FLORENCE DESCRIBED BY GREAT WRITERS ESTHER SINGLETON ' for the fotifldiag ef a. College in thit Colony Gift of REV. WILLLAM H. OWEN FLORENCE BOOKS BY MISS SINGLETON Turrets, Towers, and Temples. Great Buildings of the World Described by Great Writers. Great Pictures. Described by Great Writers. Wonders of Nature. Described by Great Writers. Romantic Castles and Palaces. Described by Great Writers. Famous Paintings. Described by Great Writers. Historic Buildings. Described by Great Writers. Famous Women. Described by Great Writers. Great Portraits. Described by Great Writers. Historic Buildings of America. Described by Great Writers. Historic Landmark* of America. Described by Great Writers. Great Rivers of the World. Described by Great Writers. Famous Catheurals. Described by Great Writer*. Holland. Described by Great Writers. Paris. Described by Great Writers. London. Described by Great Writers. Russia. Described by Great Writers. Japan. Described by Great Writers. Venice. Described by Great Writers. Rome. Described by Great Writers. Germany. Described by Great Writers. Switzerland. Described by Great Writers. Turkey and the Balkan States. Described by Great Writers. Love in Literature and Art. The Golden Rod Fairy Book. The Wild Flower Fairy Book. Dutch New York. Manners and Customs of New Am sterdam in the Seventeenth Century. A Guide to the Opera. A Guide to Modern Opera. PANORAMA FROM S. MINIATO AL MONTE Florence As Described by Great Writers Collected and Edited by ESTHER SINGLETON Author of "Turrets, Towers and Temples," "Great Pictures," and "A Guide to the Opera," and translator of '''"Yh.^ Music Dramas of Richard Wagner" WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS Dodd, Mead and Company I 9 I o Copyright, 1910, by Dodd, Mead and Company Published, Octoier, 1910 PREFACE EVERY one admits that Florence is one of the most fascinating cities of Europe; and some critics, in deed, advise the tourist to begin his artistic studies and travels in the Tuscan capital. The danger of this would be that he might never go any farther. Because of the beauty of her situation, her silvery Arno, her flower-sprinkled meads arid her lovely gardens and princely villas ; because of the number and magnificence of her buildings ; because of her art-treasures ; and because of her long and complicated history — it is difficult to present a complete picture of Florence. Moreover, the City of Flowers was the very centre of Renaissance culture, where the greatest minds of the day gathered around the brilliant Lorenzo the Magnificent until the stern Savonarola arose to asher in a new dawn of thought. To discover the haunts and point out the works of the great procession of painters, sculptors and architects, headed by Dante, Boccaccio, Arnolfo di Cambio, Cimabue, Giotto, Andrea Pisano, Orcagna, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Verrocchio Pollaiuolo, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarotti, Ghirlandaio, Donatello, Luca della Robbia and Cellini, that walks through the streets of Florence, would more than fill a book of this size. V vi PREFACE My sole endeavour, therefore, has been to present in convenient form for ready reference and supplementary reading to guide-book and history a comprehensive view of the noble city ; a description of her most famous monuments of architecture ; her art-galleries ; her public gardens ; and some features of her street life. These extracts, culled from historians, travellers and art-critics, arranged with this idea in view, may, therefore, give some pleasure to those who have never visited Florence and awaken happy memories in the minds of those who have fallen under her spell of enchantment. E. S. Ntw York, October, igio. CONTENTS Early History .... Enrico Lemmi The Republic Under the Medici A. M. Berthelot The Medici Grand Dukes . Pasquale Villari The Old City Susan and "Joanna Horner The City of Lilies Louise de la Ram'ee (^Ouida) A Stroll Through Florence Edward Hutton Memories of Florence Charles Dickens First Impressions Hippolyte Adol^he Taine A Cradle of Art Oscar Browning The Palazzo Vecchio Augustus J. C. Hare Piazza della Signoria and the Loggia dei Lanzi Edward Hutton The Bargello Edmund G. Gardiner La Badia Augustus y. C. Hare PAGE I 38 49 57 71768389 98 106 118 vii vm CONTENTS PAGE The Piazza and Church of Santa Croce . .121 Edmund G. Gardiner Or San Michele 137 Charles Triarte The Duomo 146 Edmund G. Gardiner The Campanile . . . . . . .164 Harry ^uilter The Shepherd's Tower 169 John Ruskin The Baptistery — The Duomo . . . '173 Edward Hutton The Children of Florence . . . .180 Rose M. Bradley Campagnia della Misericordia . . . .188 Mabel Sherman Crawford The Mercato Vecchio and the Mercato Nuovo 194 E. Grifi San Lorenzo ....... 198 Nathaniel Hawthorne The Laurentian Library ..... 204 Eugene MuntT. Florentine Festivals . . . . . .211 Helen Zimmern Convent and Church of SS. Annunziata . . 223 Susan and "Joanna Horner Spedale degli Innocenti 232 Rose M. Bradley San Marco 241 Edmund G. Gardiner The Academy of Fine Arts .... 254 Eugene Miintz CONTENTS Art and Literature . A. M. Berthelot The Cascine E. Grifi Santa Maria Novella Edward Hutton Midsummer in Florence Louise de la Ram'ee {Ouidd) The Uffizi Edmund G. Gardiner The Ponte Vecchio Corridor Charles Richard IVeld The Pitti Palace Eugene Miintz The Boboli Gardens . E. March Phillips San Miniato Charles Triarte The Tower of Galileo Louise de la Ram'ee (Ouida) The Villa Palmieri and the Villa Medici E. March Phillips The Carmine and Santo Spirito Susan and Joanna Horner A Florentine Terrace George S. Elgood Some Florentine Industries Helen Zimmern IX PAGE 257265 269 282286293299 306 313 318 322 331 347352 ILLUSTRATIONS Panorama from S. Miniato al Monte . S. Croce : the first Cloister and Cappela Pazzi ..... Tomb of Giuliano de' Medici, by Ml chelangelo, San Lorenzo S. Marco : Cloister Palazzo Riccardi, via Cavour Palazzo Ferroni gia Spini (Piazza S Trinita) .... Ponte S. Trinita .... Hospital of S. Maria, Nuova Santa Trinita .... Piazza and Church of the Ognissanti Piazzale Michelangiolo, with monument in honour of Michelangelo Portico of the Uffizi and the Palazzo Vecchio .... Via Calzaioli .... Palazzo Strozzi (Piazza Strozzi) . Palazzo Vecchio .... Loggia dei Lanzi (Piazza della