o 0^ .0 O' 'oo' .^o' -^, vN" .^^. "^y- v-J^' OO^ v^^ "^^^ o 0^ •-^' 0^ "^^ .•^■'' -• - - - ^^^ % %. * a s ^ ,# // C' \' V ^ t- /"i ' ..>" % %"--V^ \: ^ .^^^ ^. ./ ^.. , %/■ %,^' %/'^^ ^c:^^ - -■ %,/ ' (»^' .'^^'^ \' ,0 o x^'<<- o^ 'C ^^- .^^' ^ ^^ %^- ■ -■'■■J- ,f .> -^^ x<^^ .,,^^ ;o^ %^" A^^ '^/>- ,0 o X^" "^^ 'O , // . ■ /■ ■^> ' .N '■ " o c- \' ^ ^ '■ " / Photo. Brogi Michelangelo Unknown: Uflfizi IN AND OUT OF FLORENCE A NEW INTRODUCTION TO A WELL-KNOWN CITY BY MAX VERNON WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DRAWINGS BY MAUD LANKTREE AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1910 ^ V r ^ ^ Copyright, igio, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Published May, 1910 €CI.A2656'^6 tlTo iWp Wiiit MY GUIDE IN SEEING AND TELLING PREFATORY NOTE This Is a sort of guide-book or Introduction to Florence, both for those who actually are coming or have come to It, and for those who can come only In the spirit. And It tells something about Florence and the Florentines of to-day as well as about those glori- ous people of the earlier centuries. Finally, It tells also something of how one may be- come for oneself with least trouble and expense and most advantage and Interest temporarily a Florentine. Or at least It describes how this was really done, to the unreckonable great joy of the doers, not only through their days In Florence, but for what promises to be all of their days of memory hereafter. M. V. The author and publishers wish to express their appre- ciation of the courtesy of the well-known Florentine firms, the Fratelli Alinari (i, Via Strozzi) and G. Brogi (i, Via Tornabuoni), in permitting them to reproduce the copy- righted photographs used in this book. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. In Florence and House-Hunting . . . . i II. Our Villa 15 III. Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping ... 30 IV. Our Garden 49 V. Our Village 6i VI. Beginning to See Florence: Piazza del Duomo . 73 VII. The Churches: The Small Ones 90 VIII. The Churches {continued) : The Larger Ones . 98 IX. The Galleries: The Uffizi 113 X. The Galleries {continued): The Pitti and Acca- demia 127 XI. Castles and Palaces: Palazzo Vecchio and II Bargello 138 XII. Castles and Palaces {continued) : The Palaces . 153 XIII. Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls .... 167 XIV. The Sculptors from the Hill-side Quarries . . 184 XV. Outside the Walls: Feudal Castles and Fiesole . 200 XVI. Outside the Walls {continued) : San Miniato, Certosa, Impruneta, Signa, and Malmantile . 215 XVII. The Streets: Yesterday and To-day .... 236 XVIII. Florentine Shops and Shopping 258 XIX. Harvest Times 269 vii viii Contents CHAPTER PACE XX. Florentine Excursions: I. Vallambrosa and over the Consuma Pass 286 II. In the Casentino 297 III. Prato and Pistoja 315 IV. Lucca 330 V. Pisa 340 XXI. Books About Florence 348 Index 365 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS I. DRAWINGS PAGE " Other times our way was across crowded, fascinating Ponte Vecchio " 6 Antonetta, the flower woman. (After a photograph by the Author) 9 " That last remaining stretch of old Florence bordering the water's edge" 13 " The other side of the house gives on the garden terrace and is adorned by balconies and a profusion of climbing vines." (After a photograph by the Author) ... 22 " The huge red brocca on the housetop." (After a photograph by the Author) 27 " In little intimate groups are changing companies of potted plants." (After a photograph by the Author) • • • 53 "An angled stone stair leads down to the lower garden." (After a photograph by the Author) 56 " It seems to be, in May, wholly a garden of irises." (After a photograph by the Author) 57 " They have their oxen fair in June." (After a photograph by the Author) 6+ "A most useful village fountain where all day long women and children fill their straw-covered fiaschi and exchange the gossip of the day " 66 The church of the frati Olivetani at Settignano .... 70 The Duomo and Campanile 7^ Santa Maria Novella, " the great Dominican church that still dominates the now almost deserted piazza" .... 103 The cloisters of Santa Maria Novella 107 " Michelozzo's beautiful little court with its winsome laughing boy of Verrocchio spurting water over his dolphin play- mate " 140 " The noble Loggia dei Lanzi with its strenuous statues " . . 144 "The Bargello is the ancient palace and stronghold of the podestas and chiefs of police of Florence" .... 146 "That most fascinating room of all, the Bargello, that un- roofed room of the arcades, the well, the stair, and the j/^/n mi-spotted walls" 151 ix. X List of Illustrations PACE In the Boboli Gardens 156 Boboli Cypresses 157 A corner lantern of the Palazzo Strozzi 159 Palazzo Spini i6i The cloisters of San Marco 176 " The prior's cell of Savonarola, with its few most intimate relics" 180 San Niccolo, one of the " few noble gate towers of ancient days " 201 " Up the hill toward Vincigliata." (After a photograph by the Author) 202 The gate tower of Vincigliata 203 " The tower of Castel di Poggio still stands in its full height and strength." (After a photograph by the Author) . . 205 Castel di Poggio. (After a photograph by the Author) . . 207 The Duomo of Fiesole and ruins of Roman Amphitheater . . 209 " Starting from the Porta Romana at the beginning of the road to Rome" 216 The Certosa, " seated nobly on a beautiful hill overlooking a laughing valley" 223 Certosa has a " beautiful cloister garden, with a fascinating stone well in its middle " 224 " Slow, white oxen were hauling the bigonie and casks to the wine-sheds." (After a photograph by the Author) . . 227 " A cabbage bed, with beautiful great pottery vases set about in it." (After a photograph by the Author) .... 230 A torch socket on a palace wall 237 Giovanni da Bologna's "devil of the Mercato Vecchio " . . 241 "The Mercato Nuovo where the big bronze boar keeps guard " 242 Housetops and chimney-pots. (After a photograph by the Author) 245 "Everywhere the six balls of the Medici appear" . 256 On the Ponte Vecchio 265 " The men seize the wisps one at a time and beat their grain- filled ends violently against the aja floor or against a stone bench or block, until most of the grains have flown out." (After a photograph by the Author) . 272 A podere well. (After a photograph by the Author) . . 274 "The relics of Romena " 294 " The Casentino vines are trained to grow on p'toppi, small trees pruned to have low, broad, thick heads." (After a photograph by the Author) 296 " Facing our garden gate was the great brown block of a castle (Poppi) with its high square tower." (After a photograph by the Author) 298 List of Illustrations xi PAGE The entrance to Poppi Castle. (After a photograph by the Author) 299 A street fountain in Stia 300 The gate tower of Poppi Castle. (After a photograph by the Author) 301 The court of Poppi Castle, " though much smaller, is com- parable in beauty and rough grace with that of the Florentine Bargello " 303 "The angling stair and pillared rail, the stemmi on the walls and open balcony " of the court of Poppi Castle . . 304 " Past contadinos' houses all hung over with drying gold and orange corn." (After a photograph by the Author) . . 305 Camaldoli in its forest 309 " St. Francis's famous monastery, set aloft in mountain cliffs and forest" 311 The old well at La Verna. (After a photograph by the Author) 312 A climbing path at La Verna. (After a photograph by the Author) 3H A bit of Tuscan countryside. (After a photograph by the Author) 318 The patched walls of the ancient Palazzo Pretorio . . . 320 " The pulpit is partly Michelozzo's, according to authority, but the reliefs must certainly be Donatello's own" . . 322 "The striking, column-laden long fagade of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas " 324 " Vasari's imposing dome and a lantern on Madonna dell' Umilta" 325 The Duomo of Pistoja 326 " The Duomo is one of a group of interesting structures facing on an open piazza whose most conspicuous feature is the high square campanile, or Torre del Podesta " . . 327 The inclosed court of the Palazzo Pretorio 328 " Until finally the host of flat-topped square towers of Lucca came into sight" 332 "How fit It is that this old-world place should be completely inclosed by low bastioned walls, with dry moat without, and broad, grassy, tree-grown bank within "... 333 The Duomo and Campanile of Lucca 335 San Michele in Lucca 33^ IL PHOTOGRAPHS Michelangelo. Unknonvn: Uffizi Frontispiece PoNTE Santa Trinita .... 8 Iron Gate in Wall near D'Annunzio's Villa .... 17 xii List of Illustrations PAGE Settignano Road Through Olive Orchards 20*' Beppi and the Water Pails 32 The Cypresses of Villa Gamberaia 68 Cypresses on Settignano Hill Above Val d'Arno ... 71 Singing Boys. Luca della RoblAa: Duomo Museum ... 83 Virgin and St. Benedict. Filippino Lippi: Badia ... 91 Detail of Altar. Benedetto da Rovezzano: Santa Trinita . 93 Pulpit. Benedetto da Maiano: Santa Croce 98 Detail of the Pulpit. Benedetto da Maiano: Santa Croce . 100 Death of St. Francis. Giotto: Santa Croce .... 102 Altar in the Chapel of the Sacrament. Desiderio da Settignano: San Lorenzo 109 Tomb Monument of Lorenzo de' Medici. Michelangelo: San Lorenzo m The Birth of Venus. Botticelli: Uffizi 114 Virgin and Child. Filippo Lippi: Uffizi 118 Virgin, Child, St. John, and St. Anthony. Titian: Uffizi . i20n Adoration of the Magi. Botticelli: Uffizi 124'. The Concert. Giorgione: Pitti 127 \ The Granduca Madonna. Raphael: Pitti 129 . Pope Leo X and Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi. Raphael: Pitti 131 The Ador.\tion. D. Ghirlandajo: Accademia .... 133 Spring. Botticelli: Accademia 135 The Deposition. Fra Angelico: Accademia 137 The Virgin and Child. Michelangelo: Bargello .... 147 Niccolo da Uzzano. Donatello: Bargello 149^ Madonna with Child. Luca della Rohhia: Bargello . . 151 Lorenzo de' Medici .\s One of the Magi. Benozzo Gozzoli: Palazzo Riccardi 157 The Last Supper. Andrea del Castagno: Santa Appollonia . 172 The Annunciation. Fra Angelico: San Marco .... 179 The Crucifi.xion. Perugino: S. Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi . 182 Tomb Monument of Carlo NLarzuppini. Desiderio da Settignano: Santa Croce 185 Detail of the To.mb Monument of Carlo Marzuppini. Desiderio da Settignano: Santa Croce 187 Detail of the Tomb Monu.ment of Carlo Marzuppini. Desiderio da Settignano: Santa Croce 189 Tomb Monument of Leonardo Bruini. Bernardo Rossellino: Santa Croce 191 Altar. Mino da Fiesole: Sant' Ambrogio . • -193 Tomb Monu.ment of Ugo, Marchese di Toscana. Mino da Fiesole: Badia •195 Door of the Sala dell' Orologia. Benedetto da Maiano: Palazzo Vecchio ^97 List of Illustrations xiii PAGE Altar. Benedetto da Rovezzano: Santa Trinita .... 199 Tomb Monument of Bishop Leonardo Salutati. Mino da Fiesole: Duomo of Fiesole 211 Altar with Virgin and Saints in Adoration. Mino da Fiesole: Duomo of Fiesole 213 Florence from the Viale dei Colli 217 Tomb Monument of Cardinal Jacob of Portugal. Antonio Rossellino: San Miniato 220 Malmantile (15th Century) 234 Detail of Tomb Monument of Cino de' Sinibaldl Cellino di Nese: Duomo at Pistoja 327 Tomb of Ilaria del Carretto. Jacopo delle Quercia: Duomo of Lucca 334 Duomo, Leaning Tower, and Baptistry at Pisa .... 343 CHAPTER I IN FLORENCE AND HOUSE-HUNTING ONE may well be disposed to risk much for one's first glimpse of Florence, but hardly a wife. And Rowena's symptoms, violent and astounding ever since passing Prato, had become of a sudden truly alarming. When finally she lunged far out over the drop glass in the compartment door and with a manner of Columbus discovering America, cried out, "Florence!" I could no longer restrain myself, but frantically clutched both hands full of skirt and dragged back for dear life. Also I wanted a turn at looking out myself. It is not the lifting dome of Brunelleschi that one sees first on approaching Florence, as it is Michel- angelo's great egg of St. Peter's that is first descried on the road to Rome. It is rather the egregiously re-made Galileo tower thrusting itself heavily sky- ward from Arcetri hill. It was this sad reminder of Florentine decadence, this sacred relic sold by the city to a restoration-mad collector and seller of antiquities, that gave Rowena the signal to cry, "Florence!" " Florence ! And the magnificence and passionate agitation of Italy's prime sends its fragrance towards us like a blossom-laden bough." Florence, Mecca 2 In Florence and House-Hunting of that sect of believers, persistent even in these breathless days of machines and money-madness, the believers in the reality of the ideal. Florence, reli- quary, holding such choice treasures of the beati of art and poetry that hundreds of thousands come to press their reverent lips to its surface. Florence, adorned, inlaid, canopied cradle of the noblest of the family of creative man reborn. " Why be aston- ished," asks reverent Hopital, " by the magic that Florence exercises on cultivated spirits? It attracts them by all that captivates the imagination, appeals to the intelligence, makes palpitate the heart. Its history is a little world where the greatest interests of earth have contended, where all the passions of man have burned. Its science and literature have moved all there is of good and bad in us; and finally its art is, if not the most perfect, at least the most in- tellectual and most immaterial, and that which gives our thinking faculties the most powerful stimulus." From Nature's majesty in Switzerland and her rippling, glinting beauty at Bellagio; from the en- chantment of Venice fairyland, and the soft luxury of earth's brown lap in Arno valley, one comes well- attuned to Florence and eager to see and feel her achievement of spirit and genius. Even on one visit- ing her for the first time and guiltless of any knowl- edge of her beyond a vague idea of the eminent role she has played in the eternal human tragedy, Flor- ence makes from the first an ineffaceable impression. She is an old city, this City of the Lily, but she still lives in all her grace of form and color. She is like a flower, some one has said, which, when fully blown, In Florence and House-Hunting 3 instead of withering on its stalk, turned as it were into stone. And she is such a concentration of the achieved things of the spirit, such a materialization of inspired visions put into enduring form and color; she is so immediately revealing and satisfying! In Rome one sightsees through the centuries; in Venice, one dreams in a color-shifting fairyland made musical by moving water; in Florence one lives in the Italy that gave the world a new life. One merges into the very atmosphere of inspiration; one becomes as much of a poet and artist as he ever can be. But one cannot live on wonder and inspiration alone. Even John in the desert land had his locusts and wild honey. The pilgrim arriving in Florence, the goal of his longings and hopes ; this pilgrim, climb- ing out of the express from Bologna, has first of every- thing to face the sordid earthly considerations of a place to lay his head and food to fill his mouth. A hotel for a few days, a pension for a few weeks, a house or apartment for a few months. We were for months and a house. But most arrivals are for days or weeks. The hotels most frequented are those along the Arno, especially those that stretch along the north bank from the Ponte Santa Trinita to the Piazza Manin. The best hotels are here, with others good but cheaper. And in the same general region are many pensions. But when a city is completely run to pensions, as Florence is, no quarter will hold them all. There are many desirable ones out in the clean new quarter around the English cemetery; perhaps it will be less disconcerting to say around the Piazza Dona- 4 In Florence and House-Hunting tello. The artistic and the literary rather gather here. It is a common belief that the hotels and pensions on the other side of the Arno are cheaper, and per- haps, the pensions anyway, as good. So, if you are willing to walk across a bridge for most of your sightseeing you may save a lira a day. And who is not willing to walk across a city bridge? Bridges of London ! bridges of Paris ! bridges of Florence ! Fascinating, unique Ponte Vecchio ! Graceful Santa Trinita ! Historic alle Grazie I What time you will waste in crossing these bridges ! You will come too late to the church with the frescoed chapel; it has just closed for midday. You will miss the tram for Fiesole; ten minutes of waiting. You will get to your pension tardy for the table-d'hote; the soup, never hot, will now not even be warm. But what this lost time will have won ! Sometimes we loitered on alle Grazie to hang over the railing and look north to the Fiesole and Settignano hills with their wondrous colors of twilight as the sun slanted across their climbing villages, their clustered villas, their silver-gray slopes of olive. And we mused, as we loitered, over a history of seven cen- turies, for the piers and arches under our feet were built in 1237. Originally called Rubaconte in honor of the Podesta of Florence at the time of its building, the bridge gets its present name from a tabernacle of the Madonna delle Grazie which was in the little church that used to stand at one end of it. About fifty years after the building of the bridge occurred the greatest historical event in its memory: the cele- In Florence and House-Hunting 5 bration of the ephemeral peace between the Guelphs and Ghibellines arranged by Pope Gregory X on his journey through Florence to the Council of Lyons. "At the end of July, 1273, the Florentines as- sembled on the banks of the Arno, which at this point broadened into a sort of lake, to witness the Pope, who, followed by his Court and accompanied by King Charles of Naples and the Emperor Bal- dovino of Constantinople with their imposing reti- nues, appeared on the middle of the bridge, blessed the crowd, and obliged the opposing parties to kiss and embrace, subsequently ending the ceremonies of the day by laying the cornerstone of the church called San Gregorio della Pace. " The impression produced by the magnificence of this solemn function and the manner in which it took place remained for a long time; and the church of Saint Gregory of Peace existed for many centuries, even to our own time. But the peace which it was intended to commemorate lasted exactly four days, after which Florence again became divided by the quarrels and fights of the Guelph and Ghibelline factions, and Pope Gregory, discouraged and morti- fied, left the city." — Carocci. Through several centuries the bridge carried numer- ous little houses built on its piers. These included six little chapels, three small convents, and several picturesque birdcage-like houses, in one of which lived Benedetto Menzini, a satirical poet of much reputa- tion in the seventeenth century. In one of the con- 6 In Florence and House-Hunting vents were " confined for education, from choice or political motives, princesses of some great Italian families. Among them were the celebrated Caterina Sforza, who died there, Caterina and Eleonora Cybo di Messa, Lelia Orsini di Pitigliano, and the unfortu- nate Camilla Martelli, wife of Cosimo I dei Medici." Other times our way was across crowded, fascinat- ing Ponte Vecchio. It was on this bridge that Cosimo " Other times our way was across crowded, fascinating Ponte Vecchio." dei Medici found Camilla Martelli, his unfortunate wife, who soon got shut up in the convent on alle Grazie. And it was at the south end that Ariosto lived for half a century in the Hospice of the Knights of Malta. And there occurred the murder of young Buondelmonte, that set off the long cruel struggle of the Whites and the Blacks. But it will be Ponte Vecchio's interest of to-day that will overpower most of us; the solid rows on either side, except for a short way in the middle, of little houses in which the Florentine goldsmiths and jewel workers, disciples of Cellini, contrive and dis- In Florence and House-Hunting 7 play their wares. The fascination of those little shops; the seizing scenery of those windows; the enticing ways of these politest of present-day Floren- tines ! There is a current rumor that wherever in Florence you may get false wares under fair names, here on the old bridge there is honor among — jewelers. What is called ruby is not " recon- structed"; what is declared emerald is not " dou- blette." Let us believe it. And such delicate manip- ulation of gold and silver; such revealing display of the blandishment of precious stones and pearl, of coral and colored glass, will not often elsewhere come under one's eye. In the little open space in the middle of the bridge we may turn our eyes from the glitter of jewels to the fascinations of the sliding river, the distant hills, the guarding walls of old buildings that follow its banks. Here there is set a bust of the patron saint of all the inhabitants of the bridge, Benvenuto Cel- lini, that swaggering master-jeweler and master-wit of the olden days. If one would see Cellini as gold- smith instead of sculptor, he should spend an hour or two in that lower room in the Pitti Palace where are the golden cups, finger basins, and the dinner service of the Medici. Just under Cellini's bust there occasionally sits an old woman with a tray of little wooden cages too small for birds, but which house, nevertheless, a lively lot of musicians. They are singing crickets. Like the Japanese, the Italians have killed many of their wild songbirds and supplement their field music with that from cages. Perhaps it was from this need 8 In Florence and House-Hunting that came the inspiration of one of the Ponte Vecchio wonder-workers to devise the glittering marvel of bird-song shown us one day. It was a bejeweled casket which when opened let spring up a tiny bird figure, resplendently draped in fragments of humming-birds' feathers, and pour- ing forth from vibrating beak and bobbing head a clear and liquid little song. We let our curiosity even go the length of asking the price of this toy. And then we watched with awe-struck eyes as the gemmy thing was put carefully back into the steel safe. Finally, the Ponte Santa Trinita, the beautiful bridge, with its perfectly satisfying curve and line. Seen from the Ponte Vecchio, from Lung' Arno Ac- ciajuoli or Guicciardini, or from the roadway winding down from San Miniato to Porta San Niccolo, it proves in how simple a thing, just a curve, just a group of lines, genius can show itself. Whenever we crossed it we bought a few flowers from Antonetta, the lavender woman. You can see in her face the beauty she once had. Four years ago, Rowena knew her a beautiful woman. She added to the workingman husband's wages the soldi got from selling flowers. And there were many soldi; for she was so joyous and smiling, so polite and friendly, that all who often crossed the bridge knew her. The tourists kodaked her and she was the flower woman of Florence. Then the husband died, and the soldi for flowers and from the kodaking tourists were all there were for her and the two children; one a crippled girl, In Florence and House-Hunting the other a hunchback son. Her face took on a look of seriousness. So the tourists stopped kodaking her. Then the girl cripple fell into a wasting, lingering Illness. The flower woman had to stay at home much of the time to care for her, and the regular patrons turned to other ven- ders. Then the lit- tle girl died and she could again give all her time to flower- selling. But it was too late to gather her patrons again; and she had lost her old place in the line at the supply gar- dens. So she gave up bouquets and fresh roses and car- nations and began to sell lavender. Then the hunchback boy, who had always earned a few soldi, dropped one day into the cloudy waters of the river that ran under the bridge. Antonetta's face to-day is no longer beautiful; her joyousness is gone. She lives in a stanzaccio that costs her ten dollars a year for rent. She eats — what does she eat? And she pays this rent and for that which she eats by selling lavender, sometimes flowers; " elle meurt de I'hiver en of rant le printemps." In Antonetta, the flower woman. lo In Florence and House-Hunting four years so much has happened, all of it bad, and she is trying, perhaps, when she stands unnoticing, to solve the problem of a God who is all-kind and a life that seems all unkindness. Whether you choose your hotel or pension on this side or that side of the river, one thing you will find out speedily. That is, that the estimate of prices given you before leaving home by the friend who spent a month in Florence four or five years ago will have to be revised. The pensions are in this year, 1909, at least one lira a day more expensive than they were in 1904, and by another five years they will hkely have added another lira to the tariff. Still, one can live to-day very comfortably and de- cently in good Florence pensions for five lire (one dollar) a day, and in better ones, of course, for six or seven or eight lire. The hotels make pension rates from nine to twelve to fourteen Hre a day. If you Hve long in any pension, however good, you will still have need of knowing where you can get a good cup of coffee or chocolate with biscotti; or perhaps a glass of German beer with a club sandwich. The restaurants and cafes of Florence are not such attractive or admirable places as those of Rome or Venice or Milan. Where, indeed, in any European city will one find a better cafe than the Nazionale in Rome, or a more attractive one than Florian's on St. Mark's? But with Giacosa's and Doney's restau- rants on the Via Tornabuoni, the more Bohemian Lapi's and Paoli's tucked away in their side streets, and the Gambrinus and Reinlnghaus cafes on the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, Florence can very well In Florence and House-Hunting ii help out one's pension fare by anything from an ice to a dinner. And to pick and choose, plate in hand, before the open case of varied and wonderful pasti in a bakery like Luigi Gilli's, is a special kind of joy that comes only next to the successful running down of an out-of-the-way Botticelli. If one likes seeing a touch of Bohemia, or what seems to be that, as he seeks his five-o'clock rest and refreshment, he can take an outside seat at the Rei- ninghaus, more familiarly called Jacquetta Rossa, or Red Jacket, by reason of the golf jackets affected by the waiters. Here gather most of the pallid faces with burning bright eyes, the long hair, the unusual hats and clothes, and the speakers of ultra-foreign tongues, that Florence has to exhibit. Art students and musicians, poets and near-poets, anarchists plot- ting for the woe of monarchs and the weal of the proletariat, make this their picturesque rendezvous. The thing about any European cafe in good situa- tion, that is, on a public square or populous streets, that makes it worth more than its merely material refreshment to the tourist, is, of course, the revela- tion it makes of the native people and their visitors. Idling at a cafe table on the sidewalk with eyes open is to assist at the unrolling of a panorama of the life of a foreign folk. The faces and dress, the speech and gesture, the wit or stupidities, the customs and be- havior of all sorts and conditions of people are revealed with the winking swiftness and staccato em- phasis of a cinematograph. Perhaps you are not in Florence for days or weeks, but for months. Then you will want as we did, not 12 In Florence and House-Hunting a hotel or even a pension, but housekeeping apart- ments, or better, a villa beyond the barriers. To satisfy this need one must inquire, inquire. Ask of all acquaintances, of all Florentines you come into speaking contact with, of pension mistresses, of shop- keepers, of your barber and your banker. And, of course, go to the agents. Their names are in the Florence Herald, the English newspaper of the Anglo-American colony. Also there are always ad- vertisements in this paper of apartments and villas to let. Take tram rides and walking trips about town and out of town, watching for the " to let " signs. And someway, finally, there will turn up just what is wanted. There are always some apartments to be had along the Arno, and if one's stay is not to run into late sum- mer or early fall, they are, if for no other reason than the view, perhaps the most desirable. Friends of ours have a dainty set of rooms on the top floor of a building on Lung' Arno Acciajuoli. From their little balcony — I should pay the whole rent of the suite for that balcony and one sleeping room ! — what incom- parable seeing! Straight down, the green Arno, with its bridges, a skiff here and there, perhaps a pair of white four-oar shells with crews in bright-colored jerseys. Across, that last remaining stretch of old Florence bordering the water's edge. Everywhere else along the river the old houses have been torn down and the Lung' Arno promenades built in. It is a fascinating block of angular, irregular, small- windowed, towering soiled whitish and yellow walls, behind which the little furnaces of the silversmiths In Florence and House-Hunting 13 are roaring and scores of bare-armed, deft-fingered workmen are hammering and beating, drawing out and twisting the shining silver strands in a haze of heat and smoke. And then looking up the river into the face of San Miniato del Monte and on beyond and above to the hills, and finally to the mountain crests by Vallombrosa ; and the other way down the river with Bellosguardo and Oliveto for near back- ground and the high Carrara in the far distance. That last remaining stretch of old Florence bordering the water's edge." Think of the lights of morning and evening on the pictures in this gallery ! But better than three or five rooms in town is a house of one's own with a garden and a pony stable; a villa on a hill-slope above Florence, in a plantation of olive and vine. And so we set out in search for a villa. The little rest of this chapter is the tale of Rowena's success. For she did the searching and she found the villa. There were villas too large and too expensive; others too small, and one for a song; just the taxes 14 In Florence and House-Hunting apparently, but with drawbacks, of course. Finally, and sooner than you would think, the exactly right one appeared. The discovery was by a friend; the consummation by an agent. The business details were an agreement to rent for at least three months and payment In advance for the rent for these months; the necessity of taking on the gardener attached to the place and paying his wages at an already fixed rate; the assisting at the making of, and the signed agreement to, an Inventory of all the household fur- nishings; the waiving of any furnishings in the way of linen and table silver (these we had to rent spe- cially), and the waiving of any rights to the vege- tables or fruits that the garden might produce unless from seeds of our own planting, but a recognition of our rights to all the flowers. We might, I presume, have picked all the pear blossoms, but we could not pick the pears if we let the flowers stay on the trees ! To all these matters we agreed; paid our three months' rent with a commission to the agent — it seems the lessee and not the lessor pays the commission over here — and faced the business of finding servants and establishing ourselves. CHAPTER II OUR VILLA MRS. ROSS, the active authoress who has compiled a voluminous red book called " Florentine Villas," as well as another about Floren- tine palaces, catalogues twenty-three really and truly villas of the castle or palace type that inhabit the hilltops and slopes girdling Florence. All these ap- proved villas, with perhaps one or two exceptions, date from the fifteenth century or earlier, and in their histories the names of emperors, popes, and cardinals stand out in imposing relief. Hardly less conspicu- ous, and much more familiar and enhancing, are the names of many of the poets and painters whose mem- ories and priceless bequests of song and picture and marble make Florence the magic city she is. That the present owners of these villas are mostly English- men and Germans of less conspicuous claims to fame only tells of the decadence of Italy, and need detract not the least from the abiding interest of the storied palaces. But these twenty-three villas are in truth but a tithe of the reality. There are hosts of others, less princely in their proportions, perhaps, and more un- certain in their fragrance of fame, but none the less beautiful and not infrequently of most interesting 15 i6 Our Villa association. Their gleaming white and pink walls rise well above the olive orchards and vineyards that cover all the hill-slopes and valley floor about Flor- ence. There are literally hundreds of them, each with its own beauty of scene and setting, its own vagaries of tower or crenelated wall, loggia or carved buttress. And each sits in a garden; whether on hilltop or dropping slope or in the flat-floored valley, there is always the lush growth of tree and shrub and bedded plants; the garden of walks and arbors, terraces and bowers; of quaint bits of stone stairway and wall, fountains and grotto pools. And hardly one that does not rear beside its cool white walls a group, a row, perhaps only a pair, of dark steeple-like cypresses. As we stand on the roof-terrace of our house and let our eyes range the miles of girdling hill-slopes about the nestling city, these countless white villa spots, with their guarding sentinel black cypresses, dot the whole landscape. I have said that many of the uncatalogued villas have their associations interesting or dear to the visi- tor in Florence. It is very true. Not a giant's stone's throw from our own perching home on Setti- gnano hill-side is a modest gray stone house with square battlement tower which once belonged to the Buona- rotti family, and where the great Michelangelo himself " drew in with his foster-mother's milk the mallet and chisel with which he afterward carved his statues." For this nurse mother was the daugh- ter of a stone-cutter. On the floor of this villa the boy Michel drew his first picture. Photo. Author Iron Gate in Wall near D'Annunzio's Villa Our Villa 17 Indeed, we neighbor abundantly with distinction. A few rods further down the hill-side from the old Buonarotti house is the former country home of' Eleonora Duse, with its quiet inclosed garden sweet with roses. It was her fancy to have only roses in the garden and clambering up the rough walls to her deep-set windows. In one of these stood a tall vase with a single white rose whenever the maestra was in residence. What a pretty conceit for a house flag ! The house is low and rambling, looking rather like an unusually large contadino's house than the more pretentious villa. In its door-post is cut " La Porzuincola." A high-walled narrow roadway, dropping deviously down the hill, runs by the house and is opened on by the broad front doors. Just across the roadway from these doors is a beautiful small iron gate let into the stone wall of the adjoining podere (farm), with a bright-colored little Holy Mary set into the heavy stone cross-piece above the gate. On the podere side of the gate is cut " Pensa! " This podere is leased by Gabriele d'Annunzio, and in his absence is mostly given over to a horde of pampered dogs of a dozen breeds. They have their own cuoco and cameriere (cook and waiter), says our Beppi, and Beppi knows. He knows the household intimacies of every home on Settignano hill, as does every Set- tignanese, of course. On the posts of the great iron gate that guards the dark tree-grown garden of the establishment of dogs and literature are cut "Noli me tangere " — this under the bell-pull — and " Cave Canes ac Dominum" — on the other post. There i8 Our Villa seems to be a breath of irreverence in the genius of Italian literary decadence ! A strong contrast of association is furnished by the very next house in the same podere with d'Annunzio's establishment. This is the Villa Viviani, a high, square, pink-walled affair overlooking Florence and facing Fiesole and the rugged Apuan Alps in the distant west. It was in this villa that Mark Twain finished " Pudd'nhead Wilson," that best, because most human thing of his, and wrote in its preface: " Given under my hand this 2d day of January, 1 893, at the Villa Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back from Florence on the hills; the same certainly af- fording the most charming view to be found on this planet and with it the most dream-like and enchanting sunsets to be found on any planet or even in any solar system." If we do not tramp the hill-slopes for distinguished villas, but stay at home and sit on our roof-terrace under the shadow of the big red-brown water hrocca that holds our acqiia da hagna, and gives our villa its name, still we find no end of sights to thrill us. Along the curve of the hill-ring toward Fiesole our eyes follow over soft gray olives and tall close-robed somber cypresses to houses where history inhabits; where picture and poetry germed and blossomed; houses resonant with memories of great men and women. There with its crenelated skyline is the very house where Boccaccio's gay youths and ladies amorose told their tales of love, while the death chants of the black-cowled Misericordia rose dolorous from plague- Our Villa 19 struck Florence below. And just beyond is a cypress- guarded villa that belonged to the great Medici themselves : a house in which poets and painters lived with those extraordinary patrons of the arts, those merchant princes whose life was for so long the very life of Florence. Among these older houses are newer ones with their names of more modern times. Landor's villa, Sal- vini's home, Hawthorne's across the valley, and the others. A score might be catalogued to tell of the drawing and holding power these Florentine hill- slopes have had, and still have, over the sensitive spirits of art and song. But this chapter was really to be a most specifically descriptive and practical one, to serve as introduction to this tale of how one lives modestly in a villino at Florence. It was to tell of the outsides and insides, and the conveniences and inconveniences, the differ- ences and similarities of a Florentine dwelling when compared with " home." So there is necessity of a sort of word-picture of a villa; a catalogue of dimen- sions and relations, and an inventory of parts and appurtenances. As a matter of fact, such an inventory, even to each stray unbound Tauchnitz in its book- shelves and fugitive cork-screw and can-opener in the pantries, has to be made out and mutually agreed to as correct by contracting owner and lessee, and has to be faced with full seriousness and responsibility by the lessee at the time of his surrender of the premises to the owner. Our villa is a house and garden, a pony stable, and a gardener's lodge. And it has a stone laundry- 20 Our Villa tub that is the most picturesque thing about the premises — at least it is when Marina, the lovely laundress — the phrase is as true as it is alliterative — is bending over it. The villa lies on the up and down road that winds along the hill-side from Settignano village to Villa Gamberaia, the show place of the whole Settignano hill. This little stretch of roadway from the village to our gate is not the least of our joys. It dips and lifts its curving way along the verge of the hill lined by low stone walls, one of which grows higher and higher as we near the villa, and is crested for many rods with climbing roses; and gives from every yard of its way the most wonderful views of the Arno and Florence in its hill-rimmed cup. The villa was formerly a group of three contadinos' (farmers') houses, which through the persistent and expensive efforts of two successive English owners have been merged into one. One can pick out the original units with some accuracy by standing on the roof-terrace and attending to the levels and directions of the various parts of the tiled roof. But the merger of the houses has been a successful one and there are no indications of faction or falling apart of the original trio. One of them, at least, is of decent age, as a sort of cornerstone is inscribed " 1639." An inscribed plate put up by his nephew on the highway side of the house attests that in one of them lived, a generation or two ago, a painter of some note, one Malatesta. The wife of this nephew is now our teacher of Italian, and thus do we curiously main- tain the association of our villa with the family of Malatesta. Our Villa 21 The three-in-one house is long and sinuous. Long is surely the right name for a house with one hundred and sixty feet of running length and less than twenty- five feet of width in its widest and but seventeen in its narrowest part. What I mean by sinuosity in our house is its curious habit of following the curve of the road along which it extends its ten rods of length; inside it doesn't seem exactly to curve, but an analysis of the many little offsets and insets in the roadside wall, and the total lack, of correspondence of the longitudinal partitions, show how the fitting of the house to the curving road has been accomplished. As the house wall is the actual boundary of the highway it is given two special means of keeping out the noise, of which there isn't much anyway, and the dust, of which there is less. These are, first, a com- parative absence of windows, and second, an unusual thickness. The walls are, of course, as are all here, of stone and brick overlaid with a smoothish coat of cement. There is a part of this face that no owner of the house may own. This is a small shrine let into the wall and under it a narrow projecting stone bench built into one of the rectangular juttings. The bench for the weary wayfarer and shrine for the passing pilgrim are appurtenances of the commune and not of us, nor of our landlord. It is in this shrine that our servants burn candles for us on holy days, and place flowers to be blessed when the village priest and his candle-bearing, singing procession of women and children comes along to bless the roadside shrines. The other side of the house, which is the south side 22 Our Villa and the down-hill looking side, is anything but a blank white wall. It gives on the garden terrace, is full of windows and doors, and is adorned by bal- conies and a profusion of climbing vines. Its outjut- tings are much more pronounced, taking on the char- acter almost of " ells " and all of the ground-floor " The other side of the house gives on the garden terrace and is adorned by balconies and a profusion of climbing vines." doors, which are large and double and open from every room, have two or three stone steps leading up to them. Inside there is the only possible arrangement of rooms in a house ten rods long by one to one and a half wide. Each floor — the house is full two stories — simply has a longitudinal series of successive rooms with occasional narrow corridors running along by Our Villa 23 their side, in the widest, that is, least narrow, parts of the house. You cannot lose yourself. There are no mysterious side trails. You keep on ahead or turn around and stroll back along the same path. But it isn't monotonous, because, as I have said, the house is sinuous and the trail is a gently winding one. The whole general make-up suggests a two-story python with interior arrangements for human habita- tion. There are in all twenty rooms, counting each least one, such as the bathroom. These rooms are equally divided in number between the two floors; but the arrangement of them below and above stairs does not correspond at all. Underneath, too, is a cellar con- taining a room with racks for wine and a never- failing well; the department of fluids. In the old days this well belonged with the shrine and the stone bench outside the house to the commune. In fact the shrine and the bench are the outward visible signs and relics of the well, which once was public and furnished water to many generations of fiaschi- bringing old wives and children; but now is private and perhaps the most valuable single asset of the Villa Brocca. Through all the summer long was needed only a cry to Beppi of '^ Acqiia fresca, per piacere," and the glasses were soon poured from the dripping copper pail and the full draughts of cold clear water drunk thankfully down. And this kind of water is not the most easily got thing anywhere and at any time in Italy. On the ground floor is, first, the salone, or parlor, with parquetry floor, timbered ceiling painted in 24 Our Villa brown and gray-green and bossed in full gilt, gray- green walls, chimney-corner fireplace, and large double doors opening south on the garden terrace. One of the windows is a high, pretty, iron-bound square with casement doors of leaded glass. From this room a narrow tiled corridor runs along the north wall to the main entrance hall. Off this cor- ridor opens the salott'uw, which we used as study and smoking-room. It also, like the salone, has double doors giving on the garden. The floors of salone, corridor, and salottino are all at slightly different levels, a condition common as well to all other parts of this curiously assembled house. On the entrance hall, which gives on the garden, opens a bathroom. A corridor runs from the hall to the dining-room and a curving stair rises from it to the second floor. This stairway, with great flower pots of dwarf lemon trees and azaleas on its landings and a beautiful pair of long Persian shawls depending from the upper balustrade, is very attractive. From the corridor there opens darkly under the stair an odd little door into the roadway along the sinuous north wall of the house. But we rarely use this entrance, preferring the big wistaria-covered garden gate at the east end of the house. The dining-room is long and narrow, with high timbered ceiling and tiled floor. All the floors, in- deed, except the parquetry one of the salone, are of tile. And the windows of this room, as well as its great double doors, open on the garden terrace. The view from the table out into the blooming garden. Our Villa 25 and the soft air and sweet fragrance that come in from it, add a rare and special flavor to the dishes. From the dming-room opens the serving-room, with a curious little cold pantry built into the thick north wall of the house and led up to by a narrow little stair of four steps. Next comes the kitchen, with timbered ceiling, tiled floor, and windows on the terrace. From it rises a stairway to the children's rooms and balcony on the second floor, and doors open from it, one to a brick-tiled sort of outer open court jutting off the terrace, and another into a serv- ants' dining-room, where Maria, Marina, and Beppi have their sociable meals. That is, they do when they do not have them out on the brick-floored court or in their terrace arbor with its stone table and stone seat benches. Beyond this servants' room are two store and fuel rooms opening on to the brick court. As the pony stable is down in the lower garden, and it would be too much trouble to run the cart up and down from this lower garden to the upper terrace with its entrance gate giving on the road, the owner of the villa used one of these storerooms for the cart. So much, then, for the first floor. We can run along the second more rapidly. First, over the salone, a beautiful large bedroom, Rowena's room, of course, a comfortable, airy, joy- ous room with dark blue-gray walls and whitish ceil- ing; a window in the north or road-side wall, iron- barred, heavily shuttered, and two large double case- ment windows in the south or garden wall, opening 26 Our Villa on a beautiful little vine-clad balcony that runs all the length of this and the next room. From this room a narrow tiled corridor runs along the north wall to the stair landing with a door open- ing off into the next sleeping-room, which also has double casement windows opening on the south wall balcony over the terrace. From this stair landing doors open into a small guest bedroom and into another large one and also into a vine-clad stone stairway leading to the roof- terrace. Beyond the guest bedrooms are children's and servants' rooms, to which access from outside is got by a bacl<. stairway. Along the south or ter- race side of these rooms, and around the corner along the east wall of the last one, runs a pretty little play place on the east end of the house. Such is the house. And it is the house unadorned. As a matter of fact, what with heavy furniture, East- ern rugs and hangings, and flowers and dwarf shrubs in all the rooms, and vines about all the windows, and pots of green and color on all the door-steps, it is a house very much adorned. And with bathroom and fireplaces it is as comfortable as it is pleasant to see. But there are yet the outbuildings and the garden to tell of. The garden! ah, that is the joy over all; that will be the untellable thing. That May pro- cession of flowers ! Those wonderful June evenings of fire-flies ! Those July days of ckale! The oranges in blossom; the nespoli ready for eating; the fat figs ripening and swelling to bursting; the tiny olives, slowly, so very slowly, getting to be less tiny and Our Villa 27 then to be not tiny at all, just small and finally — but this is not the place! It is the turn of the outbuildings. These are in the lower garden. We get to this lower garden from the terrace, which is on the same level as the house, either by the pretty stone stair by the walnut trees The huge red brocca on the housetop. or by the gently dropping path with the tall poppies on one side and the dwarf red roses on the other. At the end of this path is the stone laundry tub under an arbor of Banksia roses, and next to it the vine-clad pony stable with three little stalls. In it is also a room in which Beppi sits each day for half an hour to turn the big wheel that someway pumps water from the cistern to the huge red brocca on the house- top. Opposite the pony stable is the gardener's house with two sleeping-rooms and grainroom, and 28 Our Villa underneath it alcov^es for the pots and tools. There are cement-walled forcing frames near by, with the glass tops all broken by hail. And now, finally, after all this laborious and per- haps superfluous detail of description, the truly in- quiring mind, especially that cautious feminine one; the mind really interested because its possessor in- dulges the fancy, perhaps, of some day living for a short while in a modest villa in Italy; this one will ask: " Well, and after all is this pythonesque villa of yours, or any other one like it, really livable? Is it truly a house in which you can be comfortable and cheerful and where your dreams actually come true?" " Well, and it is," is all we have to say. The thick walls that keep out cold and heat; the water that is good, and enough of it; the fireplaces and stoves; the bright, sunny, south-facing, warm rooms of winter and the same rooms airy, darkened, and cool in summer; the breeze-filled balconies and roof-terrace; the fragrant outdoor breakfast arbor; the magic garden with its blossoms and green tangle: all of these are realities of comfort and luxury. And this quite apart from the joys of seeing and doing outside our garden wall; our leisurely enjoyment of Florence, our trips through the Tuscan hills or along Arno valley to the Tuscan towns; our hours in the fields and country paths, our constant pleasure in the wit and play of the Tuscan. Perhaps I should add one more matter of informa- tion for that cautious, truly inquiring feminine mind Our Villa 29 that has visions of a future year in Italy. The rent of such a house is not prohibitive. It is, in fact, just about what the rent of a house of half as many rooms would be on a good street in an American town of twenty thousand inhabitants. CHAPTER III SERVANTS, MARKETING, AND HOUSE- KEEPING TO live in however small a villa requires servants and a dog. In our case the dog and one of the servants came with the villa. We had to have them whether we liked or not. But the more we have them the better we like them. Beppi is the gardener. But if you were a strong man — strong enough to be a hod-carrier, for that is what Beppi was originally — and had come by chance to have in charge a garden about the size of a man's pocket-handkerchief, would you need all your time for digging and watering and pruning? Well, neither does Beppi. He is just such a gardener as you or I would be. And besides he has charge also of the dog. That is why he gets more money than either the cook or the maid — forty lire a month for his varied services. He is fastidiously humane about this dog, whose name is Boy. Beppi begins bright and early in the morning to garden a little. He chops for some min- utes at the weeds in the tulip bed. But hold, a thought ! There should be meat got for Boy. Even now he howls lugubriously and the terrible Gam- beraia dog is nowhere near. F^or what, then, is this howling if not for hunger? So Beppi makes a little 30 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping 31 passeggiata to the village for meat for Boy. And as custom and politeness demand, he gives a few neces- sary moments to passing the time of day with his numerous friends on the street. After the meat is safely in Boy's jaws, Beppi begins swinging his long-necked little green watering can or trundling again his toy wheelbarrow down the gravel path between the pale-blue flags and the deep-red roses. But again Boy howls. Beppi has forgotten the bread for the dog! Che peccato! To have to interrupt one's pressing duties of gardener for the sake of a brute dog! But, if it must be And so back to the village again to buy bread, for Maria, the cook, will give him none. And another passing of the time of day with his friends of the street. The time Is different, you see, by an hour perhaps ! But after his bread Boy goes to sleep. And there Is nothing to Interrupt Beppi In his gardening. With some creaking of the knees he gets down to an earnest, if somewhat deliberate, weeding of the gravel path. Handful after handful of poor little uprooted green things drop into the toy wheelbarrow. It is a day of sunshine. Beppi mops his clipped gray head. He lets his eye follow along the path down to the lower rose arbor. Not a spot of shade in It anywhere. " Beppi — Beppeef " Beppi scrambles to his feet with a surprising alacrity. " Commandi, Sign oral " " Ac qua fresca, Beppi I " " Sissignora! " 32 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping And up out of the lower garden and on to the ter- race goes Beppi for the shining brass-bound copper pails. Down he plunges with them into the dark, cool cellar under the hallway and soon he comes in smiling and happy with the filled glasses on the tray. Ah, this good water so fresh and clear and cold on this day of terrible sunshine. And we drink to Beppi's gar- dening! Maria and Marina, approximate names but an- tipodal personalities, were not appurtenances of the villa; they had to be found. The methods of seeking servants In Italy are about the same as those we use in America. Rowena besieged agents — for there are good ones in Florence — besought pension mistresses, enlisted the Interest of friends, and even questioned shopkeepers with whom she came into professional acquaintance. It was by this last and least promis- ing way that she discovered Marina the maid, or cameriera. Out of Navonl's lace shop on the Via Strozzi came the clue that put beautiful Marina into our hands. She was the daughter of an Arezzo hair- dresser, and had had very little training as maid. But her red-brown hair, her big, soft Italian eyes and bright cheeks, her youth and pretty grace, and her swift intelligence made Rowena's brief questioning and examination a mere formality. As to wages, Marina suggested twenty or twenty-five lire a month. Rowena made It twenty-five : and Marina's cheeri- ness and neatness and prettlness have been a wonder- ful bargain at five dollars a month. Not to speak of her actual services, which include caring for the rooms, serving at table, and acting as lady's-maid Photo. Author Beppi and the Water Pails Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping 33 to Rowena. This last she accomplishes with particu- lar deftness and cleverness. Finally, she does all the lighter laundry work at the picturesque stone tub under the Banksia arbor in the garden. In this last item alone she has actually saved us her wages each month. The discovery of Marina was a step toward getting established, but the most important one of the little household was yet to find, — namely the cook. Row- ena's specifications required that this person be, first, a woman; second, a woman who could cook; third, an honest woman who could cook; and, fourth, an honest woman cook who could and would cater eco- nomically. Again she sought the agencies, the friends, and the friendly shopkeepers. Days passed of much inquiring and of occasional refusing of cooks who claimed to be honest and who confessed to a special cleverness as economical caterers, but who also to their and our regret were men. All of