to ascribe the famous Last Judgment and Triumph of Death in the
Pisan Campo Santo). All these imply a certain Dantesque selection;
these subjects are among the examples quoted for purposes of meditation
or admonition in the _Divina Commedia_. The coloured terracotta relief
is by Giovanni della Robbia. The frescoes of the choir, by Agnolo
Gaddi, are among the finest works of Giotto's school. They set forth
the history of the wood of the True Cross, which, according to the
legend, was a shoot of the tree of Eden planted by Seth on Adam's grave;
the Queen of Sheba prophetically adored it, when she came to visit
Solomon during the building of the Temple; cast into the pool of
Bethsaida, the Jews dragged it out to make the Cross for Christ; then, after
it had been buried on Mount Calvary for three centuries, St.
Helen discovered it by its power of raising the dead to life. These
subjects are set forth on the right wall; on the left, we have the taking
of the relic of the Cross by the Persians under Chosroes, and its recovery
by the Emperor Heraclius. In the scene where the Emperor barefooted carries
the Cross into Jerusalem, the painter has introduced his own portrait, near
one of the gates of the city, with a small beard and a red hood. Vasari
thinks poorly of these frescoes; but the legend of the True Cross is of some
importance to the student of Dante, whose profound allegory of the Church and
Empire in the Earthly Paradise, at the close of the _Purgatorio_, is to some
extent based upon it.
The two Gothic chapels to the right of the choir
contain Giotto's frescoes--both chapels were originally entirely painted
by him--rescued from the whitewash under which they were discovered,
and, in part at least, most terribly "restored." The frescoes in
the first, the Bardi Chapel, illustrating the life of St. Francis,
have suffered most; all the peculiar Giottesque charm of face
has disappeared, and, instead, the restorer has given us
monotonous countenances, almost deadly in their uniformity and utter lack
of expression. Like all mediæval frescoes dealing with St. Francis,
they should be read with the _Fioretti_ or with Dante's _Paradiso_, or
with one of the old lives of the Seraphic Father in our hands. On the
left (beginning at the top) we have his renunciation of the world in
the presence of his father and the Bishop of Assisi--_innanzi alla
sua spirital corte, et coram patre_, as Dante puts it; on the right,
the confirmation of the order by Pope Honorius; on the left,
the apparition of St. Francis to St. Antony of Padua; on the right,
St. Francis and his followers before the Soldan--_nella presenza
del Soldan superba_--in the ordeal of fire; and, below it, St. Francis
on his death-bed, with the apparition to the sleeping bishop to assure him
of the truth of the Stigmata. Opposite, left, the body is surrounded by
weeping friars, the incredulous judge touching the wound in the side, while
the simplest of the friars, at the saint's head, sees his soul carried up to
heaven in a little cloud. This conception of saintly death was, perhaps,
originally derived from Dante's dream of Beatrice in the _Vita Nuova_: "I
seemed to look towards heaven, and to behold a multitude of Angels who were
returning upwards, having before them an exceedingly white cloud; and these
Angels were singing together gloriously." It became traditional in early
Italian painting. On the window wall are four great Franciscans. St. Louis
the King (one whom Dante does not seem to have held in honour), a splendid
figure, calm and noble, in one hand the sceptre and in the other
the Franciscan cord, his royal robe besprinkled with the golden lily
of France over the armour of the warrior of the Cross; his face
absorbed in celestial contemplation. He is the Christian realisation of
the Platonic philosopher king; "St. Louis," says Walter Pater,
"precisely because his whole being was full of heavenly vision, in
self banishment from it for a while, led and ruled the French people
so magnanimously alike in peace and war." Opposite him is St. Louis
of Toulouse, with the royal crown at his feet; below are St. Elizabeth
of Hungary, with her lap full of flowers; and, opposite to her, St. Clare,
of whom Dante's Piccarda tells so sweetly in the _Paradiso_--that lady on
high whom "perfected life and lofty merit doth enheaven." On the vaulted roof
of the chapel are the glory of St. Francis and symbolical representations of
the three vows--Poverty, Chastity, Obedience; not rendered as in Giotto's
great allegories at Assisi, of which these are, as it were, his own later
simplifications, but merely as the three mystical Angels that met Francis and
his friars on the road to Siena, crying "Welcome, Lady Poverty."
The picture of St. Francis on the altar, ascribed by Vasari to Cimabue,
is probably by some unknown painter at the close of the
thirteenth century.
The frescoes in the following, the Chapel of the
Peruzzi, are very much better preserved, especially in the scene of Herod's
feast. Like all Giotto's genuine work, they are eloquent in their
pictorial simplicity of diction; there are no useless crowds of spectators,
as in the later work of Ghirlandaio and his contemporaries. On the left is
the life of St. John the Baptist--the Angel appearing to Zacharias, the birth
and naming of the Precursor, the dance of the daughter of Herodias at Herod's
feast. This last has suffered less from restoration than any other work of
Giotto's in Florence; both the rhythmically moving figure of the girl herself
and that of the musician are very beautiful, and the expression on Herod's
face is worthy of the psychological insight of the author of the Vices
and Virtues in the Madonna's chapel at Padua. Ruskin talks of "the
striped curtain behind the table being wrought with a variety and fantasy
of playing colour which Paul Veronese could not better at his best."
On the right wall is the life of the Evangelist, John the Divine,
or rather its closing scenes; the mystical vision at Patmos, the
seer _dormendo con la faccia arguta_, like the solitary elder who
brought up the rear of the triumphal pageant in Dante's Earthly Paradise;
the raising of Drusiana from the dead; the assumption of St. John.
The curious legend represented in this last fresco--that St. John
was taken up body and soul, _con le due stole_, into Heaven after
death, and that his disciples found his tomb full of manna--was, of
course, based upon the saying that went abroad among the brethren, "that
that disciple should not die"; it is mentioned as a pious belief by
St. Thomas, but is very forcibly repudiated by Giotto's great
friend, Dante; in the _Paradiso_ St. John admonishes him to tell the
world that only Christ and the Blessed Virgin rose from the dead. "In
the earth my body is earth, and shall be there with the others, until
our number be equalled with the eternal design."
In the last chapel of
the south transept, there are two curious frescoes apparently of the
beginning of the fourteenth century, in honour of St. Michael; they represent
his leading the Angelic hosts against the forces of Lucifer, and the legend
of his apparition at Monte Gargano. The frescoes in the chapel at the end of
the transept, the Baroncelli chapel, representing scenes in the life of the
Blessed Virgin, are by Giotto's pupil, Taddeo Gaddi; they are similar to
his work at Assisi. The Assumption opposite was painted by
Sebastiano Mainardi from a cartoon by Domenico Ghirlandaio. In the Chapel of
the Blessed Sacrament there are more frescoed lives of saints by
Taddeo's son, Agnolo Gaddi, less admirable than his work in the choir;
and statues of two Franciscans, of the Della Robbia school. The monument of
the Countess of Albany may interest English admirers of the Stuarts, but hardly
concerns the story of Florence. |
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