Signoria The Bargello (Museo Nazionale) . Piazza S. Croce, with statue of Dante Or San Michele .... The Duomo .... Giotto's Campanile Piazza del Duomo and Via dei Martelli xi . Frontispiece Facing page 4 (( (( 12 (( (( 20 C( (t 26 (( (( 34 (( (( 38 l( il 42 (( (C 50 t( (C 58 66 (( 72 (( 76 (( 86 (I 90 (( 98 (C 106 (( 122 » 138 <( 146 C( 164 (( 174 xu ILLUSTRATIONS Piazza del Duomo, Loggia di S. Maria Misericordia (The Bigallo) . Compagnia della Misericordia Piazza Vittorio Emanuele S. Lorenzo ..... Facade of The Duomo SS. Annunziata .... Piazza and Church of S. Marco . Ponte Vecchio and Portico of the Uffizi Gallery .... The Cascine : II Viale della Regina S. Maria Novella Via Tornabuoni .... The Tribuna, Uffizi Gallery Ponte Vecchio .... Palazzo Pitti .... Boboli Gardens : Amphitheatre . Boboli Gardens : Fountain of Neptune San Miniato .... The Carmine .... S. Spirito : Church and Piazza Loggia di Mercato Nuovo . . Facing page 1 80 (C (( 188 u (C 194 U (( 198 cc (C 212 tt IC 224 (( (I 242 (( .(( 258 CI (( 266 « (( 270 (( (C 282 tl l( 286 « (( 294 (C IC 300 (( C( 306 e " (( 310 (( (( 314 (( (( 332 (( (( 344 (( (( 352 EARLY HISTORY ENRICO LEMMI THE city of Florence sprang originally from Fiesole at the foot of which it lies extended. The incon venient and hilly site of the Etruscan Fiesole, perched on the crest of an irregular height, rendered the town so difficult of access to the traders who resorted to its market-places with their varied merchandise, that it was at length decreed they should assemble at the base of the hill, in the fertile plain traversed by the Arno. The ievf rough shelters erected for the accommodation of these traders may be considered the original nucleus of the im portant and splendid city of Florence. Such at least is the traditionary history of its origin generally accepted by the Florentine historians. It would seem that as early as the time of Sulla there had been a Roman colony here ; another was sent after the death of Julius Csesar, and it soon became a thriving town. The Florentini are men tioned by Tacitus, i6 a. d., as sending delegates to Rome but it was not till the time of Charlemagne that Florence began to rise out of obscurity. It was now governed by a political head with tbe title of duke, assisted by various subordinate officers, who were elected by the united suf frages of the duke and citizens. In the Eleventh Century, 2 FLORENCE Florence, and a great part of Tuscany, were bequeathed to Pope Gregory VII., by his friend and partisan the Countess Matilda, who inherited from her mother, the Countess Beatrix, her jurisdiction over the city. Under the pro tection of Rome, Florence speedily adopted the forms and institutions of a free city and the republican spirit which then arose amongst the people imparted an impulse to national and individual life, and awoke a spirit of ardent patriotism and splendid enterprise. As early as the Eleventh Century, the Florentines were European traders, and the possessors of grand commercial depots in the seaports and cities of France and England, and their skill as workers in gold and jewels had grown proverbial. In proportion as papal preponderance increased in Florence, that of the empire sank; and in 1113 the citizen forces routed the troops, and slew the delegate of the emperor at Monte Cascioli, near Florence. During the bitter wars between pope and empire, Florence and all Tuscany seemed to have been saved from the civil feuds which raged throughout Italy between the contending factions of Guelphs and Ghibellines ; the former, adherents of the pope ; the latter, of the empire. But in 1215, Florence became involved in the great party struggle, owing to a private feud breaking out between two noble families, chiefs of the contending principles. A Guelph noble, Buondelmonti, mortally in censed the Ghibelline family of the Amidei, by breaking oft his alliance with a daughter of their house, and contracting marriage with a member of a Guelph family. To avenge EARLY HISTORY 3 this insult, the Amidei appealed to their powerful kinsmen, the Uberti, and, in fact, to all the Ghibelline party of Florence. Buondelmonti was stabbed to death as he crossed the bridge of the Ponte Vecchio, and was speedily avenged by the Guelphs in the blood of his enemies. Thus for thirty-three years was Florence distracted by the deeds of bloodshed and violence of these two rival factions, who assumed the names, and adopted the respective causes of Guelphs and Ghibellines. In 1250, the animosity of these parties seemed somewhat blunted, and public attention was directed to wise internal reforms. Twelve magistrates, or anziani, were appointed in place of the consuls, each of the six sections into which the city was divided being intrusted to two of these magis trates, whose tenure of office was annual. To avoid all local dissensions, two other magistrates, strangers by birth, were elected : the one, invested with supreme authority in civil and criminal cases, was called the podesta; the other, with the title of captain of the people, had the chief com mand of the militia, in which were enrolled all the youth of the state, who were bound, at the call of this magistrate, to join their company fully equipped for fight : twenty companies defended the town, ninety-six the country. After the death of the Emperor Frederick II., the great pro tector of the Ghibellines, the Guelph or papal party grad ually rose in power in Florence, and during ten years of their predominance, the city ascended in grandeur and prosperity, until it stood not only the first in Tuscany, but 4 FLORENCE one of the first of all Italy. In 1254, the Florentines first coined their noble golden florin, unequalled at the time for beauty ; in weight, a dram, it bore on one side the national emblem, a lily ; and on the reverse, the effigy of the popular patron, St. John the Baptist. It commemorated a period of great success in the annals of Florence, whose forces had successively humbled the adjoining towns of Siena, Arezzo, Pisa, and Pistoia in 1252, and in 1254 captured Volterra. In 1260, the standard of civil war was again raised by the Ghibellines of Florentine, who, in league with Manfred of Naples, attacked the Guelphs, and cut their forces to pieces in the sanguinary battle of Monte Aperto. The