them, too, wanted from fifty to fifty-five lire a month as wages, and estimated that they could not buy for master and mistress and three servants for less than fifteen lire a day. And yet we knew that families of two in Florentine villini were living comfortably for much less. Finally came the day of success; it was announced by a summons from the agent who had let us the villa. Rowena listened to his news; he had discovered a woman cook of proved honesty and economy. She was " rather old " and a " bit queer " and she bore, for unknown reasons, the sobriquet of " The Turk." But she had served in a small English family near 34 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping Fiesole for eleven years, and her recommendations were excellent. Would Rowena see her? When " The Turk " waddled in the first glance was not reassuring. She was short, broad, animated, and positive. She talked on one foot at a time, with one eye at a time, breaking excitedly from Italian into a curious German patois and back again repeat- edly. But with acquaintanceship grew confidence. Her face was better than her figure. Also she asked but thirty-five lire as wages, and was sure that she could provide decently for us for six or seven lire a day. Rowena engaged her, and we still make the monthly returning of that day a special festa. Maria became from the start more than satisfactory, she became indispensable. And she revealed herself at once no less a woman of heart and wit and beautiful devotion, than an excellent cook and a willing slave to our every need. The villa had been " put in order " for our coming. But when Maria arrived she gave one swift inclusive glance and plunged immediately into such ecstasies of groaning and scrubbing and calling on the saints and polishing, as made leisurely, thoughtful, polite old Beppi stare half in pain, half in admiration. The kitchen had not been used for nine months. Nor the pantry and /7;/r//o (servants' dining-room) . For days Maria scoured and polished until the boards shone white under their thin green paint, and all the kitchen wall gleamed with its copper pots and yellow bowls. Even Beppi was galvanized into an unwonted activity. He kept busy bringing in big pots of callas and azaleas and arraying them along the stairways and in the Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping 35 window-boxes of the salone, while above stairs Ma- rina was cleaning and sunning the wardrobes and dressers and pulling and pushing things according to Rowena's notions of convenience and taste. The only note of confusion arose from Maria's occa- sional explosive sallies into the front part of the house demanding permission to do a copper or brass that belonged in Marina's domain. Maria has an insati- able mania for polishing. All through this real putting in order, this getting arranged and settled for routine days, shone out the joy of living and joy of personal service that lie inborn in these Italian servants. And once settled Into the routine this singing, laughing, care-free tak- ing of life as it came became more and more con- spicuous. To be sure, we were a small household of few cares and light duties. Maria solemnly said once to her respectfully listening auditors at evening meal In the kitchen court under the stars : " This is our first real service, and after this there will be no other like It." Maria Is undisputed head of the little servant group. She buys their food and cooks and serves It for them. She exhorts them to Industry and serious- ness. For fascinating Marina has fairly bewitched old Beppi Into a youthful behavior that almost scan- dalizes black-gowned Maria. He cuts choice flowers for the kitchen table, hcev^en slips a few of the big, soft figs from the padrone's trees Into Marina's hands. And when Marina and Beppi give Boy a bath In the big green tub under the servants' arbor on the terrace, the joyous peals of Marina's laughter and the 36 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping pretended scolding phrases of Beppi must carry clear across the olive hill-slope to the silent, shut-in, sad grand lady of the great castle-like villa there. They love the out-doors, these servants; these happy " little people " of the Tuscan hills and sunny skies. When we go to Florence for the day and time is theirs, and Maria seeks for coppers that may be repolished or finds a corner of floor that can stand more rubbing, Beppi and Marina drift out of the wistaria-bound gate and across the road and up into the sloping orchards and vineyards of the Gamberaia demesne. And they come back with arms full of wildflowers and tall grasses for the house. When the reapers came into the nearby fields Marina was breathless with excitement. She imitates the cicale and the frogs. When the frog in the lower garden croaks softly she says he has water enough; when he grunts he is demanding rain and we must beware of wettings. When the rainbow appears after a shower she prognosticates the harvest by it. If there is more red than yellow or green in it, it will be a good year for wine; if more green, a good season for oil; if more yellow, a rich harvest of grain. She carries her sewing out under the ilex arbor: she insists on the out- of-door meals for them all. And she dearly loves to spread our breakfast or tea table on the terrace under the rose pendants. Maria, who is Montenegrin and not Tuscan, and who has lived mostly in great cities, as Vienna and Budapesth, finds less joy outside her quarters. She keeps mostly to her shining kitchen, always so fresh and sweet. But she has a passion for travel. Her Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping 37 ambition is to see America. She once prepared, secretly, to sail for New York. She had saved the money and was going to slip away to the steamer and then send back word to her astonished friends. She makes great effort to carry out even her smallest plans with secrecy. Something slipped in the matter of the New York expedition and it had to be postponed. But she hopes to see it through some day. However, she holds Florence to be the loveliest city in the world, but the Florentines — ah, they don't deserve their beautiful city. She wishes to see the whole world, but she wants to come back to die in Florence. She has, poor creature, an ailing leg. And this gives her necessity or excuse to go once each year to the baths. And of all places, Montecatini. Montecatini is the Carlsbad of Italy. Maria nurses her lame leg there by the side of princes and millionaires. She does not stay long, but she stays well. How many have a servant who takes the waters at the swellest baths of the country? Maria not only cooks for us : she lends us distinction. The wages of the servants have been told. And it may be recalled that Maria undertook to buy the food and oil and wine for our household for " six or seven lire " a day. This seems a small sum, and it is, even for Italy, where, despite the high prices for meats and poultry, living is really cheap. And it means, of course, that the wine was vin ordinaire, and not overmuch of that. For the rest, though, it was good living for simple tastes. But perhaps it takes a Maria to make a dollar and a half a day go so far. 38 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping Rowena gives to Maria each evening the money for the purchases of the morrow. For Maria is off to the village each morning while we are still sitting over our coffee on the terrace. On Saturday mornings she goes to Florence for more important purchases and special delicacies: a chicken, perhaps, or a pair of pigeons, fish, calves' brains, or sweetbreads, or some other special bit. When she gets back with her bundles, puffing and important, v^oluble of her experi- ences of the market, Rowena goes to the kitchen, and then begins Maria's great hour. The scales are got out, the provisions spread over the table, and the account books opened. Maria becomes philosopher, raconteur, actress. Is she cheery and good-humored? That means a successful business. She is quiet and downcast? She was overmatched in a delicate bit of trading. She produces her bills, she weighs and comments. Maria has no faith in tradesmen's honesty. " Alas, there is no humanity left. Each of us is but one among thousands nowadays." She even admonishes Rowena to be watchful in dealing with her. " I am honest to-day: but who knows what I shall be to-morrow? " And with a great sigh she exclaims: " I have lived much and seen how it goes : and many times I think I do not care to survive longer in the midst of such inhumanity." Her triumph over a small success in bargaining is as exaggerated as her despair over non-success. She boasted for days over getting some peaches softer and for one soldo less apiece than Rowena had paid on the same day. Another day she wept in the Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping 39 shop because eight peaches cost a lira. As she tells her tale of the morning's bargaining, of the rapacity of the tradesmen, and of her own triumphs or de- feats, her head and hands and body sway and leap like a pantomime actor's. She raises her arms to heaven; she bows her head in despair; with her hands she clutches her throat as those robbers do meta- phorically; she snaps her thumb-nail against her teeth with a sharp, hissed out '' zitta," that conveys a portentous injunction to secrecy. She moans and sobs, gloats and exults. It is all very moving: and it all has to do with the expenditure of a dollar and a half a day. The meats are the familiar ones of home; but more parts of the animal are used in Italy than with us. However, one does not need to follow the Italians too far in this. Veal is the national meat : veal cutlets, veal stew, and veal roasts are the staple courses of the Italian table. We had hard work to make Maria get roast beef and beefsteak, and she in her turn had hard work to get them. Mutton is abundant. But the Italian believes that civilized man should touch only white meat. So next to veal he uses chicken. The traveler in Italy must come out of it with a firm conviction that there are no cattle in the country : they must all be eaten as calves, and milk and butter are so rarely visible. And he must have an equally convinced belief in an overwhelming Italian produc- tion of poultry. In June Maria complains that chickens, and very small ones at that, are costing three lire. But she cheers herself with the thought of the coming July. " In July we are all padroni. 40 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping There are clilckens for all of us then ! "she exclaims. Along with chickens are pigeons and, to Italy's shame, hosts of small birds of field and hedgerow. Italy has sacrificed all her song-birds to her table. I shall never forget seeing dozens, scores of the tiny little carcases impaled on two long slowly turning spits, before a great open fire in the kitchen dining- room of a little hotel in northern Italy. And as I looked over the heap of yet unplucked sacrifices on a nearby table, I counted easily a dozen different species of song-birds. There were larks, thrushes, sparrows, titmice, and even tiny warblers awaiting the fire. Of vegetables we have, varying somewhat with the months, cauliflower, spinach, peas, asparagus, arti- chokes, beets, string beans, peas, tomatoes, flat beans, and zucchini, this last an odd kind of little squash, very tender and palatable. The cauliflower and spinach come early and the spinach, at least, lasts all through the season. The tomatoes are rather late, as are also the flat beans. The zucchini begin in June and from that time on fill all gaps in the vege- table bill of fare. In July they seemed to reign supreme. 7 hey came on not only in their own undis- guised naked little cucumber or slender egg-shaped bodies and in their proper place as vegetable course, but they turned up in pieces in the soup, as the filling of omelets, or stuffed with chopped meat, or fried in thin slices, or mashed to puree. They managed to smuggle themselves in twice a day. Life became a zucchini-haunted nightmare. We demanded some other kind of vegetable, but Maria said there was none to be had. Marina, however, who had to see Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping 41 our daily agonies, had her heart touched and whis- pered one day: " Yes, there is one other kind to be had: beans." We called for Maria. " Beans, Maria : we de- mand beans." Maria looked aghast. " The padrone and padrona have asked for beans," she said slowly. " It is quite true that they wish to eat beans? " We were mystified by the serious results of our simple request. But we answered firmly that we did wish and, indeed, demanded beans. Or rather we did not so much demand to eat beans as not to eat zucchini. The situation gradually cleared; and a modus Vivendi was come at. Whether we ate beans I must not tell, for the servants agreed not to and we can do no less. Maria, Beppi, and Marina might eat beans; but the padroni never. And it was nearly as bad with the macaroni, although we were allowed as much as we liked of a certain delicate form of spa- ghetti. The line is very sharp between what is food for the servants and " little people " and what is food for the gentlefolk. Noblesse oblige, even to starvation ! Fortunately there are no convenances to observe in the matter of soups and salads; at least we have run afoul of none. There is a variety and excellence in both of these courses that well makes up for an occasional brief period of monotony in the vege- tables. And we have eggs abundant and fresh and manipulated by Maria with the hand of an artist. Omelets of a lightness and a variety as to unexpected 42 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping interior presences to make one gasp witii admiration. We have fresh, crisp little radishes from our own garden, and occasionally thin onion stems. Maria's desserts are tarts, fruit puddings, a particular kind of fritter-like thing, Portuguese and fried cream, and the favorite Italian zabbaione, a sort of thick egg punch made with Marsala. Fig pudding and chest- nut pudding, too, appeared in season. Of these des- serts Maria seems to have trouble with her fried creams, although to us they seem always excellently prepared. " Cursed be the cook that invented fried cream!" she cried one day: quickly adding, "But I can make plum pudding like laughing! " The fresh fruits do not fairly begin until June. Up till then there are, of course, oranges and man- darins. In June come cherries (enormous ones), strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, apricots, and peaches. In July little pears and the first figs appear and there are still apricots and peaches. In August come plums, melons, the second figs, and the first grapes, while peaches and pears still last. In Sep- tember we have the bulk of the figs, soft, oozy purple or greenish-white flasks of nectar and cheap to ab- surdity. Sometimes the figs, although looking good, were bad. " Like donne del niondo," said Maria, " fair on the outside but false within." When there are not fresh fruits to come within our " six or seven lire a day " budget, there are dried fruits and raisins and nuts. From Calabria come wonderful little packets of small raisins soaked in wine and closely wrapped up in fragrant grape- leaves. Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping 43 The Italians make some unusual combinations with their fresh fruit. For example, they eat together pears and cheese, placing slices of pear on thin strips of cheese like a sandwich. They eat figs and also melons with ham. The buying is very different from that which we do in America. Hardly anything but oil and wine is kept in stock in the house. Even the flour and sugar are got in little paper bags of a few pounds. The provisioning is for the day; each day the com- missary is renewed. Two and three cents' worth of things : a single egg sometimes : enough vanilla for just the pudding at dinner, that is the way one buys not only in Italy, but all over the Continent, for that matter. The oil and wine we get from the nearby villa of an authoress. The wine comes in open fiaschetti and is kept in the cool cellar: but we actually use less of it than of oil. The amount of oil used in an Italian kitchen is appalling to anti-fry hygienists. We get it in great straw-covered fiaschetti and reckon pay- ing for it as something apart from food; something rather to be classed with fuel and lights. But these discursive notes are too evidently those of an untrained observer. I am no specialist In such matters. To pay the bills, yes; and to wonder while paying them how much we seem to have for how little we give. There are brains mixed with this housekeeping without doubt : Rowena's and Maria's. But these notes show the possibilities. Excellent service, and all simple people need or indeed could well eat, the simple commissary not only wholly 44 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping sufficient for us, but including enough to entertain our friends willing to take pot-luck; the food fresh and clean, cooked admirably by a philosopher and wit, served by a graceful creature of a face and eyes to craze an artist; and all this for a sum within the resources of a very slender purse, indeed. What more could one ask? Perhaps just one thing more: the glimpse of Beppi, bareheaded, leisurely and care- fully carrying the big lighted lamp along the garden terrace from the kitchen to the salone. He brushes by the roses as he walks, and to us within at dinner, with the double doors wide open on the terrace, comes the fragrance from the dancing flowers. And we stop and hold our breath for very wonder and happiness. Indeed, all of Beppi's day is one contribution to the picturesque. He has more to do than merely garden and look after the dog. First thing in the morning he opens up the house. He unfastens the outer green shutter doors, takes down the iron bars he has put up the evening before across the inner glass doors, and swings them all wide open on to the garden terrace. Then he draws the long window curtains apart and rearranges the callas and azaleas and cinerarias about the doorways and in the hall and rooms. He cuts fresh roses and irises and heaps them up in the serving-room for the later arranging under the padrona's direction. If it is Tuesday or Saturday morning Beppi then takes out the rugs for a sweeping, and the uphol- stered chairs for a vigorous punching. He feeds the dog, and if it is the proper day, gives him a bath. Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping 45 Then he can garden a little : water some of the flowers perhaps, or dig up a few new potatoes or gather some artichokes for Maria. For our garden yields a little of everything, it seems; flowers, fruits, and vegetables. He trundles his toy wheelbarrow around, or clips the long new shoots and pendants on the rose arbors. Or sometimes he climbs up into the loquat tree to pick off all over-ripe fruit, so that the little beetles will not gather so abundantly in this tree that shades our breakfast table. But whatever Beppi is doing or wherever in house or garden he may be, he is ever on the alert and prompt with his " Sissignora, vengo subito," when the call comes. This call may be for fresh cold water, or it may be to carry a departing guest's bag to the tram in the village, or it may be to go to Florence, six miles away, on some errand. He re- sponds and goes always as if this opportunity to serve were a favor bestowed on him. He has an initiative of his own, too. Should we have gone to Florence without raincoats or umbrella, and rain comes on, how often has Beppi been on hand at the tram's end with big green umbrella to escort us home. And if we are late he mounts to the roof to watch for the first sight of us along the winding road from the village, so that Maria may be warned just when to stir the fire under the waiting soup. Sometimes Marina replaces Beppi on the housetop. And then what a sight to welcome one home; this graceful weather-vane, with blowing hair and laughing face, that waves a greeting from the red tiles. Beppi feels a fine personal responsibility, too, for 46 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping his people and his premises. He it is that meets the beggars and the would-be intruders at the gate with Boy growling fiercely at his heels. And his fatherly, protecting attitude toward the two women servants is a delight to see. At their long, merry dinner to- gether Beppi sits at the head of the table and leads the conversation like the true gentleman host he is. And even in his insatiable curiosity to know all that concerns us his politeness makes his questions seem but a kindly interest. One day a traveling friend, a writer of verses, had tea with us. After he left, Beppi and his long-necked watering pot busied them- selves quietly about the flowers near the tea-table where we still sat, until he asked casually, " Is the gentleman from your home, perhaps, Signora? Is he long away? What does he do?" And when he was answered that the gentleman was a poet, he re- sponded politely, " Ah, and is he perhaps greater than d'Annunzio? " In the service of Beppi and Marina and Maria there is a quality of personal relationship and per- sonal devotion that are its finest and most beautiful characteristics. And their manifestations take very delightful forms! We wandered out one Sunday morning into the Gamberaia fields and found the day and the flowers and the cicale and all so enchanting that luncheon time came and we were not aware of it. And after a while, as we lay outstretched on a flower-bank by a path in the olive orchard, we heard a step and there was smiling Beppi, hat in hand, and softly saying the hour. He had sought us through the fields and orchards while Marina had gone by Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping 47 the roadway, and as we all came home together, Maria stood welcoming us at the gate. They never forget our special festa days even if we sometimes forget them, and we never go away for a little two or three days' trip to some Tuscan town but they put candles in the shrine to burn for our safe return. One day when we came back from Prato we were so late that we dined in Florence before coming out to the villa. When we finally reached home, Marina and Beppi met us on the road from the village, where they had been waiting a full hour, while at home Maria had heard a civetta (little owl) cry In the garden, and was crossing her- self and praying for our safe return. We never go to bed at night without their " Felice notte, hiion riposo," and Beppi's last call for " commandi." Ah ! such servants, such comrades in pleasure : such nature-lovers, such poets, such children ! Servants who are neither servile inferiors nor superior in- solents: servants who serve as friends serve, happy In their work and making us happy, making the days full of song and good cheer, full of the joy of being alive in a land of sunshine and flowers and beauty. We can begin to understand that extraor- dinary clinging to the very last of Michelangelo to his old servant Urblno. " For the older he grew," says Grimm of the great artist, " the more the number dwindled of those whom he had gathered round him In middle age. He had sat day and night by the sick couch of his old servant to whose widow ... he turned with the most anxious sympathy. The letter which he wrote to 48 Servants, Marketing, and Housekeeping Vasari on Urbino's death is truly desponding. The one hope alone remained to him of soon meeting his lost friend in another life. He had indeed felt, he says, how Urbino, as he lay dying, had suffered less from the fear of his own death than from the thought of being obliged to leave him behind him thus old and solitary in this false and miserable world, in which nothing now remained for him but ceaseless calamity." CHAPTER IV OUR GARDEN I SAY our garden; but I mean any garden near Florence. The procession of flowers must pass through all In about the same order. Ours is small, and not an " Italian garden," if by that is meant one with straight, broad paths and long vistas closed by sculptures or fountains; one with cypresses, plaster grottoes, and carved stone benches. But everywhere in Italy there are the typical flowers and vines, the harmonies of odor and color, the swift succession of bursting bLssoms, the day-long song of insects, the going and coming of soft breezes that set all the myriad leaves to dancing, and the true Italian languor and loveliness over all. We have seen other Floren- tine and hill-side gardens, and we like ours better the more we see these others. We are prejudiced? Per- haps. But the garden is not ours for ever, we have no proprietary interest in it, simply a lease on its beauties and joys for a little time, hardly more endur- ing or personal than the rambler's lease we have on any other garden we can get into. Still, it is, perhaps, true that we are prejudiced. I hope so, indeed. It is good to like the things you have; it is one of the first secrets of happiness. The great villa near by has a real " Italian gar- 49 50 Our Garden den," a representative of the type made famous by the gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli and the Villa Medici on the Pincian Hill. The box-hedges along the long, broad paths, the statues in the vistas, the water playing down the stucco cascade steps or spout- ing from the dolphins' mouths; the cypresses spiring high; the dense-headed ilexes, the Japanese grotesque- ness and beauty of the stone pines, and the clinging vines up the broken pillars and old tree trunks; all that belongs to the type is there. Ours is a homely little garden for homely people. It does not call for a staff of gardeners, but for a single Beppi and a singing woman in wide straw hat, trowel in hand. It is a garden of an acre, perhaps, dropping rather quickly down the hill-slope, bounded by high stone retaining walls on the sides and lower end and by the smiling face of the long, low house on the up-slope end. At this end there is a built-up, level terrace varyingly twenty to forty feet wide and extending all along the house front; and on it a pa- vilion arbor of Banksia rose for coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon, and hammock, steamer chairs, and reading-table for all between times. There are a few trees on the terrace; a loquat standing so close to the arbor that the yellow fruits fall as they ripen on to the very breakfast table; a dense arbor vitae, shaped like a top upside down, with the little blue-gray cones studding its bright-green surface; an olive, a pear or two, a big fan-palm, and a plum tree with a thriving family of large black carpenter ants in its ragged trunk. Then there are tvvo lemon trees in great red-brown pots nearly a Our Garden 51 yard high and as broad across the top, and a rhyn- chospermum as fragrant as a ja-smine in another big pot. The June evenings were heavy with the odor of myriad white blossoms. But mostly the terrace is given to vines, shrubs, and bedded plants. Against the west wall is a row of high pink oleanders that blossom all through the summer, while at their feet cluster bridal wreath, mignonette, and old-fashioned white pinks. In the angle of wall and house run up two roses, a yellow and a red, clasping and twining about each other in inextricable confusion. They go up by the salone door and over it to the balcony, which they drape as with heavy green cloths all figured with red and yel- low. Then they climb on up to the tiled roof of the house. In fact, all along this south or garden face of the long house the plant draperies of roses, jas- mine, brilliant trumpet-flowers, and orange, hang in wonderful beauty and richness. This orange drapery was new to us who only knew the ordered rows of the California orchards. By the salottino door and by that of the entrance hall are two thick, flat, fragrant climbing masses of it. The Banksia rose arbor, a snowy mass in May, is backed by lilacs that blossom in April and May, and yuccas that send up their tall spikes of creamy white blossoms in June. This bed is bounded on one side by clematis supported on wires between low, green stakes, and is filled with pansies, anemones, stock, geraniums, and foliage plants. Across a path to the east is a palm bed, in which are also myrtle, snapdragons, and more clematis, stock, and yuccas. All along the 52 Our Garden house wall and clustering around the feet of the lift- ing vines are geraniums, heliotrope, snapdragons, myrtle, laurestinus, and foliage plants, giving a con- stant succession of new blossoms and changing color. In front of the dining-room terrace doors are two rose plots in which the flowers kept appearing steadily from May to August. At the height of rose time the display all over the little garden is nothing short of breath-taking; there is a perfect riot and clamor of roses on the walls, along the balconies, hanging from the roofs, massed on arbors, lined alongside the paths, and scattered in groups in beds and about the bases of trees. White, yellow — a magnificent Marechal Niel is spread all over one end of the gardener's house — pink, red, saffron, copper; all the possible colors of roses in " massy harmonies " of unplanned grouping and design. In front of the kitchen doors there is a dense ilex arbor with stone table and stone benches, where the servants are supposed to have their meals. They do sometimes, but mostly they prefer their dinners under the stars, setting the table on the open little brick- floored court next the kitchen and storerooms. Their part of the house and terrace is no less rich in blos- som and vine than ours. Indeed, the most striking picture on the terrace is the curving line of azaleas, white, pink, and red, that follows the looping wall which runs from near the kitchen door to the outer gate. This wall I call looping because its crest is a series of shallow arcs of circles with intervening flat- topped spaces on which stand pots of agaves. As the ground rises to the gate these loops of wall, hung with Our Garden 53 jasmine and rhynchospermum are succeedingly higher. The effect of wall-draping vines and cresting agaves is one of grace and unusual decoration. The gate itself has its characteristic Tuscan over- hanging tiled roof covered with a lush growth of wistaria, which comes into full blossom at the begin- ning of May but continues to send out sporadic masses of bloom all through the summer. From the gate roof the graceful vine runs on up the balcony over the children's play place and from there on up to the roof of the house. By each stone gate-post rises a thin young cypress. The open spaces on the terrace covered with finely- broken red stone and soil are kept clean of fallen leaves and fruit by Beppi with fagot broom and basket. In these clear spaces, in little intimate groups or ringed round the circular beds and ranged on the stone steps of the house doors, are changing companies of potted plants; blossoming cal- las in April, cinerarias in May, carnations in June, geraniums in July, and chrysanthe- mums in the autumn; while along the coping of the retaining wall that holds the terrace above the lower ' In little intimate groups are changing companies of potted plants." 54 Our Garden garden are more of these pots, some of them of unusual shape, tall and vase-like. This coping and these pots are very convenient for decoration. One festa day we draped all the walls with heavy red hangings and covered the stone steps of the house doors giving on the terrace also with red, and dropped other hangings from the balconies. Then we arranged the many and various pots on and by side of and under all these draperies. It was like a Carpaccio picture. It is on the wall coping and in the dry open places of the terraces that the spotted green, beady- eyed, long-tailed little wall-lizards play. They play with each other in jest or love or anger; but they play in another way with the little ncspoli beetles, and the flies that alight on the fallen fruit. This play is little fun for the beetles and flies. I have made our garden, so far in my account of it, exclu- sively a botanical one, which makes a curiously one- sided account, for it is a zoological one as well. But there are too many snails, too many great yellow wasps, too many black carpenter and blue leaf-cutter bees, too many green and silver leaf-chafers, too many very large black and very small red ants, and far, far too many rose beetles to be crowded into this chapter, already a bit over-full of blossoms and vinery. There are little owls and swift bats and a kind of great rat that affects stone walls and tiled roofs, and is, according to Beppi, really a very fearful creature. But all these must be passed with their names, and some others ignored altogether. At one place just south of the big palm which is Our Garden 55 outside the dining-room doors, the terrace is built farther out over the lower garden as a tile-floored, open court bounded by a wall three feet high and shaded by a large walnut tree that comes up from below. This is our outside dining-room when we prefer our dinner al fresco. As we sit here our eyes feast as well as our mouths. To the east are the olive plantations, the tall cypresses, and the beautiful face of Gamberaia; to the south the long, dropping hill-slope and Arno valley; to the southwest Florence and her roofs and domes. The north view is filled by the long, irregular vine-draped stretch of the house, with its many red-casemented, green-persianed doors and windows fronted by the blossoming masses of shrubbery and bedded plants. From this terrace court an angled little stone stair leads down to the lower garden. Or one may come to It from the terrace by a gently-dropping path from the west wall. Down here is the real garden; here is where things grow in masses; where the roses are in low hedges along the paths; that is, if these hedges are not tall irises or climbing sweet peas. It Is an olive planta- tion, a pear and fig and peach and apple orchard, a grass plot spotted with red poppies, a group of rose and passion flower and locust bowers, and a kitchen-garden of potatoes, asparagus, artichokes, tomatoes, and beans. It is a tangle of shrubbery, and an officinal garden of rosemary, lavender, and thyme. And with all this it seems to be, in May, wholly a garden of irises; of pale-blue ones mostly, but also of white ones and indigo ones and black-spotted 56 Our Garden bronzy ones; everywhere just Irises by untold hun- dreds. It is, in fact, a revelation of how much and various a garden of one acre can be; a tiny lot of " An angled stone stair leads down to the lower garden." ground made wonderful by the co-partnership of the wit and industry of man with the generosity of Nature. There is a special pleasure in the unpremeditation Our Garden 57 of paths, and in the astonishing juxtaposition of pota- toes and irises or artichokes and lilacs. These happy victories of chance appeal to one's instinct of vaga- bondia and one's spirit of democracy. Why should not the lily and the onion be friends at elbows? They are of the same family ! Far away at the very lower end of the garden, which isn't really far at all, there is the other bound- ing, retaining wall rising high out of the olive grove below. In the ar- bor along this wall that is covered with rose, passion vine, and acacia and bor- dered by larches and arbor vitas, we some- times have tea, or lie on spread mat- tings to read and doze. From here we can look out in- timately into the po- dere that stretches across and down the hill-slope below us. The podere is pri- marily an olive or- chard; as, indeed, are all the hill-sides about Florence. But in it grapevines loop from tree to tree, and grain is underneath all. Three different crops, not to speak of scattering figs, mul- " It seems to be, in May, wholly a garden of irises." 58 Our Garden berries, and other fruits, are taken from it by its owner each year, and to us it yields still another harvest: a harvest of continuous beauty of scene and interest of performance. White oxen come here with red tassels on their faces, and laborers with grimy sashes girt about them. There are birds which chatter and call, and crickets, green grasshoppers, and cicale that sing and throb all through the long, warm, growing days. There is one nightingale; it stays high up in the podere, just below the cypresses and ilexes of Gam- beraia and begins its singing usually about midnight, sometimes, though, not till just gray dawn. We have never heard it sing at midday, as nightingales are said sometimes to do. If the podere adjoining us with its olive and vines and shivering grain belongs to us, what is to prevent our seeking a higher vantage point and making a wider inclusion in our proprietary dominance? The house-roof will be just the place. And it has besides a peculiar flora of its own, a roof-garden of an un- usual kind. It is not the roof-terrace that is the roof- garden, there is not a single pot or flower-box there; it is the tiled roof itself that is the garden. For it is a veritable bed of lichen: green, sulphur-yellow, orange, rose-red, ashy, black, white lichens in bizarre spots and splashes everywhere, a beautiful place that grows lovelier and more interesting the more and the closer one looks at it. It reminds me always of another sort of garden quite different and far from it; a sea- garden; the bed of colored stones, splotched with flat sponges, boring molluscs, and shelled worms that Our Garden 59 one sees at the bottom of clear tide-pools. We some- times have our tea here, and then we take our wider possession of the hlll-sldes and valleys around us with their fields and orchards and forest patches. There are whole villages In the view; also a great monastery on the high hilltop to the east, where St. Francis and St. Dominic met; and there are two mediaeval castles and an Etruscan city with its modern villas built on crumbling relics. And best of all there are the winding river and the haze-blue mountains. The hill-slopes just above and behind us, " the hills over- smoked behind by the pale-gray olive trees," are so close and so steeply rising that It seems as If we could step from our roof right into the olive orchard. But for the tunnel-like road below us between the house and the opposite high stone wall, we really could. To the west the village church steeple shoots squarely up across the setting sun, and its bells have a ludi- crous way of kicking out from the belfry windows when they ring. The sun goes down behind the jagged peaks of the Apuan Alps, and the colors that slowly kindle and fade on the mountains and sky are a veritable conflagration. One evening we came up here to see a great storm that raged over the distant hills and mountains south and west. Such boldness and swift succession of fork- ing lightning flashes, such prolonged rolling and echo- ing and swelling and dying of thunder were new and wonderful to us. And then with the falling of the storm came on, for contrast, all the stillness of the Italian night In the country. The city sounds did not reach us and the garden Insects mostly hush 6o Our Garden with the onset of darkness. Below us the fire-flies twinkled in the garden: beyond them in the distance the lights of Florence twinkled in the streets and piazzas; and overhead the stars twinkled in the swiftly clearing sky. CHAPTER V OUR VILLAGE FROM the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, the trysting-place of so many commuting villagers, the focus of so many street-cars and omnibuses, the tram leaves for Settignano every twenty minutes dur- ing early forenoon and late afternoon, and every hour during midday. The ride costs thirty centesimi and takes thirty-five minutes. It is a pleasant jour- ney, and an interesting one for its glimpses of beau- tiful fields and hills. Fiesole perches in its narrow saddle over the Mugnone; and Florence grows grayer and more compact about its dome and towers, the higher we climb those " harmonious hills " where stands our village. It is an Interesting ride also, for the glimpses it gives, swift but vivid, of the people with whom we are for the moment living: villeggiante, operaii, and contadini, Florentines and Settignanese, but Tuscans all, with Tuscan wit and good humor, Tuscan ways and point of view. De Amicis has written a delight- ful little book of thumb-nail sketches of his traveling companions in these carozze di tiitti, as he calls the tram cars of Turin. " Non parlate al manovratore " is placarded over the motor-man's head. But fortu- nately this interdiction of speech, while it may keep 6i 62 Our Village others silent, does not seem to apply to the manovra- tore in the least. So he talks to you, to himself, to the donkey-carts and oxen-drivers of the country road; to the bicyclers and busmen of the city streets and the dust-covered pedestrians of the side paths. And rarely does his talk miss point; there is always in it a touch of humor or wit, of impudence or mor- dant advice. It is a whole philosophy in interjection and passing comment: an exercise of the Tuscan heritage come down from the master wits of the Renaissance. It is the transmuted poetry and epi- gram of the days of Lorenzo. As we are ready to start, a bus blocks our way. Imprecations hurl up and down between the perched bus-driver and the tram platform. The busman re- viles the lowly position of the motor-man. " But you must be a much worse sort than I," replies our man of the electric current, " for they put you up there alone, away from your passengers. We tram men associate with people, we." A man struggles on with his arms full of bundles, which take time and cause confusion on the rear platform. The motor-man peers back over his shoulder, and asks: " Are you quite alone, then? " While the car is at rest at Mensola, where old women are sitting in the shade by the bridge, weaving cloths on small hand looms, a peasant woman clam- bers in for a last moment's conversation with her padrona going to Settignano on an errand. It is time for the car to start, but the conversation ripples on. Finally, the motor-man, who has already waited two or three minutes beyond his schedule, interrupts : Our Village 63 *' Pardon, but if perhaps the massaia [polite des- ignation of the peasant wife] would deign to accom- pany us, we should have much pleasure. Have we permission to start?" We come often too soon to the end of the thirty- five minutes of the tram line, and have to bid a regretful a rivederci to the motor-man. Settignano Is not another Flesole, and few tourists come to know it. But it has good things to know; chief among these Its beauties of setting and scene, its association with names conspicuous In sculpture and architecture, and among its villas one of the most noble and Impressive and truly beautiful of any near Florence. Settignano is still an unspoiled suburb of Florence. It has few forestieri to buy up and renovate Its villas, to sophisticate its villagers, to teach Its children beg- gary. It has just one real permanent beggar and he gives half his time to a neighboring hamlet. It is still peopled with primitive Tuscans, living the simple free life of contadlnl and little shopkeepers, enjoying their daily gossiping In street and piazza, their festa Sunday afternoons and evenings In ca^e con giardino, and around the local band or choral club in the open place by the church. They have their oxen fair In June, and their harvest and vintage festivals in July and September as ever since the Virgilian days. To us Settignano has its added Interest of market- place and post-office; we have our clothes cleaned and boots patched there; we share, through our servants, its gossip and excitements; we contribute our share of centeslml to help bring back and bury 64 Our Village a soldier son of the village " dead in far Palermo." We take language lessons from its school-teacher, and greet daily the polite hostler of the man with the cart and shining little black pony which we should like dearly to own. We are padrone and padrona of " They have their oxen fair in June." a villa in Settignano, and as such are for the moment Settignanese and very glad of it. But unless you come to live In Settignano you will not experience these delights, and as an earnest and persevering tourist hot on the trail of pictures and frescoes, of birthplaces and literary landmarks, you may even not want them. The streets and shops and people of Settignano will then be of only passing in- terest. Sights and names will be wanted. Well, our village has even something of these. First, Desiderio the sculptor. He is Settignano's most famous son. The village cinematograph hall is Our Village 65 named for him ! And so is the new piazza on the verge of the hill at the left of the end of the tram line. The pleasing statue of Desiderio here is by Vittorio Caradossi, and the inscription : " A Desiderio nato sul colle harmonioso," etc., by d'Annunzio. The view of Florence from this piazza is one of the best to be had from any equal distance from the city. Desiderio di Bartolommeo, or Desiderio da Setti- gnano, as he is better known, is generally esteemed the best of that little group of famous Tuscan sculp- tors who had their first training in the stone-carving sheds of Settignano, Fiesole, Maiano, and Rovez- zano, hill-side villages on the Eastern outskirts of Florence. (See the chapter " The Sculptors from the Hill-side Quarries.") Of this group besides De- siderio, Settignano claims also the brothers Bernardo and Antonio Rossellino. And still other Settignanese stone-carvers have come to distinction, if not to the wide fame of Desiderio and the Rossellini. Indeed, the village has always been the home of stone-cutters and carvers. " Modest quarriers and stone-cutters at first," says Carocci in his exhaustive account of the environs of Florence, " the Settignanese felt quickly the influence of the arts that in Florence were passing from triumph to triumph. They dedicated themselves to this art, and soon built up here a true and dis- tinctive school of stone-carving from which issued in great numbers the most exquisite works of ornamenta- tion and composition. The art of the Settignanese masters had a character peculiarly its own and local, above all in connection with its decorative character, 66 Our Village in which it preserved constantly a type of spontaneous ingenuity associated with the high skill and good taste of the workers." Notable examples of the work of these Settigna- nese sculptors are the Marzuppini tomb in Santa 1 " A most useful village fountain, where all day long women and children fill their straw-covered fiaschi and exchange the gossip of the day." Croce, by Desiderio, the Bruini tomb in the same church by Bernardo Rossellino, and the Portogallo tomb in San MIniato by Antonio Rossellino. Immediately on descending In Settignano from the Florence tram one finds oneself on the edge of the Piazza Niccolo Tommaseo and nearly in face of the church of Santa Maria a Settignano. In the mid- dle of the piazza is a most useful old village foun- tain, where all day long women and children fill their straw-covered fiaschi and exchange the gossip of the Our Village 67 day. This Niccolo Tommaseo, whose statue by Leo- pold Costali adorns the piazza, was a patriot and scholar who spent the last years of his life in the vil- lage. Within the church are several interesting works of art: a tavola representing the Resurrection by Manzuoli da S. Friano; a tela figuring the Last Supper by Andrea Commodi ; several frescoes in the manner of Cigoli (near a statue of S. Lucia) ; other frescoes by Piero Dandini in the choir; a group in glazed terra-cotta representing the Madonna and Child between two angels, a work in the last manner of Andrea della Robbia and his son Giovanni; and finally a marble ciborium, a delicate piece of orna- mental sculpture of the thirteenth century. The pul- pit was designed by Bernardo Buonalenti. In the oratorio of Santa Trinita adjoining the church is a marble bas-relief of Madonna and Child, a work either of Desiderio's own or of some gifted Setti- gnanese imitator of the master. In a corner of the piazza near the street is a much- mutilated rough statue of the Roman emperor Sep- timius Severus, put up in 1559. It was erected, according to Carocci, to consecrate the tradition of the founding of the village by Severus. But the traces of antiquity visible in certain fragments bearing inscriptions point to a much earlier settlement of the place. It is probable that the name Settignano is derived from a family Settimia that had here, in the flowery days of the Roman colony at Fiesole, their major possessions. By a dropping road or pathway leading north from the iron gates just at the end of the tram line. 68 Our Village one comes in a few rods to the Villa Verse, one of the largest and most beautifully situated of the Setti- gnano villas. Its special interest lies, however, in its association with the name of Meo del Francesco del Caprina, who was born here in 1430 and whose numerous works of sculpture are to be found in Rome and other Italian cities. The villa and its extensive poderi later belonged to the Marchese Buondel- monte. Among all the villas in or near our village, how- ever, that called " La Gamberaia " is easily first. To see it and its marvelous avenue of towering cypresses, and its box-hedge so broad across its clipped top that a carriage might drive on it, is fully worth a visit to Settignano. As its present owner, the Principessa Gyka, lives in great seclusion and seldom leaves the villa, opportunity is rare to enter the elaborate formal garden or to see the interior of the great house, with its wealth of decoration and its majesty of great halls and high ceilings. The en- trance hall is eighty by thirty feet, and salone and dining-room are in similar proportions of grandeur. The garden is four hundred yards long along its eastern face and contains an unusual number of foun- tains and pools, for Gamberaia has a famous water supply. But even if one does not enter, he may see very well from the roadway the villa and garden, the massive building weathered and stained to beautiful soft shades of yellowish, almost orange when the afternoon sun is fully on its face. Gigantic but slender cypresses tower darkly out of the grounds Photo, Polheiuus The Cypresses of Villa Gamberaia Our Village 69 and march in double column high above the tunnel- ing roadway and on up the gentle hill-slope to a curious grotto pool. Bocklin's wonderful " Island of Death " cypresses might have had this Gamberaia group for inspiration. It is indeed quite possible that they did, for the artist lived for some time in a villa not far away. Gamberaia has in its history, too, a certain amount of interesting association. The brothers Rossellino, already mentioned as, next to Desiderio, Settignano's most famous sculptor sons, were two of the five chil- dren of Matteo di Domenico, called the Borra stone- cutter, who lived here in the first part of the fifteenth century. The place was then known as Gamberelli. All these five children were boys and all followed the profession of the father. Two, Domenico and Tommaso, did not rise above the rank and file of Settignanese stone-workers; a third, Giovanni, be- came known as an unusually capable sculptor and architect; but the remaining two, Bernardo, born in 1409, and Antonio, born in 1427, came to take their place among the best of the Florentine names of the golden century. For what reason they were known under the name of Rossellino rather than under their father's seems untold, but this is an incident com- mon to the history of many of the famous Italian artists. Later Bernardo sold Gamberaia to one Dome- nico di Jacopo Riccialbarri, who must have enlarged and beautified the modest house of the artists; for from this time on the place is known in local history as the " Palace of Gamberaia." The subsequent 70 Our Village changes of ownership are of no particular interest, except perhaps the falling of the property into the hands of the two famous Florentine families of the Cerretani and the Capponi in the eighteenth century. The Capponi soon had entire ownership and in their hands the garden was greatly enriched with statues, grottoes, fountains, and other embellishments. In the nineteenth century Prince Louis Napoleon, after- ward Napoleon III, lived in the villa for several months. In the chapter " Our Villa " mention has been made of a group of four other Settignano villas lying ^ closely together on the south hill-slope that drops swiftly down to the Arno, 'it 'i^-W ^fc^^ the four villas of Lhiesa, rorzum- cola, Capponcino, and Viviani, associ- ated with the names of Michelangelo, Eleonora Duse, Ga- briele d'Annunzio, and Mark Twain, respectively. And still other Setti- gnano houses asso- The church of the frati Olivetani at ciated with names Settignano. ^^^^^^ -^ ^^^ ^^ jj^. erature might be mentioned. However, the special charm of Settignano is its out-of-doors. Farms 1 £ Photo. Author Cypresses on Settignano Hill Above Val d'Arno Our Village 71 and orchards and vineyards are all about it, and from its hill-paths are glorious views of Arno valley and its inclosing mountains. Take the road past Gambcraia that dips in a short, cavern-like tunnel under the cypress avenue and winds up and along the hill-side beyond. It is lined by the ever-present stone walls of the Italian highways, but they are low and you can look over them into the fields and orchards on either hand, and see scarred olive trees, the looping vines, and the grain with its scattered red poppies and corn-flowers. In a little way you come out upon a shoulder of the hill, and there you can sit on the wall in front of the curious old roadway shrine and look out between two lifting cypresses standing like mute guardians on either side of a gate. It is a wonderful view of the Arno from here. It can be traced all the way to and through Florence and beyond, lying in its broad valley on its way to the sea. On its right rise the Pistojese moun- tains where so many Florentines make their summer villeggiatiire. On the left, that is on the south, lift the rugged Carrara; those marble mountains where Michelangelo dug out his blocks. Directly across the river and narrow valley in front of you are the round- ing hills dotted with innumerable white villas, scat- tered churches with their square bell-towers, and every here and there a village nestling in a hollow or clinging to the slopes. The horizon is an uneven line of hilltops with passes or hollows between, and this sinuous crest-line is cut by towers or tall trees that etch themselves against the blue or white or gray of the sky. And everywhere close about you 72 Our Village it is all fresh and verdurous this spring day, and full of delicate color and soft calls of distant bells. If you are more ambitious and would see a larger world you can turn your back on the two cypresses that frame the Arno and climb up the stony path through the podere to the very summit of the hill. Resting there under the young cypresses and great umbrella pines, one can look east across the Arno to Vallombrosa and its forests, or north to the distant snow-topped Apennines, and west to the bold peaks of the Apuan Alps. New valleys and new villages are in the view and you can people them all with marching armies and strew them with ancient ad- venture. For in truth armies marched and adventure came on all these Tuscan hills and valleys. CHAPTER VI BEGINNING TO SEE FLORENCE PIAZZA DEL DUOMO THE Piazza del Duomo is to us the beginning and the ending of Florence; for it is there we disembark when we come in by tram from Settignano, and it is there we take passage again for home after a half-day's sightseeing or shopping or just strolling the streets. Our rule is to do but one thing on one trip, that is, go to one church or one gallery, or hunt out one stray fresco. We get more impression from the things seen in this way than if we attempted the Herculean tasks assigned to the " morning of the fourth day " or " sights of the western quarters." But we do not stick to our rule with entire fidelity. Tradition and the inertia which require initiative and decision to overcome still hold us in a measure to the approved manner of sightseeing work. The tasks of the morning of the fourth day are too well estab- lished to be discarded or avoided on mere recognition of their foolishness. The truth is, Baedeker and Baedekerism are too much with almost all of us who are traveling the well- worn trails of culture by sightseeing. It is a serious mistake to make a complete surrender to Baedeker. 