conquerors entered Florence forthwith in the name of Manfred, abolished all trace of the popular institutions, establishing an exclusively aristocratic executive, and even strongly advocated the entire destruction of the city, the hotbed of Guelphism. This barbarous scheme was indig nantly repudiated by their own famous leader, Farinata degli Uberti, immortalized by Dante for his patriotism. He de clared his intention of heading the Guelphs, were such a sacrilege perpetrated by his own party. Pope Urban IV., French by birth, summoned against the Ghibelline Manfred a French army, led by Charles of Valois, to whom he offered the prospective kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Manfred was defeated and slain in the famous battle of Benevento, and Guelph ascendency was restored anew throughout Italy and Florence. Charles fully restored to the Florentines their internal institutions, and received their S. croce : THE FIRST CLOISTER AND CAPPELLA PAZZI EARLY HISTORY 5 offered allegiance for ten years in 1266. In 1282, the Priori., a new executive power, was established in Florence ; and in 1293, by the consent of the Priori,, a higher chief than their own order was elected, with the title of Gonfalonier e. In 1300, Dante became one of the Priori,, and the former feud was recommenced with new vigour between two factions, who bore the names of Bianchi (Whites) and Neri (Blacks). Their dissensions were, however, interrupted by the ap pearance of Charles of Valois, sent by Boniface VIII. to restore tranquillity, 1301. Charles espoused the part of the Guelphs or Neri, and sanctioned every outrage on the Bianchi, who were plundered and murdered barbarously, the survivors being exiled and beggared ; among these were Dante, and Petracco dell' Ancisa, the father of Petrarch. In 1306, Pistoia was besieged, and taken by famine with great barbarity. In 1315, the Florentines met with a severe check from the Ghibellines of Pisa, under the com mand of Uguccione della Faggiula; and in 1325, were completely defeated by Uguccione's successor in command, the valiant Castruccio Castracani, in the battle of Alto- pascio. Florence, weakened by long dissensions, and alarmed by Castruccio's threat of marching on the city, appealed to the king of Naples for aid. They received joyfully an officer of the king, entitled the Duke of Athens, sent as royal vicar ; and such was the public demoralization of the moment, they proclaimed him dictator of the republic, unanimously suppressing the offices of Priori and Gonfaloniere. The intrigues of this ignoble schemer to overturn the re- 6 FLORENCE public being discovered, he was ignominiously expelled by a general popular rising, and narrowly preserved his life. An attempt to admit a proportion of the nobles into the government signally failed at this time, and only led to renewed animosity between them and the citizens. This was the last effort of the nobles to secure power. (See MachiaveUi, book ii.) A terrible pest decimated Florence in 1348, sweeping off" 100,000 of her inhabitants. The chief power of Florence about this time seems to have been alternately wielded by the democratic families, the Alberti and the Ricci, and by their patrician rivals, the Albizzi, who, for the space of fifty-three years, guided the republic in the path of independence and progress. In 1406, the ancient and illustrious republic of Pisa fell under the sway of Florence, after a most heroic resistance. THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE MEDICI A. M. BERTHELOT THE death of the prudent Niccolo d' Uzzano (1433) left the fiery and inconstant Rinaldo Albizzi head of the aristocracy. He did not in spire confidence and was never elected to high office. Cosmo de' Medici his rival was a " crafty and deceitful fox " ; thin and ugly, but elegant, not much of an orator but a persuasive talker, he courted the populace. His family was enormously rich, possessing sixteen banking houses in Europe. They were the wealthiest family in Florence, the Albizzi and Strozzi coming after them. The Medici made noble use of their riches. They built a magnificent palace, the work of Brunelleschi, and subven- tioned artists and men of letters ; at the same time, they helped the poor citizens who were in danger of losing their civic rights. Averardo de' Medici, Cosmo's cousin, was the warrior of the family. After the war with Lucca, hostili ties broke out between the Albizzi and Medici. At first, the former got the upper hand, and Cosmo was imprisoned. They did not dare to kill him, and he bought over his enemies. Being exiled, he made a triumphal march to Venice and Padua. His intelligent generosity increased his prestige and filled his partisans with confidence. Rinaldo 8 FLORENCE became unpopular, and took up arms, but did not dare to attack his opponents. Pope Eugenius IV. interposed as a mediator, and the exiles were recalled, and the chiefs of the oligarchy were banished in their turn and confined in Naples. Cosmo, ever circumspect, returned in short marches and modestly entered the city. But there was no mistaking the fact that he was master. His enemies, the Strozzi, Peruzzi, etc., were exiled en masse, and he called new men to power. Under the mask of a hypocritical moderation, Cosmo was implacable. Sentence of death was passed on everybody who plotted against him. Thenceforth a tyranny existed under the trappings of a republic, although it took a century more for monarchy definitely to prevail in Florence. At first, Cosmo de' Medici reigned by the power of public opinion ; the democracy supported him and consti tuted his strength. This skilful politician slowly trans formed influence into authority. Of pacific tastes, he shared the liking of his fellow-citizens for industry and commerce, art and literature, rather than for warlike ex ploits or political agitation. To encourage labour and riches was to get on his side the working people who de sired safety much more than liberty. His foreign policy was able ; and war, which he could not avoid, strengthened him. In 1440, Piccinino appeared before Florence and called the friends of the Albizzi to arms. The city re mained faithful to Cosmo. A battle was fought at Anghiari in which the Milan troops were routed by Nero