73 74 Beginning to See Florence He is the most useful but the most abused, the most helpful but most harmful, the most instructive but most subversive of friends. So many days, so many churches. My tired-eyed, limp-shouldered friend. Smith, whom I met in the Settignano tram as he was returning after a rebellious day's escape from Florence and frantic joy in the country hill-paths, said: " They say there's four hun- dred churches in Rome. Well, I guess we done 'em all. But Ma's not been very well here and we're goin' to miss some of the Florence ones. Anyway, I kind o' like to see the country occasionally. Don't you?" It is well to see the country occasionally. Or even to see nothing. And those are the times when one is likely to see things that will stick in the memory when the Uffizi has become a hazy blend of color and a composite photograph, badly printed, of saints, sinners, Christ children, and Madonnas. Nine out of ten of us have no real interest in ninety out of one hundred of the Baedeker appre- ciations. We haven't the technical knowledge or the experience to understand and enjoy the points in the artistry that determine the stars. Galleries and cathedrals can be and are enjoyed by uneducated people, but this enjoyment comes from the impres- sions, the personal discoveries, the slowly awakening and growing art sense; the appreciation of the whole thing rather than the perception or understanding of the points of masterly technic or the traces of this or that school or manner. Another point about good seeing is that connected Piazza del Duomo 75 with the mental mood and physical condition of the see-er. An astronomer, clothed In two sweaters and an overcoat, and lying in a great, dark, bare bell of a room on a wooden rack under the eye-piece of his thirty-Inch refractor, murmurs a prayer for " good seeing." He means by this a dark night, and clear, with no wind, and in himself the patience, the en- thusiasm, the eager eye and brain that will not only hold him to his lonely vigil through half a long night, but will make this vigil a joy and a revelation; he prays for a good opportunity and a good use of it. Just so the achiever of culture along the lines sug- gested by Cook and approved by Baedeker must pray for " good seeing." The opportunity is most cer- tain to be good; his use of the opportunity depends upon many things. Two of these are certainly mental mood and physical condition. And who Is he that can rely on the steadfastness of his mood and stomach for the perfect succession of days assumed by the guide-book? On the "morning of the fourth day," lying In bed is perhaps the very best thing one can do toward acquiring culture. If so, much better do It than groan through the tasks appointed for that precious period. On a Sunday morning In the densely-packed rooms of the PItti as one of a vast concourse of people all mumbling, mumbling rapidly the lesson of the morn- ing of the fourth day from the red-backed book of commonplaceness, we may excuse ourselves; for our souls haven't much chance anyway and we are at least backed up In our mistaken religion by the other be- lievers. But for the other times, alone In a great 76 Beginning to See Florence still church, before a carven tomb, or in an old mon- astery room of frescoed walls, or a half-empty gal- lery some fortunate morning hour, why not put aside the faithful book companion and try a flight with the artist all unchaperoned? There is a real joy in just surrendering to the spirit of the artist who has revealed his God-touched soul in blossomed marble or rainbow-touched canvas — and in seeing what we see and feeling what we feel. It is high time to return to our nearly forgotten muttons, the sights of the Piazza del Duomo. A Florentine once asked me, " Do you really like the Duomo? Do you like it as well as Milan's cathe- dral?" That I assume presupposes a certain con- fessed lack of unanimity of like or dislike of Flor- ence's great church. I am glad, for I should be sorry to confess alone to some disappointment in this enormous creation of Arnolfo and Brunelleschi. Not with its bigness, for its bigness is real, even if hard to appreciate without repeated seeing, walking all around it occasionally, and above all without occasional look- ing down from San Miniato or Bellosguardo on it, rearing almost grotesquely immense from the huddled city. Then it is that the great dome becomes truly great; that it lifts and expands and soars. And then, also, it reveals its beauty despite its size, its lines that satisfy, that make a heavy thing light, a big thing graceful. It is hard to comprehend the size of any enormous thing, anything so unusually big that one's customary standards of measure fail to serve. Does one realize the bigness of St. Peter's, or the Paris Opera, or Piazza del Duomo 77 the Cologne Cathedral? You must try to get at it indirectly. You look at the doves in St, Peter's and remember that they are carved as large as eagles. You walk slowly around, measuring with outstretched arms, one of the nave columns under the towers of Cologne's Dom. You recall how many hundreds of doors there are in the Opera. Even to experienced mountaineers the sheer half-mile and more of vertical cliff of El Capltan in the Yosemite is an uncompre- hended bigness. But the Florence Duomo has more than size of dome to consider. Does one like Its striped exterior, its vari-colored facade, its interior plainness? As to the striping and coloring of walls and fagade that is a matter not of the Florentine duomo alone, of course, but of most of the great churches of Tuscany and Umbria. For myself, these churches, or any others In Italy, are infinitely less beautiful than the cathe- drals of France, of Germany, and England. As Hopital points out, the Italian cathedrals are all hurt by the hampering of their architects by old tradition. Roman style is mixed with Gothic inspira- tion, while the pure Gothic of the French and English churches is the free expression of the untrammeled architect. There is necessary more than a science of lines and dimensions for a cathedral; there is always needed a self-expressing Christian soul. The Duomo stands now Isolated in its piazza; free from attached or adjoining buildings. In this It has an advantage over some of the German cathedrals, Mainz for conspicuous example. But when it comes to isolation, to freedom from interference and harass- 78 Beginning to See Florence ment by the jostling city, it is, of course, the English cathedrals, in their rich soft green closes, that have all the advantage. That isolation and quiet, that softness and beauty of setting make them the most The Duomo and Campanile. attractive and nearly perfect signs and abodes of the religious spirit in the world. But there is the other point of view. To pass at one step from the clangor and rush and grime of the city; from the earthiness of the crowded piazza to the heavenliness of the great duomo's spacious quiet and rest and cooling breath; does or does it not outweigh in beauty of contrast and lesson to man the more remote influence of the cathedral of the close? The interior of the Florentine duomo is plain and not beautiful, but it gives a certain satisfaction by its Piazza del Duomo 79 spaciousness and lines and by Its few but mostly good monuments and windows. It has been much criticised for its lack of religious feeling. Rio says that one entering by the grand portal who wishes to pray or meditate has to walk more than a hundred meters through a great flat, naked, dry nave before he finds a place for his devotions. Hopital calls it a great cathedral, brilliant without, dark and cold within, where the Christian loses himself in seeking God, and the uninformed tourist has trouble in understanding. " Under the dome is a sort of grande piscine, sur- rounded by a marble balustrade (the isolated choir) to which are relegated the good God and the priests; the rest of the church is a hall in which one knows neither where nor how to pray." Of the monuments, the one immeasurably first in interest is that last work of sculpture of Michel- angelo, an unfinished Pieta. It has a tenderness of expression in grouping and faces that makes, in the half-light behind the great altar where the marble stands, a wonderfully strong impression. The rugged artist, the man of force and iron who delighted to portray force and iron in human muscle and torso, knew sorrow and softness as well. Grimm's account of the shaping of this last work of the master is interesting, " There was," he says, " in Michelangelo's atelier at Macello dei Corvi a marble group — Christ lying dead on his mother's lap, and Joseph of Arima- thea standing by her side — which he had begun about 1545 and continued working at slowly for himself. He only undertook it that he might have something 8o Beginning to See Florence at hand for his leisure hours. Vasari relates how he had once been sent by the Pope to Michelangelo, on account of some drawing somewhere about 1550, and had found him at this work. It was dark. Michel- angelo, however, who knew Vasari by his manner of knocking, came out with a lantern to see what was wanted. Urbino was thereupon sent to the upper story to fetch the wanted sheet, but Vasari tried while he was waiting to catch a glimpse of the group by the limited light, and he looked at the leg of Christ, at which Michelangelo was then working. Scarcely, however, had the latter observed where Vasari was looking than he let the lantern fall, so that it went out, leaving both in darkness. He then called to Urbino, the faithful old servant, to bring a light, and as he and Vasari left the partition in which the group stood, he said, ' I am so old that Death often pulls me by the coat to come with him, and some day I shall fall down like this lantern and my last spark of life will be extinguished.' *' Often in the middle of the night, if he could not sleep, he would get up and work at this last task. That he might have a good light for doing so, and yet not be himself hindered by it, he had a kind of pasteboard cap made, on the top of which he fixed a tallow candle which would not drop like wax, and which was not in his way. He left the group, how- ever, unfinished, because he discovered a flaw in the marble. He intended to break it to pieces, but he gave it afterwards to one of his young men. It is now in Florence under the dome of Santa Maria del Flore with the inscription beneath it that it is Michel- Piazza del Duomo 8i angelo's last work. The place is not unfavorable. The dim light that prevails there suits the group, which is only finished in its general mass." On the entrance (west) wall at either side of the great portal are two tall tombs, equestrian portraits in grisaille of two most unchurchly heroes; one, the famous English soldier-adventurer, John Hawk- wood, who fought for Florence for a price, in a time of her great need — he fought against her first, — and the other, the Italian condottiero Niccolo da Tolentino. The Hawkwood portrait is by Paolo Uccello, the Niccolo by Andrea del Castagno. In the right aisle there is a portrait monument to Brunelleschi by Buggiano, and a bust of Giotti by Benedetto da Maiano. In the left aisle is a curious picture by Domenico di Michelino, including a portrait of Dante, a view of old Florence, and a scene from the Divine Comedy. In this also is a statue by Donatello. The bronze door of the north sacristy and a terra-cotta relief of the Resurrection over it are by Luca della Robbia, as is also a relief of the Ascension over the door of the south sacristy. The stained-glass windows are by Ghiberti, Donatello, Paolo Uccello, A. Gaddl, and others. The marble screen around the octagonal choir, and its figures in low relief, were designed by Baccio d'Agnolo. The frescoes in the dome ceiling were begun by Vasari and finished by Zucchero. To appreciate fully the interior of any cathedral it is necessary to see it under two conditions. First one should see and sit in It and walk slowly about it when it is empty, save for the few silent worshipers 82 Beginning to See Florence kneeling here and there before the altars in the chapels. Then he should see it at High Mass on some day of fiesta when all the world is there; when the Cardinal or Archbishop is officiating, and the whole chapter is assisting; when the organ and the chanting voices, the choir, and perhaps the aiding orchestra, are filling it with rolling sound; when the sun rays from the clerestory windows slant, glistening and solid-golden, through the haze of odorous smoke, and the rich vestments of the priests hang heavy down the broad backs, the tall miter of the Cardinal is slowly doffed and donned, and the tinkling bell of the Host sends a great multitude to its knees in rever- I ent or awesome silence. When we heard the Mass J of San Giovanni Battista in Florence's duomo, we j got a new idea of its greatness, and its glory, as one 1 must under similar circumstances of any cathedral. ' The dome seen from the inside repeats again much of the impression of beauty and stateliness that it ) gives from the outside. Indeed, the dome is the thing j about the Duomo, and there is hardly anything more : interesting reading in the history of Florentine hap- j penings than the story of how Brunelleschi built it. And we like to see him each time we visit the Piazza r sitting there in his stone chair by the wall of the 1 Misericordia, with his eyes lifted to his triumph. ' When you have read the story — you will find it in |l Vasari — you will like to go into the Cathedral 'I Museum on the piazza opposite the choir of the j Duomo and see there the various models and designs, including Brunelleschi's own for the lantern, made from early to modern times in connection with the Plioto. Brogi Singing Boys Luca della Robbia: Duomo Museum Piazza del Duomo 83 church's building. And there are those famous sing- ing galleries of Luca della Robbia and Donatello, and the silver altar from the Baptistry. What a carol- ing chorus is della Robbia's ! what a mad romp of chubby legs and arms is Donatello's ! You open your mouth to sing aloud as you face the one; you balance on your toes to pirouette and spring as you turn to the other. Opposite the modern fagade of many colors of the Cathedral, the Baptistry lifts its ancient walls. It dates from about 600 and is the church of San Giovanni Battista, the patron saint of Florence. The Duomo's real name, by the way, is the church of Santa Maria del Fiore (Saint Mary of the Flower), the name being got, it is said, from the sending to the Cathedral, by Pope Eugenio IV, of a golden rose " by great courtesy as to a princess." The church under this name belonged for a long time to the powerful wool-weavers' guild. At the east front of the Baptistry, before the closed bronze doors and between the two broken and iron-bound red porphyry pillars that came from Pisa eight hundred years ago, there is always a little elbow- ing, neck-craning crowd. About it cluster cabmen and venders of postal cards, medallions, and trinkets. Above it lift gesticulating, pointing hands. Other hands hold up the red-backed books, and all languages murmur the stories of the panels, the name of the artist, the date of his success, and lastly, perhaps, the curt sentence that half a man's working lifetime was given to the fashioning of these doors. It must all be very gratifying to Ghiberti's shade to see this appre- 84 Beginning to See Florence ciation of his genius and his industry; this shifting, ever-flowing, and changing group, coming from and dispersing to the four quarters of the earth, and carrying with it the memory of ten minutes spent before his achievement. But it must be just a bit ludicrous to this eternal shade to note a certain dis- proportion in the time devoted to producing and that given to appreciation. But there are some who come again and again to this picture gallery in the side of the Baptistry, this garden of sculpture in bronze on a doorway, these gates of Paradise, or worthy to be them, as Michel- angelo shall have said. The old sacristan of Santa Annunziata — the most interesting sacristan in Flor- ence — as he placed us before the wonderful panels of Giovanni da Bologna in his church, mur- mured that if Michelangelo had only seen these panels after he had uttered his famous praise of Ghiberti's doors, he would have had to say of Bologna's work that it was worthy of something be- yond Paradise. And there are also Donatello's bronze reliefs on one of the two stairless pulpits in San Lorenzo. But the voice of the world has de- clared, with Michelangelo, for Ghiberti, and hence this ever-forming, melting, and re-forming group of pilgrims by the east face of the Baptistry. Outside there are still to see Ghiberti's other earlier doors on the north; and Andrea Pisano's, on the south, still earlier and, to some, most interesting of all. Inside the Baptistry there is not much that catches the casual eye, although all there is, even to the sacred emptiness itself, echoes with the low rever- Piazza del Duomo 85 berations of history and historic names. There are the thirteenth century mosaics in the choir, the tomb of Pope John XXIII by Donatello and Michelozzo, the wooden statue of Mary Magdalen by Donatello, the antique columns, the old black and white marble floor, and the great font in which generations of Florentines have been baptized. On the occasion of the same festal Mass at which we " assisted " in the Cathedral, the famous relics of the Baptistry were exposed under glass in a golden casket, set up for the adoration of the multitude. A constant stream of worshipers crowded by the casket, most of them kissing its glass face. Some with cer- tain doubts, perhaps, as to the efficacy of the relics In a struggle against the danger of microbic infection, contented themselves with rubbing their calloused or gloved finger-tips against the sacred object. When the Archbishop finally came, under an umbrella of green silk, from the Cathedral for his prostration be- fore the relics the kissing was turned to him, and his rich skirts and extended hands were touched by scores of reverent lips as he slowly passed along. As we came to the Piazza one day just at noon, the great bell in Giotto's campanile began tolling and all the time we were in sound of it the tolling continued. It sounded from twelve to one o'clock, which pro- claimed the death of a priest of the Duomo chapter. Had this passing soul been that of a higher prelate, two hours of the bell's tolling would have been wafted after it. This bell tells the hours to all Florence, and it calls a mystic cryptogram to the black-cowled Misericordia in times of special need of 86 Beginning to See Florence their services. The house of the Misericordia, the brotherhood of pity, on the south side of the Piazza was formerly used for the Florence Court of Trus- tees. " The beautiful Loggia [del Bigallo] oppo- site the Baptistry was built for them by Orcagna," says Mrs. Ross in her excellent account of the brotherhood in " Old Florence and Modern Tus- cany," *' but fell to the Bigallo [another con- fraternity] in 1523." In the present chapel of the Misericordia there is a beautiful altar-piece by Luca della Robbia and " in the secre- tary's room a curious picture by Cigoli of the Piazza del Duomo during the great plague." In the deli- cate little Bigallo there is a fresco attributed to Giottino and with it a few other collected pictures and sculptures. But the beauty and joy of the Bigallo lies in its exterior. It is one of the most charming bits of architecture in all Florence. The Misericordia become such familiar figures to any repeated visitor to the Piazza — and are met so often here and there in the streets in a little group about a low, coffin-like hand carriage which they are trundling along, — that a further word about them ought to be of interest. They constitute a charitable order, not connected with any church and founded, according to tradition, in 1240. Their benevolence takes the form of a free service to the poor sick and dead of the city, whom they take in wheeled litters from house to hospital or cemetery. They also act as free nurses to the poor in their own houses. They are voluntary workers recruited from all ranks of the citizens, and are organized with four groups Piazza del Duomo 87 or degrees : the Capi di Guardia of seventy-two mem- bers, and the Glornanti or day-workers, the Strac- ciafoglle (paper-tearers) and Buonevoglli (well-inten- tioned) of several hundred members. " No ap- prentice is admitted into the confraternity without his master's consent, nor any youth under age, save by his father's wish. No servant in livery can belong to it, nor can any barber, hairdresser, coachman, cobbler, seller of fish or of salt meats and sausages, or any per- son following a trade which is considered mean or vile. No man can belong to the Misericordia who has been condemned in a court of law, or is notoriously an evil liver " (Ross). Over the Duomo and the Baptistry, the Bigallo and the Misericordia, over the swift, picturesque life of the whole crowded piazza lifts the pride of the city, the triumph of Giotto, the campanile that has been the special glory of Florence for more than five centuries. No degree of audacity ought to warrant a single attempted new word or phrase of descrip- tion of this dream-tower in rose and white and green, this " tower worked like a lace and ornamented like a precious furniture, that rises with a bold and pure thrust toward the sky and bears there the sonorous prayer of its bells." Joseph Hopital believes he has discovered the sym- bolism of this precious campanile. It is the progres- sive ascent of the soul toward the celestial ideal. Its four stages form four degrees of a mystic stair. The first, or lowest, without windows, bears reliefs relating to things of the earth, to man's earthly life. The second stage is made lighter by a double-pointed arch 88 Beginning to See Florence one each side. One has quit the earth ; one breathes a purer air. The statues are of prophets, sibyls, patriarchs, heralds inspired by immortal destinies. The third stage, still higher and with twin openings on each face, seems smaller and more delicate. It also bears sculptures of figures of the spirit. Finally, at the summit is the belfry, with its great open arches and its bells in the pure light and free air. One midnight, after a festa day, we saw the tower illuminated; not boldly, glaringly, like an exposition tower all pricked out in electric flashes, but modestly, delicately, from within, by a few scattered lamps. It was simply made softly radiant, as old stone phos- phorescent in the night. Its fragile sculptures seemed curious natural outgrowths on its walls, its slight pilasters and casings, all indistinct in the evanescence, lost their regularity and rigor of repetition, and this triumph of the hand and brain of man, rising from the dark walled-in space of the piazza, seemed to transform into a great slender pink and white stalag- mite, lifting from the floor of some vast cave and illumined by its own mysterious radiance. Swirling about the bases of these centuries-old monuments to the hands and brains and souls of wonderful dead Florentines, and mingling its medley of sounds with the clear tones of the tower bells, is the flowing life of Florence to-day; the clangor and grinding of the electric trams which run on every side of the Duomo and make their very headquarters under the campanile, the calls of venders of giornale and tickets of tombola, the ebb and flow of the curi- ous tourists with their attendant horde of crying cab- Piazza del Duomo 89 men, guides, and souvenir sellers, the laugh and chat- ter of the idlers under the canopies of the sidewalk cafes, the portentous coming and going of the black- robed Misericordia. We leave it, this throbbing piazza, with regret each time the fading day calls us to our hill-side home. And no sooner are we come to our vine-covered house of quiet and rest and fragrant airs than we turn and look down upon the city at our feet and see again the great dome and slender tower of bells. And as night comes on we sit and watch the lights burst out in the street and open square, and pick out again on the star-studded map of the city that focal spot of all that Florence was and is. CHAPTER VII THE CHURCHES THE SMALL ONES THE churches of Florence may be conveniently grouped into the large ries and the smaller ones; categories not based on esthetic distinctions, to be sure, but on easily seized and much-used ones. For not Americans alone use size and cost as distinc- tions of interest and merit. As one walks down the long nave of St. Peter's one sees marks that indicate where various other great cathedral naves would reach; here Milan, here St. Paul's, here Cologne, silent witnesses to the material bigness of this church of the Popes. There are not four hundred churches in Florence, as my hard-working tourist friend, Mr. Smith, thinks he found in Rome. Indeed, in the group of larger churches there are but five besides the Duomo, namely: Santa Croce, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Novella, Santissima Annunziata, and Santo Spirito. The smaller ones are fifty, more or less, of which the Badia, Or San Michele, Santa Trinita, Ognissanti, San Marco, Santa Maria del Carmine, Santi Apos- toli, and Sant' Ambrogio are most interesting either because of their beauty of architecture, or of their go Photo. Brogi Virgin and St. Benedict Filippino Lippi : Badia The Small Churches 91 contained treasures of painting and sculpture. How- ever, the special Interest of San Marco Church Is neither that of form nor interior frescoes and statues, but wholly an interest of historical associa- tion. It Is the church of the monastery of Savona- rola and Fra Angellco. No one can be looking at Florence through spec- tacles more golden than mine just now, and yet It Is hard for me to see in the Florence churches, especially in the larger and more pretentious ones, anything of the warmth or beauty of gold. That is. In the form and finish of the buildings themselves. There are no rarer or more beautiful church contents of fres- coes and paintings, pulpits and tombs anywhere. So many were the Florentine geniuses of art, and so prodigal were they of their labors, that there Is hardly any least church in the city but has some precious picture or marble. Take, for example, the little Badia opposite the Bargello. You enter by a door carved by Benedetto da Rovez- zano under a lunette by Luca della Robbla. Within are exquisite wall-tombs by Mino da Flesole and Benedetto da Maiano, and in the little Chapel of the Bianchi Is Fllippino LIppI's wonderful Madonna and St. Bernard. The splendid carved wooden ceiling Is by Segalonl. All this In a small, bare interior, cubical In shape, with projecting recesses, and gray and plain to commonplaceness. How unassum- ingly this little box of a church holds Its group of art treasures that a cathedral ten times Its size and pretension to architectural glory might well envy. Perhaps La Badia is an especially well endowed ex- 92 The Small Churches ample of the Florentine churches of the smaller size. But to take another at random, how many Continental cathedrals have anything to offer in the way of genu- ine creation comparable to the treasures of the Bran- cacci chapel in the church of the Carmine? In this chapel Masolino and his boy pupil of flashing genius, Masaccio, have left their best work, work that initiated and determined truth in art. Here Michel- angelo is said to have studied, and here it is really certain many of the greatest names in Florentine art got both instruction and inspiration. Along with Masolino and Masaccio's frescoes in the chapel are some by F'ilippino Lippi. Among these latter is a harrowingly realistic one of the mar- tyrdom of St. Peter. The bleeding body is nailed head downward on a cross that is being lifted by a rope. In a central group of three figures in this picture the middle one, with its face looking out and with the finely lighted arched open doorway for a background, is the artist's own. Among Masaccio's pictures the expelling of Adam and Eve holds one's eyes longest. The two figures, crude and ill-drawn as they are — the right leg of Adam is an anatomical monstrosity — ^have a tremendous strength and con- vincingness. They come as near the core of the suffering as picture may. Of extraordinary quality also is the picture of the bringing of the Emperor's son to life, attributed to Masaccio and Lippi together. It holds a host of carefully drawn faces in realistic attitudes — a masterful composition. In the sacristy of this church are some frescoes by Agnolo Gaddi, and in the choir is a marble tomb, by Photo. Alinari Detail uk Altar Benedetto da Rovezzano: Santa Trinita The Small Churches 93 Benedetto da Rovezzano, of Piero Soderini, one of the historic gonfalonieri of Florence and repre- sentative in his life and family of much of Florentine history. Indeed, were one to close one's eyes entirely to the beauty of the paintings and sculptures of the Florentine churches and see in them only their his- toric significance, their interest would still be pro- found. Another small church, Santa Trinita — said to have been called by Michelangelo his " sweetheart," as San Miniato is said to have been called his " bride " — is also unusually distinguished by its pictures and carvings. Conspicuous among them are Domenico Ghirlandajo's frescoes in the little Sassetti chapel (right of the choir) . They represent scenes from the life of St. Francis and immediately impel the visitor to compare them with Giotto's similar series in Santa Croce. The comparison may be concentrated on the two treatments of the death of the saint. The attempt of Ghirlandajo to relieve the necessary artificialness of the scene — for it seems there really must be one figure at each of the stigmata — by introducing numerous accessory figures lends but little toward its convincing- ness. It simply reveals the decadence in naive belief and the artistic sophistication that came with a cen- tury and a half of years. Other objects of interest in this church are a carved marble shrine (right of the central door) and marble altar (fifth chapel, right), by Benedetto da Rovez- zano; an Annunciation by Lorenzo Monaco (fourth chapel, right) ; a crucifix and a strange wooden Mag- dalen (first chapel, left) by Desiderio da Settignano; 94 The Small Churches a beautiful tomb of a bishop of Fiesole (second chapel left of the choir) by Luca della Robbia; and finally the crucifix of San Giovanni Gualberto " origi- nally in San Miniato, and brought thence in great state (1671) by order of Duke Cosimo III. The Christ is related to have bowed the head on the day when San Giovanni pardoned his brother's murderer." The interior of the church itself will have to most an unmistakable charm and religious feeling. Not all of the smaller Florentine churches are plain and simple inside like the Badia, the Carmine, and Santa Trinita. Ognissanti, for example, has a taw- dry decorated interior. But this does not prevent one from getting much pleasure from a visit to it. It has a beautiful fresco by Ghirlandajo of the De- scent from the Cross, with a lunette above it of our Lady of Mercy, " sheltering members of the Vespucci family." Besides this chief prize there is also a fresco by Ghirlandajo of St. Jerome and one of St. Augustine by Botticelli (opposite each other on the sides of the nave). Botticelli is buried in the church. Of special interest to Americans in Ognissanti is the tomb of Amerigo Vespucci, the navigator. In the wall above the grave is the curious Vespucci coat- of-arms, with its seven wasps. One can indulge oneself before this grave in musing over the significance of the rolling tide of Americans that passes constantly over the worn covering stone of this bold, solitary visitor to America four hundred years ago. So well returned is this visit nowadays that a material part of the financial support of Vespucci's poorer country The Small Churches 95 comes from these restless wanderers from the newer land. The refectory of the old convent of Ognissanti (entered by a separate door on the street) contains a Last Supper by Ghirlandajo (see the chapter " Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls "). In the very heart of the business and social activity of Florence — just a step off the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele — one may pass through a swinging door out of the noise and glare of the populous piazza into the beautiful dim quiet of a chapel of fascinat- ing attractiveness, the sanctuary of Or San Michele. This single square, groined room at the bottom of the towering memorial building of the Florentine guilds of the fourteenth century is a priceless jewel box containing a priceless jewel, the famous shrine or tabernacle of Orcagna. This votive offering commemorates the cessation of a plague and is the sum of twelve years of cease- less labor. It is a mosaic-incrusted, marble structure, domed, pinnacled, and sculptured, that stands easily first in its originality and beauty among the many tabernacles of Italy. Around its base is a running series of exquisite marble reliefs inclosed in hexag- onal and octagonal frames, while at its back is a larger relief covering the whole surface. The shrine shelters a painting of the Madonna and Child by Ugo of Siena. An iron grill about the base bears at its angles tall slender columns with angels and candles. The tabernacle should be seen, if possible, on a bright day when the sunlight makes gold of it. Then all the delicacy and marvel of the sculpturing can be appre- 96 The Small Churches ciated. At other times a boy with lighted candle will show you the reliefs, naively telling their tale and tenderly rubbing and patting the little figures as he talks. But it was not as the housing of a unique gem of art that Or San Michele first became known to us; but rather as a chapel filled at candle-light with a reverent and spellbound group of worshipers. They overflowed the few benches, and sat on the altar steps or stood leaning against pillars or dimly out- lined in shadowy corners and crowding about the very feet of the preacher himself. We slipped in quietly as sightseers, and were soon merged into the tranced group held by the spell of the scene, the hour, and the eager passionate voice of the preacher. It was twilight of the day of San Giovanni Battista, and the tale and the exhortation came from the life of the ascetic saint of the wilderness. It was the call to simplicity and devotion, to faith and sacrifice. And yet it was almost daring in the liberality and enlightenment of its exposition. That priest should go far in the new Catholic Church, or be snuffed out soon by the still weighty hand of the reactionaries. Since then Or San Michele has been our favorite place to realize that Italy's churches are not merely art museums nor yet altogether places of extravagant display and pompous religious ceremonial. High Mass is not the time or place to see revealed the true religious spirit of the rank and file of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy; the incense obscures the sight, the glittering robes distract It. But at vespers every night In the little churches and In the little The Small Churches 97 chapels of the big churches gather the thousands to recite and pray together under the fatherly guidance of some old silvery-haired priest with a little boy at his side. It is then that the Virgin and the Christ child are real, and the sacred wafer becomes in truth the Body. I cannot go on with the enumeration of even the more interesting of the smaller churches. But one should not forget to find little Sant' Ambrogio with its beautiful altar by Mino da Fiesole, who is buried there ; nor the ancient hidden-away church of the Santi Apostoli said to have been founded by Charlemagne ! In It are a tomb by Benedetto da Rovezzano and a clborium by the successors of the della Robbia. There are others of the little churches, too, that well repay their seeking out; a graceful Interior, a rare old picture, a curious pulpit or carved tomb, or a haunting memory of the famous men and women whose lives touched or whose mouldering bodies lie here. Much of the history of Florence, history that is romance realized, can be read from the monu- ments of the Florentine churches. CHAPTER VIII THE CHURCHES (continued) THE LARGER ONES THE tomb monuments spoken of at the close of the last chapter are most abundant In the larger churches. Santa Croce, for example, makes, if one may speak so irreverently, a specialty of them. On either hand, as one walks down the long nave, are the records in sculptured marble and carved words of Florentine history, while in the lofty chapels of transepts and apse are the frescoes that tell the double story of Florentine piety and genius. Santa Croce is a spacious church; more than any other in Florence it gives something of that feeling of free largeness, of open extent, that one asks for | in great churches. The wholly open nave and the aisles unbroken by side chapels, together with the extreme shallowness of apse and its adjoining chapels, make the whole length and breadth of the building immediately obvious. But the bare grayish and dirty I white walls, the bleak and ugly side altars of Vasari, and the obtrusive modernity of many of the monu- ments emphasize a feeling of irritation which has been stirred up even before entrance by the sight of the staring new fagade. Photo. Alinari Pulpit Benedetto da Maiano: Santa Croce The Larger Churches 99 The farther one walks down the nave, however, the more allayed becomes this irritation because of the growing beauty of the lofty, narrow, shallow apse with its softly glowing fourteenth century windows and its frescoed walls, and the interesting glimpses of the Giotto pictures in the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels quiet and gratify. And finally just before reaching the transepts there are on either hand those precious pieces of decorative sculpture, the tombs of Mar- zuppini and Bruini by Desiderio and Rossellino, the Settignano stone-carvers. Indeed Santa Croce is exceptionally endowed with works of the sculptors of the decorative school. The beautiful pulpit, the most beautiful in Italy some have esteemed it, is by Benedetto da Maiano; while the charming relief of Madonna and Child on the first right-hand pillar of the nave is by Antonio Ros- sellino, younger brother of Bernardo who carved the Bruini tomb. Finally, Mino da Fiesole is represented by a tabernacle in the Medici chapel. If only Dante, Galileo, Alfieri, Machiavelli, Ros- sini, Mazzini, Michelangelo, and the rest of the great ones burled here could have had tombs by these master carvers, what a wonder of beauty this Floren- tine pantheon would be. Indeed, if even a certain virtue of negation could have been exercised, and where Desiderio and the Rossellini could not carve, simple plates with the great names had been held sufficient ! Hopital exclaims of Michelangelo's tomb: "The creator of the grave monuments of the Medici con- demned no doubt for expiation of his sins to sleep lOO The Larger Churches under the work of a Vasari ! Still he Is less punished than his rival in glory, the painter of the delicate Madonnas, who wished that an image of the Virgin Mary should figure on his tomb, and whose bones in the Pantheon at Rome are crushed by a statue of a grosse fcmme of which the sight would have out- raged him." But let us be content with the positive blessings. Besides exquisite marbles and refulgent old glass (the beautiful rose window is from a design by Ghiberti) Santa Croce has its famous frescoes. Giotto's pictures, much restored, telling the stories of St. Francis and the two St. Johns, are in the first two chapels to the right of the apse, and Taddeo Gaddi's of the life of the Virgin and the Christ Child are in the Baroncelli chapel in the south transept. Of the Giotto frescoes only the drawing and com- position can now be fairly attributed to the master, for the colors are mostly the restorers', although follow- ing, of course, Giotto's tints. The pictures can be seen very well, especially the lower ones, and next to the master's work at Padua and Assisi are his most im- portant series. With eyes filled by the piety and sweetness of Santa Croce's tombs and frescoes, one is likely to forget that it was this same great House of the Lord that housed the Florentine tribunal of the Inquisition and that was the plotting and bloodthirsty center of the clerical antagonism to Savonarola. One may wander slowly through the Medici chapel (built for Cosimo by Michelozzo) and the Pazzi chapel in the cloisters and through the great and lesser refectories, riii.lo. Alin.Li Detail of the Pulpit Benedetto da Maiano: Santa Croce The Larger Churches loi and, If he have good eyes, behold the moving scenes of Florentine history that passed here; the Pazzis plotting the Medici murder in the Duomo; the masked inquisitors condemning Acco d'Ascoli and Tommaso Crudeli to the pyre and holding their horrors so vividly before persecuted Galileo that for the moment the flesh overcomes the reason. Servite Santissima Annunziata, " the richest church in the city," and Augustinian Santo Spirito, the church of the beautiful lines, may be referred to with some brevity, Santo Spirito is a fifteenth century church of Brunelleschi's design. Its beautiful cam- panile across the river grows more and more loved the more often it is seen — and all the dwellers along the north bank of the Arno from Ponte Vecchio to the Cascine see it every time they look from their win- dows. Its fagade is unfinished- — a pleasing relief after facing Santa Croce's finished one — and modern pictures of little interest replace the ancient treasures of most of its altars. But its spacious, perfectly pro- portioned interior, which has echoed to the voice of Martin Luther, if tradition be true, is restful, re- ligious, and truly harmonious. In a chapel (third) in the west transept is a Madonna and Child by Filip- pino Lippi. Santissima Annunziata Is smaller than the other large churches, but the contracted appearance of Its interior is due In part to the filling or replacement of its aisles by lateral chapels, and to the hiding of its large rotunda-like apsidal choir by a high altar under the tribune dome. In addition the church Is crowded with elaborate decorations in the way of I02 The Larger Churches banners, crimson hangings, golden and glass can- delabra and the like. All this helps to make impos- sible any feeling of spaciousness that the actual size of the church might warrant. This richness of drap- ery decoration may be necessary to maintain the char- acter of the church as the richest and most fashion- able one in the city; but it effectively repels all interest in it as a thing of beauty or majesty. It contains, however, some admirable works. On the walls of the arcaded court in front of the main entrance is an interesting series of frescoes by Andrea del Sarto. There are less interesting ones also by several other artists. Within the church, or rather over the door leading into it from the cloisters, is del Sarto's charming and celebrated Madonna del Sacco. There is also an Assumption by Perugino in a dark chapel on the left of the nave; a characteristic piece of sculpture by Bandinclli, a Pieta for his own tomb, in the right transept; and in the middle chapel in the rotunda choir behind the high altar are several beautiful bronze reliefs by Giovanni da Bologna (or his pupils). The church is the burial place of both Andrea del Sarto and Giovanni da Bologna. At the left of the main entrance is the ornate shrine built for Piero de' Medici after Michelozzo's design. It is set about with great candles and many heavy, swinging, ever-burning brass lamps, the gifts of the noble families of the city. And the memory of this sumptuous thing is, on the whole, a fitting one with which to leave the church. There are several small pictures by Giovanni Signorini in the modern gallery upstairs in the Ac- The Larger Churches 103 cademia, which are of much interest, whether good paintings or not, for they reproduce scenes of carnival and festa hfe in old Florence, One of them shows the Piazza of Santa Maria Novella on a day of the chariot races. The banked seats, the crowded people, '^^^q°J^^] Santa Maria Novella, " the great Dominican church that still dominates the now almost deserted piazza." the chariots in their mad course in the limited space of the piazza making their dangerous turns about the goal pillars; all is very live. Over this scene lifts the great Dominican church that still dominates the now almost deserted piazza, with its two pillars standing forlornly memorial of the old gay days. Perhaps the tomb niches in the facade and adjoining arcades were full then; they I04 The Larger Churches are empty now. And the fagade then could not have been so roughened by weather and grimed by smoke and dust as it is to-day. But it is still a beautiful front; certainly more beautiful than that of any other Florence church. Within there is a softness of light and a fair openness that compensate for the uninteresting fea- tures that line the long nav'e. Only one of these ar- rests attention: Bernardo Rossellino's monument of the Beata Villana (right aisle near the second altar; formerly in the Rucellai chapel in the right transept). The holy maid is sleeping behind curtains that angels are drawing back. But once the transepts are reached the passing interest of curiosity becomes changed to warm de- light and eager enthusiasm. For here, at the head of the church, is concentrated a wonderful group of treasures. Behind the parti-colored marble high altar lift the beautiful fifteenth century windows of the choir. This high but shallow and narrow choir is perhaps Santa Maria Novella's choicest spot; for all of its three walls are covered by Ghirlandajo's fascinating frescoes of Florentine men and women in Florentine costumes and setting, but arranged in the holy guise of scenes from the life of the Virgin and of John the Baptist. They have a most appealing naturalness and grace, and the softest and most varied of color harmonies. The faces and figures are as human as may be, and seem, someway, recognizable; indeed, many of them must have been really recognizable to Ghirlandajo's contemporaries. Most of the settings The Larger Churches 105 for the figures are elaborately architectural, with arcades, walls, pillars, and decorated stairways. More can be learned from such frescoes as these, and from the canvases of the Florentine painters, of the aspect of old Florence and its people than from many ponderous tomes of descriptive minutiae. Streets and piazzas and houses, costumes and man- ners, and the portrait faces of nobles and artists, poets and poet-sung women are all revealed In the convenient vehicle of scenes from Old and New Testament history. In the StrozzI chapel In the left transept are the famous frescoes by the brothers Orcagna of the Last Judgment (wall behind the altar), with its portrait of Dante, Heaven, with more than two hundred beatified faces, and Hell, with its seven circles of the damned enduring realistically their various effective tortures. We may be tempted to laugh at this naive Hell, but the Florentines of the fourteenth century did not laugh at all at such pictures. And Orcagna was intent on saving his contemporaries, not us. In- deed, when looking at any of the old pictures we must keep In mind always the difference in theologic point of view between us and the Italians of six centuries ago. The ludicrous realities of the Day of Judg- ment, as seen in a picture of Fra Angelico or Or- cagna, were the most belleved-In things of the time. And the eternal joys of Heaven or the ceaseless writhings In Hell, as portrayed with impartial fidel- ity by the painter prophets of the old days, were as certainly then the fate of every man as to-day many hold a blank nothingness to be. io6 The Larger Churches In the Gondi chapel (first to left of the choir) is the wooden crucifix of Brunelleschi, which is the sub- ject of one of Vasari's pleasantly interesting, if not certainly truthful stories; that one which makes Donatello drop the breakfast eggs in amazement at this wonder work of his friend. In the Filippo Strozzi chapel (right of the choir) are some frescoes by Filippino Lippi, with curiously heavy scowling faces not at all like the more usual smoothness of this gamin genius. Here also is a marble tomb carved by Benedetto da Maiano. The four flying angels, the two winged heads of cherubim, and the appeal- ing faces of the Madonna and Child in the tondo, all live in the flesh and blood translucence of old rubbed marble. Up the steep stone stair In the right transept is the bare chapel of the Ruccllal, with the ancient won- der picture of Clmabue, or, by the higher criticism, Ducclo. The face of the Madonna, however, as in- deed the whole picture, is most Cimabue-llkc in con- ception. The stories of the artist's great triumph in producing the picture, the king's visit to his humble studio to see it, and the procession of all the people which bore it to the church, lend it an interest which, to most. Its actual self as work of art will lack. Yet some have found much expression in this '* broad-faced Virgin " of the early days. The remaining prides of Santa Maria Novella are the old cloisters, with the now nearly vanished naive frescoes of Paolo Uccello and Dello Delli; and that Spanish Chapel on which Ruskin lavished such a spe- cial extravagance of praise. Even the untutored The Larger Churches 107 visitor will recognize the great interest of these well- preserved and lively frescoes — religious rebuses, Joseph Hopital calls them — whether or not the subtle- ties of artistic genius reveal themselves to him. In- deed, there seems to be some difference of opinion The cloisters of Santa Maria Novella. among the tutored as to their actual art values. But the anecdotal values are certainly there; and the fresh colors, the realistic faces and attitudes, and the free play of naive imagination make the frescoes among the most interesting in Florence. Their subjects include such more usual scenes as the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, but also a number of allegories which are the pictures of most interest. On the right wall is imagined the triumph of the Church as represented and defined by the Dominicans. io8 The Larger Churches In this picture the Dominicans as dogs are seen attack- . ing and kilhng the heretics shown as wolves. On the ] left wall is the personal triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas with a remarkable allegorical series represent- ing the various virtues, sciences, and phases of learning by female figures, with a corresponding series of con- ventional portrait faces of distinguished representa- tives of each of these aspects of virtue and learning; St. Augustine for charity, Justinian for civil law, Euclid for geometry, Cicero for rhetoric, and so on. The frescoes are commonly attributed to Taddeo Gaddi and Simone Memmi. Cold and bare, outside and inside, is San Lorenzo, the great Medici-built church. Here lie the Medici tombs in which Michelangelo reached the height of his genius in sculpture. Indeed it were as well to call it a Michelangelo as a Medici church; for as architect and sculptor, the great artist gave an im- portant part of his life to this historic structure. And here was held the magnificent funeral over his body when he returned to Florence, dead, after thirty years of voluntary exile in Rome. Other great names of art are associated with the building and embellishing of San Lorenzo. Brunel- leschi was the first architect, dying after seeing only the Old Sacristy completed. It is this part of the church which, next to the New Sacristy where the Michelangelo sculptures are, is the richest in its legacy of Renaissance art. For in it is a veritable museum of Donatello reliefs, busts, and statuettes, besides a pavement sarcophagus constructed by Cosimo the Elder to the memory of his parents. An Photo. Alinar Altar in the Chapel of the Sacrament Desiderio da Settignano: San Lorenzo The Larger Churches 109 hour or two spent in this room with the old sacristan as cicerone will give one an abiding memory of Flor- ence's first great sculptor. Out in the bare, cold nave under the tawdry gilt ceiling are two stairless pulpits with rich reliefs in bronze by Donatello and his pupils; while in the left aisle is a beautiful singing gallery, and in the Mar- telli chapel (second in the left transept) a cradle tomb by the same master. In this chapel, too, is an unlovely crucifix by -Cellini and a beautiful Annuncia- tion by Filippo Lippi. On the altar at the end of the right transept is an exquisite marble shrine by Desiderio da Settignano, almost concealed by the altar fittings; but by scram- bling up behind the altar and squeezing in between its back and the shrine one can see something of this delicate and wholly charming piece of decorative sculpture. In August, 1530, the citizens of Florence gave up their unequal struggle against the intrenched foe without and the compromising plotting commander within the walls. Malatesta became master of Flor- ence and submitted the practical subjection of the city to the Imperial-Papal army. The conditions of the subjection were three, of which one was the return of the Medici to power. There was no further need of Michelangelo's genius at the San Miniato fortifi- cations; but the incoming Medici had need of it for another and very different undertaking. So freedom and security and commissions were offered the artist if he would come forward. Thereupon he left his hiding-place in the bell-tower of San Niccolo by the no The Larger Churches Miniato gate, and quietly and immediately began his labors of genius in the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo. The two statues of the Medici dukes, Lorenzo and Gluliano, and the four extraordinary symbols of time, the famous Morning, Evening, Day, and Night, were actually, so vehemently did the artist work, sufficiently advanced by the end of the year to be placed in niches in the walls of the building sacristy. And in another year, that is by September, 155 1, Michelangelo had nearly killed himself with over- work and exposure in the cold, damp underground room. He was an old man of nearly sixty years, working feverishly and utterly regardless of strength and health at his masterpiece. And doing it under tremendous disadvantages, both material and of spirit. " If San Marco is the blessed retreat where a happy man detached from the dolorous cares of earth has satisfied himself with giving a visible form to the celestial glory which ravished him, San Lorenzo is the goal where a great suffering soul has constrained marble to express the storm of his rancor and disgust. If Florence had only San Marco and San Lorenzo, this convent and this church, where is preserved that which human art has produced of the most elevated in the two opposite poles of the spirit, would suffice for Its glory " (Hopltal). The sacristy as It now stands with its contained sculptures, is In almost all respects Michelangelo's personal work. His, too, is the beautiful Laurenzian library which overlooks the church cloisters. This Photo. Brogi Tomb Monument of Lorenzo de' Medici Michelangelo: San Lorenzo The Larger Churches 1 1 1 library, founded by Coslmo Medici and protected and enriched by the later members of the family, is an extremely valuable collection of rare codices housed in beautiful rooms. The Intricate pattern of the rich red and white inlaid pavement Is repeated in the carved ceiling, and the stained-glass windows are un- usually lovely. Among the special treasures in the collection, which includes altogether more than 10,000 MSS., are the Pandects of Justinian taken by the Pisans from Amalfi in 1 135 and seized by the Floren- tines when they took. Pisa In 1406. Petrarch's Horace and Cicero are here, too, and the BIblia Amiatina " brought from the monastery of Amiata and written by Ceolfridus, a monk of the English Wearmouth (690-716), and taken by him to Rome as an offering at the sepulcher of St. Peter." But both sacristy and library were being built by Michelangelo for unloved masters. He had long been opposed to the Medici, at least as rulers or claimants for the rule of Florence. Indeed, his antl- Medlcean activity would have certainly forfeited his life had he been a man of less fame and worth to the world. It is not surprising to learn, then, that on the death, in September, 1534, of Pope Clement, his powerful protector, and because of his consequent unshielded exposure to the open dislike of Duke Alessandro, Michelangelo should have immedi- ately dropped all his work on the sacristy and library and left Florence for Rome. Nor did he return again until that March, thirty years later, when his dead body was taken secretly out of Rome by his friends and brought to Florence to lie in unofficial state in 112 The Larger Churches Santa Croce until the whole city had passed in sorrow before it. Thus like so curiously much of Michelangelo's work San Lorenzo's sacristy and its famous figures stand unfinished. But incomplete as they are, they stand, nevertheless, the chief pride of a city overfull of things to warrant pride. CHAPTER IX THE GALLERIES THE UFFIZI AS one climbs the toilsome stairway of the Uffizi, . he has time to take mental note of his errand. He is about to enter one of the largest and best galleries of paintings in the world — and for what purpose? To see the pictures, certainly. But why see them? Is he an actual draughtsman or colorist eager to learn the technical secrets of the old masters? Is he a student of art history, trying to trace the growth and development of painting, the interacting inspiration of artists, the influence on art of the re- ligious and political beliefs and conditions of a given period? The answer of most of us is that we are neither artists nor art critics; not students of the history of art; nor even persons of any considerable acquaint- anceship with pictures. An honest man, then, enter- ing this gallery, will not behave as if he were what he confesses he is not. He will treat himself and the pictures with simple common sense and truth. He will retain, in some measure, his own individuality and will try to give himself the joy of personal dis- "3 114 ^^^ Galleries covery and response; the happiness of the awaken- ing of the germ of art sense and feeling that is sure to be within him. All of which is not to encourage ourselves to take the stand of the perspiring merchant from Sioux City that we shall soon see standing before Botticelli's little Judith figure that Ruskin has just told him is as true as painter can make it to " the mightiest, purest, brightest type of high passion in severe womanhood offered to our human memory." " I don't know anything about pictures," responds our friend from the Middle West to Ruskin, " but I know what I like, and I don't like this." He has said that about music too, when he has had to sit through Parsifal at Bayreuth or a Bach fugue at the Berlin Philharmonic. He added his voice loudly to that overpowering chorus that made " Breaking Home Ties " the " greatest pic- ture at the Chicago Exposition"; and when Sousa's band rose as one man and waved the American flag in the "Trip to Coney Island," he said: "There, that's something like music." But his wife, who never is a Philistine but always a Phil-Ruskin, draws in her breath before a one-star picture and lets it out again in an ecstatic sigh before a two-star one. She revels in ready-made admirations and recommended aversions. Where, Indeed, shall we stand between not knowing about pictures but knowing what we like, and not knowing anything at all but taking somebody's shil- ling short-cut to knowing everything? The presumption is not mine to say. Indeed, one The Uffizi 115 must find oneself; and my own troubles are sufficient to me for my days. But honesty and independence coupled with due respect to authority that justifies itself, recognition of what is unattainable but a strong hope and desire to attain what is possible, some little information about the times and life of the artist, some little also about the subject of the pic- ture; these, with our own glad eyes, an open mind, and a hungering soul must be an equipment able someway to find us a better standpoint than the pride- ful honesty of blatant ignorance, or the silly hypocrisy that conceals an equal ignorance neither from others nor ourselves. " All the guide-books I ever read ask the traveler to see too much," says Hutton in some book of his. This Is going to be the exception; In fact, It will not tell of seeing enough, and hence it will not be suffi- cient to most as a guide-book. But where, as in the Florence galleries, the pictures are all fully labeled — except for the signs of some one's approval or dis- approval — a catalogue is hardly necessary. And espe- cially Is a catalogue for the Uffizi a rather difficult thing to compile satisfactorily because of the con- stant movement of the pictures, due to RIcci's per- sistent efforts to put some informing order Into what has long been approximate chaos. At the top of the long stair one comes first to four rooms which will be for many of much more interest than the guide-books reveal in their curt lines. These are the rooms in which are hung the portraits of the " masters painted by themselves." The faces of men who have achieved have a strong fascination. And ii6 The Galleries when into these faces have been put what the brains and souls behind them conceive they should show, this fascination becomes doubly gripping. So one lingers in these rooms making acquaintance with the men whose names one knows, something of whose lives one ought to know, and whose works one is just about to see. One stands struck by the suggestive juxtaposi- tion of the rugged Michelangelo (not a self- portrait), his face and hands seamed like the bark of an old oak, with the elegant Leonardo da Vinci; the glorified street gamin face of Filippino Lippi and Raphael's lifted eyes of genius. Here are Titian and del Sarto, the Englishmen Watts and Millais, the Low Countries Rubens and Van Dyck and Matsys, the German Diirer and Holbein. And here are Ma- dame Le Brun and Angelica Kauffmann representing the mistresses among the masters. We go on from the masters to the masterpieces. And in the very first room we discover how necessary as preparation for satisfactory seeing is one part of that equipment which I have just tried to catalogue. The paintings in these Florentine galleries — and, for that matter, in all the galleries in the world that, like them, are devoted to the " old masters " — are the work of artists dead long before our time; artists of the Renaissance and of the centuries immediately following. Looking at these pictures is a very different experi- ence from viewing a spring salon in Paris or going through the rooms of the Luxembourg or other mod- ern gallery. The pictures here are not landscapes — primarily, at any rate — nor plates of fruit by bronze The Uffizi 117 jars, nor " ladies in gray," nor Monet impressions of gardens in blossoms and women in toilette du bal, or less. They are for the greater part, one after an- other, pictures of faces and stories of the Christ family and of the apostles, saints, and martyrs. A monotonous repetition, if you like, of conceptions of the Madonna and Child, the Saviour on the Cross, the Saviour arising, the Saviour enthroned in judgment; and an endless retelling of stories from the lives of the apostles and saints, stories chiefly of naive belief in miracle and wonder, of martyrdom and glorification. We need to know the stories, therefore, if we are to understand the pictures and the attitude and at- tempt of the artist. We need to know the attitude of the people toward art in the times of the artists; and of the absolute dominance of the Church in all things connected with art and with the opportunities of the artists for work. Otherwise we shall walk half blindly through the galleries. We should have read some such books as Mrs. Jameson's lives of the saints and some accounts of the artists themselves, such as Vasari's gossipy tales or Grimm's thoroughgoing life of Michelangelo or Kugler's or Crowe and Cavalcaselle's massive compilations. And even then, finally, these pictures may not make an appeal. Most of the art of Florence will not speak to persons who like landscapes or pictures of sensation. But they will to those who like Man better than Nature; who are interested in human psychology and sentiment, and especially to them who believe, as the old painters believed. ii8 The Galleries These may wander at will through the corridors and rooms of treasure. They may go when tired and come again and again for new discoveries, new de- lights. And each time they return they will find them- selves a little more understanding, a little more criti- cally examining, a little more appreciating the master thought and touch. It may be in the vaunted Tribune that the thrill will be quickest to come, the joy keenest to feel. Or it may be in some room of fewer stars. Perhaps the rich gleam of the Venetians, or the religious fervor of the painting priests of Tuscany may appeal most. Or it may be the magic lines, the sinuous figures and flowing draperies, the cloying sweet faces of holy women and angel children in Sandro Botticelli's gold-framed tondi. From room to room one wanders with open eyes and unbiased mind. The famous name should not be too compelling. One is too likely to look carefully at an indifferent effort by some well-known artist and throw only a vague glance at a marvelous bit by an artist of name unfamiliar to the casual sightseer. It is a common mistake. Only the student needs to see all the works of a master. Another trouble is the loss of effect because of the unfortunate close crowding of the pictures. In the UfSzi any one of a hundred paintings would be the pride and sufficient justification of a provincial museum or a private gallery; indeed, of almost any gallery in America outside of the Metropolitan. This Raphael or that Perugino or Titian or Giorglone alone would be visited by thousands; one would travel far to see it. Here it is one of a hundred equally Photo. Brogi Virgin and Child Filippo Lippi: Uffizi The Uffizi 119 wonderful. The Uffizi, then, as a whole is inconceiv- ably valuable, but each picture in it is greatly lessened in its appeal by being put with all the others. With all this preamble of gratuitous advice and lecturing about picture-seeing, there is little space to speak of the Uffizi's pictures themselves. But, in- deed, that Is just what I have never had any intention of doing. Or at least, not beyond the fleeting ex- pression of a certain personal satisfaction experienced in seeing certain particular things — and what picture- seeker is there who can resist that? " How I remember," I say with keenest joy, "that little jewel of Carpaccio's; that Sogetto Biblico that analyzes itself as you look at it from a kaleido- scopic play of color and pattern into human faces and animation. "And in that room," I continue, " — the room of the Venetians; the one with Titian's Flora before which the guides immediately lead all their docile charges — in that room just adjoining the Sogetto Biblico is that glorious little triptych by Mantegna, with the Ascension in the left wing, the Adoration of the Magi in the middle, and the Circumcision in the right; a picture that simply glows with color and breathes with life." "Oh, yes; and in the same room," takes up my companion, "are Giorgione's wonderful three; that black-bearded Knight of Malta, flanked by the Judgment of Solomon and the Child Moses, in each of which the human groups are singing chords of color, sounding out of the softer harmony of the landscape background. And there, too. Is Giovanni I20 The Galleries Bellini's naive and childishly reverent Sacra Con- versazione, with its elaborate landscape and its com- plications of tone." " Yes, and above all," I interrupt, " that im- mensely human St. Anthony and the Virgin of Titian with the playing St. John and Christ-Child. Baby John holds high a slender cross in his left hand, while with his right he hands up flowers to the little Christ, who sprawls in the Madonna's lap." In the room next the Venetians is a strange, hard, crude, but very strong Crucifixion by Andrea del Castagno, the peasant painter. It is a fresco done on a black background and the figures have all the un- couthness and all the strikingness of the painter's similar types in his Cenacolo in the convent of Santa Apollonia. In the same room also is a large ruined fresco by Fra Bartolommeo of the Judgment. Adjoining these is the room of tabernacles; a room of triptychs and angels. There is a large work here by Lorenzo Monaco, a Crowning of the Virgin, with bright colors put on in masses, and another large triptych of Fra Angelico which was done for the Guild of Woolweavers. But the sounding joy of this room is Angelico's golden Crowning of the Virgin, with its lifted trumpets and beatified faces. The Sala di Botticelli includes among its fifteen pic- tures of this artist the famous Birth of Venus; the Adoration of the Magi, with the artist himself as the extreme right-hand figure; the vigorous allegory of Calumny with its architectural landscape; and the two little pictures, so praised by Ruskin, of the Judith and Holofernes story. The Venus picture is The Uffizi 121 the apotheosis of the curved line. Only the tree trunks are rectilinear. In the Sala di Leonardo on opposite walls are Leonardo da Vinci's cartoon of the Adoration of the Magi and a battle scene by Paolo Uccello, with a kicking horse so ludicrous in Its wrongness that a schoolboy would deride it in the drawing of another. Of how far a genius for color may be substituted for a talent for drawing Uccello's various pictures are a fair test. In this room also is an exquisite Annuncia- tion by Leonardo da Vinci. The blue-robed Virgin is sitting behind a reading desk and low carved table. In front of the table, kneeling in the flower- strewn grass, is the Angel, with flowing red draperies and right arm half outstretched. In the background are symmetrical trees and a distant cliffy mountain. It is a picture that balances and sings like a lyric poem. Here also is Fra Filippo Lippi's much-visited Madonna of the filmy headdress, with the Babe being held up to her by two angel children. In the httle Sala di Michelangelo is the artist's Holy Family, with its curious introduction of a number of irrelevant nude figures, making a picture over into the painter's equivalent of an etude for the piano. The figures of the Holy Family itself are far from sanctified in seeming. The picture is, how- ever, of great interest to any student of Michelangelo, for it is one of his very few easel paintings. In a new small room off one of the halls of the Tuscan school are two charming pictures of Melozzo da Forli, the sundered Angel and Virgin of an An- nunciation. The Virgin has dark-green outer drap- 122 The Galleries ery with dark red-purple underneath and a black mantilla over her head. The Angel is serious but animated, advancing swiftly with skirt and girdle flying and hand uplifted. The Tribuna, focus of all the Uffizi's wonders, contains five masterpieces of sculpture and two score *' pictures selected as capi d' opera and arranged with- out reference to schools or dates." It is a startling example of the incalculable harm that can be done by this mode of lack of arrangement and crowding. It is the method of sensation; and it misses even this aim, which would be no virtue if attained. Raphael's Madonna of the Cardellino, St. John in the Wilderness, and replica Portrait of Pope Julius II hang here. Titian's two Venuses, one with the Cupid, the other with the little dog, and his portrait of Beccadelli; two of Correggio's best works; an Adoration of the Magi by Diirer; two portraits by Van Dyck; pictures by Rubens, Veronese, Francia, Luini, Kranach, Gucrcino, Luca van Leyden, Fra Bartolommeo, Spagnoletto, Perugino, and still others with names familiar are here. It is a collection of most enjoyable riches with any one thing in it very hard to enjoy. The sculpture of the Uffizi, considerable in quan- tity, seems to be, with the exception of a few pieces, rather undistinguished. The famous five antiques of the Tribuna and the Niobe group in the Sala di Niobe are the better known prizes. The Niobe room is one of the most satisfactory in the whole gallery. It is restful and impressive in its singleness of use. The statues, originally a single group found near The Uffizi 123 Rome, are now placed separately about the room. The figure of NIobe herself, clasping her youngest child, presents an extraordinary expression of inten- sity and nobility of grief. The Tribuna five are the Venus of Medici, the kneeling Scythian slave whetting his knife to flay Marsyas, the group of Wrestlers, young Apollo, and the Dorian Satyr. Of these it is to the Venus of Medici that one turns with most interest. But beau- tiful Roman as she is, she falls far short of her Grecian sister of the Louvre. In this comparison she is, to be sure, badly handicapped by her difference in setting. The Venus of Melos has her own boudoir. She is seen from far down the corridor of open rooms projected in perfect outline against the relieving back- ground. It is the same advantage that the Germans have given the Sistine Madonna, in her own quiet room, over Raphael's other Madonnas, the Gran Duca, della Sedia, and the Cardellino, here in the Florentine galleries. Strolling the length of the corridors one may pause a moment in front of Bandinelli's self-vaunted copy of the Laocoon, to muse on the harm a little man can do a great one, with opportunity. Bandi- nelli harried and heckled Michelangelo for a score of years, and by sheer self-conceit and persistence man- aged to push himself into a position of apparent rivalry with him. His chief triumph came when he got his Hercules and Cacus put on the platform of the Palazzo Vecchio, opposite Michelangelo's David (now removed to the Accademia). Over Bandinelli's tomb in Santa Annunziata is a Pieta by 124 The Galleries his own hand, which, in his extraordinary conceit, the sculptor thought to rival Michelangelo's master- piece in Rome. Of Bandlnelli's effort Michelangelo is said to have remarked : " I have only pity for that ' Pieta ' ! " The three rooms of sketches by the masters seem little lingered in, but there is much of Interest in them. Especially in the last one of the three (called " Sala Prima ") is one held fascinated by this inti- mate meeting with the masters in their undress uni- form. Sketches, finished drawings, architectural de- sign, bits of human anatomy, tentative groupings, and compositions in the swift free lines and scratches of pen or pencil of a half-hundred men whose pictures fill the Florentine galleries. Raphael's sketches for the Gran Duca and Cardellino Ma- donnas, Titian, Glorgione with his fancy for musi- cians showing In his sketches of players of various instruments, Carpaccio, PInturrichIo, Perugino, Va- sari, Cellini (designs for silver or gold work), Baccio Bandlnelli's drawings for his Hercules and Cacus, are all In the first two rooms (Sale II and III). In the Sala Prima are the Tuscan and Florentine painters. Here are sketches and designs by Dona- tello, Masolino, Fra Bartolommeo, Andrea del Sarto, of these latter two an especially large showing; Fra Angellco, Ghiberti, Andrea del Castagno, Fillppo LIppI, and Flllppino his son, Domenico Ghirlandajo, Botticelli, Verrochio, Luca SIgnorelli, Piero di Cosimo, Antonio and Piero del Pollaluolo, Benozzo Gozzoll, Mario Albertlnelli, Lorenzo di Credl, Paolo H P The Uffizi 125 Uccello, and Michelangelo. Of this last, most inter- esting is the first drawing (No. 608) for the never completed mausoleum of Pope Julius II, begun in the Pope's lifetime and worked at intermittently and to the great worry of mind of the artist and the con- stant interference with his other projects, for over twenty years. For this mausoleum the celebrated Moses and the Bound Captives were made. To reach the rooms of drawings and designs one has had to pass along hundreds of feet of corridors. Lined by old paintings, sculptures, and drawings, this league of corridor contains an important part of the Uffizi collections. But it has an added interest and charm in its timbered and decorated ceiling, which is covered with an amazing variety of ara- besques painted in the sixteenth century. Although rather tiring it is fascinating work, to pick out the details and scheme of decoration in this exhaustless ceiling gallery. Finally, there is a curious part of the Uffizi — if it should be reckoned with this gallery rather than with the Pitti — which to some people proves of unusual fascination. It is Vasari's long angled passage which leads from the west corridor across the Ponte Vecchio and thence to the Pitti Palace. This long overhead tunnel was built by the Medici to connect the Palazzo Vecchio with the Palazzo Pitti as a means of safety in case of a popular uprising. Now it is a con- venient short-cut from one picture gallery to another, offering at the same time a wealth of curious interest on its walls. Here are hung the portraits of half a thousand worthy and unworthy citizens of Medicean 126 The Galleries Florence, chief among whom are the many Medici themselves. It is at once the Rogues' Gallery and the Hall of Fame of Renaissance Florence. From these faces look out the history and humanity of a wonder- ful epoch of the world's life. CHAPTER X THE GALLERIES (continued) THE PITTI AND ACCADEMIA AT the end of the long passage from the Uffizi, which runs over a famous bridge across a famous river, is the Pitti : a gallery of perfect satis- faction or as nearly that, probably, as one can come to among all the collections of Europe. By no means the largest; indeed, that is one of the joys of it. The Louvre, Dresden, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, the Uffizi just across the river, these and others are the large galleries. The Accademia in Venice, the Brera in Milan, the Hague, and the other small ones, but far and away first among them the Pitti, are the galleries one comes really to know and to love. Although the passage from the Uffizi leads di- rectly to the Pitti, this is not the way to come to it, if the traverse of the passage means that the larger gallery has first been visited. One should enter it fresh and unfatigued. The very introduction, Giorglone's marvelous Concert, which faces one from across the room as he steps over the threshold of the first hall, the Saloon of the Iliad, is fair sign 127 128 The Galleries and measure of the unique richness, the glory of color, and wealth of genius in this gallery. From this room on through the saloons of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Venus, and the rest one wanders wide- eyed and breathless, reluctant to leave one hall, eager to enter the next. To each his own choice. For myself, in the first room, the Sala d'lliade, I linger longest and with most delight before the Concert, which is music veritably humanized. The dispute over the attribu- tion of this picture need not detract from its interest: it cannot from its charm. Near it in this room is Sustermann's fascinating boy Prince of Denmark; and on opposite walls are two large pictures of The Assumption by Andrea del Sarto. These latter have an interest apart from their beauty in the oppor- tunity they give to note the artist's resources in connection with a single subject. The Hall of Saturn is the Hall of Raphael. There are eight of his pictures here, four of such char- acter and so hung as to make a curiously balanced quartette. These are the two men in red, Inghirami and Bibbiena, and the two Madonnas of world fame, the Gran Duca and della Sedia. Here is Raphael at his smoothest and sweetest. He is here the courtier and the artist genius turn by turn, and both at once. It is interesting to look from Raphael to Perugino his master, as shown in a single famous picture in this room, the Deposition from St. Chiara. Sweet and smooth are truly the words for both master and master-surpassing pupil. In the adjoining room, the Hall of Jupiter, is Photo. Brogi The Granduca Madonna Raphael: Pitti The Pitti and Accademia 129 Raphael's La Velata, with its face of the Sistine Madonna secularized. Opposite it is Titian's violet- sleeved Fornarina; beauty against beauty. Here also is a picture by an unknown artist — or rather, an undetermined artist, but one forever famous by this picture alone — the so-called Three Ages of Man. The face of the old man is a face of affairs; that of the middle-aged man a Christ-face; and that of the boy a painter or poet in his beginning. Another picture here of three faces, or really a triple repeti- tion of a single face, is The Fates, painted by Rosso Fiorentino after an alleged design of Michelangelo's. In the Hall of Prometheus just off this room is Filippo Lippi's delightful tondo of the Madonna and Child, with the Nativity of Mary in the back- ground. In the Sala di Marte are two unforgettable por- traits by Rembrandt. One is the world-familiar one of himself as a young man, with low forehead and almost gamin face. The other is that of a fine old man, experienced, wise, quiet, but with a strong life still burning behind the face. Here, too, is Titian's Ritratto Virile, called, for want of any other name, the Young Englishman. Perhaps no other picture in the Pitti gives one so much food for fancy as does this inscrutable face. Here also is another of those great wall-covering canvases of Andrea del Sarto, of which the Pitti is full. This is a Holy Family painted for one of the Medici. As one enters the next room, the Hall of Apollo, a striking picture of red and black across the room catches the eye and holds it. It is Raphael's uncom- 130 The Galleries promising portrait of the first Medici Pope, Leo X, with his two nephew cardinals looking over his shoulders. It is a picture that tells how much a Pope was a prince of state in those days, and how little a vicar of church; a man of force and self-will and pleasure, but no saint for you and me. In this room also is Titian's luxuriant Mary Magdalen, and, skied above it, Sustermann's charming baby Cosimo III. Raphael's little Vision of Ezekiel is also here, and a Madonna and Child by Murillo that satisfies more than some others of this variously criticised Spaniard. In the adjoining Hall of Venus is Raphael's Pope Julius II, a genius's conception of this patron of the arts, warrior of the field, and undaunted fighter of countless enemies and obstacles. A splendid old man whose very worldliness and ambition made him a better Pope for his day. There are other rooms, although in these first half- dozen most of the glory of the Pitti is gathered. But everywhere there is color and delight. The very walls and ceilings, rich and splendid in their decoration, the beautiful great golden frames set on hinges to make them follow the light, the scattered superb vases and cabinets and tables all add to the Pitti's distinc- tion. And distinction may well be the fitting closing word for this gallery. If we come to the Accademia last it is, perhaps, only because of the retrospect it can give of the whole history of Florentine, and, partly, Umbrian, painting. The Accademia delle Belli Arti is more truly a museum, a teaching collection, than either Plioto. Brogi Pope Leo X and Cardinals Giulio de' Medici AND LuiGi de' Rossi Raphael: Pitti The Pitti and Accademia 131 the Pitti or the Uffizi; although this latter, by its steady rearranging, is coming more and more to be informing to the tourist who must read as he runs. Perhaps, indeed, it would be better if one, for the sake of this opportunity for orientation in Tuscan art, this opportunity to follow the course of the birth, development, and decadence of Tuscan paint- ing, would come to the Accademia first. However, this is a matter of personal liking. On entering, one strolls lingeringly by the attract- ive naivete of the fine Flemish tapestries that clothe the walls of the broad vestibule. How delightful the animals in Eden passing in review before Adam; the unicorn proudly leading the large quadrupeds, the over-fat and toothsome mice right in front of the very jaws of the paradisaic cats, and the fowls of the air in a great flying stream led by ostriches and other like birds believed by the foolish naturalists to be incapable of flight ! One leaves them with reluc- tance. But once left all one's attention is immediately given to that David of wonder and of extraordinary history, of limitless description and praise. What- ever the little contentions about details, the size of head, hands, and feet, for example, the whole the world has long given Michelangelo nothing but praise for this his first great attempt. The story of the undertaking is of interest. First the puzzle of the single great block of Carrara marble and the reluctance of all the sculptors to undertake its subject. Then Michelangelo's decision and permis- sion to make the attempt, and his two years and more of nearly continuous labor before the completion of 132 The Galleries the statue. Finally, the famous council of artists and architects called to determine where it should be placed; the long debates, the decision to put it next the gate of the palace of the Signoria (the Palazzo Vecchio) to replace the smaller David of Donatello (now in the Bargello). But deciding to put the statue in place by no means put it there. So II Cro- naca, the Garrulous, devised a great scaffolding for lifting and transporting the 18,000-pound monster. For three exciting days it moved slowly through the streets with its guards, attacked each night by evil wishers. But at dawn of May 18, 1504, it arrived safely and was put in place. " The erection of the ' David,' " says Grimm in his "Life of Michelangelo," " was like an occurrence of Nature from which people are wont to reckon. We find events dated so many years after the erection of the giant. It was mentioned in records in which there was not a line besides respecting art." For three and a half centuries David stood at the portal of the palace of the people. A curiously long deferred anxiety about the danger to the statue from the elements led, in 1873, to its removal to its present roofed-in quarters. Up on Monte San Miniato, near the scenes of Michelangelo's herculean labors of fortification in that sad time of Florence's struggle with a besieging Emperor and Pope, stands a bronze copy of the statue. And from most of the city the bared youthful head can be seen outlined against the sky when one looks across the river toward San Miniato. Around David in the Accademia are grouped riioto. Brogi The Adoration D. Ghirlandajo: Accademia The Pitti and Accademia 133 several casts of Michelangelo's other works, together with some of his drawings and an admirable series of photographs of his Sistine frescoes. To attend to the pictures of the Accademia and their teaching one may advisably first enter the room at that end of the corridor which contains the cast of Michelangelo's Roman Pieta (a cast presented by the city of Rome to the city of Florence). Here begins a series which, starting with Cimabue in the thirteenth century — there are even two or three truly Byzantine pieces as forerunners of Cimabue — goes on through the glory of the fourteenth and fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, into the fading of the later sixteenth and the decadence of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The latter pictures are gathered fittingly into a dark room (VIII) and make of it almost a chamber of horrors. Not the least of these horrors is Carlo Dolci's sickening Christ head. On an easel in this room, but put here for the light and not at all as belonging in time or quality to the rest of the collection, is a Madonna by Masaccio, reserved, strong, and quietly dignified. The easel pictures in the first room of the series are an Adoration of the Magi by Gentile da Fabbriano and an Adoration of the Shepherds by Domenico Ghirlandajo. They are both intense in color and life, crowded with figures and elaborate in background. They attract much attention, as they deserve, but they really keep the sightseer un- fairly long away from the valuable, and from the his- torical point of view more important. Madonna of Cimabue and the Giotto pictures on the left wall. 134 The Galleries The Giotto paintings are a series of panels illustrating his favorite subject, the life of St. Francis. The next room (VII) contains Fra Bartolommeo's fresco portrait sketches taken from the walls of San INIarco and elsewhere and set up here as framed pic- tures. Most interesting of these is certainly that one of Savonarola in the guise of St. Peter Martyr. Two pictures of Albertinelli, an artist of name less familiar than deserved, are here, an Annunciation and a Madonna and Child. In this room also is (usually) on an easel the wonderful Deposition from the Cross, of that other painting priest of San Marco, Fra AngeHco, or Fra Giovanni da Fie- sole, as the Fiesoleans still call him. How his blue Italian sky of summer glorifies the whole picture. Returning to the room nearer the David, namely, the Sala di Perugino and the two Sale di Botticelli, we find a concentration of masterpieces of the Tuscan and Umbrian masters. Here is Fra Filippo Lippi's very beautiful Coronation of the Virgin, with the artist himself in the picture. He is on the right, with hands clasped and looking in- tently at his nun of human feelings. Here also are two cherubim of Andrea del Sarto, " spirits of just babies made perfect " to quote an apt friend. And the wonderful portraits by Perugino of two Val- lombrosan monks. There is an Assumption by this master of Raphael painted for the monastery at Vallombrosa and containing a figure of San Giovanni Gualberto, the picturesque founder of the forest monastery. And Luca Signorelli's strong and real- istic but most reverent Crucifixion. Also Lorenzo The Pitti and Accademia 135 dl Credi's Adoration of the Shepherds and Holy Family and Angels. And, finally, here is the group of paintings by the master whose work has made the Accademia famous and whose name, Sandro Botti- celli, is that most often mentioned among the paint- ers whose patrons were the Medici. The moonlight sonata of this artist, the Reign of Venus, or more familiarly the Primavera, is the most beset picture in the gallery. It seems to be fading a little, but perhaps it is only the waning of the moon over this fantastically beautiful group of dream figures. Are these forms wholly human? Especially that wild leaping thing of the woods with the leafy spray in her mouth? Have not Bocklin's h ilf-human, half-animal creatures of the Urwald a prototype in this Chloris of the dream painter of the Renaissance? The Primavera is flanked by two of Filippo Lippi's most delicate and exquisitely beautiful pic- tures, a Nativity and an Adoration. Another picture of Botticelli's that attracts unusual attention is the Angels with Tobias. The youthful Tobias carries his fish in one hand while with the other he clasps lightly the hand of one of the angels. They are all moving vigorously along over a rough ground with draperies flying and one foot of each a-tiptoe. In the Sala del Angelico is a collection of bits by Fra Angelico taken from San Domenico di Fiesole. These little pictures lose much by being plucked out of their churchly and monastic setting and crowded together in a single small room, but the delicacy of 136 The Galleries drawing and color and the earnest religious feeling of the painter triumph over all this misfortune. The group of sightseers concentrates ever about the Last Judgment. This picture is larger than most of the others and next to the David and the Primavera is the best known object of pilgrimage in the Acca- demia. The hand-in-hand circle of happy elect in the lower left-hand corner of the picture leaves a memory of pure bliss. The other side of the picture, with its rather ludicrous damned, is so much less successful that one inevitably asks the reason for such a disparity of conception and work revealed in a single picture. Is it that Fra Angelico was always so lost in ecstatic visions of heaven, and so pene- trated by the belief in an all-pitying and all-loving Saviour, that he was simply unable to conceive of hell? The two succeeding rooms of pictures by early Florentine painters of questionable distinction have not much in them to arrest us. If one is curious to see just how far the decadence in Italian art, beginning in the seventeenth century, has reached in the twentieth, he should spend a few moments upstairs in the rooms of modern paintings. Hare mentions Morgan's Death of Raphael and Ussi's Banishment of the Duke of Athens as the two most notable pictures in this collection. But some will care more for Eugenio Cecconi's vigorous hunt of the wild boar, with its full breath of out-of- doors and its tensely halted animals. In the first room of the series leading to the right there is an interesting group of five small paintings The Pitti and Accademia 137 by Giovanni Signorini of carnival, race, festa, and fireworks in Florence on the piazzas of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce and on the bridge of Santa Trinita, In the last room of this series there is a pic- ture painted by Enrico Farfani from the Loggia dei Lanzi, showing part of the piazza in the revolution of 1859. In the glimpse of the front of the Palazzo Vecchio in this picture one sees the David in its original place. Finally, in any even .most incomplete account of the pictures in Florence, reference must not be omitted to two remarkable works of Botticelli, the Pallas and the Madonna with the Roses stranded in one of the royal bed-chambers or ante-rooms in the Pitti Palace. Why these pictures cannot be got out from their hiding-place and put into the Pitti gallery, or one of the others, is hard to understand. As it is, one has to traverse and be shown an interminable series of royal bedrooms and the like in green and blue and red and yellow, all suggestive and proper enough of royalty but wholly unnecessary to the seeing of the pictures. There are, indeed, pleasant rumors afloat that Ricci would like not only to rescue these marooned masterpieces of Botticelli but also to remove and rearrange in their proper places in the great UflUzi pageant the pictures now hanging in the dark and dangerously damp and mouldy rooms of the Accademia. That would truly be a breath-taking room in the Uffizi in which the Birth of Venus and the Reign of Venus should be hanging on opposite walls as they were originally painted to be. CHAPTER XI CASTLES AND PALACES PALAZZO VECCHIO AND IL BARGELLO FROM the days when we first read Walter Scott and looked at the geography book pictures of the castle-lined Rhine, most of us have had a clear mental image of a proper castle. And from the days when we first knew from story and illustration the jeweled front of the Doge's Palace by its magic waters, and the limitless length of Versailles in its garden of fountains, we have been pretty confident of the seeming of a palace. Well, the castles and palaces of Florence are dif- ferent. The castles are on no lonely hilltop. They front on crowded streets and are jostled by shops and restaurants. And the fagades of the palaces are simple great wall surfaces, unadorned except by huge iron torch-sockets or corner lanterns and worn family stemmi carved in the rough stone. These palaces seem to be just great cubes of stone set four- square to the streets and humble houses of the city. Seventy-six of them are catalogued in a recent book devoted to their description and history — there are really many more than this book lists — and they all seem as much alike as so many peas. But they are 138 Palazzo Vecchio and II Bargello 139 no more alike; for peas, after all, always truly differ from each other, although keeping closely to the recognized pea plan of architecture. If one climbs the four hundred stairsteps of the Palazzo Vecchio tower, and looks down on the Flo- rentine palaces he will discover a hole In the top of each of these solid seeming cubes, a hole which goes clear down to the ground and Is really a small court which usually has a lot of green things at Its bottom. And If one descends and rings up the custode of one of the cubes when its Inhabitants are at Viareggio or In the PIstojese mountains for the hot season, he can readily get acquainted with the general, simple, prac- tical plan of the Florentine palace. There are exceptions, of course, to the general type; most conspicuously the PItti palace, the greatest of them all and one of the noblest, most splendid, and truly regal palaces in Europe. It is long and winged. But most of the others keep to the compact cube, a plan due less to the fancy of the Florentine merchant- prince nobility than to the urgency of those lively days of Palleski, Arrabbiati, and Plagnone mutual house-to-house visitations under arms. As to the castles of Florence, there are only two that I am going to write of, and as neither of them is really called castle, it is obviously foolish to make cas- tle generalizations in their connection. However, each has donjons and battlements and a huge tower, and so Is really something like our early picturing. The first and much the larger of these two Is the Palazzo Vecchio, towering hugely and really most grimly castle-like up from the busy Piazza della 140 Castles and Palaces Signoria. " Rude are its walls, severe its crenela- tions where hung the Pazzi and toward which mounted the smoke of the funeral pyre of Savonarola." Castle and piazza form together the focus of most Florentine history and fiction. They are still the center to which the converging threads of present-day Florentine life run. In and near the piazza men strike hands over the mar- ket-day transactions. Here the straggling lines of tourist cara- vans under their marshaling leaders are beset and har- ried by a cloud of flanking parasites. And here come the shining carriages of the Florentine wed- ding couples bound for the tapestried, red-hung sala di "Michelozzo's beautiful little court ^^^^trlmouio where with its winsome laughing boy of the civil ceremony Verrocchio spurting water over his necessary tO all dolphin playmate." j^^jj^^ marryings, and sufficing for some, is enacted. Entering the great building by its portal between Bandinelli's graceless Baucis and Philemon, and under its " fierce tower, standing like a giant sentinel on Palazzo Vecchio and II Bargello 141 his rounds," one comes immediately into Michelozzo's beautiful little court (1434) with its winsome laugh- ing boy of Verrocchio spurting water over his dol- phin playmate. So joyful the splashing fountain, so beautiful and quiet the court, one gets at first none of that sense of great things done here in momentous times of storm and stress, in those epoch-making hours throbbed through by hearts of men whose memories still live to glorify or execrate human strength and passion. It is hard at first to re-create the tumult and shout of mobs, the solemn meetings of councils, the clamor of soldiers, and pomp of warrior princes. It is hard to catch the whispers from stealthy conferences of intrigue and plotting. But the farther one penetrates into this abode of history, the more murmurous be- come its walls with the echoes of those full days, and the more the shadows moving ghostly through the corridors and halls begin to take recognizable forms of gonfalonier and councilor, of prince and papal legate, of jailer and tortured prisoner of state. In the great hall of the consigUo grande sit the shades of the nobles and citizens of Florence; on the floor lies during his last night of life the vision-seeing martyr priest of San Marco; on the walls, under the commonplace frescoes of the profuse and facile Vasari one dimly divines the lost cartoons of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. What a Mecca of art this room would be had those pictures ever been consummated and preserved ! There is no longer any lack of the thrills and the awe and rever- ence that should come to us from the spaces of this 142 Castles and Palaces old castle. The eyes rest lightly on the details of Vasari's and Ghirlandajo's painted walls; on Bene- detto da Maiano's delicately sculptured marble door- way and carven ceiling; on Giambologna's Ivory crucifix. They are too full of pictures of past scenes. Nowhere else in Florence, not even in the Duomo where a Medici was murdered and Savonarola won a whole proud city to ways of penitence; nor in the cathedral piazza where, when the city seemed about to be overwhelmed by a great army, and when " every citizen to a man took the oath in the presence of the magistrates, that, true to the government, he would either conquer or die "; nor in the holy walls of San Marco where the falling leader and prophet made his last stand against the wolves of a fickle populace incited by Pope and thwarted prince: — in none of these places gather memories so many or so important in the history of the city as in the Palazzo Vecchio and the blood-hallowed square in front of it. One climbs, silent and thoughtful, up the long turning stairway of the tower. Far up, just under the machicolated battlements, a little door Is pushed open and a tiny cavity in the great stone wall is shown; a mere rat-hole with a narrow stone seat in it. It has a single crack-like outer opening and the door Is per- forated by a small cross-barred aperture. Here Savonarola shall have spent that time of his forty days' imprisonment,, when he was not In the hands of his torturers. The myth speaks well for the per- sisting picturesqueness of Italian fancy, for this rat- hole more than fulfils all of a New World tourist's demands for an Old World donjon cell. Besides its Palazzo Vecchio and II Bargello 143 impossible limitations of space for Savonarola's long confinement, its fitness Is enhanced by the fact that the narrow vertical outer peep-hole gives sight of the great church of Santa Croce, headquarters of the Franciscan enemies of the Dominican priest. However, the larger prison room a few steps higher, In which Cosimo I was imprisoned. Is much more likely to have been also the cell of the Medici-fighting monk. From the top of the tower Florence and Its sur- roundings reveal themselves in bird's-eye view. The larger buildings stand out In their proportions; the lesser ones disappear in a lower continuous red-roofed mass. The Arno winds away seaward, glittering in its broad valley; hill-sides and plain show themselves one continuous plantation of olive and vine; the mountains that stand about Florence everywhere In the distance lift themselves in heavy lines above the nearby villa-dotted hills. Straight down three hun- dred feet below, curiously foreshortened men and cabs and horses trot about in the busy piazza, like little black whirligig beetles on the smooth surface of a pool. The whirling of these black spots Is Florence life of to-day playing across the scene of Savonarola's burning. As we issue again from MIchelozzo's beautiful little colonnaded court we pause on the platform where Michelangelo's David stood, and overlook for a moment the populous piazza. It is a genre scene unpaintable and indescribable In Its lack of emphatic points or dominant figures, but unique in Its impres- sionistic whole, its aroma. Out of it, to the right, rise Ammanati's great fountain, with its giant Neptune 144 Castles and Palaces and guarding tritons, and Giovanni da Bologna's statue of Cosimo I; while, to the left, lifts the noble Loggia del Lanzl with Its strenuous statues, Cellini's Perseus, Donatello's Judith, and Giovanni da Bo- " The noble Loggia dei Lanzi with its strenuous statues." logna's Rape of the Sabines and Hercules Slaying the Centaur Nessus, — statues befitting the scenes of blood and terror that the Loggia looked upon in the troublous centuries long past. As we stand contemplative and hesitating, suddenly Palazzo Vecchio and II Bargello 145 the noon gun booms, and promptly on the roar the piazza springs into a violent activity. There comes a whirling flight of pigeons up from their feeding- grounds in front of the cafes and a simultaneous great cracking of whips and grinding of wheels as all the Signoria omnibuses lurch forward and coveys of quick cabs flit off into the side streets. It may be our signal as well. The Bargello Is the ancient palace and stronghold of the podestas and chiefs of police of Florence. In Its present peaceful capacity of national museum It loses much of Its flavor for those who would like to enjoy In It those thrills that the Tower of London or the Conclergerle In Paris gives In such full measure. But when the giiida aiitorizzata of the Palazzo Vecchio leads you solemnly up to a window giving a view out over the nearby roofs, and whispers heavily, " There — there in the dungeons of the Bargello they took him to torture him," — him being Savonarola, of course, the Bargello offers at long distance a very real thrill, indeed. But when you once enter it, are really In It, have got quickly through its first room of armor and guns and sabers, and Into Its court of magic beauty, you lose at once, nor desire any more at all, any thrills of the morbid. There are In you now and to renew them- selves in you for all of your stay here only thrills from the beautiful; from the wonderfully beautiful court and stair; from the beautiful upper loggia, the Verone; the beautiful great halls and high-ceilinged 146 Castles and Palaces little chapel, and from the varied beauty of the many triumphs of art in this castle of joy. To catalogue the sources of this joy is far from " The Bargello is the ancient palace and stronghold of the podestas and chiefs of police of Florence." my Intention. There is much to see, and each will have his special likes. Some things will almost cer- tainly appeal to all. First of all, the marvelous Bar- Photo. Brogi The Virgin and Child Michelangelo: Bargello Palazzo Vecchio and II Bargello 147 gello court with Agnolo Gaddi's stairs and the great arches below and the smaller ones of the Orcagna loggia above; the well in the center near which the old executions took place, and the towering walls spotted thick with the varied and fantastic stemmi of the two hundred and more podestas of Florence. One sur- renders at once and unquestioningly to the rare charm of this famous court. A door leading off from it opens into a short cor- ridor on which lies the small Michelangelo room con- taining several works of his earlier life, the Bacchus, the young David, the small Moses, and a charming unfinished tondo relief of the Virgin and Child, the boy standing with his elbow resting on an open book in the mother's lap. In this room, too, are the mutilated remains of Benedetto da Rovezzano's mas- terpiece, reliefs containing many small figures of ex- quisite workmanship. The story of the making and destruction of these sculptures is told elsewhere in this book. Most celebrated of the Bargello rooms is that called the Hall of Donatello. It is splendid in itself, with its high ceiling, double tier of windows piercing the thick walls, and rich air of spaciousness. But its contents, a Donatello collection of originals and casts, uncrowded and most effectively placed, are its real attraction. Here is that San Giorgio taken from its niche in the outer wall of Or San Michele, and now given the position of honor between the youthful Goliath-conquering David on one side and the more than ascetic John the Baptist on the other. In front of this group are the Young Gentleman 148 Castles and Palaces in bronze and the realistic Uzzano bust in colored terra-cotta. A score or more of casts of Donatello's reliefs and statues in other cities, especially Padua, line the walls of the room, and a cast of his giant equestrian statue of Gattamelata (Padua) towers up in the center. In front of it squats the Marzocco (original) that used to sit on the old Palazzo Vecchio platform called the Ringhiera. Altogether this hall is an opportunity and a delight to lovers of the little Donato. In a nearby little room filled with small bronzes and reliefs are the two trial reliefs of the scene of Abraham and Isaac done by Brunelleschi and Ghiberti in competition for the commission to do the bronze doors of the Baptistry. The justice of the decision for Ghiberti is quickly evident. Brunelleschi makes the real scene, the sacrifice interrupted by the angel, only a sort of upper story incident while the waiting horse and two attendant figures below stand most conspicu- ous. Ghiberti with all the same figures in his com- position — probably a stipulation of the competition — tucks his horse and attendants neatly and undistract- ingly away into small compass, leaving Abraham, Isaac, and the angel their rightful center of the stage. In the adjoining room are Cellini's little wax and bronze models (differing slightly) for his Perseus in the Loggia dei Lanzi, — he tells of these little models, with characteristically entertaining egotism, in the last chapter of his " Treatise on Sculpture," — and an animated framed relief of Perseus liberating Andromeda, with all the characters. There are also in this room a whole series of Giovanni da Bologna's Photo, Brogi NlCCOLO DA UZZANO Donatello : Bargello Palazzo Vecchio and II Bargello 149 bronzes, among them his patched flying Mercury with its inimitable air of lightness, a small model of his Rape of the Sabines of the Loggia, and two charming piitti with fish evidently designed for a fountain. Here is also a delightful small bronze head of a boy, attributed, but with some growing uncer- tainty, to Desiderio da Settignano. In the chapel, a small room entered from the saloon of tapestries, cloths, ivories, and enamels, with its intarsia stalls, is the famous Dante death mask; and in the fresco of Paradise above it, the restored portrait of Dante holding a flower — (this head has been redrawn as a framed picture below hanging at the right of the mask). These apparently authentic portrayals of Dante's face are of much interest, and reveal the inaccuracy of many of the more familiar portraits. On the floor above are the rooms of the della Robbia reliefs. These glazed and colored terra- cottas, the secret of whose making was held In the della Robbia family and died with It, appeal with curious difference of response to different beholders. Especially Is this true of the parti-colored examples. For the simple blue and white pieces, especially those of unelaborate decoration, where the eye Is filled by the exquisitely modeled faces of Virgin and Child (the favorite subject), there can hardly be anything but admiration. But this cannot be so certainly claimed for the more richly decorated and brilliantly colored pieces. The two rooms containing these tondos and plaques give one an exceptional oppor- tunity to compare the work of the first members of 150 Castles and Palaces the family, Luca and Andrea, the real masters, with the grovvingly inferior ones of the later workers. Finally in rooms IV and V of this floor we come to chambers hard to escape from, so rich are they in reliefs, busts, and statuettes of the masters of Tuscan decorativ^e sculpture. Here all the hill-side sculptors are represented, Desiderio, the Rossellini, Benedetto da Maiano, Mino da Fiesole. And here also are characteristic pieces by Verrocchio, Michelozzo, San- sovino, Luca della Robbia, Pollaiuolo, Giovanni da Bologna, Cellini, Matteo Civitali of Lucca, and, shameless to behold, a fragment of decorative relief from Jacopa della Quercia's tomb of Ilaria in the cathedral at Lucca. Some of the desecration of that loveliest of tombs has been repaired by the tardy return, through the intervention of the good queen- mother of Italy, of the reliefs ravished from the ends of the sarcophagus, but Florence still has the hardi- hood to retain this purchased fragment. It is difficult in such wealth of achievement to at- tempt to call attention to any particular pieces, but I may mention Verrocchio's speaking relief for the tomb of Francesca Tornabuoni and the Ecce Homo, and two nearby reliefs of Matteo Civitali, that rare sculptor of Lucca whose work is seen so little out- side of his native city. Then there is Antonio Rossellino's marble tondo of the Adoration with its beautifully detailed background, the sheep and cow and shed and trees, a complete landscape. Also I must mention Benedetto da Maiano's John the Baptist, and Jacopo Sansovino's Bacchus, and Cellini's Ganymede. Photo. Brogi Madonna with Child Luca della Robbia: Bargello Palazzo Vecchio and II Bargello 151 If one has a fancy for delicately moulded faces in low relief, the room of medallions with its veritable gallery of Medici portraits in miniature, and its scores of other faces of the great days of old, can furnish entertainment for long hours. But sight- " That most fascinating room of all the Bargello, that un- roofed room of the arcades, the well, the stair, and the stemmi-spotted walls." seeing with a reading glass becomes tiring in time, and there is that most fascinating room of all the Bargello, always calling; that unroofed room of the arcades, the well, the stair, and the stemmi-spotted walls. And so one finds oneself again in the court, the unsurpassable court; and stays there till closing time. Finally, in any chapter under such a title as this one has, it must at least be noted that Florence has two fortress castles of some importance that are rarely 152 Castles and Palaces visited. These are the Fortezza di San Giorgio on the hilltop across the Arno, built in 1590 by the Grand Duke Ferdinand; and the Fortezza da Basso, at the opposite end of the city, built by the Medici Pope, Clement VII, as a stronghold for Alessandro de Medici, ruler of Florence. Here the great banker Filippo Strozzi, who had actually lent money to the Medici to build this fortress, was imprisoned, and either put to death or reduced to such hopelessness of freedom as to commit suicide. CHAPTER XII CASTLES AND PALACES (continued) THE PALACES OF the hundred palaces of Florence, those fa- miliar, heavy, fortress-like fourteenth and fifteenth century structures, with their massive rough- faced or stucco-covered stone walls, their iron lanterns and torch-holders, and their carved stemmi over portal or at wall-corners, we can mention but half a dozen. The interested tourist may engage some more leisurely cicerone for introduction to the others. Mrs. Ross's " Florentine Palaces " is the