Capponi. THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE MEDICI 9 The victory of Anghiari consolidated the power of Cosmo. He proscribed the families of his enemies, torturing even the women ; he caused to be painted on the palace of the podestat the chiefs of the opposing faction hanging by the heels :— Rinaldo and Ormanno Albizzi, Ludovico di Rossi, Stefano Peruzzi, etc. — and had them defamed by his poets and writers. He induced the Pope to gather together at Florence the council that was sitting at Bale ; the city thus resumed its role as a Guelph town. It obtained great privileges from the Byzantine Emperor, and thus Cosmo's prestige was augmented. Growing jealous of the victor at Anghiari, Nero Capponi, he caused the latter's friend. Captain Bal- daccio, to be killed. Nero then unreservedly submitted. Cosmo caused great popular satisfaction by establishing the progressive tax by which the rich paid eight times as much as the poor. Ruining a number of people, enemies to his rule, it enriched those devoted to him. Add to this the system of forced imposts and one can understand how the State crushed all who displeased it. Making the fortunes of his partisans and overwhelming his adversaries by devious ways, the wily Medici created an aristocracy devoted to him. He proceeded slowly and surely. He avoided war as much as possible. At home, he was the all-powerful arbiter of peace and war. The delibera tions on public affairs were held in his house ; he was a great observer of appearances, like Augustus of old. He affected to be a mere citizen like his fellows, without lo FLORENCE either a court or guards. He ruined and exiled all who op posed him ; and never allowed his enemies to return. His taxes enabled him to buy everything, consciences as well as swords. In order to escape material ruin, he was joined by such families as the Pazzi. In 1458, an attempt at opposi tion was made. Cosmo remained apparently neuter, but he managed a coup d"etat through Luca Pitti, Gonfalonier of Justice, in spite of the resistance of Geronimo MachiaveUi. Thereafter Cosmo was absolute master. When he died in 1464, the title of Father of his Country was inscribed on his tomb. Piero de' Medici (1464-69), the unworthy successor of Cosmo, was accepted with resignation ; but an opposition was soon formed. Luca Pitti, his father's instrument, wanted to gain the first place. Angelo Acciajuoli and Dietisalvi Nerone, two other friends of Cosmo, became secret enemies. The most influential of all was Niccolo Soderini. Piero de' Medici took strong measures in 1466, harshly suppressed the opposition, and exiled the leaders. They returned with an army commanded by Colleoni, but were defeated at Mulinella (1467). The gouty Piero con tented himself with securing the transmission of his authority to his sons Lorenzo and Giulio. They succeeded him in 1469. They were very young (Lorenzo twenty-one, Giulio six teen) to rule a city that did not acknowledge heredity. Nevertheless, they were supported by the friends of their family, above all by Tommaso Soderini. In internal affairs THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE MEDICI ii Lorenzo wanted to go too quickly, being pressed by need of money. After having caused the sale of the possessions of the parte guelfa, and reduced the magistracy that was formerly so terrible to the management of public works (1471), he reduced the fourteen minor guilds to five, and confiscated the property of the nine suppressed corpora tions. Power was concentrated in the hands of ten accopia- tori, nominated really by Lorenzo, to whom was granted the dictatorial power to revise the institutions according to their own fancy. The role of the signory was now only a deco rative one. The master ceased to dissimulate, he boldly showed his hand. He made himself a mark for conspirators of whom there were plenty, classical education furnishing them with the theory and example of political assassination and insurrection. In Florence it was the same as in the other Italian cities : the tyrant felt his life threatened. In 1477, the Pazzi conspiracy was hatched. That rich and powerful family had submitted to Cosmo. The rupture was caused by a loan made to the Pope on the refusal of Lorenzo. Franceschino de' Pazzi, who lived in Rome, drew his rela tives into the plot. The most prudent of them wanted to await the private bankruptcy of Lorenzo, which by ruin ing his fortune would entail the loss of his position in the State; but the adhesion of the Pope decided the waverers. Giuliano was slain in the cathedral, but Lorenzo was only wounded. The archbishop Salviati failed to capture the palace of the signory ; and the populace made no move at the call to liberty. The conspirators were crushed ; the 12 FLORENCE archbishop was hanged from a window of the palace with Franceschino de' Pazzi by his side, and many other mem bers of the family, innocent and guilty, were executed (1478). For the next few years, there was a continuation of executions of all who were suspected of complicity in the affair. Lorenzo de' Medici was firmly established, be ing relieved at the same moment of his brother, who was becoming troublesome, and his enemies. He obtained an armed guard. The Pope's fury with those who, not satisfied with put ting an archbishop and several priests to death, had also imprisoned his nephew, was shown by the excommunication of the Florentines, followed by a declaration of war. The Florentine theologians justified Lorenzo, and Louis XI. and Venice intervened in his favour. He nevertheless felt greatly isolated in face of bitter enemies who ranged them selves behind the Pope and the King of Naples. By a masterstroke he went to Naples, placed himself in the hands of King Ferdinand, gained him over and obtained peace, paying for it an annual tribute of 60,000 florins. The Pope found himself obliged to grant the pardon demanded. Thus freed from external danger, the supple tyrant reformed the constitution. A new council of seventy members an nulled all the others, and became the principal body of State. Abroad, Lorenzo followed an astute policy, trying to establish an equilibrium among the Powers of Italy. In the Ferrara war, he defended the Duke, in accord with Naples, Milan, Mantua and Bologna, against Venice the tomb of giuliano