most avail- able aid, perhaps, although it gives less of architectu- ral and descriptive details of the palaces themselves than of biographical particulars of the old families that builded and inhabited them. It is, indeed, a sort of blue book of the first families of quattro and cinque cento Florence; a mass of interesting material, delved from old chronicles and manuscripts. It records the loves and hates, the poisonings and poniardings of these picturesque gentlemen and ruffians and their fair ladies, of the Florence of the Medici, the Strozzi, the Soderini, the Capponi, Pazzi, and Pitti. As one reads these scrappy particulars of 153 154 Castles and Palaces the lives of the old Florentines one wonders no longer at the massive stone walls, the few windows, the bat- tlements, and towers of their palace dwellings. It was certainly well, in those days, to be able to bar one's door effectively to any too pressing neighbors. To-day we are likely, unless more interested in Florentine history than Florentine art, to visit first, and perhaps only, those palaces in which artistic treasures remain or have been specially gathered. Most conspicuous in this respect is the regal Pitti, with its world-famed galleries. The events, however, in the history of this palace have been of much impor- tance, outlining in some degree the whole history of Florence. The palace was begun in 1441 by Luca, of the great Pitti banker family, rivals of the Medici, with the expressed intention of surpassing the Medici palace (Palazzo Riccardi). It was begun by Brunelleschi and carried on by Ammanati, and in later times en- larged and variously modified under the direction of Parlgi, Ruggieri, and others. By the vicissitudes of fortune it soon passed from the hands of the Pitti into those of their rivals the Medici; and since then has been constantly identified with the ruling family of Florence whether Italian, French, or Austrian. In addition to the paintings and sculptures (al- ready referred to in the chapters "The Galleries") the PIttI palace contains extensive collections of china and of silver- and goldsmlthery, besides the handsome furniture and fittings of the royal apartments; for the Pitti is the abode of the King of Italy wTienever Castles and Palaces 155 he comes to Florence. The rooms of the royal plate and other treasures of gold and silver work are of much interest, for they house some of Cellini's most magnificent cups and bowls. These are treasures which are especially known and loved by the common people of the city. When our cook was most excited over the preparations for a company dinner she would exclaim : " Our table must look as beautiful as if we had the Cellini bowls and plates on it." And although she had never known the use of finger-bowls she recognized at once what ours were for, crying: " Oh, those are little ones like the big ones that Cellini made." In one of the rooms of the royal apartments are two striking paintings by Botticelli, one a Madonna with roses and the other the curiously composed Pallas, discovered In the palace in 1894 by an English artist, and held by many to be one of the most rarely beautiful of Botticelli's works. Behind and above the five hundred feet of length of the PittI palace, are the Boboll Gardens (entered through the portal near the entrance to the gallery). They are an excellent example of the formal Italian style of landscape gardening. There are many long, straight, hedge-lined alleys and paths with the vistas closed by fountains or statues, and there are stone and stucco structures of various sorts and degrees of beauty or ugliness. In the latter category the palm Is held by the Grotto (near the entrance), which con- tains four great unfinished statues reputed to be 156 Castles and Palaces Michelangelo's beginnings for the Captives which were to adorn the never completed tomb of Pope Julius II in Rome. These four unfortunates in their In the Boboli Gardens. Grotto suffer a most atrocious captivity in their present setting. The gardens as a whole, however, are very beautiful and offer a delightful resting-place to the footsore and eye-weary pursuer of " sights." Photo. Brogi Lorenzo de' Medici as One of the Magi Benozzo Gozzoli: Palazzo Riccardi Castles and Palaces 157 Also he can see, particularly on Sundays, how truly these gardens belong to the people. That palace of the Medici now known as the Palazzo Riccardi and serving as the city's Prefettura, is the one that Luca Pitti set out to surpass only to have his labors enjoyed, at their end, by his hated rivals. Next to the Pitti (and Uffizi) it contains the most precious treasures of art housed in any Florentine palace; for in it is that wholly lovely and joyous little chapel frescoed by Benozzo Gozzoli. If this is not the most fascinating and enlivening little room in all Europe, as some hold stoutly, it is at least no mean second to whatever that more entranc- ing room may be. Here is the joy, the color, the life of Medicean Florence animate on flat walls. It assumes to be a holy pic- ture as befits the place and the art tradition of the time; a Procession of the Magi; but all that is in it of humanity and Nature is insistently and secularly Florentine. As in the frescoes of Ghir- - ^^ landajo behind the great altar of Santa Maria ^°^°^' Cypresses. Novella, the pictured people of Gozzoli and their setting are of the painter's personal acquaintance. Here are Cosimo and Lorenzo dei Medici, the painter's patrons, and here is the joyous artist him- self. And the procession winds its pageantry and 158 Castles and Palaces caroling life down the hill-slopes of Fiesole and Settignano. The caretaker of the chapel is a man of intelligence and enthusiasm, as he should be with such a charge in his care. His exploring lantern on its long pole and his facile running commentary as he slowly moves over all the walls are a part of my memory of the little room that I would not lose if I could. And how exceptional that is ! Besides these chapel pictures there is Luca Gior- dano's swiftly painted apotheosis of the Medici in the banqueting hall, a hall whose ornate decorative walls and ceiling recall the great corridor in Versailles. Other rooms and halls have, too, their attractions; but of greater interest are the memories clinging to these chambers and corridors of the lives of that extraordinary family that made this modest palace its abode. Here poetry and statecraft, love of beauty and of power, philosophic broadness, and personal malice lived hand in hand. History was made here in days whose nights were revels of trivial pleasure. It is a palace whose very stones must have absorbed some essence of all this human greatness and frailty that they guarded for so long. Most striking and most familiar of all of Flor- ence's cubical fortress palaces is the great Strozzi (corner Via degli Strozzi and Via Tornabuoni). Its huge bozzi, its convenient sedilia smoothed by much picturesque use, its splendid though incomplete over- hanging cornice and its beautiful corner lanterns {fanali) of worked iron become very familiar to even the most hurried visitor to Florence. He cannot help walking or driving by the palace a half-dozen Castles and Palaces 159 times a day; It is so in the very center of the tourist's Florence. He will look out on its massive rough walls each time he sips his tea at Giacosa's; and he will usually buy his morning paper from one of the giornalisti that spread their wares on the sedilia at its corner. The Strozzi, wealthy bankers, were for long a powerful family, some- times friends, sometimes rivals of the Medici. The decline of the fam- ily began with the death of the famous Filippo In the Medlcean fortress of San Giovanni Battista (now Fortezza da Bas- so). The palace, which still belongs to the fam- ily, was built in the fif- teenth and sixteenth cen- turies according to the designs of Benedetto da Maiano and later II Cro- naca. Within there is a small collection of pictures and marbles by painters and sculptors of the first rank. This collection, unfortunately, has steadily diminished under the con- stant pressure of the enormous building debt, a debt that has persisted through five centuries. Another palace conspicuous by its great size. Its A corner lantern of Palazzo Strozzi. the i6o Castles and Palaces battlemented walls, and made familiar by Its situation and Its present use by the banking house of French, Lemon and Company (American Express Co.), is that now named Palazzo Ferroni, but better known as Palazzo Spini (on the Piazza Santa Trinlta just at the bridge). It was built about 1300 by the Spini, a family whose head was a wealthy wool mer- chant and the leader of the Florentine Guelphs. In the middle of the seventeenth century half of the palace passed, by purchase, into the hands of the Ferroni family, and the other half in 1807. "The southern facade rose straight from the bed of the Arno, and the street passed under the palace by a long archway. Room after room and balcony after balcony overhanging the river had been built until the height reached sixty braccie and grave fears were entertained for the stability of the building. So in July, 1823, that side of the Palazzo Spini was taken down and the fagade thrown back to admit of the con- tinuation of the Lung' Arno Acciajuoli. In the church of Santa Trinita (just across the street from the palace) is a fresco by Domenico Ghirlandajo, in which Palazzo Spini is represented as it was in the fifteenth century" (Ross). The palace contains some fine vaulted upper chambers that are in present use as clubrooms. At No. 20, Via della VIgna Nuova, Is the beauti- ful Palazzo Rucellai, a fifteenth century structure built by Bernardo Rossellino after designs by Leon Battista Alberti, for the great Rucellai family, cloth merchants and bankers. This family gave to Flor- ence thirteen gonfalonleri and eighty-five priors, and Castles and Palaces i6i was honored, or perhaps dishonored, by intermarry- ing with the Medici. The palace contains some curi- Palazzo Spini. ous old portraits, and the courtyard has admirable Corinthian pillars. In the Rucellai loggia (now i62 Castles and Palaces inclosed and used as a picture shop) opposite the palace " the citizens of Florence used to meet and discuss their affairs . . . and after the introduction of the game of chess from the East such large sums of money were lost [here] at dice, draughts, and chess, that a law was passed forbidding any games to be played in courtyards, porticoes, or loggie." Palazzo Pandolfino (No. 74, Via San Gallo), an unfinished fifteenth century palace of unusual design, with very fine portal and Ionic and Doric windows, is reputed to have been begun from a plan by Raphael. In the Via del Proconsolo, No. 10, is a striking palace called Palazzo Quaratesi built by the Pazzi in the fifteenth century, after plans by Brunelleschi. This is the great family of rivals and haters of the Medici, whose hate culminated in the murder of Giuliano and wounding of Lorenzo dei Medici by Francesco dei Pazzi in the Duomo in April, 1478, and the sub- sequent hanging of Francesco and some of his com- panions from the battlements of the Palazzo Vecchio. It was a member of this family, Pazzino di Pazzi, who is said to have been the first to scale the walls of Jerusalem in the Crusades, and who brought from the Holy Sepulcher the stones from which was lighted the Holy Fire. On Saturday of Passion Week every year this Holy Fire is carried by the dove from the high altar of the Duomo out to the fireworks car in the Piazza. Great crowds attend this perform- ance, and it is one of Florence's chief annual spectacles. In the Via Ghibellina one's attention may be at- tracted by eight heavy, low decorated marble pili Castles and Palaces 163 rising from the sidewalk in front of a massive palace. This is the Palazzo Borghese built originally by the Salviati family. In it lived until recently Franceschini, a book collector of indefatigable industry but much eccentricity. On his death Voynich, the London dealer, bought his collection, " sight unseen," and is now engaged in the Herculean but fascinating task of exhuming from sealed and completely filled rooms the masses of books and pamphlets which the eccen- tric collector piled away. The collection will cer- tainly number over a million pieces and in it have been found already a number of valuable incunabula and, stuffed as " filling " into thick binding of common- place tomes, such interesting things as illustrated Medici playing cards and Strozzi wedding invitations. An interesting palace open to the sightseer on cer- tain days in the week is the seventeenth century Cor- sini (No. 7, Via Parioni), with splendid halls and hangings and a collection of pictures. The Corsini have been one of the greatest families in Florence from time unremembered. Pope Clement XII was a Corsini, and the family tree is a veritable blue book of cardinals, bishops, priors, and princes of state. This catalogue of Florentine palaces could run on for many pages. But it must stop right here. Or, at least, it must stop with the bare outlining of a walk that I can recommend to any one wishing a glimpse of some of the older, more rugged, and less conspicuous palaces that cluster so thickly in the nar- row streets near the Arno. Start may be made from the Mercato Nuovo, that of the flowers and straw hats and the big bronze 164 Castles and Palaces boar; and the way may lead first down the Via Por Santa Maria toward the river. Here on either hand are the remains of the palaces of the Amidei. At No. 5, which is the tower of the Palazzo Lambertesca and in the little church of San Stefano near it (just off the street), was plotted the murder of young Buondelmontc, that homicide that was so large a part of the beginning of the Guelph-Ghibelline war in Florence. Opposite the Lambertesca Tower is the picturesque tower of the Girolami, both of these antedating the days of Medicean rule. Turn into the Borgo SS. Apostoli, right, and follow along its dark, narrow way between continuous relics of the old palace- fortress days. Here are the old palace of the Altoviti (near the little church of SS. Apostoli in the Piazza del Limbo) and the Palazzo Borgherini (No. 15), containing some good pictures and bearing a relief of the Virgin and Child by Benedetto da Rovezzano on its angle-wall. In narrow streets near here, the Via delle Terme and others, are numerous remains of old and historic structures. We issue from the narrow Borgo SS. Apostoli into the always animated Piazza Santa Trinita. At our left is the Palazzo Salimbeni, and adjoining it Palazzo Buondelmontc with Miss Zimmern's beauti- ful roof-garden on its top. It faces the north wall of Palazzo Spini, whose south face is on the river. The short stretch of the Via Tornabuoni is almost entirely made up of old palaces refurbished and changed to suit the requirements of shopkeepers and clubmen. Along the river front, too. Lung' Arno Acciajuoli and Castles and Palaces 165 Lung' Arno CorsinI, running both ways from the bridge, is a whole line of palaces and historic houses turned into hotels and pensions. We cross the beautiful bridge and leave its south end between Palazzo Frescobaldi at the left and Palazzo Capponi on the right. The Capponi family has numerous claims to celebrity, but none more valid than old Pier Capponi's inspired reply to Charles VIII, who attempted to coerce the Florentine during a treaty conference by the threat: " Sign as I have dictated or we shall blow our trumpets." " And we, Sire, shall ring our bells." We turn sharply to the left into Borgo San Jacopo. Here is another line of mutilated old towers and palaces, including, on the right, Palazzo Rossi (corner of the Via Guicciardini) , Palazzo Ridolfo, Palazzo Belfredelli, and the tower of Palazzo Mar- sili opposite the church of San Jacopo. On the left are the towers of the Barbadori and Lotti and the Palazzo Corno with a fine fourteenth century court. From the Borgo San Jacopo we come into the noisy little piazza at the end of the Ponte Vecchio. Here in the corner of a house wall is a fountain above which Is the niche, now filled by a Bacchus, in which was the statue of Mars, at whose feet the murdered young Buondelmonte fell. Across the street, the Via Guicciardini, rises the old tower of Palazzo Mannelli "where Boccaccio frequently visited his friend and transcriber, Francesco de' Man- nelli." And here we enter the Via de' Bardi along i66 Castles and Palaces which are the remains of the many palaces and houses of this famous family and its retainers. A score or more were inhabited by the insolent Bardi at the time of the great uprising against them of the citizens; and the final sacking and burning of these palaces took place only after a prolonged and desperate struggle. The weak point in the Bardi's position was the swiftly rising hill behind them. It was from this dominating point that the besieging citizens finally made their successful assaults. The Via de' Bardi wanders on up the river to the Piazza Mozzi, on which lie the attractive old Mozzi palace and garden (No. 3) associated with much of the important history of the Guelph-Ghibelline strug- gle. Here also is the large Palazzo Torrigiani (No. 6). "It was the insult offered by Giuliano Sal- viati (son of Landomia dei Medici and intimate of Duke Alessandro) to Luisa Strozzi at a masked ball here in 1534 that began the feud between the Medici and Strozzi." Farther up the river rises the new Palazzo Ser- ristori. It is built upon the old one in which Mala- testa Baglione, the treacherous and compromising military chief of Florence at the time of the siege of the city by the Papal-Imperial army in 1530, had his headquarters. And with this egregiously new speci- men we may end our search for relics of those fierce proud days of embattled Florence in her towers and fortress-palaces. CHAPTER XIII STRAY PICTURES ON MONASTERY WALLS ONE may or may not have a fancy for hunting down stray pictures; peering at half-empty lunettes over doorways in dark alleys; inveigling an elusive caretaker to open a street-corner oratory so long closed that spiders have webbed its weathered shutters together; or finding a way to scattered chapels of old convents turned into hospitals or palaces made over into warehouses. This may all be very exciting and very good sport for some, for others no sport at all. One would think, perhaps, that a picture, not being four-legged like a fox, would need no special pursuing or persistence to trace to its hole and capture. My metaphor limps, for it is precisely when the fox gets into its hole that it doesn't get captured. However, with the stray picture it is different. With the help of Hare or Horner, or anybody else who has been there before, you locate it and go after it. It is there; it stays there all the time; but you come on the wrong day, or on the wrong hour of the right day, or you get drawn aside by a nearby tempting church, or a new shop for old brasses. You keep postponing 167 i68 Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls this simple, easy little thing for the sake of more Herculean tasks yet unfinished. But in persistence there is victory — and compensa- tion. For there is great reward, ofttimes, in the overtaking of the stray pictures in Florence. To find them all, however, would be an undertaking of many days; more days, certainly, than a merely temporary Florentine could give to it. So we may limit ourselves to those especially interesting ones to be found still in the place where they were first set; those frescoes that reverent hands put upon the walls of monasteries and convents. These pictures were the inspiration and the guide of the faithful; the perpetual reminder of the pain and joys of the devoted life. With the gradual taking over by the government of the monasteries and convents of Florence and their conversion into public offices, courts, hospitals, and barracks, many frescoed wall surfaces have been doomed to sudden destruction by wreckers and white- washers or to more gradual extinguishment by the dust and grime of neglect. The juxtaposition of ex- treme modernity and practicality with art and mystic piety which this modern use of the old mon- asteries brings about occasionally, is startling. A physician took me one day to the exceedingly up-to- date institute for phototherapy near the great hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. Here is installed a very elab- orate equipment for the treatment of certain malignant diseases by the application of Roentgen rays, Finsen light, high potential electric currents, and the like. And here also over a door in the little courtyard the white-aproned operator of electricity and Roentgen Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls 169 rays shows you with a curious apologetic smile, " if you have any interest in art, perhaps," a fading fresco of one of the Ghirlandajos! Often the conversion of the monasteries was so sudden and unlooked for that not even the removable art treasures could be saved. Thus is accounted for the sadly mutilated condition of the sculptures that one sees in the museums. A most pitiful and terrible example of this kind of disaster is afforded by those exquisite remnants in the Bargello of the reliefs that Benedetto da Rovezzano carved for ten years for the adorning of the tomb of S. Giovanni Gualberto. The artist was working in the Palazzo del Guarleone, outside the walls of the city, when the Papal-Imperial army encamped in the neighborhood to besiege Flor- ence. The palace was taken possession of for a temporary barracks by the imperial soldiers, who amused themselves by breaking off all the heads of the delicate little relief figures and finally by the total demolition of most of the results of the long labor. Perhaps most important and most interesting of these monastery frescoes are the four scattered cenacoli of Andrea del Sarto, Andrea Castagno, Domenico Ghirlandajo, and Raphael, respectively, and the pictures on the walls of San Marco. The Andrea del Sarto cenacolo in San Salvi only narrowly escaped destruction at the same time that Rovezzano's masterpiece was ruined. But its danger came from the Florentines themselves in their patriotic eager- ness to sacrifice all their own dwellings in the suburbs that might give shelter to the enemy. " On the lyo Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls 24th" (July, 1529), says Grimm in his *' Life of Michelangelo," " the destruction of the suburbs be- gan. The houses were broken down with battering- rams such as the ancients used; trees and underwood in the gardens were hewn down and manufactured into fascines. Houses, palaces, and churches fell to the ground. . . . The possessors of the buildings often helped most eagerly in their ruin. So thor- oughly did the spirit of freedom dwell in the mass of the people, and only in a few of the richest families was any resistance manifested to sacrificing what be- longed to them. " In this work of destruction there occurred one of those little natural marvels which witness to the power of art over men. A number of peasants and soldiers were engaged in demolishing the monastery of San Salvi. A part of the building lay already in ruins when they reached the refectory, where, as was usual, the Last Supper was painted on the large wall. This work, which is still standing at the present day on the half-destroyed walls, fresh and in good preser- vation, as if all had only just occurred, is a fresco painting of Andrea del Sarto, and is one of the finest things he has produced." Taking a tram (either for Settignano or for Rovez- zano) from the Duomo, one asks to be set off at the point nearest San Salvi. From here, with the grace- ful square campanile of the old church for guide, it is but a few rods to the little Piazza de San Salvi. The entrance to the refectory (the single word " cena- colo " spoken to any urchin in the piazza will pro- duce an instant guide) lies in the Via San Salvi a few Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls 171 steps from the piazza. You pass through a small garden, then a long corridor lined with numerous casts of the school of Canova, go through an anteroom containing a cast of Jacopo della Quercia's wonderful Ilaria Guinigl tomb in the cathedral of Lucca, and at last enter the fine old refectory room. The cena- colo covers one end wall and has over it a broad arch bearing frescoes of four saints and the Trinity. The picture is so fresh (only one small defacement, a blotch on the face of St. Simeon, mars it), and the colors are so vivid, that it is hard to realize the years that have passed since del Sarto worked here. The figures all show an unusual activity and grace. The Christ has just declared that he will be betrayed by one among them, whereupon three of the disciples have leaped to their feet, while all look and lean toward the Christ figure. St. John and St. James are on either hand of the central figure, St. John with a most beautiful face, and St. James with his hand on his breast, evidently much startled at hearing Christ's words. The quiet, restful, empty room, well lighted and of beautiful proportions, makes a fine setting for the expressive picture, and one may get an enjoyment here that great masterpieces, in their unnatural crowded setting In galleries, fail to give. Indeed, It Is under such circumstances as these that we come to realize how much we lose by being compelled to see pictures torn from their proper setting and jum- bled together In a great museum. The UffizI, says Maurice Hewlett, is a great shambles where 2,000 Madonnas are strangling 2,000 bimbif A cenacolo in a refectory can be a picture of power, even when 172 Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls done by a weak artist; so much does It gain In signifi- cance and message by Its setting. In quite another direction from the Duomo must we set out to run down our second quarry, the cena- colo of Andrea Castagno In the conv^ent of Sant' Apollonia (corner Via San Gallo and Via 27 Aprlle). Here Is a picture of curious realism. The painter has selected and closely followed Jewish models for the faces of his figures. Rugged, coarse, black- bearded Jews of the common people, typical Jews of the Ghetto, this peasant painter has set about the Holy Table. But there is great strength and serious- ness In the composition. Besides the cenacolo, the room (the old chapel hall of the convent) contains a number of Interesting frescoes removed here from a villa. They Include curious figures of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and certain famous Florentine warriors, notably the Ghlbelllne leader Farlnata degli UbertI, " savior of the city." More attractive are figures of the two Sibyls and Esther (half-length over the door). Above the cenacolo are the Crucifixion, Entombment, and Resurrection. The whole little chamber Is of exceeding Interest. In still another quarter of the city Is Domenico Ghlrlandajo's Last Supper (1400) In the old refec- tory in the cloisters of the church of Ognlssanti (enter at No. 34, Borgo Ognlssanti). The first Impres- sion, as one enters the long, rather low-celllnged room, is one of cheer and out-of-doorsness. The light, If the day Is bright, — and for the most pleasure from this picture a day of full sun should be chosen, — Is Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls 173 very good and makes the whole picture, with its richly laden fruit trees and flying birds and its cheer- ful coloring, seem a vista of some sweet garden. The supper scene Is of conventional type, the sleeping John fallen forward on the table and Judas sitting alone at the front. The faces are mostly full of interest, and a general animation pervades the whole group. Bread, wine, and cherries are on the stiffly-creased new table-cloth, and a peacock and dove look down on the scene from two upper narrow side windows cut in the thick wall. Very similar to this picture in composition and detail is that other one by the same master in the small refectory of the monastery of San Marco. Here, too, are the joyous cheer and light, the leaves and flowers and fruit and birds of a sub-tropical garden. And here again the peacock and dove look down in quiet wonder on the group at the long table. Even more decorative In treatment, although of very different manner, is that last cenacolo of our list in the old convent of San Onofrio, now partly a hospital and partly a sort of little dependence of the Uffizi Gallery. The picture has been variously attributed to Raphael, to Raphael and Perugino jointly, to Neri de BiccI, to Gerino da Pistoja, to Giannicola MannI, and to others. The sacristan, perhaps not a wholly disinterested critic, declares the three figures at the right end of the table and the single figure at the extreme left to be the work of Raphael, the others and the rest of the picture to be that of Perugino. On the yoke of the garment of one of these Raphael figures (the handsome St. Thomas) 174 Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls is an inscription to the effect that " Raphael did this." And, indeed, this St. Thomas and, perhaps, particu- larly St. James major (the end figure at the left), are figures distinctly in Raphael's manner. Joseph Hopital maintains stoutly that the whole work reveals itself by its character and technic to be unmistakably the work of Raphael. " That it was of Raphael," he says, " was not doubted by those who discovered it in 1845 under the soot which concealed it. And this M. Vitel has tried to prove in his ' I'^tudes sur I'Histoire de I'Art ' (T. Ill, Raphael a Florence). . . . But Italian erudition and German science have found this attribution too simple." All the disciples have golden glories and the ar- rangement is the conventional one. The coverings of the table and long seat have a decorative pattern, while above (behind) the supper table are numerous pillars with delicate tracery, among which appear vistas of garden and landscape. In the middle one of these spaces over the three central figures of the supper is a beautiful picture of the agony in the night at Gethsemane, with the disciples sleeping and an angel presenting the cup of bitterness to Christ. The whole picture produces an effect of decoration and delicate lightness of treatment which may to some detract from the seriousness of its significance. The small size of the figures at the supper table in proportion to the rest of the picture may, perhaps, add to this feeling of lack of dignity and seriousness. It is a decorative cenacolo as compared, for example, with the deadly serious one of Andrea Castagno in Sant' Apollonia. Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls 175 In the well-lighted room of this Cenacolo di Foligno are hung some fifty or more original draw- ings and engravings of other cenacoli, as well as some that were never carried beyond the first con- ception stage. They form an extremely interesting and valuable series for the student, as well as for the casual sightseer. These drawings, together with the various mostly undistinguished pictures on the walls of the anterooms and corridor, belong to the Uffizi collection, having come to it as a gift from the Fer- roni family. Among the pictures are two by Carlo Dolci, of which one is held to be in his best manner. Like the other monastery walls of Florence, those of historic Dominican San Marco belong no more to the monks, echo no more to the matin and vesper bells, the chant and response, the muttered mumbling of the hours. But unlike many of the others they do not serve to Inclose soldiers and horses, or courts of law or hospital wards. Their decorations are zealously guarded, the cloister gardens kept green and flowering, and as one strolls through room and corridor he may summon up. If the mind be well steeped in the lore of earlier times and the heart and Imagination sympathetic and lively, a most vivid picture; so responsive Is the atmosphere of those peaceful days and wild, when Fra Angelico painted and Savonarola prayed In San Marco's Inclosure. In many ways no more satisfying hours can be spent by the temporary Florentine than those given to the unhindered, quiet, almost solitary rambling through the arcades and halls of San Marco. The cloister gardens with their great tree and old well, the 176 Stray Pictures on Monastery Walls frescoed arcade walls, the gathered relics of Old Florence and its palaces, the marvelous Crucifixion in the chapter house, the cenacolo in the refectory, and that wonderful, great loft with its unique series of embellished cells under the bare, rough timbers and overlying tiles of the roof; and, fi- nally, everywhere the abiding and con- trasted presence of the peaceful, meek, consecrated painter monk and the vi- sion-driven, fanati- cal, trumpeting, doomed preacher monk : — sian monkish order. . The few white- . robed monks, last of nearly one hundred ^ that formerly lived here, whom the gov- ernment permits to finish their silent , lives in the monas- ' tery, serve as guides ; to the visitors, and ; help the imagination : in seeing the real i Certosa. They lead i one by devious ways i through church and cloisters, into small chapels, and along cool corridors, and into their own little rooms and gardens. There is much to see and a good deal g^jiuuC""' Certosa has "a beautiful cloister garden, with a fascinating stone well in its middle." San Miniato, Certosa, Sigiia 225 to feel. There are pictures and carved stalls; a beautiful cloister garden, with a fascinating stone wall in its middle; and always from the outer rooms the reaching views out over the Ema and its valley, and across it to distant hills and scattered villages. Of all the artistic treasures of the Certosa, easily first are the tomb reliefs of the Acciajuoli family in the church, and reputed to be the work of Andrea Orcagna and Donatello. It is the figure in low relief of Cardinal Agnolo Acciajuoli in the chapel of S. Andrea that is attributed to Donatello, while the four tombs of the founder, Niccolo; his son, Lo- renzo; his sister, Lapa (wife of Manente Buondel- monte), and his father, are attributed to Orcagna. The tombs are in excellent preservation, and the figures, especially those of Lorenzo and of the Car- dinal Agnolo, are admirable. The usual souvenir of the visit to the Certosa is a primitively patterned little jug of the special liqueur made in the monastery. This liqueur is less famous than that of the Peres Chartreux — and de- servedly so. If one wants it, however, it is to be got in the Farmacia. The most interesting guide among the few remaining monks is an Irishman, of clever brain and tongue. But there is hardly any one of these shuffling, white-robed guides but is en- tertaining. If one is of an adventurous spirit, and would get a little beyond the obligatory sights, he can find opportunity and reward in plenty for indulging this impulse by pushing out a little farther into the coun- 226 Outside the Walls try. Not very far beyond the Certosa, two or three miles, perhaps, is an objective point for a day's out- ing. This is Impruneta, a village of pottery work- ers and contadini, with a famous old square-towered church that houses a few very precious religious and artistic relics. The religious relic beyond price is a miracle-working Madonna figure, always heavily veiled, that issues in holy procession whenever there is a plague to stop in Florence or roundabout. The art relics are certain very beautiful works of the della Robbias. Impruneta is on the high bounding hill range south of Florence. From our roof-terrace we see it on all clear days, a spot hovered over by the smoke of its potteries, and marked by a single tall, square tower cutting the horizon. The village seems to nestle in a shallow pass in the hill-crest, and always had for us someway an alluring invitation to visit it. And the day came when we responded to this call. It is a day we shall not forget for its country scenes and simple, cheerful people, singing in their vineyards and along their fragrant lanes. By tram to Tavernuzze, which is beyond the Cer- tosa, and then by a little diligence, or on foot, up a long, winding way among the hill-slope vineyards. Men, women, and children were gathering the last of the grapes, and slow, white oxen were hauling the bigonie and casks to the wine-sheds. A frag- mentary chapel on a nearby dominating hilltop was pointed out as the last remnant of a once powerful stronghold of the robber-baron Buondelmonte fam- ily. Perched above the valley road leading from San Miniato, Certosa, Signa 227 Rome and Siena, these gentlemen highwaymen levied toll on all passersby, and only gave up their lucra- tive profession on the insistent request of a Floren- " Slow, white oxen were hauling the bigonie and casks to the wine-sheds." tine army. By the terms of their capitulation with honor, they were to remove to Florence and live under the regardful eye of authority, although with 228 Outside the Walls full freedom and princely standing. They soon came to be one of the most powerful families of the Florentine self-knighted nobility. It was the murder of a light-worded Buondelmonte at the foot of the Mars statue at one end of Ponte Vecchio that set all the Florentines at work fighting each other, as Guelphs and Ghibellines. In Impruneta village itself, a village dating from Etruscan and Roman times, and that has become, because of its wonder-working Madonna image, a famous pilgrim center, the chief objective point is the old church, large for the little town, but not for the great open square on which it faces. The church, which boasts an eleventh century founda- tion, was built about as it stands now by a repentant Buondelmonte, in the sixteenth century. Within it are a few examples of the work of Luca and Andrea della Robbia, in their simpler, purer manner, as fine as may be found anywhere. They include a taber- nacle or shrine, flanked on cither side with large figures of Saints Augustine and John the Baptist, and with a predella below of wonderfully graceful and beautiful flying angels. The very expressive Crucifixion that was originally within the frame of the shrine has been replaced by a piece of the True Cross, guarded by iron doors, and has been put in the adjoining chapel to the right. At the left of the nave is the chapel of the hidden Madonna, and this also is adorned by the handicraft and genius of the della Robbias. There are two large figures of St. Paul and St. Luke, and a colored ceiling and frieze. The chapels themselves are perhaps the San Miniato, Certosa, Signa 229 work of MIchelozzo, the favorite architect of Co- simo de' Medici. We saw some other objects of interest in the church: a beautiful carved singing gallery, a crucifix by Giambologna, and in the nave and sacristy cer- tain pictures of interest to students. But we were of mind to get out again into the open air; into the piazza where old women and young women and children and babies were placidly weaving straw hats; where the white oxen were slowly dragging their laden carts of half-crushed grapes spreading the vintage odor in all the air. We bought some grapes and radishes to add to our lunch basket, and went a little way up into the pine wood that presses to the very edge of the village. It is, indeed, from this pine wood, that in old days covered all the hills hereabout, that Impruneta gets its name through the rather extraordinary corruption of Pineta. Then we came into the village again, and had coffee in a little cafe garden, where laden fig-trees dripped their sweet juice, and even let fall their golden fruit, ripe to bursting, on to our very table. Then we wandered on, buying some little donkey bells for souvenirs, and started fairly on our home- ward way, only to be attracted by a roadside villa with a great hill-slope garden that was too inviting to pass without trying for permission to explore it. But certainly, the forestieri might come in and see not only the park, but the villa itself, and the monkeys of the padrone, and everything, for the padrone was in England, and had left express word that inquiring strangers were to be made welcome ! 230 Outside the Walls And so we did see It all — a curious villa home of a wealthy bachelor, crowded with pick-me-ups of every sort, from sword-fish saws to valuable-looking old books In the crowded library. And live monkeys and cockatoos, and a wonderful bathing pavilion, mostly decoration and smoking loggia, and with con- m«s* "A cabbage bed, with beautiful great pottery vases set about in it." siderably less than luxurious bathing facilities. And lastly, a cabbage bed, with beautiful great pottery vases set about In It, the most ornamental cabbage bed one could ever hope to see. Then on down the winding way, the beautiful hill-slope way, towards the Via Romana. Sweep- ing views of Arno valley, of red-gray Florence and her background hills. We ate grapes as we walked and figs when we rested. We passed a little church that must have been worth entering, but it was too San Miniato, Certosa, Signa 231 fine outside. And we came to the great villa of the Antinore family, Villa Rose, but we preferred to walk steeply on down its magnificent avenue of cy- presses than to try for admission and curiosity-hunt- ing. Finally, even in the Via Romana tram, there was interest. The prideful owner of an enormous bunch of grapes hung it so conspicuously to the over- head hand-rail that the good-natured dogana officer at the Florence gate simply had to take cognizance of it and charge its indignant owner one soldo for octroi ! Another objective point for a day's outing with a little tramping in it is Signa and its nearby coun- try. It is easily reached by tram, or by the Florence- Empoli railway line. The tramping comes in con- nection with a visit to Malmantile, the curious forti- fied village or great unroofed stockade-like castello, which crowns a hilltop on the old highway from Florence to Pisa. Signa to-day is primarily a place of straw-hat plaiting; in old days it seems to have been mostly given over to fighting and burning and pillaging. No Florence visitor but gets to know the straw hats of Signa; the great piles of them in the Mer- cato Nuovo — pale blue, rose, green, white, and just straw color, and so light and flexible and durable, and with it all so cheap. Not, indeed, that all " Leghorn " hats come from Signa, but many do, while most of the others come from any of a dozen other Tuscan villages, rather than from Livorno on the sea. After the harvest, the commonest of all 232 Outside the Walls village and country-road sights Is the constant, un- regarded, automatic shuffling and bending of the little straws In the hands of the women and girls. They plait as they walk along the road or sidewalk, as they gossip and laugh with each other, as they sit in reverie in chairs before the house doors. Un- der one arm is the bundle of prepared straws, under the other the coiled-up, long " string " or braid of already plaited straw, and in the two hands held together the growing end of this braid, with Its bobbing, bending tuft of separate straws. There are usually from four to six straws in the tuft, but the old women handle even eight or nine. There are shops or factories, too, where long rows of ex- pert workers sit the days through turning out meters and meters of the straw braid, ready for winding and sewing together into soft flat hats. In the Mer- cato Nuovo the hats are mostly of two kinds; one thin, and nearly transparent, made of stiff, gauze- like stuff, and the other thicker, heavier, made of braided straw. The gauzy ones can be put on top of the thicker ones, so that your garden hat may really consist of two hats, one fitting closely on top of the other. Signa has been the center of the Tuscan straw hat-making since very early times. But our interest in those early times concerns itself more with Signa's fighting and castle building than with her more com- monplace industry. As a sort of outer stronghold of Florence, a buffer between her and Pisa, Signa had more than her fair share of battling in the lively days of Guelph and Ghibelline. Florence got hold of San Miniato, Certosa, Signa 233 Signa in the twelfth century, and began an intermit- tent castle building and fortifying. In the thirteenth century John Hawkwood, fighting for Pisa, captured Signa, and in the fourteenth century Florence lost the city again to the famous Lucchese leader, Castruccio Castracani. She soon regained it, however, only to have it again captured and sacked by that indefatiga- ble mercenary, Hawkwood. With the beginning of the fifteenth century Signa finally came to some de- gree of rest, remaining permanently in the hands of the Republic. Of the castles and fortifications built up and torn down, and built up again, in those earnest days, the most impressive remains are the great wall and gates of Lastra a Signa, which are, indeed, alone im- pressive enough to repay one for the excursion. In Lastra, too, is a beautiful fifteenth century loggia (di Sant' Antonio, under the theater), along with various other architectural bits of interest. In Signa itself (Ponte a Signa) there are some remnants of the old castle and fortifications on the hill or bluff that rises sharply above the river. And the bridge, several times partly destroyed and rebuilt, the last time in quite modern days, can serve well as a point d'appui for the imagination that would picture the moving scenes of Signa in the centuries gone. The road to Malmantile is uphill and winding. It takes off to the left just where one starts to leave Lastra a Signa for Ponte a Signa, and follows up a little stream that, in escaping from the hills, has cut for itself a picturesque ravine. A man in shoot- ing coat started up the ravine just as we did, and 234 Outside the Walls it was our misfortune to have to witness his prowess among the poor frightened hedge-sparrows, that seem to be the Italian sportsman's prey. If, indeed, he had only been a true sportsman and kept to wing shots! But not at all; he used his shotgun like a rifle, aiming carefully at each pitiful little bunch of feathers huddling among the foliage. No other civilized country in the world, unless it be Japan, has been so recklessly regardless of its song-birds, so brutally complete in its approximate extermination of them. In these days, however, there is a strong and growing sentiment, cultivated by an energetic society of nature lovers, making toward preservation of the bird remnants. And so persistent are the songsters in their love of Italy's blue skies and soft airs, that, in spite of their centuries of persecution, they seem ready with the slightest encouragement to restock the coverts and hedge-rows and fields, and to make Italy the land of bird song it ought in all fitness to be. Climbing out of the ravine, our way took us up an open hill-slope, and, after an hour's walking, to Mahnantilc. It was a good day to be out, clear for the long views and warm for the quiet restings by the roadside. Some grapes were still hanging, but the pickers had abandoned the vineyards, so that all was still in them except for the few, the alto- gether too few, staccato bird chirps, Malmantile was an amazing place to enter. It was a veritable walled-in city, or rather not a city but the smallest sort of village, a hamlet of poor little houses, with one street, and no shops. Soon we realized that it San Miniato, Certosa, Signa 235 had been originally, in truth, no fortified town, no walled village, but simply a great, unroofed, square castello — a castello all walls and wall-towers, but without banqueting halls and living-rooms — just a walled camp. The walls themselves, intact in all their extent, except for the two open gateways, are not so in their height. They have been cut off, broken off, at the top, for several meters. Here and there they are evidently nearly of their original height, for the expanded upper courses appear. They are massive, immense, and impressive. The hamlet they inclose is most abject — dilapi- dated huts, decrepit barnyard beasts, apathetic peo- ple. What an odd heritage of war and days of glory is theirs! And what a marvel of reaching view of distant hills and placid valley stretches they have from the crest of their crumbling walls ! But this heritage means nothing to them; this scenery of Umbrian hills does nothing to fill their hungry mouths. Want blinds their eyes to beauty and chokes any curiosity to know the story of past days. Malmantile's walls to-day are a sort of dust of Caesar that stops the wind away from these poor Tuscan sons. CHAPTER XVII THE STREETS YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY TO say that much of the life of a people can be seen in the streets of its cities is to utter a familiar truism. But this truism is particularly true of the Italian people, and even more particularly if the streets are those of Naples. In those crowded, clamorous, narrow rampc that climb steeply up from the Via Roma to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele there is little of the private life of their inhabitants that is left to the imagination. But no Italian city or town but has its characteristic and revealing streets, in which the people carry on openly many of their personal affairs. In Florence the streets have a very distinctive color and atmosphere, and expose, even to the most casual onlooker, much of the special character of the work and play of the present-day Florentines. But to the attentive and persistent observer they do even more. For there are in these streets still some of the echoes and subtle fragrance of the old splen- did days of artist, poet, warrior, and merchant noble. Here an old palace w'all of great blocks of rough- 236 The Streets 237 hewn stone, or a square machicolated tower; there a carved stone doorway or window frame, or a fan- tastic wrought-iron fanale on an angle wall, or fading Madonna and Child in a shrine in a wall niche; and everywhere the set-in carved stemmi of guild and noble families. All these architectural relics tell their bits of story. And if the observant wanderer be in- terested enough, and in- formed somewhat, he can make of all these bits a mosaic background of the Florentine life of yesterday, against the dull glow of whose ancient but enduring pigments the garish colors of the life-picture of to-day will both contrast and harmonize. An element in the street pictures of Florence, and one quite lacking in the other larger cities of Italy, is the bounding of almost every perspective by the background of green hill-side; the silvery sheen of breeze-swept olive orchard, the distant white spots, black-girdled, of villas set in cypress gardens. Flor- ence is not a village inclosed in a field or garden, but neither is it a great city that shuts out all the world of Nature. Its hills lift above it on every side, except down Arno, with their slopes starting A torch socket on ace wall. a pal- 238 The Streets ' swiftly up from almost every point of its margin. Its streets all end in winding ways among these hills. All this puts into the street pictures of Florence some- thing which lends them a beauty and a character that is their most unforgettable part. And it is a part which has a significance that must not be overlooked in any attempt to picture old Florence. For these hills and gardens and villas ' and nearby villages had their important place in the life of the Florence of the Medici. How many of ■ these hill-slopes, and how much of this verdure, does i one see in the paintings and frescoes of the Floren- ■ tine masters? How often is Fiesole on her hill the village in the background? And how many of these very villas and gardens were the favorite homes of the merchant nobles and the haunts of the artists and poets, whose names are the chapter titles in the - story of old Florence? Florentine life of yesterday, like that of to-day, must be looked at through sun- : shot air against blue sky, green slopes of olive and grape, and overflowing gardens of rose and jas- mine, surrounded by the dark cypress towers of silence. It is hard to know how best to see the streets of ' Florence and their sights. Shall one set to work ■ systematically with map and guide-book in hand and - hunt, first of all, for relics of the old days? If so, • there is a little paper-covered book of a hundred I pages, called " Firenze Scomparsa," that will help much in the search for the scattered remnants of the Florence that is gone. This book is written by ' Cav. Guido Carocci, who evidently knows and loves The Streets 239 his old Florence, A translation under the title of " Bygone Florence " has been pubHshed. Or shall " literary landmarks " be the first game? If so, Laurence Hutton's book is the standard guide. It is complete and interesting, and undoubtedly as accurate as such a book can be. Or, finally, shall the newest things come first? Shall the Florentine life of to-day, the life of the city Tuscans and their visitors from all the world first have one's eyes? If so, then there is, indeed, no guide but the color and hum of the streets them- selves to lead one to the best adventure. We had deserted our hill-side villino for a town stay one week, and took the opportunity for some special visits to the streets. One morning we left our hotel before breakfast, and went to have our coffee on the sidewalk in the Piazza Vittorio Emanu- ele. The florid new buildings surrounding the piazza were no less uninteresting by morning twi- light than they are at other times. But the life was very different from that more familiar, leisurely one of the five o'clock hour, when the cafes are full and overflowing. The people of early morning were all moving. Little red and blue and green and yellow carts, heaped with flowers or vegetables or fruits or growing plants, were following microscopic donkeys at all angles across the place. Most of them were plainly converging on the entrance to the Via Call- mara, which leads to the Mercato Nuovo. It was a Thursday morning In early November, which means that It was flower market time. We gulped our good Gambrlnus coffee, for we wanted to follow 240 The Streets the carts. But hot coffee enforces a certain leisure- liness, and we had time to try and reconstruct back- wards the ugly gray stucco stretch of modernity along the west face of the piazza. It was here and near by that some of the most interesting part of old Florence stood. Indeed, here was the center of the ancient Roman city that was the first Florence, the Florence of twenty-five cen- turies ago. The forum was near the corner of Via degli Speziali, and near by were superb mosaic- floored therma?, whose vestiges can be seen now in the Archeological Museum. Fifteen feet below the present ground surface were found the old street pavements, with the wheel ruts still visible, and the relics of waterpipes, sewers, and well. On the ruins of Roman Florence rose medieval Florence. The Old Market was its center of life. About it were the fortress palaces of the great fami- lies, above which rose the forest of towers that must have been the most striking thing in any view of the Florence of that day. " Attached to the palaces and towers were the Moggie' (or verandas), which were of characteristic significance, being symbol and proof of the nobility and power of those families that owned them — they were the frame of all that was most brilliant and gay in the life of those days, and took the place of the ball-room and reception- room of to-day. During the balmy summer even- ings friends and relations met and whiled away the starry hours with conversations, songs, and music. Betrothals and marriages were discussed and ar- ranged in the midday hours. The May-time festi- The Streets 241 vals were celebrated here, and repasts and banquets freely given, the public looking on with respect. For constant use of the ' loggie ' by the patricians had rendered them almost sacred, so that they even be- came haunts of refuge in times of dread." (Carocci.) With the growth of the Old Market and the crowding in and about it of the Jewish vendors, the noble families emigrated and the Jews took gradual possession of the palaces and towers, making honey- comb of them for the hiv- ing of their increasing thou- sands. The Ghetto was crowded and dirty, but it was at least picturesque. What has succeeded it Is cleaner without doubt. It is also undeniably ugly. It may well be that cleanliness must have precedence of picturesqueness. But it was not necessary in order to establish this precedence to destroy with ruthless icono- clastic hand every trace, almost, of the great treas- ure of wall-painting, stone-carving, and sculptured wood that gathered in the crowded, dirtied old pal- aces. There was such salvage possible there as would have given Florence another priceless center of art relics. But Florence in its third period pre- Giovanni da " devil of the Vecchio." Bologna's Mercato 242 The Streets ferred to forget Its parent of the Renaissance and grandparent of the Roman emperors. A Httle cart came by that was carrying a veritable forest In miniature, and then another that seemed all aflame; and we followed them. The Mercato " The Mercato Xuovo, where the big bronze boar keeps guard." Nuovo, where the big bronze boar keeps guard, was of a bustle Indescribable. Where other days In the week it is a quiet market of straw hats and silk shawls — In winter woolen crocheted ones — on Thursday mornings It Is a crowded, odorous, chat- tering flower market. The " little people " of the country-side bring their little treasures of blossom and greenery in little carts of littlest donkeys. Each has a place by a column's foot, and around him he groups his ofterlngs : the products of his own loving care. It Is no big, gorgeous affair, like the Paris flower market, but it is an intensely human and per- The Streets 243 sonal offering of beauty and affection. On this par- ticular morning of ours it was mostly an azalea show, and the dwarf bushes in pots, with their burden of color, were crowded as thickly as possible over all the floor of the great loggia. At noon the market takes out its luncheon and feeds itself. People and donkeys eat side by side. Indeed, the public lunching of the common people is one of the characteristic street scenes of Florence. In the Piazza del Duomo we saw one day a delight- ful lunch party, sitting and kneeling about a scarlet horse-blanket spread out on the street pavement. Cabby's wife had brought the lunch basket and had emptied it on the scarlet cloth under the warm sun of noon. On one corner of the cloth was carefully placed cabby's shabby top hat; on another the bottle of red wine, while the bread and cheese arranged themselves conveniently to the hands of cabby, cabby's wife and little girl, and cabby's horse-feeder. Over their heads the gaunt cab horse, crested with the cock's feathers that keep off the evil eye, swung his great nose bag, from which he munched his own luncheon of hay. The feeding and watering of the horses and wash- ing of the cabs are an affair that gives special employ- ment to three or four boys or men at each cab rank. Each has a little pile of hay, and a water-pail, easily refilled from the nearest street fountain. As the cabs drive up for their noon rest they are at once taken possession of by these thrifty lads, who earn a few sous from each lordly driver sitting aloft, while his horse and vehicle are cared for. 244 The Streets All manner of Florentines eat in the street. It is like the four o'clock pains chauds habit of the Parisians. There are booths, where all day long in the autumn especially, hot chestnuts, hot boiled potatoes, or cornmeal cakes dropped into boiling oil, are vended. Hot doughnuts, two for three soldi, and waffles and segments cut out of flat, thin, brown chestnut pies, two feet in diameter, are in great de- mand. In the shops at noon everybody is munch- ing. Sometimes they retire to a back room, but as often not. In the dark caverns of carbone shops, into which the hindered daylight comes only enough to distinguish moving blackness from stationary blackness, I have seen the coaled imps cramming down their smudgy bread and cheese with a most cheerful disregard for the mineral condiment. And it was always fascinating to watch a whole wood- working shop at luncheon — a happy, chafling com- pany of master workmen and apprentices squatting together in the shavings. At noon, too, one sees most abundantly the little baskets going up and down from street to windows, high up in the tower-like tenements, bearing eggs, bread, snails, bottles of wine, a newspaper, anything, indeed. The streets are busiest, of course, in certain places and at certain times. On Fridays the Piazza Signoria and adjoining streets (Via Calzalaio, Via della Condotta, Via dei Lamberti) are filled with violently talking and gesticulating men. They are traders, mostly from the nearby country and vil- lages, and this is a sort of weekly curb exchange. The Streets 245 In winter-time many of these traders carry green umbrellas, and wear heavy terra-cotta colored coats, with wide fur collars and cuffs — a striking sort of uniform of the soil. They strike hands over a completed trade, and crowd into Paoli's and Lapi's Housetops and chimney-pots. restaurants to further seal their agreements over good wine and food. Every fine afternoon, and especially Sundays, the Lung' Arno from Ponte Santa Trinita to the Cascine, and the park itself, are crowded with the carriages of the aristocrats. There is also a plentiful sprin- kling always of the hired cabs of the simpler citizens and tourists. It is the Florentine Corso. The reference to the tourists suggests a feature of modern Florentine life that can by no means be overlooked — even by the tourist himself. Florence is enormously visited. And being a city of only moderate size, this visitation is readily apparent. 