DE' MEDICI, BY MICHELANGELO, SAN LORENZO THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE MEDICI 13 Pope, Genoa and Montferrat (1482). He was glad to make a few conquests, and took possession of Sarzana in spite of the Genoese. The next year, he profited by the murder of Riario Sforza by setting foot in the Romagna. He protected and dominated Faenza, Imola, and Forli. He then seemed to be an arbiter between the various Powers of Italy, Innocent VIII. and Ferdinand of Naples, Ludovico il Moro and his competitors. However that may be, it was not diplomacy that made the immortality of Lo renzo de' Medici : it was his life as a Maecenas. After the conspiracy of the Pazzi, there was no obstacle to his rule ; the populace cared nothing for politics, being satisfied with private business and the festivals that occu pied a great place in the life of the city. Lorenzo received and treated with princes and foreign ambassadors ; he as sumed the attitude of a sovereign although in every-day life he behaved like a simple citizen. He did not appear at the council, but there, as in every office, he had a confidential representative ; his chancellor or secretary, Bibbiena, held all the threads. Knowing that an accusation of plotting might cost a man's life, people rivalled each other in obse quiousness ; and those who were not recognized friends of the Medici lived in perpetual anxiety. The weak point was the economic situation. The constitution of great na tional States in Western Europe was a menace to the com merce of Florence, which was at the mercy of the caprices of the kings. The monte (funded public debt) suspended payment of interest. Lorenzo was a bad administrator; 14 FLORENCE his own fortune was suffering ; the failure of Portinari at Bruges cost him heavy losses, and the other branches of his bank were losing money. To recover his losses, he laid hands on the State funds, and resorted to new taxes : in two years the tax-payers had to pay twenty-six times. He struck new coin, and reduced the value of the old by one- fifth ; and appropriated the monte delledoti in which parents deposited the money destined for their daughters' dowries. Dishonest as the means employed were, we can only look at the result. Having become rich again, Lorenzo was un assailable. Peace abroad and at home procured an era of general prosperity ; the splendid festivities provided by the tyrant and his gifts to the humanists seem sufficiently to justify a domination which he put to such a noble use. Posterity has ratified this judgment. Opposition however appeared in the name of morality ; its interpreter being the Dominican Girolamo Savonarola. The latter is one of the first organs of the religious reaction against the intellectual paganism of the Renaissance, a re action from which the Reformation was to issue. In 1483, his rude sermons in San Lorenzo had not two dozen hear ers. In 1490, Lorenzo recalled him to Florence, and this time the prophet produced a violent impression. He an nounced at the same time the chastisement of Italy and the renovation of the Church. He prophesied the im minent death of Innocent VIII., Ferdinand of Naples and Lorenzo de' Medici. When the latter felt it approaching, he sent for the austere prior, probably to gain his favour for THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE MEDICI 15 his son (1492). It has been said that Savonarola refused his benediction to the dying man unless he restored the lib erties of the Florentines. They were going to show how incapable they were of recovering them. It is curious to note that the city that in the Fifteenth Century gave the signal for the return to antique forms also gave it for a religious reaction. The last years of the Fifteenth Century were dominated by Savonarola. Lorenzo had died in time. Given over to mercenaries, Italy was to fall under the yoke of the stranger. Piero de' Medici had the vices of so many princes born in the purple. He quarrelled with the Soderini and even with the younger branch of his family, exiling his two cousins and breaking with Savonarola. Abroad he allied himself with Naples against Milan, and led Ludovico il Moro to call on Charles VIII. which entailed many calamities (1492). He himself negotiated with the King of France but without concluding anything. Regarding him as an enemy, Charles treated him as such, and expelled his agents from Lyons. Obsti nate in his Neapolitan alliance, Piero de' Medici found him self ruined after the defeat of the Neapolitans in Liguria. The Florentine malcontents excited by Savonarola declared for the French. Piero submitted and gave up his fortresses of Sarzana, Pisa and Livorno. His cowardice completed the disaffection of the Florentines, who rose, drove out the Medici, pillaged their palaces, set a price upon their heads and recalled the exiles, — the younger Medici, the Pazzi, etc. In the presence of the French they put on a bold i6 FLORENCE front, in spite of the dangers threatening their trade in the realm of France. They receive them with great pomp and splendidly entertain Charles VIII. ; but notwithstanding the popular enthusiasm and the cries of " Vive la France I " they maintain their reserve. A few clashes occur in the streets on the following days, and the situation is difficult. At the end of a week a treaty is made. Charles VIII. re ceives the title of protector of Florentine liberty ; Pisa, which he has freed, shall be pardoned ; the Medici shall be exiled. There was almost a rupture over the amount of the indemnity. The king said : " Very well ! we will sound our trumpets ! " "And we will ring our bells ! " Piero Capponi quickly replied. The sum fixed was 120,000 gold florins. The French left the city the following week, to the great joy of the Florentines. They had recovered their liberty ; the next thing was to organize it. In drawing up the new constitution, Savonarola's advice prevailed. This was the concentration of power in the hands of the signory and a grand council formed of citizens whose father, grandfather, or great-grandfather had held public office. These numbered 2,300 in a population of 100,000. Arms were distributed to the people to defend their liberty. The special feature that marks this government is that Christ is proclaimed King of Florence. Savonarola's