246 The Streets There are three distinct tourist seasons connected by httle parties of irregulars that come dropping in all through the year. The old idea that Italy in summer is simply a hot, steamy pest-hole of malaria and misery has been largely dissipated, thanks to modern science and the safe-returning of a number of summer-vacationing teachers. In fact, summer is now a special tourist season — a season largely of caravans of women school-teachers, who do not in- terest the shopkeepers of the Ponte Vecchio and Lung' Arno much. And yet they make alto- gether a good many two-lire purchases. But the big shops are mostly closed; the shopkeepers, and much of the shop stuff, spend the summer in Lucerne. The principal tourist season is that of the early spring. Then the Via Tornabuoni and the hotel and pension district, along the Arno clear down to the Cascine, is one procession and murmur of familiar faces and nasal " all rights." Then the shops do business. Again, in the autumn there is a reinvasion. So many tourists come south for the winter — Florence, Siena, Rome, all have their full Anglo-American winter colonies. And the growing custom of going to Europe by the northern steamers and coming home by the southern ones (Genoa, Naples), or vice versa, gives Italy its full share now of the whole great host of annual American visitors. One summer afternoon at the Gambrlnus, when the sun and siesta were having their way with most, we were roused from our own half-dozing dawdling The Streets 247 over our after-luncheon coffee by a whirl of the piazza pigeons, and then the fluttering down near us of seven little school-teachers, each with a serious face, a small camp-stool, and a guide-book. They had made a triumphant morning, but now the churches were closed on them, and hunger and ex- haustion could be reckoned with. How hard they were taking it, and how absolutely faithfully to their red-backed taskmaster ! But how happily, and with what a realizing sense of dreams come true ! The summer represented the saving and planning of years; every day, every hour, must make its rich repayment. Their chirpings and bobbings to the quick-witted, politely impertinent waiter, their gur- glings over the cool Italian sorbetti, their intense adding and counting of the soldi, their grudging but over-generous determination of the tips, and their final swift scurrying off with waving camp-stools, and guide-books — it was all the perfectness of how we do it. But if we are good seeing for the Italians, so are they for us. A day and evening of festa, with the spectacular Masses in the churches, the processions in the streets, and the fireworks at night from Ponte Carraja or San Miniato hill, and a big band concert under all the silent, stone Florentine notables in the Court of Honor of the Uffizi — that is all good seeing. The festa of San Giovanni Battista, which I have told something of in another chapter, is the biggest of all the religious festivals — unless it is that Saturday before Easter, when the dove issues from the Duomo 248 The Streets and lights the fireworks car from the sacred PazzI fire. At 8.30 in the morning of this day there is Mass and communion at Santi Apostoli, after which comes the striking together of the sacred stones, supposed to have been brought by a Pazzi from the Holy Land. Priests and choir boys were greatly excited during the performance we saw, although there was no particular ritual about it. The stones were simply rubbed together by a priest until a little flame came; then two candles were lighted from this flame, and were placed in closed lanterns, which were carried in solemn procession through the streets to the Duomo. Any person might stop the procession to light his candle, join it, and give lights to others. The procession entered through the large portal, and the two candles in the lanterns were blessed at the first, holy water font at the right of the entrance. The large candles of the Duomo's altar were then lighted from the little lanterns, and High Mass was said by the Archbishop of Florence. At noon ex- actly, the dove lighted by a sacred candle was sent sliding along a wire from the altar to the fireworks car outside the main portal. The car had been dragged in that morning from the Porto Prato by four white oxen. As the flaming dove touched the fuse in the car the fireworks began to explode. It was then dragged to the densely crowded Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, where it was surrounded and acclaimed by the multitude and more fireworks were set off. All the people of the city attend this cele- bration — a very good-natured, although excited, The Streets 249 crowd. The inevitable accident came last year, when a little girl and a woman were killed and sev- eral others were wounded by the fireworks in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. This may mean some modification of the celebration for the future. The festa of San Lorenzo is celebrated chiefly by a High Mass in San Lorenzo church and a " free day " for the new sacristy and Medici chapel. It results in a rabble and rout all through and about the church. It is the most perfunctory and irrever- ent religious performance that Florence has annually to offer. Of secular festivals, one of the best observed is the 20th of September, the anniversary of the storm- ing of the Porta Pia at Rome and the consequent uniting of all Italy, The streets are crowded all day, and bells ring with great enthusiasm for morn- ing, noon, and evening. A curious sort of free-for- all running race takes place. Sixty-nine young men made the race when we saw it. It is sport for all, the sort of thing some of us Americans, sick of our over-trained, over-glorified, club and collegiate ath- letics are crying aloud for. But there is another side of it. Here are soft shop clerks, weak-hearted ofl&ce men, without any preparation or preliminary physical examination, running their hearts out in one single annual violent over-exertion. Still Italy's Pietro Dorando, the baker's assistant, Marathon wonder of 1908, is a graduate of this sort of athletic school. We had one day a festa in our own village, Settignano. The singing club of the town, the Phil- harmonica, took advantage of some convenient minor 250 The Streets \ church festival to institute a festa, whose receipts shouldgo to getting new uniforms for the club. There was an exhibition of marble- and stone-cutting in the daytime, with singing by the club, and in the evening ' grand illumination of the main street and church 1 piazza by hundreds of little red and yellow lamps, ^ that were simply small jelly tumblers of oil with floating wicks. The street buzzed with Settignanesc and contadini families from the poderi round about. There were hot waffles for a soldo each; and tiny < cornucopias of sorbetto for another soldo. The band | played, the Philharmonica sang, and at the end there were very good fireworks. The Italians go in for : fireworks. They make most ingenious rockets and ] candles and mines, and set pieces of much intricacy, ^ and they let them off with good judgment. ' Outside of festa days Florence is not particularly I animated at night. There are band concerts in the piazzas, to be sure, and always a lively crowd at the Gambrinus, where a feeble orchestra plays, j There is not very much attraction for foreigners in ^ the way of play and opera. Italy, with all its sing- 1 ing, does not support good concert and opera houses , with anything like the generosity of the Germans and Parisians. Moving picture shows and cheap vaude\ille do better. In Florence the two or three theaters are open ^ irregularly, depending on traveling companies of players or singers to fill them occasionally for a few ' weeks at a time. The custom still prevails of get- , ting two separate tickets, at two separate prices, for ) one's admission and seat. Except when an unusual The Streets 251 artist is playing or singing the prices are low. The audience Is more likely to be made up of middle-class and artisans than of aristocrats, except when some special performance Is worked up as a social occa- sion. Then there is grand opera dressing, and a good deal of fuss and feathers generally. Other times the people stroll in in street costume, smoke between acts, and enjoy themselves naturally. They hiss the villain — one night in Roberto Bracco's patriotic " Romantkismo " they would hardly let him finish his praise of Austria — and they call aloud to the tenor or soprano as he or she reaches the high note. The bravos Invariably drown the climax. But you can always see a climax in an Italian theater, even if you can't hear It. Along the Arno line of hotels two or three bands of street singers with guitars and mandolins make their pilgrimages every night. Each has a male falsetto singer. One of these falsettos in particular has become known to thousands of tourists for his extraordinary woman's voice. You wrap up a few soldi In white paper and drop them from your win- dow into the street. Late at night, when all else Is still, you begin to realize how many clock towers there are in Florence. Eighty-four strokes of varied loudness and tone are a few more than is necessary to announce midnight. But a resident in almost any Arno hotel can hear the hours from seven different towers. Almost all the rambling notes of this chapter so far have been of Florence to-day. However, most of the rest of the book tells of finding the bequests 2^2 The Streets and relics of her yesterdays. But almost nowhere in it have I set down as yet any " literary landmarks," none, that is, of post-Renaissance litterateurs. This has been done once for all by Laurence Hutton, and it is to him that one must go for real guidance. Just by way of lending point to this recommendation, I confess to filching from him half of the following score of finger-posts. Of Florentines, Dante lived (perhaps!) in No. 2, Via San Martino, near the Duomo. And he sat (perhaps!) on the forerunner of the now modernized " Dante seat " of the Piazza del Duomo. Savonarola preached in the Duomo and the church of San Marco. He lived in San Marco monastery; was imprisoned in the Palazzo Vecchio; spent his last night in the Hall of the Consiglio (Sala dei Cinque Centi) ; and was hanged and burned at the spot in the Piazza della Signoria now marked by a plate. Michelangelo was nursed in the Villa Buonarotti (near Settignano), and had for study the closet-room now shown in his house on the Via Ghibellina. Galileo lived for some years in No. 3, Costa San Giorgio (south side of Arno). He died at No. 23, Via del Piano di Giullare, the Villa Galileo. Milton visited him here in 1638, and probably again in 1639. Machiavelli lived and died in No. 16, Via Guic- ciardini, on the south side of Arno, near the Ponte Vecchio. Opposite Machiavelli's house is that of the famous historian, Francesco Guicciardini. The Streets 253 Alfierl lived and died in the Palazzo Masetti, No. 2, Lung' Arno Corsini, near Ponte Santa Trinita. Amerigo Vespucci was born and lived in the house at No, 18, Borgo Ognissanti, now occupied by a hospital founded by him. Among the famous temporary or permanent lit- erary expatriates who have landmarks in Florence, the Brownings lived in Casa Guidi, in the Piazza Santa Felicita (corner Via Maggio, near south end of Ponte Vecchio). Mrs. Browning wrote "Casa Guidi Windows" and "Aurora Leigh" here; and died in this house in 1861. Nathaniel Hawthorne came to Florence in May, 1858, and lived first in Casa Bella, No. 124, Via de' Serragli (near the Torrigiani Gardens). In Au- gust he moved out to Villa Montaiito, on Bellos- guardo. George Eliot and George Lewes came in May, i860, and lived first in the Pension Suisse, No. 13, Via Tornabuoni. T. A. Trollope and mother came in 1843, ^^^ lived in a house next to the east end of Santa Croce church. Later, after marrying Theodosia Garrow in 1848, Trollope moved to the Villa Trollope on the Piazza Indipendenza (now a well-known pen- sion, that makes much of the building's literary asso- ciations). After the death of his wife, Trollope moved to No. 41, Via del Ponte a Ema, out beyond Porto San Niccolo. Walter Savage Landor lived for years in Villa Landor, bought by him in 1829. He entertained many English literary men in this handsome villa 254 The Streets on the Fiesolean hill-side. After his death it was bought by Professor Willard Fiske, the Dante scholar and collector. Landor died (1864), "ot in the villa, but in poor quarters at No. 93, Via della Chiesa. Mrs. Jameson made many visits to Florence, and in 1857 seemed to be living in No. 92, Via Maggio. Dickens described, in 1845, looking down on Florence and the villas from Fiesole; probably from the low-walled terrace just below the Franciscan con- vent. Fcnimore Cooper was in Florence in 1837-38, but his residence is not known. Charles Lever came in 1847 ^"^ lived several years in Villa San Leonardo, on Via San Leonardo, beyond Porta San Giorgio. Lowell lived in Casa Guidi for some time, and later ( 1874) he stayed a little while in the Hotel del Nord. Bryant stayed at the Hotel New York in 1858. Thomas Gray and Horace Walpole visited Sir Horace Mann in 1739-40 probably on the Lung' Arno, between the Ponte Vecchio and the Ponte Santa Trinita. Smollett, in 1765, "lodged at Widow Vinini's on Arno." Byron was in Florence one day in 18 17, his first visit, and again for a short time in 1821 with Samuel Rogers. He left no footprints. Leigh Hunt came to Florence in 1827 and stayed at No. 2 or 4 in Via delle Belle Donne (near Via Tornabuoni), and later in the Piazza Santa Croce, The Streets 255 in the corner house (Nos. 14 to 17), on the left side of it, next the church. He later went out to Maiano to live, and here Hazlitt visited him. Longfellow lived, in 1828, in a house on the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, close to the church. In 1868 he lived on Lung' Arno, near the Ponte Vecchio. Mark Twain lived, in 1892-93, in the Villa Vivi- ani, near Settignano. He finished " Pudd'nhead Wilson " here. In the English cemetery are buried Mrs. Brown- ing, Landor, A. H. Clough, Theodore Parker, and both of Trollope's wives. As one wanders the streets in search of these houses where men and women of note have lived, the eyes will continually fasten on interesting things. One will note the Dante inscriptions put up every- where over the city; the Michelangelo "kneeling windows " with their graceful outward curve of flat iron bars that let the inmates survey all the street up and down and underneath them. Swift glimpses through great iron gates reveal the luxuriant court- yards within great houses, and high overhead green branches peer over>'the roofs from the house-top gar- dens. Old Florence, too, will be catching the eyes often by means of an old carved portal or worn window- casing, a wall angle oratorio, or a wrought-iron fanale or torch socket. And oftenest of all, by the coats-of-arms, or stemmi, carved in stone and set into the house-walls over entrances, or high up under the eaves, or more conspicuously on the 256 The Streets wall angles. In the cloister arcades of San Marco monastery, or in the rooms of the Archeological Mu- seum in Via della Colonna, one can get acquainted with the stemmi of the guilds and the great Flor- entine families; the balls of the Medici, the three daggers of the Rucellai, the rearing lion of the Du- v^anzatl, the bees of the Pazzi, the great hound creature of the Altoviti, and all the rest. With this knowledge one can go into the streets and people palace after palace and house after house with the families of Old Florence. Everywhere the six (or more or fewer) balls of the Medici appear. In fact, the more you see of Florence, the more you see the mark of the Medici over it all. They seem to have lived in every house of note; or to have built it or burnt it or done some- thing to it. Over the whole city flits the haunting ghost of this extraordinary fam- ily. I say " ghost " of the family, for it is only with some study that certain in- dividuals of it come to dis- sociate themselves as par- ticular personalities. Co- simo the Elder, Lorenzo the Magnificent: these names and others come in time to stand out. But for the most part it is simply " Everywhere the six balls of the Medici appear." The Streets 257 "the Medici"; the church of the Medici, the villa of the Medici, the palace of the Medici. An extraor- dinary family truly, but a no less extraordinary people and extraordinary time that could permit a single family without divine right of royalty or even right of official recognition, without power of name or office or heredity, to hold in Its grip for two centuries almost the first city of Italy. CHAPTER XVIII FLORENTINE SHOPS AND SHOPPING IT must be a very near-sighted man and a quite blind woman who can pass unnoticing the shops of Florence, even in the exaltation of hurrying from gallery to church. And it is a matter of high proba- bility that among the visitors to Florence there is not a single blind woman, even though there may be a few men of limited vision. The shops once seen are easily entered, but once entered are not easily escaped from. For some of the best sights of the city are to be found in precisely these small private collections, where the labels of the objects, in curious numerical cryptograms, seem to hold the ob- server with an interest only less rapt than that claimed by the curios themselves. In this briefest of accounts of Florentine shopping, I shall not try to tell of such delightful shop scenes as that afforded us one day when we had taken ref- uge from a shower in a small hole-in-the-wall place, where we sat on little green-bottomed chairs, having small drinks at three soldi the glass. It was on a crowded street of the piccoli popolani, and there went on all during our stay a constant traffic in single candles, matches, cigarettes by twos and threes, long thin cigars by ones, and even halves (!), be- 258 Florentine Shops and Shopping 259 sides the small drinks already mentioned. The sums exchanged for these commodities varied from one centesimo to fifteen (from a fifth of one to three whole cents !) . Such shops afford a lively entertainment to any one interested in people, but less to one interested in things. But of the jewelry shops of the Ponte Vecchio, the antiquity shops of the Via dei Fossi, the silversmiths of the Borgo San Jacopo, the wood- carving and leather-working places of the Via Guic- ciardini there is no question of lack of interest. While the lace and embroidery shops of the Lung' Arno and Borg' Ognissanti, the dark abodes of old brass lamps and copper pots in the Via Maggio, and the straw hat booths in the Mercato Nuovo, offer attractions which vie only too strongly for many with the Ufiizi and Pitti, with tomb-lined Santa Croce and memory-haunted San Marco. However, the temporary Florentine should find time — and undoubtedly will — for both pure art and applied art, for both culture and a not unworthy covetousness. For Florence offers to wise shoppers opportunities for the purchase of certain things at marked advantage. And some of these opportuni- ties make such surprisingly small demands on the purse that even the most conscientious $4-a-day tour- ist can find place for them in his carefully guarded accounts list. I am not particularly acquainted with the statis- tics of Florence's business affairs, but I very much doubt that she has any more important " principal ex- ports " than the accumulations of old coppers and 26o Florentine Shops and Shopping brasses, hammered silver teapots, tooled leather port- folios, embroidered gowns, and " antique " furniture and jewelry, that find their way to America as " per- sonal effects and worn clothing " in the straining trunks of the returning tourists. If there is anything more wonderful in Florence than her immense rich- ness in treasures of painting and sculpture, architec- ture and history, it is her immense accumulation of " antiquities " for sale to the passing guest. Whole streets are given up to the antiquity shops, hardly any street but has a few, and then, after you have been thoroughly amazed and dismayed by this surplusage, you are simply stupefied to be led by some resident who knows, up flights of stairs into dark rooms, unadvertised and invisible to the uninitiated, with still other masses of material. Where did it all come from? Where does it all come from? Did the tre-quattro-cinquecento world ever really use all this ornament and bizarrerie? Well, in truth, probably not! Much of this an- tiquity is but relative. Some of it dates, too likely, from day before yesterday. Worn holes in the picture frames, a Byzantine outlandishness in the pattern of this necklace, verdigris on the brass, the Silurian appearance of these terra-cottas, are not in themselves indubitable evidences of the absolute veri- ties. And the glib " trecentos " or " cinquecentos " of the polite possessors of all these treasures are no more so. The Via dei Fossi is only too likely to be a " way of ditches " for the enthusiastic but inexpert adventurer into its fastnesses. And the good old tale of the Ponte Vecchio's unvarying Florentine Shops and Shopping 261 truthfulness has become changed into a more mod- ern one of too nearly opposite complexion. But all this is not to say that there are not antique antiquities in the antichita shops; for there are. All that is necessary is to know the difference between ancient and modern antiquity, and to know how to bring the price of what you want within the measure of your capacity to pay. Do not be ashamed to bargain; indeed, be ashamed not to, for otherwise one will regularly pay more than the dealer expects. Much of the modern antiquity is quite as worth one's interest and money as the ancient. The present-day expert making, after antique designs, of all sorts of furniture, picture frames, metal and wooden bric-a- brac, and especially settings for jewels, allows one to possess all the beauty and grace of the Renaissance patterns for a tithe of the money necessary to own the original. But there are other good shopping opportunities in Florence besides those in the antiquity shops. For example, in the modern wood-carving, leather-tool- ing, and silver-working rooms, and in the shops of modern jewelry, and of laces and embroidered linens. And there are some few special products, such as the Bondi hard terra-cottas and the Cantigalli and Ginorl majolicas, that merit attention from the house-furnishing shopper. One of the conspicuous advantages in connection with all these is the possi- bility of having work done to order after your own special design or general fancy, for about the same prices as the stock goods. The silver-workers will execute with enthusiasm, if not with great speed, any 262 Florentine Shops and Shopping commission you may assign them, and the work will satisfy you. If it doesn't at first, it will be done over and over again with unvarying politeness and apparent delight, until you get just what you want. And this is as true of the workers in patterned leather and the wood-carvers. I wanted a pair of bellows for the fire-place in a seaside bungalow. And the notion seized me of having their wooden sides decorated with carved sea-horses. So I asked our favorite wood-worker of the Via Guicciardini if I could have this fancy carried out. " But, certainly, if, that is, you will tell me what a horse of the sea is." My description raised doubts of what a sea-horse really looked like, but not at all of Giorgio's being able to produce a ritratto (portrait) in wood, if only the monster would be visualised. I made a little sketch; still doubts. That was all I could do for the day. A few days later I went back. And, lo, a pair of bellows with sea-horses in relief, and of an accuracy that both astonished and more than pleased me. The very fin-rays were numbered to the actuality. An authority could have named the species. How had it been done? The explanation, given with warrantable pride and enthusiasm, was this: My wood-worker had gone first to the public library and there demanded books of the sea-horses. They were few, and as he perused them and hunted for portraits, unsatisfac- tory. Per Dio, what to do? A thought of genius! he would go to the Museum of Natural History and demand sight of the monster cavallo del mar. Florentine Shops and Shopping 263 To the interested and kindly professor he explained his dilemma, and this heart of gold came to his rescue by placing in his grateful hands a veritable sea-horse, which he should accept as a loan to take to his shop and keep before him as he modeled the ritratto in wood. And the sparkling-eyed old man carefully opened a little box and revealed to my eyes the dried form of a mummified sea-horse reposing on a bed of cotton-wool. As I paid over my eleven francs for the bellows — one franc more than the agreed-on price, because of the slight trouble in get- ting the ritratto of an accuracy — I wondered how quickly I should get hardened again to the somewhat different conditions in my own land. As one walks along the Lung' Arno Acciajuoli in the growing twilight there shine out more and more clearly across the river the leaping lights from the little furnaces of the silver-workers of the Borgo San Jacopo. All along that most picturesque stretch of old houses on the river's verge, from Ponte Vec- chio to Ponte Santa Trinita, the dancmg little flames flare up and down, while clustered thickly about them are the long-aproned workmen. The shop fronts are on the street next to the river, and for shops they are most primitive and displayless. You step inside, and a workman lays aside his blowpipe or lifts from over his polishing and hears your wants. There are a few heaping trays of rings, spoons, stick-pins, and the like. In a shallow wall-case there are some miscellaneous larger things. But mostly they expect to make you what you want, when and as you want it. You select your stones from the 264 Florentine Shops and Shopping little piles put before you, find something near the pattern of setting you wish, or sketch it, or describe it to the quick-witted workman, and with a last look at the fascinating table of flames and deft hands and intent eyes, you are out with much bowing and kindly farewells. Your work will all be done by hand at that same crowded table. You may come and see it under way if you like, and if it isn't done quite to your satisfaction, the ever-polite, smiling master of the shop will be the first to suggest doing it all over again. And when finally one of the long- aproned workmen, bare-headed and breathless, brings it to you in your hotel or pension, with the bill and the little present of a Florence lily silver stick-pin stuck through it, you will be almost cer- tainly well-satisfied with the work and the bill. The more pretentious silver and gold smithing shops are on the Ponte Vecchio, or along the Lung' Arno, and scatteringly elsewhere. And all offer rare opportunities to those who know what they want, and something of how much what they want can be made for. Silver teapots and cream jugs, sugar bowls and cake plates, silver pitchers, carafes, bas- kets, and what not are made in soft hammered sil- ver, all the work done by hand slowly and lovingly. It is on the Ponte Vecchio, too, and along the Lung' Arno that the old jewelry and the new jewelry in old designs mostly are. Here are uncounted thousands of uncut stones, and occasional won- der toys like that perfect little Ponte Vecchio bird with moving Ivory bill, bobbing head, and flutter- ings wings, all covered with tiny bits of iridescent Florentine Shops and Shopping 265 humming-bird feathers, that pops out of a bejeweled gold and silver box and sings to you whenever you spring the cover. Copies of most elaborate antique chains and collars, hair ornaments and bracelets, and the rest, are shown, and to one who knows some- thing of stones and workmanship there are oppor- 1 ';v'"'A~7^i^^''^ On the Ponte Vecchio. tunities to buy the best work of this kind to be got anywhere. Less expensive than jewelry, but no less attractive to some eyes, will be the leather and parchment work of the little shops in the Via Guicciardini and else- where; book bindings, jewel boxes, card cases, photo- graph frames, smoking sets, menu and place cards for the table, and a score of other things in beautiful gilt or colored designs on colored leathers or dull white parchment. Here again, as in the wood-carv- 266 Florentine Shops and Shopping ing and silver-working shops, your own designs, your monogram or crest, your wildest fancies, will be sub- stituted gladly for the stock patterns. It is a kind of shopping in which you do more than choose; you contrive, you plan and design, and deft, skilled hands make your fancies real. The old furniture and picture frames, for which Florence is famous, exhibit themselves everywhere in the city. The shops are especially good and abundant, perhaps, In the Via Magglo, the Borg' Ognlssanti, the Via Gulcclardini, and on the Lung' Arno, the favorite tourist shopping quarter. Here, too, as in the more general antiquity shops, one needs to know something of the relative value of age. Unless he be a collector he should unhesitatingly say that he cares nothing for the centuries, but every- thing for design and quality, for beauty and service- ableness, and buy on that basis alone. Copper pots In a score of shapes, tall brass olive oil lamps, and a hundred curious kinds of metal pieces, candle-sticks, sword-hilts, and snuff-boxes, thrust themselves insistently on the eye in all the tourist-frequented streets of the river quarters, and in many unexpected places besides. Away out by the Porta Romana are a few very good shops of this guise. Copper pots and brass lamps appeal to very slender purses, indeed. Five francs will get a good pot or a really tall lamp. Five dollars judiciously expended In this line will do wonders. The two photograph shops whose wares will in- evitably form part of the tourist's purchases, are Florentine Shops and Shopping 267 Alinari's (No. i, Via Strozzi) and Brogi's (No. i, Via Tornabuoni) . Few women escape the irresistible appeal of the shops of laces and embroideries. And it would be a pity to do so. For the opportunities are excep- tional. The work is admirable, the prices wholly within reason. As much cannot be said for silks and ostrich feathers, which can be got to better ad- vantage in Paris. Nor is Florence the place to get furs. But hand-embroidered linen, batiste gowns, blouses, all lovely filet and embroidered things for the table, and Italian laces in every shape, are per- haps better bargains In Florence than anywhere in Europe. The work is different from that done in Switzerland or France, of course, but In its own way is unexcelled. Much of the revival of the lace in- dustry in Italy Is due to the initiative and encourage- ment of the Queen Mother Margherlta, as indeed are many other new beginnings in long-neglected phases of Italian art or industry. In shopping In Italy, as In all Europe for that matter, a little attention will soon reveal to one that the " bargains " are mostly In labor, not in material. It Is the cheapness of human labor that makes Europe cheap, where it is cheap. The wood for the furniture, the cloth for the gowns, the gold and silver for the jewelry, the food for eating, are all about as costly as with us in America; but the handi- work and time, the long hours of skilled or unskilled labor are immensely cheaper. The one thing of which there is plenty in Europe, the thing of which the market is over full, is human labor and human 268 Florentine Shops and Shopping skill. For one-half the wages of the American cook alone, we had in our villa the devoted and perfect service of cook, maid, and gardener! And this could be almost true of Berlin or Paris. Certainly the German or the French cook and maid would be paid together less, and would work harder and give a more helpful service than the single servant at home. The postman who brings our letters gets seven dollars a month. The conductor on our tram to Florence gets fifty cents a day, and has to make good all losses from bad money received. A day laborer in the village gets sixty cents a day without food, or forty cents with food. And so in the shops of the dressmakers, the silversmiths, and the wood and leather workers; the bargain to the American shopper in Europe comes from the low wage of the workers. It comes, too, of course, from the skill and perfection of the handicraft and from the artis- tic tradition of the centuries that reveals itself in the taste and fancy of the designer. The American shop- per in Florence is getting bargains in human service and human capacity. CHAPTER XIX HARVEST TIMES IN the last week of June most of the fireflies go, and the cicale begin to sing. This means that the time has come to cut the grain. Perhaps the un- mistakable ripening of the fields might serve as well to call for the harvester, but as between the two, let us choose the first guide. It is more in the Italian spirit. All the tillable country about Florence that is not built on by villas or given over to the flower-gardens, or devoted to walled-in roadways, is grain-field. Grain-field not alone though, but olive and pear and peach and fig orchard, mulberry plantation, vine- yard and garden of wild flowers all in one. From tree to tree the grapevines loop their lines that cling to the trunks and spread out over the branches, while underneath them sprout and grow and seed the spears of grain. And among the grain red poppies and wandering crimson clover fleck the green and brown- ing fields with fire. Along the straggling low walls that bound and hold up the terraced field-plots yel- low broom and goldenrod lift their glowing blos- soms above the standing grain. The sun shines unobscured all day long now; only soft wispy tresses or scattered curls of white cloud 269 2/0 Harvest Times come into the sky, that each day takes on more un- mistakably the Itahan bkie that poets sing. It is time for the men to come and cut. The cicale call them from early morning to full dusk; the whole air is shrill and vibrant with the incessant rasping reiteration of their song. Across this fugue of the cicala, and into it, are woven the short and varied measures of other insects, the little grylli on the dry ground, the white crickets and green locusts in the trees. And there is also the call of the tree-toad and the chirping song of sparrows. But dominating and outlasting all is the cicale chorus; so unbroken, so universal, so evenly loud and monotonous that one almost forgets it, indeed, really does sometimes, and hears clearly and undisturbed the lesser cries of the other field things. I remember once standing by the ocean trying to talk with an old man, who lived in solitude in a hut on a great cliff against which the surge of the Pacific beat all day and night. I shouted and gesticulated myself weary. Finally, I asked how he could bear it to live all his hours in this welter of noise. "What noise?" was his innocent question. When the men come out to cut the grain one notices first of all that they mostly are not men, but women and children. Probably we did not expect to see the great machines we are used to in Cali- fornia, with their twenty-two horses in two long lines abreast, the driver, perched on his high seat at the end of the slender pole reaching out over their backs, bobbing up and down like a kingbird on a wind-tossed spray of apple. We did not, of course, Harvest Times 271 really expect to see such a machine monster drive into the Settignano fields and through them, cutting, threshing, and dropping the grain behind it in neatly sewn-up sacks. But neither did we expect to see the grain crop of Italy harvested by hand with small curved sickles. As they stoop, these men and women and children, and cut, and cut, and cut, they gather the fallen spears into little wisps, which they tie around with grass-stems and lay in leaning groups against the tree-trunks, or put into the crotches, to air and cure. As the days pass the wisps grow in number, and the feet of the trees are all clustered round or their arms all filled by the little brown bundles, while fewer and fewer stand the grain stems in the field. And after two or three weeks have gone by of begin- ning at daylight and finishing at twilight, of bending over and cutting and wisping and tying, the little bundles are all made, and are gathered and taken to the aja, the stone or cement threshing floor by the barn. Here begins the most primitive and most pictur- esque part of all the harvesting. The men seize the wisps one at a time and beat their grain-filled ends violently against the aja floor, or against a stone bench or block, until most of the grains have flown out. Then the women and children take the wisps in hand and go on with the beating; or put- ting them down on the floor, strike them with sticks until every least seed is garnered. Or at the begin- ning the wisps are untied and the grain stems spread in a loose layer five or six inches thick over the 272 Harvest Times center of the stone floor, and then the men and women, standing side by side, beat rhythmically with flails for hours together, chatting or singing a stor- nello as they work. After the grain is thus beaten out the straw is gathered up and piled in neat cocks about central standing poles, while the grain and refuse on the aja are swept up into a pile and then sieved and win- nowed by hand, and the grain and chaff heaped up in sepa- rate little mounds. For days and days under the blue sky and bright sun these toiling, singing, happy groups work on the ajas. And then, after their labors here are done, the men go to plowing the fields for sake of the vines and trees with rough wooden plows (boinbero), drawn " The men seize the wisps one at a time and beat their grain-filled ends violently against the aja floor or against a stone bench or block, until most of the grains by great sleek white have flown out." ^^^^^ ^^j^j^ ^.^j ^^g. sels and ribbons on their faces; while the women, especially in all the Val d'Arno below Florence, begin to plait the straw into hats. These are the hats that cover the floor and stalls of the New Market in Harvest Times 273 Florence, and find their way by thousands to America as useful souvenirs. Besides the wheat {grano)^ a small-eared maize (gran-tiirco) , and a kind of millet (saggina), are grown in the poderi about Florence, as are also crimson and red clover for forage. The vivid patches of long-headed crimson clover, flowing and rippling In the soft breezes of May and June, are of singular beauty in their setting under the vines and trees. A tall, stiff-stemmed, purple-flowered bean Is grown In large quantities, the flattlsh white seeds of which serve, when freshly gathered, for human food, or, after drying, for horses and cattle. Parts of the poderi are given up to small plots of various vegetables for the kitchen or village market. Most interesting of these are the little green squashes or zucchini, which are the staple vegetable dish all through the summer. These zucchini vary In size and shape from large walnuts to small, thick ba- nanas, three or four Inches long, and are always tender and juicy, and most palatable. The farming land, divided Into poderi of various sizes, belongs chiefly to the villa owners, usually men of some wealth, the contadini, or peasants, only rarely owning their own holding. But each con- tadino family has Its own distinct podere to work and care for, doing this under the curious and long- established land tenure system of mezzeria, or " half and half." Connected with one villa or under one ownership there may be from one to many poderi, each with its contadino's house and outbuildings and stock, and single, sometimes rather complexly 274 Harvest Times formed, family. By complex I mean only that it may be composed of married sons or daughters with their families, or brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts :lr( 'i'>r A podere well. ■■■.m't .■•'-v»*fiflr'-i(ii.^''--7">-TiiFr--!.'i '^'^^ cousins, all added to ■^^^M^:^0^' ^^^ central parental group. There is a head man, or capoccio, and head woman, or house-mother (massaia), and the rule of these two is rigid. The padrone or podere owner deals with the capoccio alone, and there is evidently a good deal of the protecting lord and master on the part of the padrone coupled at the same time with an unusually fine spirit of self-control and independence on the part of the contadino and peasant. " Theoretically," writes Mrs. Janet Ross, herself a large owner of poderi, and a practical " lord and master " of a dozen or more contadini families, " theoretically, mezzeria is the equal division between landowner and peasant of everything the soil pro- duces. The former brings the capital, the latter gives the labor. Every podere or farm, the size of which varies considerably in different parts of Tuscany (from 8 to 30, or even 40 acres), has on it a house, stable, and outbuildings, for which the peasant pays no rent. The necessary oxen, cows, horses, or donkeys, are paid for by the landlord, Harvest Times 275 and all gain or loss on them is divided between him and the peasant. Every month the capoccio brings his book to be written up by the landlord or his factor, and half of whatever money he has cashed for milk, vegetables, fruit, and other minor products. Grain, pulse, wine, and oil are divided in kind, the landlord providing the necessary machinery for press- ing oil and wine, and the vats for the fermentation of the grapes. If silkworms are reared, the cocoons are sold by the landlord, who either pays the peasant his half share, or passes it to his credit in the books, which are audited once a year by a certified account- ant, who reads over the items of debit and credit to each contadino in the presence of the padrone, and then appends his signature. Many of the peas- ants can neither write nor read, but their memory is unfailing, and the slightest mistake is instantly cor- rected." That silkworms are among the domestic animals cared for on many of the poderi, the many mulberry trees growing in the grain fields and vineyards are plain evidence. Indeed, it will be only by the sight of these trees, the outward and visible sign of the indoor undertaking, that the casual observer can know that silken cocoons form a part of the annual produce of the farms. But if he can obtain per- mission of entrance from Sig. Cocchi, or some other proprietor of a filauda (silk-reeling establishment), near Florence, he can verify by his own amazed eyes the fact that millions of silkworms are fed and cared for every spring by the Tuscan contadini. In Cocchi's filanda in RIfredi, which we visited, 276 Harvest Times we saw more millions of cocoons piled in great heaps on sliding trays one above the other, up to the high ceiling of the store-rooms, than we believed there could ever be silkworms enough to spin. And this was only one unwinding and winding up place among the hundreds of Italy! There were seventy girls and women tending the machines there and work- ing with amazing skill and speed at softening and cleaning away the loose floss, and finding the real thread ends, and unwinding, five or six at a time, the funny little bobbing and whirling cocoons in their hot water bath. The spindles and jigging things of the machines were all whirring like mad, while on them grew the beautiful masses of smooth, shining, golden, silken thread. And every now and then the woman would take her shining mass and carry it to put with others, to make a single great heavy skein that another machine twisted tight and firm into the final, long, heavy braid in which the raw silk comes to the factories. But before the silk can be unwound from the cocoons in the filanda it has to be made and spun by the silkworms. And that is so long a story that I cannot tell it here, as interesting and fascinating as it may be. It is the story of the silk in the con- tadino house, in the attic or cellar, if it is airy enough, or in the room right next the living-room, if necessary. The silkworms are not reared in a few big establishments or nurseries in Italy, as one might expect, and as would probably be done in America if we could ever rear them at all, but scat- tered among almost all the poderi, among all the Harvest Times 277 contadini of the silk-raising sections. Each con- tadino gets some tested "seed" (eggs), that have been examined by experts to see that they are not tainted by the fatal pebrine, the disease that Pasteur taught silk-growers how to combat — and with the un- folding of the mulberry leaves in the spring, spreads these eggs out on a little tray in a well-aired, fairly light, and warm room. They soon hatch out their minute larvae, or caterpillars, the whitish, naked, i6-legged, strong-jawed silkworms, which demand immediately cut-up bits of tender, fresh mulberry leaf. They eat with an appetite incredible. Fifty centuries of domestication and cultivation have made the silkworm a nearly helpless stay-in-its-place, eat- ing and turning-what-it-eats-into-sllk machine. Part of what it eats goes to nourish the rapidly growing caterpillar, and part goes to make the viscous silk- fluid that accumulates in two long, contorted glands in its body. When the worms are full-grown they cease their audible munching of the mulberry leaves — munching that they have only interrupted temporarily four or five times for their moultings — and become restless. For the first time they seem to evince an interest in the world beyond their trays. But they are easily satisfied. Bunches of twigs or straws placed stand- ing in their trays attract them, and they climb up into them a little way and soon cease their slight attempts at foreign travel. They begin to spin silk. At first an irregular, loose skein of threads, inclos- ing them in a thin web much larger than the cocoon will be, and then, inside this, the real symmetrical 278 Harvest Times compact cocoon, all made of a single, continuous thread almost a quarter of a mile long. The silk comes from the inner glands out of a tiny hole in the lower lip of the caterpillar, and hardens from a fluid to a solid as It Issues. The worm, standing with the forward part of Its body lifted, turns and twists Its head around and around, drawing the silken thread In lines, first criss-cross and irregular all about it, and then In regular, sweeping curves, hundreds of times repeated to make the thick cocoon. A habit which existed formerly purely for the sake of the protection of Its own inert body while under- going the change from caterpillar through chrysalid to moth, has been so developed under man's select- ing care that It is magnified out of all proportion to the creature's necessity. So all the bunches of twigs blossom with thick- set golden and white flowers of silk. And these flowers, when plucked and sent in basketfuls to the filanda, are what one sees filling the cool, dark store- rooms there. But a sad thing has to happen before the cocoons go Into the unwinding rooms. And that is the killing of the yet unborn moths inside. As mummy-like brown chrysallds the silkworms are slowly changing to moths. As soon as one becomes a moth, it is ready to come out. This it does, or would do if allowed to, by dissolving and cutting away one end of the cocoon by means of a special fluid and apparatus it has for just this purpose. But this would break the long, continuous silk thread into hundreds of short pieces, which is not at all what the silk-workers want. And so all the millions of Harvest Times 279 cocoons are put as soon as they come to the filanda into great ovens, where they are heated to a tem- perature sufficient to kill the developing moths within them. All, that is, except a few extra large and finely colored ones, from which the moths are al- lowed to issue to mate and lay eggs — the " seed " for next year's silk crop. All the time since the grain harvest, the sun and showers, the soft airs and faithful soil have been preparing another harvest for the contadini of the poderi. In September and early October the vines are ready to be despoiled of their treasure, their hanging grappoli of black and red and white uva. The vintage used to be a fine festival in Tuscany, The picking of the grapes and their pressing, the fermenting of the juices, the tasting of the fresh wine, were occasions of singing and merry-making and joyful anticipations of the good returns of the thousands of liters of pure wine. Italy is second only to France in its output of wine, over 700,000,- 000 gallons a year. But in the last few years the price of the simple, unblended, untreated Italian wine has fallen so low that the contadini and poderi own- ers are greatly discouraged. In the Casentino (the beautiful valley of upper Arno, just over the Val- lombrosan hills from Florence), a fiasco of wine can be purchased for from two to five cents. Some of the Casentinese contadini this season actually seri- ously considered letting the grapes rot on the vines rather than go to the labor of picking and pressing them. So the vintage in Tuscany, and for that mat- ter all over Italy, has lost much of its festival char- zSo Harvest Times acter. Yet it is still thoroughly picturesque to the foreigner, and worth going to some trouble to see. About Florence and in the valley of the lower Arno the grapes ripen and are gathered in Septem- ber; but in the Casentino, along the upper stretches of the river, the vintage does not begin until about the tenth of October. The autumn colors, wonder- ful flame and gold, have come to the beeches and chestnuts of the Apennine forests, then; the ways to Camaldoli and La Verna are delights ineffable to the color-hungering eyes; and the air is crisp in the early morning and full of the autumn melancholy through the day. The great casks or vats and the wooden bigonie are overhauled, new staves put in, and new bands put on where needed; shears and curving knives are sharpened and all made ready for the day of beginning. The Italian vintage has been often described. It is losing its picturesqueness because it has lost much of its joy. But the same slow white oxen, with their red face-tassels, move along the country roads with their cartloads of casks filled with partly pressed grapes. The same groups of men, women, and chil- dren swarm about the vines with their curved knives and shears, releasing the fragrant, colored masses from their mother stems. The same overflowing baskets carried again and again to the waiting bigonie; the same pervading, exciting odor of bruised grapes and already fermenting juice in all the air; all these signs of the vintage, characteristic and familiar since the days of Virgil, are still to be en- Harvest Times 281 joyed by any countryside visitor to Italy in the autumn. In the wine-sheds, where the real pressing and the fermenting go on, the fragrance is almost overpower- ing. How the men who press the grapes in the bigonie with thick-headed wooden clubs, or the boys who still sometimes tramp vigorously with bare legs on the oozy mass in the great casks, or they who pour and carry the red fluid from cask to cask, manage to escape an intoxication from the pungent odor alone is beyond comprehension. I but ventured into one such bacchanal and came out reeling. At the same time as the harvest of the grapes, so long and expensively prepared for and with such problematical results, another harvest Is ready — one that has demanded no care or attention to make ready. It Is a harvest especially for the contadini and the little people of the city, and to enjoy its fruits they have only to garner them. The chest- nuts that have been falling noisily In the forests of the Apennines have but to be picked up and carried home to add no little to the food stock of the poorer Italian people. These chestnuts are made Into a sweetish but pala- table and nourishing flour by the peasants of the mountains. They are roasted and eaten by the working-people of the towns with meals as dessert, or between meals as we eat candies. They are made into great circular pies, of which slices are sold on the streets in all the poorer quarters. Made into puddings and stuffed into fowls they are served in all the middle-class homes and in the pensions and 282 Harvest Times hotels. And, finally, they are saturated with sugar syrup and become, as marrons glaces, the bonnes touches of the wealthy. Thus the useful chestnut finds its welcome way into the mouths of all Italy and her guests. From May till the end of the year the olives have been hanging on the trees, first as tiny green buttons, then slowly, very slowly, getting thicker and longer, really olive-shaped, and finally turning from green to brown and brown to blackish. In November and December is gathering and oil-making time. As Florence is entirely surrounded by olive orchards, as all the hill-sides up to the very crests are silver-white with the breeze-tossed leaves of thousands of trees, olive harvest can be enjoyed by any visitor by simply driving out of the city to the nearest poderi. The odd growth habit of the trees — a habit forced on them by their master, man — will first attract the attention. The trunks are scarred and hewn by the knives of the caretakers in their eradication of pests; the branches are few and slender, springing curiously slight and irregular from the abrupt, broad summit of the trunk, and there are few or no middle or interior branches; there are only angularly radiat- ing outer ones. The berries are thick, though, upon these. The curious shape and aspect of the tree is all the result of the radical pruning and opening out necessary to expose the berries freely to the sun and to limit their number and thus determine a common good quality. In the picking the utmost care is used not to bruise the fruit. Fallen and bruised berries are kept sepa- Harvest Times 283 rate from the others, and go to make an oil of second quality. I was told recently by an importer of Spanish and Italian oils that the olive-growers of America — and that means the olive-growers of Cali- fornia — are not careful enough in their picking and handling, and hence only In exceptional cases pro- duce oil of the quality of the European product. The pressing is done by having an ox roll a heavy mill- stone around on the berries in a great stone basin. Mrs. Ross describes the process as follows: " In the center was an Immense stone basin, in which revolved a solid millstone about five feet In diameter, technically called, I believe, an edge-run- ner, turned by a splendid white ox, which, to our astonishment, was not blindfolded. Our host told us that It was difficult to get oxen to do this work; it takes time and patience to accustom them to It. The millstone was set up on edge and rolled round in the stone basin, secured to a big column of wood which reached to the celling. The whole machine was most old-fashioned and clumsy, and the padrone said, laughing, evidently as old as Noah's Ark. In- to the stone basin, as clean as a dalry-mald's pan, five sacks of olives were emptied which. In a short time, were reduced to a mass of dark greenish-brown thick pulp. Stones and all were mashed with but little noise, save the occasional lowing of the ox when his tasseled and ornamented nosebag was empty. When Bencino judged that the olives were sufficiently crushed, the pulp was taken out from the mill, with clean new wooden shovels, and put Into a circular shallow basket, with a large hole through 284 Harvest Times the middle, made of thick cord fabricated from rushes grown in the Pisan marshes, and looking very much like open cocoanut matting. As fast as these gabble, or cages, were filled two men carried them on a hand-barrow to the press in the corner of the room, and piled one on the top of the other under the press. Then began the hard work. Two huge posts were clamped with an iron support, a co- lossal beam through which goes the screw, finishing below in a large square block of wood with two square holes right through it. Into one of these Carlo stuck a long beam, to which he hooked a rope, the other end of which was secured round a turning pillar of wood some six or eight feet distant, with a handle against which the men threw their whole weight. With many groans and squeaks the big block of wood revolved to the right until all the rope was twisted round the pillar; then it was un- hooked, the beam was lifted out of its hole in the block and carried on Carlo's stalwart shoulder to be inserted into the next hole, and the rope again hooked round the end of the beam; this process con- tinued until not a drop more of oil could be extracted. The press was then screwed back, the gabbie carried on the hand-barrow to the mill, where they were emptied, and their contents again ground; then they were filled, and put under the press for the second time, when more oil came dripping out, but of in- ferior quality. The refuse that remains, called sausa, is almost black, and quite dry and gritty. This is sold for threepence or fourpence a bigoncia full, about 55 pounds in weight, for making soap." Harvest Times 285 As the olive is two-thirds water and one-third oil, the result of the pressing is a liquid mass of oil and water. The oil rising to the top, however, is readily skimmed off and poured into receptacles that are transferred to a room of equable tempera- ture, where the oil is allowed to ripen and clear. It is then ready for market. With this I must make an abrupt end of Italy's harvest times. They are all beautifully Italian in their spirit; they are festivals as well as labors. They are the suggestion and the opportunity for song and praise of Nature, as well as the occasion and necessity for long hours of work. For Italy sings as she works — it is her inherited philosophy. We who weep and burn and curse as we struggle will never understand it. We may even profess a contempt for it, but we might do better to admire and envy it. At heart most of us do. CHAPTER XX FLORENTINE EXCURSIONS I. VALLOMBROSA AND OVER THE CONSUMA PASS THERE are certain excursions that the visitor to Florence makes quite as a matter of course. Besides the ones to Fiesole and the Certosa, he goes to Vallombrosa of the many leaves. One day on the Settignano train, in a warming week in June, I overheard the redder faced of two perspiring men in the car say to the other: " I am going out to Vallombrosa "; and he thereupon arose and went out to the front platform. Here he stood with hat in hand and seemed to get cooler. His remark was a metaphor of the street, for Vallom- brosa is one of the cooling-off places for the Floren- tines. Viareggio on the sea near Pisa is another, and besides there are the many hotels and pensions perched high in the Pistojese Mountain. To the tourist, however, Vallombrosa is a Mecca to visit, for the sake of the blind poet who made it famous in two lines, and for the opportunity of seeing the old monastery of the mountain-side in its beautiful forest setting. 