con clusion is that the new government is of divine right and infallible. God's minister, the sole chief of the State, is the prophet. He inherits the despotism of the Medici. From the depths THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE MEDICI 17 of his cell, he issues his counsels which are orders. Next he applies himself to his great work — the reform of man ners. He was supported by popular enthusiasm ; he sup pressed usury and even attacked loans at interest, creating a mont de pi'ete which succeeded admirably ; credit was re stored. In 1495, success seemed assured. Abroad affairs did not progress so favourably ; Charles VIII. did not give up Pisa ; moreover, he favoured the Medici. When he re turned to the north, Florence did not dare to declare against him. By the treaty of Turin, he repeated his promise to give up the fortresses in exchange for a loan to recover Naples. The French leaders evacuated Pisa, but left it free, to the great indignation of the Florentines. They sold the fortresses to Pisa and Lucca. All the intrigues of Italian politics centred in the unhappy city. Venice and the Duke of Milan protected it and called on the Emperor Maximilian, who, not satisfied with declaring Pisa free, laid siege to Livorno (1496). Florence implored the aid of France, and the French fleet blockaded Livorno. Hos tilities languished. These misfortunes weakened Savo narola ; the war was the more ruinous on account of the loss of the maritime and Pisan customs. Sforza encouraged the oligarchs, hoping to get Florence into his hands. Alex ander VI. and Venice came to an understanding with Piero de' Medici; but the frate (Savonarola) resisted them all and braved the Pope. He suppressed the public festivals ; his Puritan tyranny, which for a moment he thought to defend by children brigaded by districts, became more and more i8 FLORENCE oppressive. In 1497 ^^ decreed the famous auto da fe of all instruments of perversion — cards, dice, perfumes, books of poetry, harps and lutes : we know what a vast quantity of objects of art fell victims to this vandalism. Savonarola even meddled with private life, and encouraged wives to take vows of chastity. The fanatic at last wearied every body; the population was also being decimated by famine and pestilence. The palleschi raised their heads and an nounced the return of Piero de' Medici ; they deserted the piagnoni, the partisans of the frate and voted with the aris tocratic arrabbiati. The first attack was repulsed, but the compagnacci came to. their assistance, drove Savonarola out of the church and forbade his preaching. The prophet was also excommunicated by the Pope, and his authority de clined : he made no more proselytes and his own followers fell away. Nevertheless they were still strong enough to curb the Medici party : six of the chiefs of the palleschi were arrested, condemned and executed (1497). ^ medal was struck with the effigy oi the f rate and, on the reverse, beneath a sword and the word Rome, this redoubtable in scription : Gladium Domini super terram cito et velociter. But it was evident that the theocracy was on the decline • it had made a mistake in touching the axe ; the third party became hostile to it, and all factions combined against it. Its moderate adherents, such as Soderini, abandoned it. Valori, its champion, considered an armed guard necessary. During Lent in 1498, Savonarola preached in spite of the Pope and renewed the auto da fe, but the Signory of March THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE MEDICI 19 1st was hostile to him. We all know the end : discredited by the check of the Trial by Fire, the Dominicans and their Prior lost all influence. The Gonfalonier Piero Popoleschi aided by the compagnacci attacked the piagnoni. There was fighting in the streets, Valori was slain, the convent of St. Marco was besieged and Savonarola was taken prisoner. He was tried, abandoned by the Domin icans, and burned on the Piazza della Signoria as a heretic. Thus ended this strange episode of Florentine history. The city of Boccaccio and of Donatello could not become a Geneva ; Savonarola possessed the energy, perhaps, but not the talents of a Calvin. The theocracy which he had organized lacked vitality. An attempt was now made to organize a republican gov ernment, but without success, for it was soon necessary to return to a disguised monarchy. The piagnoni, regarding Savonarola as a martyr, remained faithful to his cult ; the libertine compagnacci gave plenty of employment for the victorious party of the arrabbiati; and the palleschi plotted. In short, anarchy was prolonged. At last, having escaped its foreign dangers, the city reformed its institutions, and a bourgeois government was organized. A Gonfalonier for life was instituted, responsible to the high public officers and revocable by them : he must be fifty years of age, and his sons, brothers, and nephews must not engage in busi ness. Piero Soderini was elected. The new head of the State was a moderate and capable man. The ten years of his government were relatively 20 FLORENCE happy, although he had to encounter great difficulties. The death of Piero de' Medici made Cardinal Giovanni the head of the family : he patiently assumed the position, while in Florence his adherents saw rallying around them many malcontents who were formerly their enemies, such as the Pazzi and Salviati; Soderini tried to restore the finances and recover Pisa ; his confidential aid was MachiaveUi, who rendered great assistance as a counsellor and ambassador. Politics went around the same circle : — French alliance ruinously purchased, struggle with Venice, negotiations with the Pope and the King of Spain. Soderini kept out of general European politics as much as possible, believing that there is nothing in it for the small fry. One progress was the reorganization of the militia that furnished the national army (1506). Closely pressed after the con solidation of an alliance between Florence and Louis XII., Pisa at last submitted, the capitulation being negotiated by MachiaveUi (1509). The conquerors showed extreme moderation, rare in those days. The end was attained. The fall of their ancient rival was irreparable. Pisa never recovered from it. In spite of this brilliant success, Soderini lacked prestige. He lived as a simple citizen and neglected the arts and let ters, perhaps because he was poor. A loyal observer of the constitution, he possessed little authority. Louis XII. and Maximilian wanted to share Italy between them. What was to be done between them and Julius II. ? In spite of Soderini, the two sovereigns convoked a council at cloister, S. MARCO THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE MEDICI 21 Pisa to depose the Pope. Florence was put under an inter dict, but continued obstinate in her timid neutrality, making excuses to the King of Spain for furnishing a few lances to the King of Fi'ance while forbidding them to fight. The Holy League, on taking the upper hand in Italy, was no longer satisfied with this equivocation. The Gonfalonier imprudently refused money to the Spanish. The Medici immediately gave some and promised more. Ramon di Cardona received orders to restore the Medici. The sack of Prato terrified the Florentines ; Soderini resigned and left the city ; and the Medici returned amid the acclamations of the multitude (1512). The head of the family was the cardinal ; then came his brother Julius and his nephew Lorenzo. They acted with prudence, as the popular party was still in the majority. Cardinal Giovanni therefore arrived with a formidable escort. He reconstituted the balia, the dictatorial commis sion that was to nominate all the office-holders, in accord ance with the old Medicean system. The Soderini were persecuted and exiled. Suspected of conspiracy, a few young men were put to death, or banished, but the con queror showed relative clemency. The following year, he was elected Pope and took the name Leo X. Florence was very proud of this exaltation. She did not gain much from the pontificate of this sickly epicurean whose prodigal^ ities earned for him the unmerited celebrity of an ideal Mxcenas. At least the city of his birth lived in peace under the rule of himself and his relatives. It was Julius 22 FLORENCE de' Medici, bastard of the first Julius, who governed Tuscany with the title of Cardinal— Archbishop of Florence (1513). Lorenzo, son of Piero, was the real prince till his death in 15 18. When Leo X. died, and was succeeded by Adrian VI., Julius returned to his own city. There he was threatened. Cardinal Soderini having the ear of the new Pope. The lettered class, grouped in the society of the Orti Orcellari, talked of their lost liberty ; and conspiracy succeeded in spite of repressive measures. Suddenly the death of Adrian VI. brought Julius de' Medici to the pontifi cate; he took the name of Clement VII. (1523). This election was fatal to Florence. The Pope confided two bastards to its care : Hippolyte, son of Julius, and Alexander, son of Lorenzo II. , or of Julius, or of Clement VII. These young tyrants exasperated the people. The Pope brought Florence into the league with Venice and France against Charles V., the sole result of which was to bring the bands of the Constable of Bourbon into Tuscany. Terrified be fore the storm the danger of which we can measure when we know what was the fate of Rome, the Florentines wanted to get rid of the Medici who had got them into it. Niccolo Capponi was the chief of the malcontents. One insurrection came to nothing, as one party was as weak as the other. The news of the Sack of Rome determined a second, on which the Medici left the city without resistance (1527)- This revolution of fear could not found anything durable. Savonarola's insritutions were almost enrirely restored, and THE REPUBLIC UNDER THE MEDICI 23 Capponi was elected Gonfalonier. The latter seemed above all afraid of compromising himself with the masters of yesterday who, he foresaw, were going to be those of to morrow. Tommaso Soderini caused the French alliance to be adopted, and a treaty was made with Francis I. re newing the league in which Venice, Milan and the Pope figured. Before long Capponi was negotiating with the latter for the return of the Medici ; but, being detected, he was deposed (1529). On this, Clement VII. made terms with the Emperor ; and, naturally, the restoration of the Medici was agreed on. The King of France in turn by treaty deserted his allies (1529). At this moment a wonderful thing occurred ; this popu lace, unaccustomed to war, abandoned by all, refused to be recreant to itself. The siege that it sustained with heroic obstinacy is one of the greatest events in its history. An embassy was sent to Genoa to try to appease the Emperor, who sent it on to the Pope, who refused to have any deal ings with it. It was therefore decided to resist. The siege was begun by the Imperials in October, 1529, after many inhabitants had emigrated in spite of the prohibition of the Signory. The investment was complete in December : the subject cities of the republic, Arezzo, Cortona, Pistoia, Prata, etc., had fallen away. The Prince of Orange directed the siege, being harassed in the rear by the valiant Ferrucci, while Malatesta conducted the defence. The city was starving in four months, 28,000 inhabitants succumbed to the hardships. Ferrucci's defeat at Gravinana, 24 FLORENCE where that valiant captain and the Prince of Orange both fell, decided the fate of Florence, now left without hope. The condottiere Malatesta Baglioni forced the city to capitulate. The conditions were mild, but the care of regulating the constitution was left to the Emperor (August, 1530). After some months of military oppression, Charles V. named as chief, maintainer, and protector of the city, Alexander de' Medici, Duke of Penna, his intended son-in- law (1531). The signory was abolished; and Alexander was proclaimed hereditary doge of the Florentine Republic. A council of two hundred was preserved ; a council of eighty, called the Senate, advised the prince. But they did nothing but register the ducal will. The Republic of Florence had disappeared. THE MEDICI GRAND DUKES p. VILLARI WHEN the leading Florentine families realized, not only that the republic was destroyed, but that they were reduced to equality with those whom they had hitherto regarded as their inferiors and sub jects, their rage was indescribable, and hardly a day passed without the departure of influential citizens who were re solved to achieve the overthrow of their