286 Vallombrosa and the Consuma 287 The going and returning are not the least interest- ing or beautiful parts of the pilgrimage. The long, slow, ever-ascending drive from S. Ellero (a sta- tion on the Florence to Rome railway), or the quicker, cheaper, and less dreamful ascent by funicu- lar, is a mountain climb of much ease and generous reward. First, orchards and vineyards, then woods and streams, and always the changing views of the winding Arno and its valley-floor and bounding hills and mountains. And if the day be a little misty or one of chasing clouds these views may remain the most pleasing memory of the whole excursion. The funicular ends at an unattractive hotel village (Sal- tino), standing out new and raw on a naked pro- jecting shoulder of the Protomagno. But the car- riage road winding along the mountain-side for a mile or more to the monastery is very beautiful. Even more beautiful, and better shaded and quieter, is the footpath. There is a hotel or two at the monastery itself. In fact, Vallombrosa is obviously a resort, and as much as you are disturbed by such obviousness so much less is Vallombrosa now the joy it must have been to earlier visitors. The monastery's foundation goes back nearly ten centuries, but its present buildings are only about four hundred years old, and they serve science in one of its practical undertakings; one, however, that promotes beauty as well as utility. The principal Italian governmental school and experimental station of forestry is now housed by the old convent. In rooms where once the gray-gowned monks muttered their paternosters and pondered the mysteries of 288 Florentine Excursions heaven and hell, young men now squint through microscopes, test the strength of woods, and note the characteristics of noxious insects and fungi. The old library room, too, houses very different shelves of tomes; and In place of holy bones and bits of the true cross, long cases of stuffed birds, dried plants, and polished woods are the guarded treasures of the house. Outside the buildings on the mountain slopes are acres of nurseries, with their lines of infant trees in measured plots under cryptogramic labels. It is incontestable that Italy needs schools of forestry, trained foresters, and cared-for forests, much more than monasteries, monks, and cloister gardens, but to the tourist pilgrim to Vallombrosa, with soul properly attuned by Milton and Lamartine, there must come regret and a sigh, perhaps, that helpful science has had to replace picturesque religion at just this spot of consecrated earth. Vallombrosa's founding and the establishment of its monastic order came about through the active penitence of that Giovanni Gualberto, whose mem- ory is otherwise made sacred to us by the mutilated remains (in the Bargello) of Bernardo da Rovez- zano's masterpiece of decorative sculpture. It was to this profligate scion of a noble Florentine house that the Christ head on the crucifix, now inclosed in the little Michelozzo chapel in San Miniato, bowed in approving recognition of his generosity when he prayed before it in the old Benedictine ab- bey on Miniato mount in 1018. This sainted Gio- vanni — then, however, by no means a saint — came to Vallombrosa and the Consuma 289 his prayer fresh from having spared his brother's murderer, whom a just hazard of fortune combined with an active personal search had put into his power. And in counter recognition of the miracle of the crucified image, what less could the noble young gentleman of Florence do than establish a monastery and hermitage, and found an order of monks to use them? And so it all came about as it did. In later years the monastery and order, having grown more rich in properties and compensatingly less rich in piety, came to be talked about with the tongue of scandal. And it may be as well that a practical-minded government interfered to dispossess the monastic culture of religion in favor of the scien- tific culture of forests. The dropping winds that come over the trees of Vallombrosa down to us in distant Florence can henceforth never bring with them aught but the whisperings of the spirit from God's true tabernacle and the healing balsam that distils from His complete immanence in Nature. Vallombrosa may be visited as a station on the over-mountain way to the Casentino. It is not ex- actly on the main highroad from Florence by Pontas- sieve and the Consuma Pass into the valley; but the main road can readily be reached from it by a beau- tiful drive of a few miles along the mountain-side. This drive is all the way through forests and high meadows and pastureland, and is so fragrant with its smells of spruce and larch, and so rich in its reaching views of Tuscan hill and valley that it should be made as a part of the Vallombrosan ex- cursion, even though the Casentino be not at the time 290 Florentine Excursions an objective point. Near where the road joins the Casentino highway, a few rods short of Consuma village, the great dome of Florence, with the dim expanse of gray-red roofs huddling about it, is visi- ble. And one sees from here how closely the city is held in the protecting embrace of the hills that ring her round. The Casentino can be reached by an all-rail route by means of a little narrow-gauge road that branches off from the Florence-Rome main line at Arezzo, and runs up through the heart and into the very head of the valley. But immensely more rewarding is the driving way over the mountain. It is not only the out-of-doors fresh air and odors, and the close intimacy with the things and people of the roadside, that one gains by this way of going, but the pano- ramic unrolling and bird's-eye view of the Casentino from the summit of the mountain pass. One sees the whole of the vine-set valley with the poplar- lined Arno meandering down Its middle, the villages nestling, like Stia and Pratovecchia, in the river-bed, or perched, like Poppi and Bibblena, on the summits of their isolated hills, the ragged walls and crum- bling towers of the castle ruins on their giant sentry rocks, and guarding this fairyland away from the noisy world outside, the high, rough mountain rim all around it. Your eyes grow big as the en- chanting scene fills them, and then wet and misty for very pain of its beauty; your heart leaps with the thought of entering into the peace and simple joy of it all. For a tired body and a sore heart there can be no panacea of more promise of certain Vallombrosa and the Consuma 291 healing than the Casentino seen from anywhere on its mountain ring under the Itahan sky of summer. In truth, did not that frailest and sometimes saddest of men, Francis of Assisi, find his most comforting hours up there at La Verna? And the heart-sore exiled Dante have forgetful days of peace as he wan- dered along the Arno in the valley's depths ? One can begin the day's drive from Florence itself, or save a little time for more leisurely covering the mountain part of the road by taking train to Pontas- sieve, and then carriage from there. The Pontas- sieve drivers make the most of their advantage when confronting a casual traveler, bundled off with bag and baggage into the forlorn little station. It is advisable to arrange definitely for a carriage before coming. There are drivers in the Casentino who will be glad to come over the mountain and meet you at the station; or probably the Pontassieve men will be reasonable if they do not have you so en- tirely at their mercy as they had us. There is, in- deed, a little diligence that meets one of the trains from Florence in the early afternoon, and gets over before night. But its cheapness is its chief recom- mendation. The road out of Pontassieve crosses the Sieve by a picturesque ponte (hence the village name) almost immediately, and begins its white and dusty uphill windings among olives and vines and through scat- tered little hamlets. As we jogged on we had con- stantly to meet and make a noisy way through flocks of sheep and goats, which were being driven down from the mountains to follow the Arno for many 292 Florentine Excursions miles, and finally find pastures for the winter in the marshes of the Maremma. It was now only the beginning of October, but winter comes early in the mountains. Already the vineyards along the road were more yellow and red than green, and only a few scattered, drying bunches of grapes that had ripened too late for pickers, still clung to the vines. This troubled us a little, for we had been most anxious to see the Tuscan vintage. On our return from a trip into the Tyrol and Dolomites we had found the grapes about Florence already gathered and pressed. But we had been reminded that the vintage in such a mountain valley as the Casentino would be later, and so we had waited only long enough to unpack our trunks and repack our bags before starting over the mountains. Our youthful, politely loquacious driver reassured us. The grapes hereabout had all been gathered, yes, but over there, and he waved his whip generously to half the world, the vendemviia had not yet begun. And the vineyards were very beautiful in the Casen- tino. We should see things to remember. Along the roadside and inclosing the vineyards on either side ran a low stone wall, with its rough coping covered with thorny vines held down by heavy stones. This was a primitive but effective arrange- ment to guard the grapes against the barefooted children of the roadway. In one great vineyard that we passed, too, there was a curious high scaf- folding, with a sort of little straw-hut built on its top. This was the abode of a lookout, who perched aloft there through all the season of ripe grapes. Vallombrosa and the Consuma 293 Evidently the children of Italy need more encourage- ment to be honest than is given them by the numerous roadside shrines. In this vineyard teams of great white oxen were already at the fall plowing. On every contadino's house along the road hung split tomatoes and figs in long chains, or festoons, drying in the sun. Sometimes, instead of being strung in chains, they were impaled on little twigs arranged together to form a many-branching tree. Here and there along the way we met or overtook peasants carrying loads of branches on their backs, and at a sharp turn in the road we came upon three buxom young women in animated gossip. Each had on her back an enormous load of leafy oak branches, and as they stood close together resting their strapped-on burdens against the stone wall they looked to be utterly overwhelmed under the great masses. They glanced up at us smiling, and their fresh red faces and big clear eyes gave no indication of the rav- ages that a few more years of such excessive labor were sure to bring. The hours sped quickly with the simple adventures of the way, and soon we were driving with all the necessary great clatter of whip-snapping and swift pounding of hoofs into the bleak, gray little village of Consuma, near the summit of the pass. It is a squalid alpine nest of charcoal burners. We counted twenty-four of the tenuous wisps of smoke rising from their fires in the forests of the upper slopes, and along the single village street most of the loung- ing men had faces and arms as black as those of chimney-sweeps. The road winds about for some 294 Florentine Excursions distance on the bare, wind-swept summit of the pass, but finally, passing an old chapel, picturesquely set about with firs, where a Florentine army once camped on its way over the mountains to ravage the Casen- tino, it begins its swift drop into the fairy lowland. When the eyes are sated for a moment with the wonderful stereoscope and its mountain rim, they be- gin to search out details. To the left, conspicuous on isolated hill summits, are the jagged pinnacles of two ruined castles. These are the relics of Romena and Porciano, in the old days two of the principal strongholds of the Conti Guidi, those noble gentle- men and freebooters who lorded it for so many generations over all the Casentino. The story of their fortunes and misfortunes, their loves and fra- ternal hates, is the human history of the valley. Vallombrosa and the Consuma 295 When the Florentine RepubHc finally dispossessed them and tore down their hilltop castle fortresses, as an incident to its struggle with the warring bishops of Arezzo, to whom the Conti Guidi stood in a loose connection of fiefdom, it ended romance for the Casentino. But not beauty and picturesqueness. Inhabited to-day only by simple villagers and contadini, with a small but ominous beginning of factory workers along the banks of the power-producing streams, the valley has yet all it ever had of natural beauty, and has this enhanced by the addition of well-kept fields and vineyards over all its lower acres. As our car- riage rattled swiftly down to the tilled land we stared in surprise to see what seemed to be orchards of low or young trees become vineyards. For the Casentino vines are trained to grow on pioppi, small trees pruned to have low, broad, thick heads. The vines climb up the trunks and spread out under the thick foliage of the trees, which protect them from hail and heavy rains. From a little distance the vineyards seem like orchards of small, thick-headed trees bearing heavy bunches of red and white and black grapes. The fields (down in the flat land along the Arno) look like the rectangular spots in a vividly colored checkerboard. The stream has a narrow border of planted poplars on either bank, so that the shifting silver thread of water seems flanked by long pro- cessions of tall, feather-crowned marchers. Up on the slopes of the encircling mountains the vineyards give way to forests, first oak and chestnut, and then 296 Florentine Excursions still higher, and running up to the crest and the sum- mits of the irregular peaks, dark close-set firs. At the head of the valley is the great mass of .i.V"-:^.. <^^^ " The Casentino vines are trained to grow on pioppi, small trees pruned to have low, broad, thick heads." Falterona, highest of the mountain summits, and nourishing mother of the Arno. Against the hori- zon, straight across the valley, is the curious cliffy ridge of the Penna, with the V-shaped cleft in which Vallombrosa and the Consuma 297 lies famous La Verna. We make out where Camal- doH is by the vivid autumnal copper-red of its glori- ous beech forest. At our feet is Borgo alia Collina, with its great stone gateway and castle-like palace of Landini, " celebrated commentator of Dante." Below Borgo lies the field of Campaldino, scene of the greatest of Casentino battles, that one in which the poet Dante became a warrior. Beyond it rises the steep hill of Poppi, with its restored castle and tower; and still farther, seen dimly near the foot of the valley, are the similar hill and village of Bibbiena, origin of that gay, verse-writing cardinal of the court of Leo X, whose friendship for Raphael was requited by the wonderful portrait of the Pitti. II. IN THE CASENTINO We lived at Poppi; and should we ever go back into the Casentino we should live again at Poppi. It is central, the whole valley is in view from it, it has the one really preserved castle in the region, it is itself a picturesque village, and, finally, it has a comfortable lodging-place, the pension Conti Guidi. They gave us there large, airy rooms, our breakfasts and luncheons under a blossoming arbor in the garden, and to care for us a maid named Concetta, who was more of the joy of living com- pressed into one person than we can hope ever to know again. Facing our garden gate was the great brown block of a castle, with its high, square tower; while at our free disposal was the ancient castle prato, of old a free jousting ground and now a little 298 Florentine Excursions quiet place of grass and a few old trees, with the warm sun splashing down through their branches. Some old men and women and a half-dozen playing children were usually on the scattered benches, and in one corner near the castle was a smoothed place for " bowls," busy every afternoon and all day Sunday. And from every way but the narrow town side was a breath-taking view out over the green and brown and lavender valley to the purple mountain hori- zon. From Poppi we made our excursions on foot along the dusty roads, with shepherds and sheep and heavy oxen for "Facing our garden gate was company; or by fra- the great brown block of a grant paths through castle [Poppi] with its high ^^e fields and vine- square tower." , i i • i yards; or by the wmd- ing way along the tree-lined shallow river. Occa- sionally we drove in a bouncing little carriage to the more distant places, like Camaldoll and La Verna. Or we could go down the hill to the station at its foot and take the toy railway train with its little parlor compartments to either end of the valley, In the Casentino 299 and then tramp back. In the soft moonht evenings we loitered in the old castle court listening half fearfully for ghostly noises from the banquet hall overhead or the dun- ^'^'if. geon cells below. When thegreat fair was held at Bibbiena we went to it and bought a green umbrella. When the vintage came we joined the pickers on one of our landlord's p o d e r i, where Rowena picked and sang by Concetta's side. The Casentino days were wonderfully good days, every one of them. They filled our nostrils and lungs with a tingling air fresh from the mountain forests. They were of the kind that one dreams back to in fireside reveries. Someway it is Nature that has the upper hand with one in the Casentino. And yet there are re- wards for the picture hunter. At Stia, in the head of the valley, at Strada on the Solano, and on the hill near Romena are some old twelfth century churches. The special interest in them all is the crude carving of the capitals of the interior support- ing columns. In Stia these capitals bear curious beasts with tails wrapped about them, a mer- The entrance to Poppi Castle. 300 Florentine Excursions maid Eve, and other strange and monstrous figures. In the restored and picturesque Chiesa della Pieve about a half-mile from the gaunt ruin of Romena Castle are more of these fantastic sculptures, while ^1 r~' ^ ^ miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuninir. A street fountain in Stia. in the little Chiesa di San Martino a Vado, near Strado, on the highroad (left) from Borgo alia Collina, they are especially naive. There are twelve pillars or columns in this church, low, heavy, and bulging in the center, and the capitals are all differ- ent. Almost all show crude leaf (lotus?) designs together with distorted animal or human figures. There are rams, grinning lions, monstrous winged In the Casentino 301 things, and a man on horseback with his feet touch- ing the ground. The pulpit pillar has four human figures on the faces and four more on the angles. The parts of the figures are grossly and comically out of proportion. All these churches were founded in the twelfth century, or perhaps latter half of the eleventh, prob- ably by the Countess Matilda, a conspicuous figure in early Casen- tino history. Her church building was her act of penitential piety, pro remedio anima, and the strange half-pagan carvings characteristic of them may express the per- sonal fancy of the sturdy countess her- self, or perhaps that of her architect-builder. Their special significance ought to be a pretty problem for the antiquary. In these churches, as in several others in the val- ley, pictures of more or less interest are to be found. The Casentino possesses also an unusual abundance of colored terra-cottas in the della Robbia manner. Indeed, at La Verna, where these terra-cottas are particularly numerous, some of the pieces are un- doubtedly from the hands of the della Robbias them- The gate tower Castle. of Poppi 302 Florentine Excursions selves, and include certain unusually large and two, at least, unusually beautiful, ones. Of the castle ruins five are especially notable, namely, those of Porciana, near Stia; Romena, near Pratovecchia ; San Niccolo, near Strada; Monte- mignajo, above Strada, and the better preserved and now largely restored structure at Poppi. Each of these is on a hilltop, and all, as well as others now totally destroyed, were strongholds of the Conti Guidi, To make these old castle walls and towers real, one should know something of the extraordinary family that provided for so long the feudal lords of the Casentino. From the eleventh century until 1440 the Casentino was a true feudal province, under the rule of the successive heads of the Guidi family. The Conti Guidi reached an extraordinary pitch of grandeur and power, holding besides their eight or nine castles in the Casentino, palaces and fortresses in Florence and elsewhere. They became allied by marriage with other powerful families of northern Italy; and the story of their wars and in- trigues and loves, their display and arrogant pre- tension, their internecine troubles, and final complete overthrow by the Florentine Republic is a fascinating tale. Ella Noyes's " The Casentino and Its Story " tells enough of this for the casual visitor. The student will want something more eingehend and bet- ter documented. Thus prepared, the visitor will hear from these rugged fragments of massive wall and lifting tower echoes of their old life; he will catch glimpses of their ancient pageantry and glory. The castle at Poppi is now being slowly but in- In the Casentino 303 telligently and honestly restored at the expense of the city of Florence. Its court, though much smaller, is comparable in beauty and rough grace with that of the Florentine Bargello. Indeed, the designer of the Bargello court is said to have caught his in- spiration from this smaller one of Poppi. The angling stair and pillared rail, the stemmi on the walls, and the open bal- cony above are simply magnified and modified in the Bargello. The un- usual shape and massive high walls of the castle, its strong crenelations on walls and tower, its sub- terranean prisons and great cisterns, its old well in the courtyard, the bit of remaining moat and stone bridge, the jousting and dueling ground in front, and its bold, dominating situa- tion on the summit and verge of the steep hill-slope, all combine to make the Poppi stronghold a fascinating relic of the rough but picturesque feudal days of Italy. It has memories, too, of other days than warring ones, and of other knocks at its gate than those of besieging enemies. Dante was the guest here of the Countess Battifolia from the summer of 13 10 to The court of Poppi Castle, " though much smaller, is comparable in beauty and rough grace with that of the Florentine Bargello." 304 Florentine Excursions the end of the spring of the following year, if the zealous historians of the Casentino can prove their contention. And here he shall have written " il celehre e sublime canto XXXIII dell' Inferno." Less celebrated and sublime, but with a human touch withal, is the verse carved in the stone of the outer " The angling stair and pillared rail, the stemmi on the walls and the open balcony" of the court of Poppi Castle. wall to the right of the entrance and over a sug- gestively small, dark, heavily-barred window : " Non per veder questa tomba ripiena, Ma per pieta di povere persone, Qui fece fare una nuova prigione II cavalier Francesco da Romena." * * Not with the wish to see the dungeon filled, But out of pity for its wretched ones, The cavalier Francesco da Romena Erected a new prison on this site. In the Casentino 305 This good deed was done in 1649, ^^^ the "new prison " was doubtless provided with all modern comforts ! From Poppi hill one looks through the shimmer- ing air straight down the Arno to Bibbiena, perched also on the tip-top of an isolated hill, rising like a great sugar loaf from the river's bed. The day before the vintage was to begin all Casentino came to Bibbiena to buy and sell and visit together. Shoes "Past contadinos' houses all hung over with drying gold and orange corn." and pigs, woolens and oxen, umbrellas and bleating sheep, new tools for the farmyard, new casks for the wine-shed, colored kerchiefs for feast-days; all things useful and ornamental to the Casentinese were bargained for in Bibbiena this day. And between bargainings, the red wine washed down the fried cakes and macaroni. We went to the fair in the afternoon, by a devious narrow lane, along the hill-side among vineyards, and past contadinos' houses all hung over with drying 3o6 Florentine Excursions gold and orange corn and purple-brown millet heads. The way dropped gradually down from Poppi hill to the river level, and here we gained the path under the poplars along the water's edge. The Arno in the Casentino is simply a quiet, shining little country stream, with riffles at the shallow places and still pools in holes hollowed under the banks like any brook at home. As we neared the bridge at the foot of Bibbiena hill we saw it and the main road already alive with the earlier home-comers, persons that lived far up on the mountain slopes and had long hours of tramping to reach their eeries before the light should fail. It was a motley procession. It looked like a whole people moving out of one land into another. Women on donkey-back with men tramping by their side, like Joseph and Mary in Fra Angelico's Flight into Egypt; children in little carts or gamboling along the roadside; driven oxen, sheep, and pigs; laden baskets of homely bargains, new short-handled green umbrellas; and a running fire of jest and laugh and chatter along the whole line. As each branching way left the main road it received its share of the procession, and all along the valley and far up the hill-slopes we could see the diverging thin lines, dark against the dusty roads. Once fairly in Bibbiena our chief thought was to get out again. In the church of the convent San Lorenzo there are two della Robbia pieces; and the old twelfth century Propositura has interesting architectural details. But this was not the day for seeing Bibbiena's relics. The narrow streets were In the Casentino 307 utterly jammed; booths, shops, auction, all roaring and reeking. We wanted the quiet path by the river again. The twilight was falling as we wandered back. The road to the bridge was more populous now. Here and there were groups stopped to compare purchases, or for an argument, or to make farewells at a forking of the roads. We passed a perplexed and perspiring peasant trying to drive a great hog that preferred to lie down. The man looked at us inquiringly and almost beseechingly, as if for advice. But the pig was too big and too sick for our wits to compass any better than its owner's the means of moving it. Along the path by the river an angler loitered, loth to leave his unwhipped pools; and in the thicket across the stream a man with gun still beat the bushes for song-bird game. In the fields by the path were little flocks of sheep tended by singing girls and diminutive whistling boys. And behind and in front of us straggled scattering little groups of home- farers. It was the simple pastoral that the old painters loved and that still lives in the Casentino to-day little changed from those days in which it was painted into the Holy Family backgrounds. From Poppi to Camaldoli is a slow drive out of the valley garden, up hill-slopes long denuded of forest and horribly stripped of soil, and worn into great ravines by the unchecked waters. As we wound along a bleak, bare shoulder we saw below us Moggiona, a gray ghost of a village on the gashed and sterile slope. It pitifully pointed the moral of 3o8 Florentine Excursions this story of reckless deforestation. Nature takes quick revenge for an affront of this sort. Beyond and above Moggiona, however, the forests began. And here all was luxuriance and loveliness. The road from here to the old monastery (now partly hotel) was lined by chestnut, oak, and copper beech- woods, while above them the firs climbed dense and dark to the crest of the mountains. There were sounding waters and deep, wild cafions. And such resplendent masses of color — it was October — as fairly took our breath. The vividness, the con- tinuity, and boldness of color of these great thou- sand-acre blotches on the mountain-sides were beyond our experience. Camaldoli itself is a miscellaneous pile rebuilt in the sixteenth century and picturesquely put by a swift stream in the wild canon of the Giovana. It was founded by St. Romualdo in the eleventh century, and has had an eventful history of piety, war, schol- arship, and benevolence. St. Romualdo is only less interesting as a personality than St. Francis, and his white-gowned and white-hatted disciples were mas- ters in both the arts of acquiring property and charitably dispersing it. To them is largely due the credit for the preservation and fostering care of the beautiful trees all about the convent. Even to-day their ownership of forest lands is still exten- sive. Two miles above the monastery, an hour's walk, is the hermitage, a curious group of little huts and two small churches in a large inclosure. The hut or cell occupied by St. Romualdo is pointed out, as In the Casentino 309 well as one built by " a Medicean princess in expia- tion of the grave fault of having entered, by means of a masculine dress, the sacred inclosure prohibited to women." The inhabitants of these cells led a most rigorous life of solitude. La Verna is farther and higher from the valley's center than Camaldoli. One can go, indeed, by Camaldoli in its forest. winding and climbing forest paths directly from Ca- maldoli, visiting Badia a Prataglia on the way. This beautifully situated alpine hamlet of charcoal burn- ers stands on the highway from the Casentino over Monte Acuto into the Romagna. It was the seat of an abbey before Camaldoli was founded. But as St. Romualdo's foundation grew larger, Prata- glia's Badia grew less. In the crypt there once ex- 3IO Florentine Excursions isted, according to Beni, certain columns with Roman capitals like those of San Vitale at Ravenna. We visited La Verna from Poppi, going, as is necessary, by way of BIbbiena. Our devoted Poppi driver deploring almost tearfully his inability, on account of sudden press of affairs, to take us him- self, and warning us sadly against the Inhumanity of BIbbiena drivers, put us into a decrepit little cart behind an equally decrepit and dwarfish pony in charge of a mere babe of a cocchicre. This in- fant was to get us as far as BIbbiena, where we might hire a suitable carriage for the rest of the way. The morning had broken gray and misty, and as we reached the summit of BIbbiena hill, and center of the village, a cold, steady drizzle had enveloped all our world. It was a discouraging beginning, and we were quite ready to turn back. But from the gloomy cavern of a stable, in front of which our child coachman had stopped, an active, dark-eyed man had already stepped out and was asking our pleasure. We perforce explained the situation and our need, and asked him, not without a secret hope of being dissatisfied, to name at once and definitely his ultiss'imo prezzo. Our hope of dissatisfaction was more than realized. It was a cattivo tempo, the road would be slippery for the horse, he himself would get wet, and so on. He would take us for twenty lire. With a smile of knowledge we turned away, relieved at this easy quietus on our unpromis- ing expedition. '* Twelve lire would be more than good pay," cried Rowena, " we'll go back." In the Casentino 311 "Ah, well, then twelve lire; shall I hitch up im- mediately, signora?" came back without a moment's hesitation. And before we had recovered our breath, used even as we were to Italian bargaining and vagary in the matter of prices, our new con- ductor had slipped on his oilskins and was hitching up. In another trice we were off with a clatter and splashing, starting downhill to the La Verna road. We came soon to the little Dominican church and convent of Santa Maria del Sasso. This was originally a simple hospice, but was expanded under the direction of Sa- vonarola and by the generosity of Lorenzo the Magnificent. In the church is an orna- mented central taber- nacle, with a della Robbia frieze. Be- hind this shrine, under a perched dove, is the sacred stone (sasso) on which a peasant once saw the Holy Mary seated by the roadside at the spot where now the church stands. Along the climbing road to St. Francis's famous monastery, set aloft in mountain cliffs and forest, we saw again the characteristic scenes of the simple St. Francis's famous tery, set aloft in cliffs and forest." monas- mountain 312 Florentine Excursions old-time life that still persists in this shut-in valley of medievalism; old women with distaff and spindle, ox-carts and wooden plows, singing lads and maids with their sheep. And for a while all the beauties of the valley fields and vineyards lay on either hand. But beyond the Corsalone the way quickly grows steeper and rougher, and the tilled land gives place to oak scrub and hill-side pastures. The road is a hard one, having many bits of climbing far too cruel even for light vehicles. It was a day of moving mist and showers, and the views of the val- ley below were broken and shift- ing. In front of and above us all was gray. We seemed to be winding and climbing upward to some mystery in the clouds. La Verna's strange congeries of great cliffs, rock caverns, and un- formed buildings, a holy place of mystic ecstasies, is inde- scribable in words. The seeing visitor will find him- self accompanied by a brown-robed guide, who leads him by confusing paths from point to point, reciting as he goes the naive history of the adventures of In the Casentino 313 St. Francis, the " subhme beggar." Here he talked with the birds and small beasts of the forest; there he wrestled with the devil; in that bare rock niche he slept on the rough stone shelf; this is the great stone where Christ sat when he appeared to the holy man; there is the jutting rock where the faithful falcon alighted to wake him each morning. And, finally, where the chapel of the Stigmata is now built into the rambling pile of stone walls is the very spot of the greatest miracle of all, that fact or fancy of the stigmatization, which has led to such in- terminable theologic and scientific discussion. For the incorrigible treasure hunter there are in La Verna's church and chapels numerous opportuni- ties for discovery. The della Robbia terra-cottas, especially a beautiful Annunciation and an As- cension in the principal church, singularly conso- nant in their simplicity and setting with the whole atmosphere of the place, are a quest in themselves. There are, too, some paintings here and there, and some beautifully carved wooden stalls. The hundred gowned, bareheaded monks who still inhabit this vast confusion of convent chapels and cloisters, with their chanting processions and their friendly hospitalities, lend La Verna an atmos- phere of medieval reality. But more than anything else it is the recognition of the actuality of the ex- traordinary man whom La Verna personifies that the visitor retains as a lasting memory of his pil- grimage. St. Francis was one of that smaller group of his- toric religious mystics whose hallucinations led to 314 Florentine Excursions enduring action, and whose personality had a reality that has made it persist as a genuine religious force even into these iconoclastic days. The seeming miracles of his sub-conscious hours someway trans- lated themselves reasonably in his times of conscious- ness. His acting fell no whit behind his exhorting. His body was utterly transparent to the radiations of his spirit. It is only the law of things that the Little Brothers of Poverty should fall short to-day, in some measure, of their founder's ideal. Jovial, red- fa c e d, fat-chopped Brother Urbino, who showed us much spe- cial politeness, some- way hardly realized the ascetic figure of the emaciated and pain-racked Francis. And his voluble speech often touched worldly matters. One of his stories was of a man who went far away from Italy to California and made a fortune — ah, such a mass of dollars — and came back with them, and spent them — e fiualmente mortf It lacked d'esprit as an anecdote, but It revealed a certain de- A climbing path at La Vcrna. In the Casentino 315 generate interest In the dollars that was suggestive. Still, it would be altogether too surprising to find every Franciscan a St. Francis. A picture we saw a little later, as we went down the road from the convent gate to our carriage, was more satisfying. In the open door of a rough little hut, almost filled with piled-up, stripped willow branches, a tall, slender, sweet-faced monk was sit- ting and seriously chatting with the peasant woman who was plaiting the willow withes into baskets. This was more like the little brother of poverty of the Fioretti, more like the simple holy man that Sabatier makes so vivid and convincing in the Life. As much as La Verna is real and a stimulating per- sonification in stone and terra-cotta and forest and cliff of the spirit of its founder, we needed some such human touch as this of Brother Bernadone in the peasant hut to remind us to the full of the spiritual beauty and simplicity, the very etherealization of humanity that was Saint Francis. III. PRATO AND PISTOJA Along a single short stretch of railway, of sixty miles or thereabouts, which extends from Florence on the Arno to Pisa on the Arno, but doesn't follow the river at all, lie the four towns of Prato, Pistoja, Lucca, and Pisa. All have close historic and artistic associations with Florence, and all are, in a way, really only a part of Florentine sightseeing. Pisa is, of course, on the regular tourist calendar; its leaning tower, cathedral, baptistry, and Campo 3i6 Florentine Excursions Santo, that wonderful four in their isolated, quiet field, have made it famed over all the world. But Lucca, if it had no more in it to see than its single, priceless jewel, the tomb of Ilaria — and it has many more — ought on no account to be missed. And Pis- toja and Prato are, if not equally, at least very certainly, worth while. From Prato one carries away at least one lifelong picture, that of the ex- quisite Donatello pulpit in colored stone on the ex- ternal wall angle of the cathedral, and of Pistoja he will remember much more than the guide-books' supposition, that it was the original home of the pistol. The servants showed what seemed an unnecessary excitement when they learned of our projected little outing. Maria had dark premonitions of the dan- gers of extended railway travel; Marina devoted extra hours to the overhauling of Rowena's ward- robe. Beppi commiserated Boy, the dog, on their approaching lonesomeness. To put the sixty miles of railway travel in their proper light — or. Indeed, one hundred and twenty, as we should have to re- traverse them to get back again — we spoke of the five days and nights of steady steaming from New York to San Francisco as a journey made not In- frequently In our home country. But this was a mistake of over-shooting the mark. Maria, Indeed, who had been in distant Vienna and Buda-Pesth, seemed to have some realization of such a feat of railway travel, but for BeppI and Marina it was an inconceivable performance. However, after getting new candles for the shrine on the outer house wall, Prato and Pistoja 317 and having them blessed by the village priest as he made his benevolent round of the roads, the serv- ants had some hope of seeing us again. This blessing of the field and roadside shrines by the Settignano prior and a motley little procession of women and children, with two or three old men, shot us back through the centuries. It was on the very morning of our projected excursion. We were wakened at dawn by the intoning voices in the road- way, and, peeping through the shutters, we saw the straggling procession coming towards us, along the road from Gamberaia. Colored banners, tall candles, and a crucifix on a long staff bobbed about overhead. In front strode seriously the priest and his assistant, robed in their silken vestments. Along the flanks and at the rear of the little column gam- boled children. Halt was made under our wall shrine, with its fresh flowers and new candles, and the prayer and blessings were intoned by the priest, while the women murmured responses and the chil- dren strove to keep a respectful silence. Then all moved on to the next tinseled Mary, or pitiful, weather-worn roadside crucifixion. While Prato is only about twenty minutes by rail- way from Florence, we managed to prolong the jour- ney to an hour and a half by going by the noisy, smoky, jouncing steam tram, that starts from near the central railway station and lands one in Prato under the high, crumbling, plant-grown walls of the old prison. Part of the hour and a half was used up in allowing a passenger to get out and trot back a quarter of a mile for his hat, lost overboard. And 3i8 Florentine Excursions some more disappeared during the proper discussion of this event by the tram officials and most of the passengers. But it is exactly for such incidents of real Italy that we travel when we can by intermittent trams that ramble through fields and back streets, or by pony carriages that explore country lanes and pull up at the smallest of trattorie. The Prato tram shows one a good deal of Tuscan life. It brushes past the long, hanging, fruit-laden A bit of Tuscan countryside. branches that straggle over vineyard fences. It ambles slowly by a stone-floored aja, where the men are beating the grain out with sticks or whipping the sheaves against the floor. It pushes through high walls of corn, a lush green growth that makes mockery of the too familiar phrases used to describe the " centuries-old, gaunt, used-up land of Italy." It takes one intimately by open doorways, in which Prato and Pistoja 319 women and girls sit, chatting and laughing, but al- ways steadily, interminably plaiting straw for the gay hats of the Mercato Nuovo in Florence. And finally, it lands one under the old fortress and prison walls of Santa Barbara, and immediately at the door of the curious domed church of Madonna delle Car- ceri. Here we begin promptly our Prato sight- seeing. It is a church of the late fifteenth century, in the form of a Greek cross. The heavy dome rests on an attic story, and seems too large for the building. Within there is an attractive blue and white terra- cotta frieze by Andrea della Robbia, with four large medallions of the Evangelists, with their conven- tional accessories. We had popped into the church too quickly to be espied by any possible commissionaires, if such there might be lurking for visitors in this sleepy little town. But when we came out and wandered slowly along, with eyes fascinated by the crumbling, high, old city wall, with the decaying fortress atop of it, and the little green bushes growing fearlessly in its crevices, we found ourselves provided with a valet de place, of such insinuating grace and quiet persist- ence that for once we broke one of the firmest articles in our traveling creed. We surrendered with hardly a struggle, and accepted our master. He was a boy with a live white rat in his arms; or better, he was the Boy with the White Rat. For he is unique in our experience. All that sweet, long summer day of loitering in churches and before corner shrines, standing deaf- 320 Florentine Excursions ened among the copper beaters by the river, or watch- ing and chatting with the wool-weavers and hat-mak- ers in the by-streets, we shared our delights with our boy of the white rat. As we sat at coffee on the " The patched walls of the ancient Palazzo Pretorio." piazza sidewalk in the shade of the patched walls of the ancient Palazzo Pretorio, watching the street ragamuffins climb precariously up to put their thirsty lips to those water-spouting ones of the stone Cupid on the old piazza fountain, our rat-tamer and his blinking charge nestled at our feet. Sometimes we made an imposing procession of it Prato and Pistoja 321 when we picked up followers faster than they tired of us — or rather of that soft-haired, pink-eyed, white thing nuzzling in our guide's arms. For we were nothing to the children of Prato, but the white rat was much. As we rested on the steps of the foun- tain in the cathedral piazza watching the pigeons whirling about the beautiful pulpit, we had twelve boys, beside the rat, for company; as many joyous children almost as Donatello had carved there in the pulpit reliefs. The pulpit is partly Michelozzo's, according to authority, but the reliefs must certainly be Dona- tello's own. They remind one irresistibly of those happiest of all singing boys in the world, those living images in stone on the cantoria in the little Duomo museum in Florence. Five times a year (Easter, May I, August 15, September 5, and Christmas Day) Prato's famous relic, the girdle of the Madonna, is shown from the pulpit. The holy myths of this girdle are the subjects of some of the Duomo's most precious works of art. We find them in Ridolfo Ghirlandajo's fresco over the west portal, in Mino da Fiesole and Antonio Rossellini's carved pulpit, and in the Madonna statuette by Giovanni Pisano, the architect of the church. The finest frescoes in the cathedral are those of Filippo Lippi in the choir, picturing the lives of John the Baptist and Stephen the Martyr. It was here in Prato that Fra Filippo found and seduced from her convent cell the beau- tiful Lucrezia Buti, whose sweet Madonna face grows so familiar in the Lippi pictures. In the quiet cloisters of San Francesco we saw 222 Florentine Excursions some fading frescoes in the manner of Giotto, but let our eyes linger more on the decaying beauties " The pulpit is partly Michelozzo's. according to authority, but the reliefs must certainly be Donatello's own." of the cloister inclosure: an old well, the peeling columns, and the ragged garden. In a cupboard Prato and Pistoja 323 shrine on an angle of Via Santa Margherita is a fading but still very beautiful painting of Filippino Lippi, a Madonna and four accompanying figures, Anthony, Stephen, Margherita, and Costanza. It took much scurrying about by our rat-taming guide to get the key of the shrine doors, with the result that we viewed the picture with most of the inhabi- tants of the quarter at our elbows and back. But it was as new to some of them as to us. Other things there are to see in Prato: two or three churches, with pictures of reputed interest, and a small gallery in the Palazzo Communale. But our day had come to its end. So the white rat escorted us faithfully to the station and waited with us for the train. It was truly a reluctant a river- derci. Some persons have found Pistoja a revelation of unexpected beauty and interest. We have not. Beautiful things and interesting ones there are cer- tainly, but the town as a whole brought us no such continuous, positive satisfaction and quiet joy as little Prato or larger Lucca. However, to the student grounded in Tuscan history or Tuscan art, Pistoja must be a rich hunting-ground. Even the casual visitor cannot escape realizing that he is in an atmos- phere filled with murmurs of an unusually eventful past, and that he sees here surprisingly plainly some- thing of the modulations that bind the art of one city or one epoch to that of another. To take a simple and very obvious instance : he notes unavoid- ably the appearance here and there on the church fagades of those rows of short columns that are so 324 Florentine Excursions much more in evidence in Lucca, and so dominatingly characteristic of the Pisan cathedral group. And in remembering that it was here that Catiline was defeated and slain, and that here the great Guelph- Ghibelline struggle toolc on its significant Blacks " The striking, column-laden, long fagade of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas." against Whites phase, one will have two samples of the incidents that go to make up the dispropor- tionate importance this little town assumes in the tale of Rome and Italy. Pistoja is a place of many churches, as one realizes even before reaching it from the abundance of tow- ers and domes that lift above its red gray roofs. Prato and Pistoja 325 And almost all of these churches seem to have some- thing in or on them worth seeing. There is the striking, column-laden, long fagade of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, with its fascinatingly naive old relief of " Vasari's imposing dome and lantern on Madonna dell' Umilta." the Last Supper (Gruamons) over the door. There is the elaborate pulpit of Giovanni Pisano in Sant' Andrea, with its reliefs of crowded figures and curi- ous animals between the bases of the columns. There 326 Florentine Excursions are the numerous frescoes of Giotto's school in San Francesco, and Vasari's imposing dome and lantern on Madonna dell' Umilta. Finally, there is the Duomo of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with its facade of short columns, its loggia with statues The Duomo of Pistoja. on the roof, and its della Robbia medallions in the recess over the central door. Inside the Duomo, near the entrance (right wall), is one of the most curious tomb monuments to be seen in all Italy. It commemorates the virtues of Cino Sinibaldi, teacher of Petrarch and friend of Dante. The naive relief shows the poet professor lecturing to a group of students, among them Pe- trarch and one woman. Most of the class seern a little less than interested in the conference. At the ;iM^^^' O .2 n o Z Prato and Pistoja 327 other end of the church in the chapel of the Sacra- ment (left of the choir) is a Madonna and Child, and a rather stiff but interesting relief bust of Bishop Donato dei Medici, by Antonio Rossellino, the Set- tignano hill-side sculptor. The hollow-cheeked, set- lipped ascetic face is very strong, and suggests care- ful portraiture. In the chapel on the right of the "The Duomo is one of a group of interesting structures facing on an open piazza, whose most conspicuous feature is the high square campanile, or Torre del Podesta." choir is the principal treasure of the church, an altar with elaborate silver reredos and wings worked in marvelous detail and delicacy by Pistojese and Flor- entine silversmiths. The relief carvings tell stones from the Old and New Testaments, and from the life of St. James. We spent a fascinated hour be- 328 Florentine Excursions fore this wealth of little figures and scenes, finding every minute new beauties or curiosities to exclaim at. One could repeat there many such hours. The Duomo is one of a group of interesting struc- tures facing on an open piazza, whose most con- spicuous feature is the high square campanile, or The inclosed court of the Palazzo Pretorio. Torre del Podesta. It was anciently a fortified tower, but in 1 30 1 was made over and ornamented with series of short columns in Luccan and Pisan fashion. On the same side with Duomo and Campanile is the old Palazzo Communale, while opposite are the oc- tagonal black and white Baptistry and the later Pa- lazzo Pretorio. Workmen were busy in the Pa- lazzo del Commune, and so we could not see its reputed treasures of wood-carving and marble re- Prato and Pistoja 329 liefs. But In the Palazzo Pretorio we had a cooling rest in the Inclosed court, sitting with our legs a-swing on the old stone bench of justice. In the walls and heavy masonry pillars of the roof vaulting are many stemmi of ancient podestas. It Is a place of charm and reminiscence, this cool, cellar-like quadrangle of the stern old palace. In the piazza a weekly cloth market is held, and in the wall of the Palazzo Communale an official metal braccio measure Is embedded, so that any man may readily verify his own or his neighbor's cloth yard. Of the other sights of Pistoja, certainly first in importance Is the frieze of the Ospedale del Ceppo. Stretching for several rods above the six medallioned arches of the long arcade of the building's face, and fresh and beautiful under Its glazing, this frieze is a glory of terra-cotta modeling and coloring. There are more than eighty figures in the whole piece. They are arranged in groups representing works of charity, among them the gift of drink to the thirsty, food to the starving, lodgment to the pilgrim, burial to the dead. Between the groups are larger single figures of the personified Virtues, while separating the six arches of the fagade, and at its ends, are seven great medallions representing religious scenes. Whether the work be of the della Robbias or not — the PIstojese attribute It to Giovanni — it is one well worthy of their name. This meager account of Pistoja sights must suf- fice. Her streets are clean and animate with life. She does not belie her reputation for Industry and 330 Florentine Excursions business initiative. But these do not particularly add to her charm. Sleepiness and medievalism are more sought for by the visitor to Italy than the Italian version of our own success. We pass Turin and Milan rapidly, to tarry in Florence and Siena. And so I should advise more hours or days in Prato or Lucca than in Pistoja. For all I know, Lucca may do a great deal more business than Pistoja. She is more than twice as large, and her name is strongly suggestive of high, slender bottles in the grocer's window. But she herself seems old and quiet and very beautiful. IV. LUCCA At the Pistoja station we made a trifling slip in the carrying out of our schedule of travel. We boarded a train going the wrong way. We got out at the first stop, but found we had some little time for observation of station, side-tracks, and switch- signals, before another train would come along with engine at the proper end. The station happened to be one which is the getting-off place for visitors to certain springs and baths in the mountains near by, and is besieged by the many hotel and pension and livery touts incidental to such places. We were evi- dently among the first of the season's visitors. At sight of us descending from the train a lust of blood seized them. But when time went on, and we did not issue from the little station waiting-room to be torn apart by them, consternation reigned. We could hear the murmurs of our besiegers. Lucca 331 " Are they never coming out ! " " What unusually extraordinary forestieri ! " It was like showing a pair of early Christian mar- tyrs to the lions and then snatching them back. But our train came at last. And we set out through the little plots of corn and beans bounded by trees and vines. Tall, slim cannae were growing along the water ditches. Everything was green and fresh. The sun was bright and warm, but there was a cool- ing breeze. The little fields had for immediate background the rounded Pistojese hills and moun- tains, with their sprinkling of villas and old towers and pavilioned hotel resorts. In the distance, and closing the longer vistas, we had glimpses of the high Apuan Alps. Sometimes we skirted the bases of real mountains, and near Pescia we crossed the river of the same name to escape the roughness of these Apennine outflanks. Then our omnibus train ambled on through the broad valley of the river, until finally the host of flat-topped, square towers of Lucca came into sight, with a group of extraor- dinary great peaks in the background. These peaks, though dimmed and softened by distance, seemed of a boldness and apparent impregnability hardly surpassed by a Tyrolean or Swiss group of summits. Lucca has too much in it, there is too much of it, to describe it in any detail in such a mere sketch as this. The picture must be one of the most fleeting impressionism; an impression of a dream place of highcampanile and many-columned, sculptured church fronts; of little green trees growing and beckoning 332 Florentine Excursions high in the air on the summit of an old square tower of romance, and of a marble figure forever asleep in a great cool church of her who once smiled down from the parapet of that high tower of the proud Guinigi. In this picture, too, there must be quiet, pigeon-haunted piazzas, bounded by arcaded shops and connected by antiquated tortuous streets that lead you to utter confusion, that does not matter in "Until finally the host of flat-topped, square towers of Lucca came into sight." the least. For, wherever you go, there is something more to add to the sweet dream. And how fit it is that this old-world place should be completely inclosed by low, bastioned walls, with dry moat without, and broad, grassy, tree-grown bank within. We walked slowly around the entire city on this fascinating promenade, looking now down into the medley of crowded houses, now broadly across the red-tiled roofs to the scattered score of lifting towers, and now away from the city Lucca 333 out over the flat valley and plain to the distant high, blue mountains. In the moat below a troop of black-gowned seminarists were at simple play; along the white roads, radiating away into invisibility, carts and wagons slowly moved; in the flat fields a few cattle grazed, and on the moat's outer edge a uni- formed oflicer made his canter of exercise. We were loth to surrender our picture of Lucca whole for the closer examination of even the most " How fit it is that this old-world place should be completely inclosed by low bastioned walls., with dry moat without, and broad, grassy, tree-grown bank within." beautiful bits of the mosaic. But when in our drift- ing we finally found ourselves in the quiet little Piazza San Martino, under the high, many-columned campanile of the cathedral, we went in to see that most beautiful single thing in Lucca, Jacopo della Quercia's gravestone of Ilaria. But first we had 334 Florentine Excursions our fill of tiie beauties and curiosities of the cathedral facade. It is a wonderful Romanesque church front, with its three-arched loggia, its triple series of open galleries, its many antique short columns, its striking sculptures, and na'iVe ornamentation. The interior, nearly three hundred feet long and a hundred feet high, is impressive and beautiful, and contains a number of choice things. Most mem- orable is the llaria tomb. This marble effigy on its lifted bed, with its garlanded putti and quaint little watchdog, is of remarkable delicacy and grace of modeling, and utterly expressive of tenderness and repose. The pillowed head, high-ruffed and fil- leted, with its sweet face, the lightly folded hands, the faintly outlined form under the soft draperies, all make it a thing of everlasting beauty, probably the most beautiful tomb of its type in Italy. It at least vies with the Guidarelli monument in Ravenna for this distinction. Lucca's most celebrated relic, the wooden Volto Santo, is inclosed in an elaborate small tabernacle or chapel (near the middle of the left aisle), callec^Tl Tempietto, which was specially built for it by Matjfeo Civitali. The relic is an ornamented wooden cro'ss, with a face of Christ painted on it. The face is a strange one, strongly suggestive of Byzantine origin, or at least influence. It is kept veiled in its shrine, ex- cept on certain rare occasions. The myth accounting for the existence and presence here of the relic ac- credits its making partly to the hand of St. Nicode- mus, and partly to some divine interference, and in- cludes a curious tale of its travels and adventures. Lucca 335 After its making it lay long hidden, " till in 782 a Piedmontese bishop found it by means of a vision, and put it aboard ship and abandoned it to the sea. Cast The Duomo and Campanile of Lucca. hither and thither in the waves, the ship at last came ashore at Luna, where the Bishop of Lucca was stay- ing, in the summer heat. So, led by God, he would 336 Florentine Excursions have borne it to Lucca. But the people of Luna, who had heard of its sanctity, objecting, it was placed in a cart drawn by two white oxen, and, as it had been abandoned by the sea, so now it was given to the world. But the oxen, who, in fact, came from the fields of Lucca, returned thither, to the disgust of the people of Luna, and to the great and holy joy of the Bishop of Lucca." Near II Tempietto is a statue of St. Sebastian, by Civitali, and in the right transept of the church are several other pieces by the same sculptor, who is Lucca's most famous artist. The church contains a number of interesting pictures, the most notable among which is a Madonna with Saints Stephen and John the Baptist, by Fra Bartolommeo. It is held by students to be one of the finest works of this master. In the ancient but much made-over church of San Giovanni, just off the cathedral piazza, the old woman caretaker would let us look at nothing un- adorned with the hall-mark of age. A few columns from the Roman church that originally stood here, and a great font sunk in a patterned marble floor, a veritable duocento plunge bath, In the old baptis- try, to which the Lucchese generations of a thou- sand years or longer came for the sprinkling that opened Heaven's gates to them : these were what we saw of San Giovanni. In San Frediano, far across the town to the north, and hard by the grass-topped ramparts, we did bet- ter. It was rather dark here for the pictures, of which none, perhaps, is of unusual distinction; but Lucca 337 It was not too dark to see well the interesting ancient mosaic (restored) outside on the fagade, and the great marble font within, very old and primitively- sculptured. In the chapel of the Holy Sacrament we saw on the altar another sculpture by Jacopo della Querela, a Madonna and Saints In relief, and in the chapel of St. Zita we saw the tomb of that canonized housemaid of Lucca, who Is at once the type and glory of the Lucchese folk. San Fredl- ano's campanile is one of the highest and best among all the many of Lucca, and Its fagade is as impressive In Its way as that of the cathedral, or as that of the extraordinary, much-repaired false front of San Michele. Most of the churches of Lucca are of very ancient foundation, but of much medieval and modern patch- ing. San Michele is an excellent example. Its his- tory of building and rebuilding covers more than a thousand years, for its beginning goes back to the ninth century, and its last extensive repairing oc- curred in the nineteenth. In Its devotion to short- columned galleries on Its fagade it is more Pisan than anything Pisa can boast of, for two stories of these galleries are carried right on up into the air far above the roof of the nave. The architect aban- doned all reality in order to Indulge a too pretentious aspiration. On the wall angle to the right of the central door of San Michele Is a statue of the Madonna by CIvI- tali, and in the loggia of the Palazzo Pretorio, across the piazza, Is a statue of the artist himself. In San Romano, near the Piazza Napoleone, there 338 Florentine Excursions is a strange tomb monument of Civitali's making. It stands just behind the high altar, and is the monu- ment of the martyred St. Romanus. The youthful figure of the saint, in painted alabaster, lies in a niche under an inscription, with a pitying Christ and two cherubim heads in a flat lunette above. The recum- San Michele in Lucca. bent figure is modeled in high relief, and seems con- tinually on the point of rolling out of its shallow niche. It is also contorted rather distressfully in order to show as much of itself as possible. However, despite the unhappy position and apparently con- stantly Imminent catastrophe, the figure has much beauty. Another of Civitali's colored pieces, an Assump- tion of the Madonna, is to be found in the museum in the Palazzo Provinciale on the Piazza Napoleone. Lucca 339 In this museum also are two pictures of Fra Bar- tolommeo, one very famous, as well as a number of others of some interest. In trying to come back to the center of town from San Frediano, we took, by good fortune, a wrong way. It brought us under that tower whose forested summit — one tree and a bush are forest enough for a tower's top — is so conspicuous in any general view of the town. The building above which it rises is one of the palaces of the ancient great family of Lucca, the Guinigi. It was a Guinigi to whom the beautiful Ilaria had been married but a year before her death. And it was a Guinigi who discovered and became patron of and gave opportunity to that extraordinary youth of Lucca, who became its great- est warrior, indeed, one of the greatest in all time in all Italy. This was Castruccio Castracani, who gave the Florentines the most disastrous beating they ever suffered, and who became lord of Pisa, and, indeed, of all Tuscany, and aspired even to be the very ruler of Rome. The history of Lucca in that most animated and picturesque of all its historical periods, the first quar- ter of the fourteenth century, is simply the story of the varying, but mostly ascending, fortunes of Castracani and his Guinigi adherents. And so our brief contemplation of the exterior of the old Guinigi palace and its verdurous tower at the end of a full day was a fitting close to our sightseeing in Lucca. It was, too, a proper introduction to the turning of our attention to Pisa, whose history so interlocks with that of Lucca. 340 Florentine Excursions V. PISA A thousand years ago Pisa was a great city, and immensely more important than it is now. And a thousand years before that it had made a decent beginning as a Roman settlement, provided with all those inevitable architectural accompaniments of temples, theaters, and arches, whose remains come to be the very commonplaces of Italian travel. Even two thousand years of history lose some of their thrill when they are faced too often; and the Amer- ican traveler, so quickly adaptable and swift of com- prehension, soon finds himself content with the same adjectives and exclamations under the crumbling ruins of a Roman arch of Hadrian as at home he would use in face of the dilapidated homestead cabin of the first settler on the town-site. He simply takes centuries for units instead of years, and goes un- concernedly ahead with his sightseeing. And Pisa he has known for too long as the home of the Lean- ing Tower to be seduced away from the immediate seeing of this pictured wonder of the school geogra- phies by any account, ever so compact, of the city's adventures during two thousand years of active life. As Pisa is situated on, or at least near, the sea, it may be taken for granted that some of these ad- ventures were maritime; as, indeed, they were, to the intimate knowledge of Genoa and Venice and Sicily, and even of the pagans in distant Tunis. And as most adventures of olden time arose from duties of self-defense or aspirations of aggression, it may likewise be assumed with confidence — a confidence Pisa 341 justified by most impressive facts — that Pisa played its part in the various internal and exotic wars that touched her interests in those old days. And by the end of this ruminating our traveler would find his carriage, taken at the railway station, already depositing him in front of his long-cherished Lean- ing Tower in that distant field of the Four Glories of Pisa, the Piazza del Duomo. It was in her greatest days that Pisa built for her- self the Four Glories. They commemorate not only the piety of the Pisa of eight hundred years ago, but also her prowess and her pride. For they con- tain in the way of numerous antique pillars and saintly relics much booty of Pisa's great campaigns, and their magnificence was beyond that of any other Italian city's aspiration. Indeed, there is no equiva- lent group to-day in any other Italian city of Pisa's size, or several times its size. Nor anywhere else in Italy can the visitor see so easily and so tranquilly all that is most worth seeing of a city. For one might go from Pisa without visiting any other part of it than the isolated churchyard field of the Duomo and yet suffer afterward no too serious pangs of un- seized opportunity. There are numerous churches in Pisa, all of more or less interest in structure or contents; there is a civic museum (in the cloisters of San Francesco), with paintings and sculpture of value. There is the irregular Piazza dei Cavalieri, with its church and its palace of San Stefano, and its notoriety derived from the Hunger Tower, now long destroyed, where a precious Ghibelline arch- bishop starved Guelph Ugolino and his sons. Dante, 342 Florentine Excursions the poet, and Carpeaux, the sculptor, have told the story each with his own tools. And there is the Ponte di Mezzo, where of old the game of mimic war was played that helped fit the Pisan citizens to be the Pisan men-at-wars. Finally, there are " lit- erary landmarks," haunts of Shelley and Byron and others, to be looked up. But all of these, if time be short, should not lessen by an hour the visit to the Four Glories. Especially as that most interesting and fascinating little jewel-case of a chapel, Santa Maria della Spina, on the river bank, between the Ponte Solferino and the Ponte Mezzo, can be seen on the way from the station to the Duomo, or vice versa. This pause at the little chapel " for the sailors that go to sea " will let one see at the same time the graceful curve of the Arno, and some of the picturesque palace fagades along its right bank. One of the beauties of the English cathedrals is that derived from their setting, their quiet isolation in the green close that guards them from the press and noise of the city streets. And conversely, this lack of churchyard is one of the misfortunes of most of the great continental churches. Pisa's duomo has the advantage of isolation and remoteness from the city life; the Piazza del Duomo is really a great churchyard, holding easily, besides the cathedral, the baptistry, the Campo Santo, and the campanile or " leaning tower." Beginning with this last I hasten to say that actual acquaintance discovers it to be less a curiosity and more an object of beauty than one thinks to find. Pisa 343 Not that it does not bear out satisfactorily its repu- tation for eccentricity; it leans; it leans amazingly; but its beautiful color, its successive wreaths of colon- nades, and its aspect of grace and lightness despite the considerable diameter and simple cylindrical out- line, give one the gratifying surprise of discovering beauty where only bizarrerie was expected. From the summit, reached by a wearying climb of nearly three hundred steps, two things can be well appre- ciated, namely, the rare beauty of the Pisan moun- tain landscape, and the dizzying overhang that four- teen feet out of the perpendicular gives a tower only thirteen times that many feet high. Turning from the campanile we may enter the cathedral by the old bronze doors of Bormanus, with their quaint picturing of Bible stories. Or we may walk the quiet outer length of the great building and enter by one of the later but still respectably old bronze doors of the splendid fagade. This is one of the most beautiful church fronts in Italy. Its beauty comes not alone from the majestic lines, the decorating galleries, and the wealth of colored columns, but as well from the richness of the very stone itself. The whole cathedral is built of white marble, interspersed by lines and bars of black, and greenish. Perhaps, indeed, the most beautiful mem- ory of Pisa's duomo and tower and baptistry is that of their white walls glowing like old ivory under the sun of early morning or late afternoon. With the purple and lavender of the mountains behind them they make an ineffaceable picture. Within the cathedral the impression is one of 344 Florentine Excursions beauty and spaciousness. The church is more than three hundred feet long by one hundred feet wide, and contains a forest of antique columns, booty of conquest. The choir is impressive, the nave is high and flat-ceilinged, and the aisles vaulted. There are pictures by Sodoma, Andrea del Sarto, and others, and sculptures and carving by Giovanni da Bologna, Matteo Civitali, and Giovanni Pisano. This Pisano was the son of that more famous Niccolo, sculptor of the Baptistry pulpit, and Pisa's greatest native name in the history of art. In the dome and else- where there are some old mosaics by Cimabue and his followers, and, hanging by its long chain, the great bronze lamp whose pendulum swinging meant, if tradition be true, so much to Galileo. The Baptistry, like the Duomo, is all marble. It has a superb domed top, and an ornamentation of gallery and columns like that of the tower and ca- thedral. It is nearly two hundred feet high, with a diameter half as great, and stands in complete isolation, a condition permitting all of its grandeur and beauty to reveal themselves. The Baptistry contains Niccolo Pisano's earliest and greatest triumph, the carved pulpit familiar by picture and description to every student of the Italian Renaissance. For this pulpit, carved in 1260, was almost the first tangible expression of the new feeling and manner. The sculptor's other famous pulpit, that in the cathedral at Siena (wrought with the help of his son Giovanni and certain students) was done seven or eight years later. Besides the pulpit, the beautiful great marble font, Pisa 345 seven hundred years old, Is the principal object of interest in the wide, high, echoing room. Of a sudden a sonorous ringing harmony of tones sweeps down from the great hollow of the dome and fills the whole space of the building with rhythmic vibration. It is as if one were hearing played a great calliope or organ of an octave's range in some mighty cavern of a thousand echoes. The caretaker, leaning carelessly against the font's edge, hardly moves his lips to do this; or rather, to stimu- late the speaking walls and resonant chamber of the dome to do it. Finally, there Is still to see that strangest, most holy, and, to many persons, most beautiful glory of all the quadruple group, the Campo Santo: low arcaded quadrangle, built around Its plot of holy soil, brought In fifty shiploads from Jerusalem. The quadrangle has, roundly, four hundred feet of length and one hundred and fifty of width, and both with- out and within has a continuous arcade or cloister. These arcades are a wonderful gallery of frescoes and old sculptures. Many of the frescoes are fad- ing badly, but of some both the lines and colors are still well preserved. There Is much uncertainty con- cerning the authorship of these fourteenth and fif- teenth century frescoes, especially of the most Inter- esting ones, such as The Triumph of Death, with its strange fancies of conception, and the Last Judg- ment, with its masterly execution of figures. The whole series on the north wall Is definitely ascribed, however, to Benozzo GozzoH, and several pictures in it reveal much of the joy and grace of this artist's 346 Florentine Excursions work in the little chapel of the Medici palace (Pa- lazzo Riccardi) in Florence. There are three chapels attached to the quad- rangle, which also contain some frescoes and tombs. And there are various curiosities that one looks at with interest, among them the great chains that closed the ancient harbor of Pisa against enemies. But more than curiosities, sculptures, and frescoes, one sees and feels and surrenders to the peace and ancientness and persisting rehgious faith of this sanctuary of old bones and holy soil. It is an artis- tic expression of belief that makes an almost irre- sistible appeal. To be sure, the day and one's own mood of the moment count for much in the matter. Under a soft, clear sky, with the glancing light of the sun touching the green inclosure and the old grave- stones under foot; alone, and glad to be alone and quiet; then the Campo Santo is all beauty and rest. This ended our excursion. We went back to Florence and to the little villa on the hill-side by the straightest way. That is, directly up the Arno, past Empoli and Signa. This way is some twenty miles shorter than that by Lucca and Pistoja. When we got in sight of the big red orcio on the villa roof our homecoming greetings began. Marina was waving and smiling to us from the roof, Beppi from the road, and Maria from the gate. And we soon convinced ourselves of what seemed the certain con- viction of the servants, that we had had a provi- dential return from a long and hazardous and won- derful journey, which had extended over an inde- Pisa 347 terminable period of time. The candles, which had been steadily burning In the little shrine on the house- corner for our safe-keeping, were nearly burned out, and the soup only awaited serving. It was the high- est of high time for our returning. CHAPTER XXI BOOKS ABOUT FLORENCE POOR over-written Florence! Not at all. It is simply a matter of interest. Can there be an over-interest in Florence? Can there be too many people wanting to come to see it, and feel it: people needing, therefore, some kind of guiding hand to and through and round about it? Florence, and what it stands for, and most beautifully reveals, are an abiding interest with a great many people, and so it is much written about. It would not be if the books were not wanted. Some of them are better than others; some are very good, some just good, some poor; I suppose some are downright bad. But I am no judge of books, perhaps: certainly no hanging judge, like George Moore, for example. " ' Diana of the Crossways,' " says Moore — of course, this is not a book about Florence; it is just an example of the way a hanging judge executes a book — " ' Diana of the Crossways,' " says Moore, in the " Confessions of a Young Man," " I liked better [than " Rhoda Fleming"], and had I had absolutely nothing to do I might have read it to the end." But I am not a young man, and my account of the books about Florence, which is not an account 348 Books About Florence 349 at all, but simply the naming of some titles with the swiftest and most casual of annotations, will con- tain no such spicy judgings as Moore's. This list is only introduced with the thought of giving a little matter-of-fact help to the inquiring actual or the dreaming possible first-tripper. Our own pressing need of orientation when we first came to try to see and know a little of Florence made us pay some special attention to the book-guides, and this need will certainly be that of others in our place. It would be of a certain interest to try a rough classification of the books about Florence. But it is hardly necessary for such a slight performance as this. One might group these book-guides into the " regulars," as Baedeker, Murray, Meyer, Hare, Horner, Grant Allen (with apologies to the shade of that pridefully irregular regular!), — the "Walks in Florence," " Talks in Florence," " Literary Land- marks of Florence," " Mornings in Florence," " Masterpieces of Florence," and the several just Florences: and into the " irregulars," or specials, as the " Florentine Palaces," " Florentine Heraldry," " Florence of Landor," " Florence of the Brown- ings," " Echoes of Old Florence," " Legends of Florence," " Dante and His Beloved City," and the like. Then there are the standard treatises on art, as the books of Liibke, Crowe and Cavacaselle, Be- renson, and others: and the special historical and critical accounts of the art and poetry of Florence alone, its painters and sculptors, architects and poets, and the special biographies of these artists and writers. 350 Books About Florence Then there is a collection of politico-historical treatments of Florence alone, or of Tuscany, or Nor- thern Italy, or of all Italy: and the histories of spe- cial periods, and the biographies of particular rulers, statesmen, and warriors. There is the group of travels and sketches in Italy, with more or less description and account of Florence and Tuscany; and the group devoted to accounts of the life of the people, their temperament, and ways. And there is, finally, the group of " first impressions " of Florence and " letters " from Flor- ence, a great group ever dying steadily at one end and growing vigorously at the other. But not finally, either, for there is one other group, by no means to be overlooked : that one which in- cludes " Romola," " Signa," " The Forerunner," " The Marble Faun," " Casa Guidi Windows," and the others. These are the stories and poems that have had Florence and neighboring Tuscany for their setting: books that come with refreshment and joy to the weary peruser of Talks and Walks and Echoes and Impressions. They tell more, perhaps, or at least leave more and better echoes and im- pressions, more vivid pictures and memories of Flor- ence and her great ones, than any of the catalogues or manuals of the other groups. Of all these groups, my few references are chiefly to those immediately orienting and guiding helps (written in English, or translated) that the traveler on his first visit to Florence needs in his hands, the read-as-you-walk books. But there is noted also a fair number of orienting books for the fireside Books About Florence 351 traveler to Florence. There is a certain kind of book, of which this present one of mine may be an example, which tries to be a little more than a guide in the street, but something less than a manual for the class-room; that hopes to be useful, and perhaps interesting, both to the actual visitor and those other more numerous ones that can only come in the spirit. For that group my list is more nearly complete than for any other. The actual visitor will need to own personally some compact guide to the streets and palaces, churches and galleries; but he can easily refer to any of the other books in my list by having resort to the library facilities that Florence affords. He can do this most conveniently, perhaps, by subscribing for the term of his stay to Viesseux's circulating li- brary (No. 5, Via Vecchieti, just off the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele; five lire a month for three books out at a time; less for one). This unusual lending library is certainly the best of its kind on the con- tinent. The three large public libraries of Florence are the Nazionale (under the Gallery in the Uffizi Palace), the Marucelliani (Via Cavour, near the Palazzo Riccardi), and the Laurenziana (over the cloisters of San Lorenzo church). The Laurenzi- ana contains only codices and MSS., and is limited in its use, therefore, to the scholar and bibliophile. But the other two can readily be made use of by any resident or visitor seeking current as well as older literature in Florence. The Nazionale, con- taining over 300,000 volumes, is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and with no introduction, subscription, or 352 Books About Florence other formality than the filling out of a request blank handed one by the doorkeeper as one enters, one may obtain and consult in the reading-room any book desired. If one wishes to take books out of this library, it is necessary to fill out a blank (ob- tained on request to the librarian in charge of the reading-room), which needs also the indorsement of the American Consul. Books can be consulted at the excellent Marucelliana library with the same ab- sence of difficulty. A first-class book-shop is Seeber's on the Via Tornabuoni. LIST OF BOOKS ABOUT FLORENCE (Only books or translations in English are included; dates are usually of last editions; English editions of American books, and vice versa, are usually not noted.) Addison, Julia de Wolf : The Art of the Pitti Palace. (1904, Boston.) A brief history of the palace and of the Pitti family, and a good account, descriptive, historical, and critical, of the pictures. Illustrated. Allen, Grant: The EUROPEAN TouR. (1899, London.) Chapters 13 and 14 about Florence; lively reading for a guide-book; nearly as positive and insistent as Ruskin. Allen, Grant: Florence. (1906, London.) Grant Allen's Florence is exclusively the pictures in Florence. Anderson, Isabella M.: TusCAN Folklore and Sketches". (1905, London.) Music, folk lore, bits of Tuscan life, three literary sketches, and a couple of translated bits of Ada Negri. Anonymous: In a Tuscan Garden. (1902, London.) Account of garden, household incidents, and experience with servants; autumn and winter in Tuscany; as much about other things as about the garden. Artistical Guide to Florence. ( 1909, Florence.) Berenson, Bernh: Florentine Painters of the Re- naissance. (1904, New York.) " Florentine painting between Giotto and Michel Angelo contains the names of such artists as Orcagna, 353 354 List of Books About Florence Masaccio, Fra Filippo, Pollaiuolo, Verrochio, Leonardo, and Botticelli. Put beside these the greatest names in Venetian art, the Vivarini, the Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto. The difference is striking. The sig- nificance of the Venetian names is exhausted with their significance as painters. Not so with the Florentines. Forget that they were painters, they remain great sculp- tors; forget that they were sculptors, and still they remain architects, poets, and even men of science." Blashfield, Edwin H. and Evangeline JV.: Italian Cities, 2 vols. (1903, New York.) Beautiful color sketches and good reading; in volume I about 85 pages of Florence and in volume II 25 pages; all interesting. Broun, J. Wood: The Builders of Florence. (1907, Florence. ) An admirable account of Florentine architecture, beauti- fully and informingly illustrated. Carmichael, Montgomery: In Tuscany. (1901, London.) Interesting sketches from first-hand Icnowledge, of Tuscan types of people, the Tuscan language and tempera- ment, Tuscan pallone, the Italian lottery, and several towns (Pisa, Lucca, Leghorn, Volterra, La Verna, Camal- doli, Montecatini, etc.) Good reading. Carocci, Guido: Bygone Florence. Translated by H. G. Huntington. ( 1899, Florence.) An admirable, all too short account of the old walls and city gates, the old mint, old market, the fulling-mills, the bridges as they were, etc. Chapter XII, called " Heir- looms," points out many of the scattered relics of old Florence in the way of doorways, parts of palaces and towers still to be seen in various parts of the city. List of Books About Florence 355 Cartwright, Julia: The Painters of Florence. (1901, London.) Twenty-eight Florentine artists, told about, in a way. Cellini, Benvenuto: Autobiography (translated by J. A. Symonds, London), and Treatises on Goldsmithing AND Sculpture (translated by C. R. Ashbee, 1899, London). Two highly entertaining books. Cole, Selina: First Impressions of Florence. (1906, Liverpool.) Not worse than usual. Cratvford, Mabel: Life in Tuscany. (1859, London.) The people, their manners, religion, society ; Florentine scenes and amusements; Viareggio and Montecatini. Interesting. Crowe, J. A., and Cavalcaselle, G. B.: A New History of Painting in Italy, 3 vols. (1864-1866, London.) Standard. Cruttiuell, Maude A.: A Guide to the Paintings in the Churches and Minor Museums of Florence. (1908, London, and New York.) Catalogue, and quotations from Vasari. Deecke, W.: Italy, A Popular Account of the Coun- try, Its People and Its Institutions. Translated by H. A. Nesbitt. (1904, London.) Geography, geology, climate, hydrography, plants and animals, people, political institutions, church. Especially strong on topography, geography, and geology. Gardner, Ed. G.: The Story of Florence. (1901, London.) Good compact history and general guide. 356 List of Books About Florence Goff, R. C. and Clarissa: Florence and Some Tuscan Cities. (1905, London.) A collaboration of painter husband and writer wife, the husband contributing the more interesting part of the book; reproductions in color of paintings of churches, interiors, bridges, scenes in Florence, Prato, Pistoja, Lucca, Pisa, and Viareggio. Hare, A. J. C, and Baddeley, St. Clair: FLORENCE, seventh edition. (1907, London.) The most compactly complete handbook of Florence. The quotations make it also a library of criticism and of epigram and poetry, with Florence and things Florentine for subject. Harwood, Edith: Notable Pictures in Florence. (1905, London, and New York.) A list of the more notable pictures of eighty-nine artists, arranged under the artists' names, telling where the pictures arc, and giving bits of history and critical esti- mates of them, and bits of biography of the artists. Useful. Hewlett, Maurice: The Road in Tuscany, 2 vols. (1904, London.) Chapter VII of Volume I is a delightful impression- istic sketch of Florence. Chapter XII is a clever attack on the making of galleries by taking pictures out of their setting and assembling them ; as in the Uffizi, where there are " leagues of imprisoned pictures torn, all of them, from their sometime homes and flowering places and pinned to these walls. The Uffizi may be considered as one vast shambles where 2000 Madonnas and 2000 Bimbi are strangling each other." In Volume I are accounts of Lucca, Pistoja, Prato; in Volume II is an account of Pisa. List of Books About Florence 357 Hewlett, Maurice: Earthwork out of Tuscany. ( 1907, London.) Beautiful; the best of Hewlett's writing, say many. " I, a northern image maker, have set up my conceits of their informing spirits, of the spirits of themselves, their soil, and the fair works that they accomplished." Hooker, Katherine: Wayfarers in Italy. (1902, New York.) A chapter called " Sojourning in Florence " gives a chatty personal account of a short stay. Horner, Susan and Johanna: Walks IN Florence, 2 vols. ( 1884, London.) The most elaborate and detailed Florence guide. Howells, W. D.: Tuscan Cities. (Many editions; it is in Tauchnitz.) In it a delightful and informing chapter, " A Florentine Mosaic." Hutton, Ediuard: Florence and Northern Tuscany. (1907, London.) A literary guide-book; information, and appreciation with some floridity of style; beautifully illustrated; in- teresting and useful. Hutton, Edivard: Country Walks About Florence. (1908, London.) The only thing in English covering the ground (Carocci; " Dintorni di Firenze," 2 vols., unfortunately not translated, is the really complete account) ; with map and illustrations. Useful. Hutton, Edward: Italy and the Italians. (1902, London.) Word sketches of Italian cities (two chapters given to Florence) and Italian life and customs. 358 List of Books About Florence Mutton, Laurence: Literary Landmarks of Florence. (1897, New York.) Where Dante, Galileo, Savonarola, Alfierl, Boccaccio, Landor, the Brownings, Dickens, Mark Twain, and ninety others lived or walked or talked in Florence. In- teresting and useful in trailing famous lions to their lairs. Hyett, Francis A.: Florence, Her History and Art. ( 1903, London.) A recent history by a Cambridge University man, writ- ten for the general reader because the author thinks Villari's and Napier's books are too long and scholarly and Trollope's too long and flippant. John, Earl of Cork and Orrery: Letters FROM Italy in 1754 and 1755. (1773, London.) Letters 7 and 8 and 10 to 17, composing most of the book, are from Florence, and give an interesting and lively picture of the Florence of those days. Lees, Dorothy N.: Tuscan Feasts and Tuscan Friends. ( 1907, London.) Slight sketches of festas, people, and scenes about Florence. Leland, Chas. Godfrey: Legends of Florence. (1895, London.) Tales of the people about the churches, piazzas, bridges, palaces, etc. Very interesting. Lungo, Isidore del: Women of Florence. Translated by Mary Steegman. ( 1907, London.) A study of the influence of women on Florentine history during and prior to the cinque cente. Liibke, Wm.: History of Art. (1868, London.) Standard. List of Books About Florence 359 MachiaveUi, Niccolo: History of Florence. Translated by N. H. Thomson, 2 vols. (In seven different editions.) Standard. McMalion, Anna B.: Florence in the Poetry of the Brownings. (1904, Chicago.) " Being a selection of the poems of Robert and E. B. Browning which have to do wath the history, the scenery, and the art of Florence." Murray, A. H. Hallani: accompanied by H. W. Nevinson and Montgomery Carmichael ; Sketches on the Old Road Through France to Florence. (1904, Lon- don.) Despite the heavy length of the caravan of title and author list, the book is anything but tedious. Chapters XI-XIII treat of Florence and near it. Napier, H. E.: Florentine History. (1864-7, 6 vols. London.) From the beginning up to the accession of Ferdinand HI, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Novi, Th.: Where the Masterpieces Hang in the Three Florentine Galleries. Ninetj'-one pictures selected as masterpieces and their numbers and positions in the galleries given. King, Bolton, and Okey, Thos.: Italy To-Day. (igoi, London.) Interesting account of political, religious, social, in- dustrial, and, to less extent, literary conditions of Italy. Oliphant, Miss: The Makers of Florence. (1883, London.) . Standard: Dante, Giotto, Arnolfo, Ghiberti, Brunel- leschi, Donatello, Savonarola, and the monks of San Marco. 360 List of Books About Florence Perkins, C. C: Tuscan Sculptors, 2 vols. (1864, London.) Accounts biographic and critical. Perrens, F. T.: History of Florence, 1434-1531. (1892, London.) From the domination of the Medici to the fall of the Republic. The same author published in 1877-1883 a history of Florence from its origin to the rise of the Medici. He will publish no account of Florence after the Republic for " When Florence ceased to be a free town, a republic, a state, she ceased to have a history." Phillippi, A.: Florence. (No. IV in Famous Art Cities.) Translated by P. G. Konody. (1905, Florence, London, and New York.) Many illustrations; historical and art. Ross, Janet: Old Florence and Modern Tuscany. ( 1904, London.) Good and reliable accounts of the " Misericordia," " Two Florentine Hospitals," " Popular Songs of Tus- cany," " Vintaging in Tuscany," " The Dove of Holy Saturday," and best of all, " Old Florence," an account of the Florentine Ghetto, now demolished. Ross, Janet: Florentine Palaces and Their Stories. ( 1905, London.) Brief accounts of the history of the building and decora- tion of seventy-six palaces, and history of the families which owned them. Ross, Janet: Florentine Villas. (1901, London.) Interesting sketches of twenty-three important villas. Ruskin, John: MoRNiNGS IN FLORENCE. (1907, New York.) How to see as Ruskin saw; a small book but a driving one. List of Books About Florence 361 Ruskin, John: Val D'Arno. (London.) Ten characteristically Ruskinian lectures on Tuscan art. Sanborn: About Dante and His Beloved Florence. (igoi, San Francisco.) Following Dante in Florence; his house, tower, seat, statue, portraits, quotations of appreciations of Dante ; brief biographical sketch; a little about his books; all slight and superficial, but earnest. Scaife, Walter B.: Florentine Life During the Re- naissance. ( 1893, Baltimore.) A university monograph, with characteristic marks of accuracy and thoroughness; government, public and private life ; education and intellectual life, religion, com- merce and industry, charities, amusements. Good. Scott, Leader: Echoes of Old Florence. (1894, Florence.) Historical sketches and legends of Florentine bridges, piazzas, palaces, churches, people. There are seventeen of these sketches, carefully gathered and fairly written. Scott, Leader: Tuscan Studies and Sketches. (1898, London.) Important and informing reading dug out of archives, MSS., and musty tomes. "A Library of Codices " (chap- ter n) is a good account of the Laurenziana library, a growth of four centuries from the foundation of Cosimo dei Medici. de Stendhal, Count: Rome, Naples and Florence. (1818, London.) Spicy and interesting observations of Florence in 1818. Symonds, A.: Renaissance in Italy. (1897, New York.) Standard history, finely written ; the men, the events. 362 List of Books About Florence Trollope, Mrs.: A Visit to Italy. (1842, London.) Letters VI to XVII from and about Florence; spicy comment from a feminine point of view. Trollope, T. A.: TuscANY IN 1849 and in 1859. (1859, London.) How it looked then. Trollope, T. A.: History of the Commonwealth of Florence. Four volumes. ( 1865, London.) Villari, L.: Italian Life in Town and Country. (1902, London and New York.) The people, their home life, politics, religion, socialism, amusements, art, music, etc.; curiously dry for such an interesting subject. Villari, Pasquale: The Two First Centuries of Floren- tine History. Translated by Leonard Horner. Two vols. (1901, London.) Standard. Villari, Pasquale: The Life and Times of Machiavelli. Four volumes. (1883, London.) Standard. Villari, Pasquale: The Life and Times of Savonarola. Two volumes. (1863, London.) Standard. Whiting, Lillian: The Florence of Landor. (1905, Boston.) Interesting. Wills, Howel: Florentine Heraldry. (1901, London.) A monographic treatise of the make-up and character of Florentine coats-of-arms and stemmi in general, and then a descriptive list of the stemmi of all the Florentine families and the arms of the quarters of the city. Very List of Books About Florence 363 brief sketches of the history of the principal families. A useful and interesting reference book, which would be more useful and interesting if illustrated. Zimmern, Helen: The Italy of the Italians. (1906, London.) Chapters on the king, the press, the literature, the painters, sculpture and architecture, play-houses, players and plays, science and inventions, philosophy, agrarian Italy, industry and commerce, underground Italy, music, and Italy at play. A large amount of reliable information compactly and interestingly put together. INDEX Accademia, 130 Albertinelli, Mario, 125, 134 Alessandri, Palazzo, 195 Alfieri, 253 Altoviti, 164 Amidei, 164 Ammanati, 143, 154 Angelico, Fra, 120, 124, 134, 135, 177, 180, 210 Annunzio, Gabriele d', 17, 70 Arcetri, 215 Aixheological Museum, 240, 256 Aretino, Spinello, 183 Arnolfo, 76 Baccio d'Agnolo, 81 Badia, 91 Badia (Fiesole), 210 Bandinelli, B., 102, 123, 124, 140 Baptistry, 83 Barbadori, 165 Bardi, 166 Bargello, 145 Bartolommeo, Fra, 120, 122, 124, 134. 177, 336 Belfredelli, 165 Bellini, Giovanni, 120 Bibbiena, 305 Bicci, Neri dei, 173 Bigallo, 86 Boboli Gardens, 155 Boccaccio, 18 Bocklin, 212 Bologna, Giovanni da, 84, 102, 142, 143, 144, 148, 150, 229, 344 Books about Florence, 348 Borgherini, 164, 198 Borghese, 163 Bormanus, 343 Botticelli, Sandro, 94, 120, 124, 135, 137, 155 " Brocca," 19 Browning, Mrs. E. B., 253, 255 Browning, Robert, 253 Bryant, 254 Brunelleschi, 76, 82, loi, 106, 108, 148, 154, 162, 211 Buggiano, 81 Buonalenti, Bernardo, 67 Buonarotti, 16 Buondelmonte, 164 Byron, 254 Camaldoli (Casentino), 307 Campanile, 85 Canova, 171 Capponcino, 70 Capponi, 70, 165 Caprino, Meo del, 68 Careggi, 212 Carmine, 92 Carpaccio, 119, 124 Cascine, 245 Casentino, 290 Badia a Prataglia, 309 Bibbiena Fair, 305 Camaldoli, 307 Castles, 294, 302 Churches, 299 Conti Guidi, 294, 302 La Verna, 309, 31a Moggiona, 307 Poppi Castle, 302 Santa Maria del Sasso, 311 365 366 Index Casentino: Villages, 290 Vineyards and fields, 295 Castagno, Andrea del, 81, 120, 124, 172 Castel di Poggio, 201 Castles, 138-166 Cecconi, Eugenio, 136 Cellini, Benvenuto, 109, 124, 144, 148, 150, 155 Cenacolo of Andrea del Cas- tagno, 172 of Andrea del Sarto, 169 of Domenico Ghirlandajo, 172 di Foligno, 175 dei Ognissanti, 172 of Raphael, 173 di San Marco, 173, 178 di San Salvi, 169 Certosa, 222 Chiesa, Villa, 70 Cigoli, 67, 86 Cimabue, 106, 133, 344 Civitali, Matteo, 150, 334, 336, 337, 338, 344 Clough, 255 Commodi, Andrea, 67 Consuma Pass, 286, 290 Cooper, Fenimore, 254 Corno, 165 Correggio, 122 Corsini, 163 Cosimo, Piero di, 125 Covoni, 213 Credi, Lorenzo di, 125, 135 Cronaca, 132, 159 Dandini, Piero, 67 Dante, 252 death mask, 149 Delli, Dello, 106 Desiderio. See Settignano Dickens, 254 Dolci, Carlo, 133, 175 Domenico di Michelino, 8i Donatello, 81, 83, 84, 85, 109, 124, 132, 144, 147, 225, 321 Duccio, 106 Duoino, 76, 248 (Fiesole), 209 (Lucca), 333 (Pisa), 343 (Pistoja), 326 Duomo Museum, 8a Diirer, 116, 122 Duse, 17, 70 Eliot, George, 253 Excursions from Florence, 286 Casentino, 290, 297 Castel di Poggio, 201 Certosa, 222 Consuma Pass, 286, 290 Fiesole, 207 Impruneta, 225 Lucca, 330 Maimantile, 233 Pisa, 340 Pistoja, 323 Prato, 315 Settignano, 61 Signa, 231 Vallombrosa, 286 Vincigliata, 201 Fabriano, Gentile da, 133 Farfani, Enrico, 137 Ferroni, 160 Festas, 247 Fiesole, Giovanni Angelico da, 120, 124, 134, 135, 177, i8o, 210 Fiesole, 207 Badia, 210 Caves, 208 Duomo, 209 Monte Ceceri, 208 San Domenico, 210 Villas, 2n Fiorentino, Rosso, 129 Fiske, Willard, 254 Index 367 Fortezza da Basso, 152 Fortezza di San Giorgio, 152 Francia, 122 Frescobaldi, 165 Gaddi, Agnolo, 81, 92, 147 Gaddi, Taddeo, 100, 108 Galileo, 218, 252 Galleries. See Museums and Galleries Gallo, 217 Gamberaia, 68 Gandi, 205 Gardens, 49 George Eliot, 253 Gerino da Pistoja, 173 Ghetto, 241 Ghiberti, 8r, 83, 84, 100, 124, 148 Ghirlandajo, Domenico, 93, 94, 95, 104, 124, 133, 142, 160, 172 Ghirlandajo, Ridolfo, 321 Giordano, Luca, 158 Giorgione, 119, 124, 127 Giottino, 86 Giotto, 85, 100, 133 Girolami, 164 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 125, 157, 345 Gray, Thomas, 254 Gruamons, 325 Guarleone, 169 Guercino, 122 Guicciardini, 252 Guidi, 294, 302 Guinigi, 339 Harvest times, 269 Hawthorne, 19, 253 Hazlitt, 255 Holbein, n6 Holy fire of the Pazzi, 162, 248 Hotels and pensions, 3 Housekeeping, 12, 30 Hunt, Leigh, 254 Ilaria, 334 " H Palagio," 212 Impruneta, 226 Jameson, Mrs., 254 Kauffmann, Angelica, 116 Kranach, 122 Lambertesca, 164 Landor, 19, 212, 253, 255 "La Primola," 213 La Verna (Casentino), 309, 313 Last Supper. See Cenacolo Le Brun, 116 Lever, Charles, 254 Lewes, George, 253 Libraries, 351 Laurenziana, no, 211, 351 Marucelliana, 351 Nazionale, 351 Viesseux, 351 Lippi, Fiiippino, 91, 92, 101, 106, 116, 124, 323 Lippi, Fillippo, 109, 121, 124, 129, 134, 135. 321 Loggia dei Lanzi, 144 Loggia dei Rucellai, 161 Longfellow, 255 Lotti, 165 Lowell, 254 Luca van Leyden, 122 Lucca, 330 Duomo, 333 Piazza San Martino, 333 Palazzo Pretorio, 337 Palazzo Provinciale, 338 San Frediano, 336 San Giovanni, 336 San Michele, 337 San Romano, 337 Tomb of Ilaria, 334 Tomb of St. Zita, 337 Torre dei Guinigi, 339 Volto Santo, 334 Luini, 122 368 Index Macalmont, 212 Machiavelli, 213, 252 Madonna delle Carceri (Prato), 319 Madonna dell' Urailta (Pistoja), 326 Maiano, 213 Maiano, Benedetto da, 81, 91, io6, 142, 150, 159, 184, 195 Malmantiie, 233 Mann, Horace, 254 Mannelli, 165 Manni, Giannicola, 173 Mantegna, 119 Manzuoli da S. Friano, 67 Mark Twain, 18, 255 Marketing, 30 Marsili, 155 Martelli, 195 Masaccio, 92, 133 Masolino, 92, 124 Matsys, 2, 116 Medici, 211 Melozzo da Forli, 122 Memmi, Simone, 108 Mercato Nuovo, 232, 239, 242 Mercato Vecchio, 240, 241 Michelangelo, 16, 79, 92, 108, 110, u6, 121, 125, 129, 131, 132, 133. 141. 147, 156, 218, 221, 252 Michelozzo, 85, 100, 102, 140, 150, 211, 220, 229, 321 Millais, Ii6 Milton, 252 Mino da Fiesole, 91, 97, 99, 150, 184, 193, 210, 321 Misericordia, 86 Moggiona, 307 Monaco, Lorenzo, 93, 120 Monte San Miniato, 215 Morgan, 136 Mozzi, 166, 212 Murillo, 130 Museums and Galleries: Accademia, 130 Museums and Galleries: Archeological Museum, 240, 256 Duomo Museum, 82 Pitti, 127 Uffizi, 113 Ognissanti, 94, 172 Olive oil making, 282 Olivetani, 70 Or San Michele, 95 Orcagna, 95, 105, 147, 225 Palazzo Vecchio, 138 Pandolfino, 162 Paolo Veronese, 122 Parigi, 154 Parker, Theo., 255 Perugino, 102, 122, 124, 128, 134, 173, 181 Piazza del Duomo, 73, 243 di San Salvi, 170 di Santa Trinita, 160, 164 della Signoria, 139, 244 Vittorio Emanuele, 239 Piazzale Michelangelo, 217, 2i8 Pinturrichio, 124 Pisa, 340 Baptistry, 344 Campo Santo, 345 Chiesa di Santa Maria della Spina, 342 Duomo, 342 Hunger Tower, 341 Leaning Tower, 342 Piazza dei Cavalieri, 341 Piazza del Duomo, 342 Ponte di Mezzo, 342 Pisano, Andrea, 84 Pisano, Giovanni, 321, 325, 344 Pisano, Niccolo, 344 Pistoja, 323 Baptistry, 328 Chiesa di Giovanni Fuorcivi- tas, 325 Index 369 Pistoja: Chiesa di Madonna dell' Umilta, 326 Chiesa di Sant' Andrea, 325 Chiesa di Sant' San Francesco, 326 Duomo, 326 Ospedale del Ceppo, 329 Palazzo Communale, 328 Palazzo Pretorio, 328 Torre del Podesta, 328 Pitti, 127, 139, 154 Poggio Gherardo, 213 Poggio Imperiale, 215 Pollaiuolo, Antonio del, 125, 150 Pollaiuolo, Piero del, 125 Ponte Carraja, 247 alle Grazie, 4 Santa Trinita, 8 Vecchio, 6 Poppi, 302 Porta Romana, 215 San Niccolo, 201, 215 Porzuincola, 17, 70 Prato, 315 Chiesa di Madonna delle Cerceri, 319 Cloisters of San Francesco, 321 Duomo, 321 Palazzo Pretorio, 320 Pulpit of Donatello and Michelozzo, 321 Shrine of Via Santa Marghe- rita, 323 Quaratese, 162 Quercia, Jacopo della, 150, 171, 333, 337 Raphael, 116, 122, 123, 124, 128, 129, 130, 162, 173 Rembrandt, 129 Restaurants and cafes, lo Riccardi, 157 Ridolfo, 165 Robbia, Andrea della, 67, 149, 228, 319 Robbia, Giovanni della, 329 Robbia, Luca della, 81, 83, 86, 91, 94, 220, 228, 313 Rogers, Samuel, 254 Rose, Villa, 230 Rossellino, Antonio, 65, 69, 99, 150, 185, 191, 220, 321 Rossellino, Bernardo, 65, 69, 99, 104, 150, X85, 191, 327 Rovezzano, Benedetto da, 91, 93, 97, 147, 164, 169, 185, 197, 288 Rubens, 116, 122 Rucellai, 160 Ruggieri, 154 Salembeni, 164 Salvini, 19 San Domenico di Fiesole, 210 San Francesco (Prato), 321 San Frediano (Lucca), 336 San Giovanni (Lucca), 336 San Giovanni Battista, 83 San Giovanni Fuorcivitas (Pis- toja), 325 San Lorenzo, 108 San Marco, 173, 175 San Martino a Maiano, 213 San Michele (Lucca), 337 San Miniato, 215, 219 San Niccolo, 201, 215 San Romano (Lucca), 337 San Salvatore al Monte, 219 San Salvi, 169 Sansovino, Jacopo, 150 Sant' Ambrogio, 97 Sant' Andrea (Pistoja), 325 Sant' Apollonia, 172 Sant' Onofrio, 173 Santa Croce, 98 Santa Maria a Settignano, 66 Santa Maria a Vincigliata, 204 Santa Maria del Fiore, 83 370 Index Santa Maria del Sasso (Casen- tino), 311 Santa Maria della Spina (Pisa), 342 Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, i8i Santa Maria Novella, 103 Santa Trinita, 93 Santi Apostoli, 97, 248 Santissima Annunziata, loi Santo Spirito, loi Santo Stefano, 164 Sarto, Andrea del, 102, 116, 128, 129, 134, 169, 182, 344 Savonarola, 252 in San Marco, 179, i8i prison cell of, 142 Scalzi, 182 Segaloni, 91 Servants, 30 Serristori, i66 Settignano, Desiderio da, 64, 67, 93> 99. 109, 149, 150, 184, 189 Settignano, 61 Church of the Frati Olivetani, 70 Desiderio, 64 Piazza Niccolo Tommaseo, 66 Rossellini, 65, 69 Santa Maria, 66 Statue of Septimus Severus, 67 Tram, 61 Villa Capponcino, 70 Villa Chiesa, 70 Villa Gamberaia, 69 Villa Verse, 69 Shops and Shopping, 258 Signa, 231 Signorelli, Luca, 124, 134 Signorini, Giovanni, 102, 137 Silk growing, 275 Smollett, 254 Sodoma, 344 Sogliani, 177 Spagnoletto, 122 Spence, 212 Spezeria, 182 Spini, 160 Streets, life of the, 236 Strozzi, 158 Sustermans, 128, 130 Theaters, 250 Titian, ii6, 119, 120, 122, 124, 129, 130 Torre dei Barbadori, 165 Torre dei Bardi, 166 Torre del Gallo, 217 Torre dei Gandi, 205 Torre dei Girolami, 164 Torre dei Lotti, 165 Torre dei Marsili, 165 Torre San Niccolo, 201, 215 Torre Vincigliata, 201, 203 Torrigiani, 166 Trollope, T. A., 253 Trollope, Mrs. T. G., 253 Uccello, Paolo, 8i, 106, i2t, 125 Uffizi, 113 Ugo da Siena, 95 Ussi, 136 Vallombrosa, 287 Van Dyck, n6, 122 Vasari, 80, 81, 124, 142, 326 Veronese, Paolo, 122 Verrochio, A., 124, 141, 150 Vespucci, Amerigo, 253 Verse, Villa, 68 Viale dei Colli, 217 Viale Machiavelli, 217 Viale Michelangelo, 217 Villas, 15, 211-214 Vinci, Leonardo da, 116, i2i, 141 Vincigliata, 201 Viviani, 18 Volto Santo, 334 Walpole, Horace, 254 Watts, 116 Wine making, 279 Zucchero, 8i Standard Works on Italy SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON The Renaissance in Italy. 8vo Age of Despots. $2.00 The Revival of Learning. $2.00 The Fine Arts. $2.00 Italian Literature. 2 vols. $4.00 The Catholic Reaction. 2 vols. $4.00 Short History of the Renaissance. i2mo. $1.75 Italian Byways. i2mo. $1.25 TAINE, H. A. Italy; Rome and Naples. Translated by John DuRAND. Large 12rao. $2.50 Italy; Florence and Venice. Translated by John Durand. Large 12mo. $2.50 Lectures on Art. 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