new ruler. They found a leader in Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, who was then in Rome, embittered by the preference given to Ales- sandro, and anxious to become his successor with the least possible delay. Under the pressure of terror the duke at once became a tyrant. He garrisoned the diff'erent cities, and began the erection in Florence of the Fortezza da Basso, built chiefly at the expense of Filippo Strozzi, who afterwards met his death within its walls. And now Alessandro indulged unchecked in the lowest excesses of tyranny, and although so recently a bridegroom gave way to increased libertinism. His whole time was passed in vicious haunts and in scandalous adventures. In order to conceal the obscurity of his birth, he left his mother to starve, and it was even asserted that he finally got rid of her by poison. His constant associate in this disgraceful routine was his 26 FLORENCE distant kinsman Lorenzo, generally known as Lorenzino de' Medici. Of the younger branch of the Medici, the latter was second cousin of the Cosimo already mentioned as the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere. He had much culture and literary talent, but led an irregular life, some times acting like a madman and sometimes like a villain. He was a writer of considerable elegance, the author of several plays, one of which, the Aridosio, was held to be among the best of the age, and he was a worshipper of antiquity. Notwithstanding these tastes, when in Rome he knocked off^ the heads of some of the finest statues of the age of Adrian, an act by which Clement VII. was so incensed that he threatened to have him hanged. Thereupon Lo renzino fled to Florence, where he became the friend of Duke Alessandro and his partner in the most licentious excesses. On the evening of January 5, 1537, after a day passed in the usual excesses, Lorenzino led the duke to his own lodging, and left him there, promising shortly to return with the wife of Leonardo Ginori. Alessandro, worn out by the exertions of the day, fell asleep on the couch while awaiting Lorenzino's return. Before long the latter came accompanied by a desperado known as the Scoronconcolo, who aided him in falling on the sleeper. Roused by their first thrusts, the duke fought for his life, and was only de spatched after a violent struggle. The murderers then lifted the body into bed, hid it beneath the clothes, and, Lorenzino having attached a paper to it bearing the words, vincit amor patria, laudumque immensa cupido, they both fled to Venice. PALAZZO RICCARDI, VIA CAVOUR THE MEDICI GRAND DUKES 27 In that city Lorenzino was assassinated some ten years later, in 1548, at the age of thirty -two, by order of Ales- sandro's successor. By Alessandro's death, the elder branch of the Medici became extinct. Guicciardini, Vettori, and others of the leading citizens favoured the choice of Cosimo, the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere. He was already in Florence, was aged seven teen, was keen-witted and aspiring, strong and handsome in person, heir to the enormous wealth of the Medici, and, by the terms of the imperial patent, was Alessandro's lawful successor. Charles V. approved the nomination of Cosimo, who without delay seized the reins of government with a firm grasp. Like Alessandro, he was named head of the republic ; and Guicciardini and others who had worked hardest in his cause hoped to direct him and keep him under their control. But Cosimo soon undeceived them by prov ing that, his youth notwithstanding, he had a will of his own, and was resolved to rule unshackled by republican forms and unhampered by advisers disposed to act as men tors. The Florentines had now an absolute prince who was likewise a statesman of eminent ability. On learning the death of Alessandro and the election of Cosimo, the exiles appreciated the necessity for prompt ac tion, as all delay would be fatal to the overthrow of the Medicean rule. They had received money and promises from France ; they were strengthened by the adhesion of Filippo Strozzi and Baccio Valori, who had both become hostile to the Medici through the infamous conduct and 28 FLORENCE mad tyranny of Alessandro ; and Strozzi brought them the help of his enormous fortune and the prowess of that very distinguished captain, his son Piero. The exiles accord ingly met, and assembled their forces at Mirandola. They had about four thousand infantry and three hundred horse ; among them were members of all the principal Florentine families ; and their leaders were Bernardo Salviati and Piero Strozzi. They marched rapidly, and entered Tus cany towards the end of July, 1537. Cosimo on this oc casion displayed signal capacity and presence of mind. Fully informed of the exiles' movements by means of his spies, he no sooner learned of their approach than he ordered Alessandro Vitelli to collect the best German, Spanish, and Italian infantry at his disposal, and advance against the enemy without delay. On the evening of July 31st, Vitelli marched towards Prato with seven hundred picked infantry and a band of one hundred horse, and on the way fell in with other Spanish foot-soldiers who joined the expedition. At early dawn the following morning he made a sudden at tack on the exiles' advanced guard close to Montemurlo, an old fortress converted into a villa belonging to the Nerli. Having utterly routed them, he proceeded to storm Monte murlo, where Filippo Strozzi and a few of his young com rades had taken refuge and barricaded the gates. Knowing that they must either conquer or die, they made a desperate resistance for some hours, and then, overwhelmed by su perior numbers, were obliged to yield themselves prisoners. All the prisoners, who were members of great families. THE MEDICI GRAND DUKES 29 were brought before Cosimo, and were received by him with courteous coldness. Soon, however, a scaffold was erected in the Piazza, and on four mornings in succession four of the prisoners were beheaded. Then the duke saw fit to stay the executions. Baccio Valori, however, and his son and nephew were beheaded on the 20th of August in the courtyard of the Bargello. The young prince's cold-blooded murder of his captives cast an enduring shadow upon his reign and dynasty. But it was henceforward plain to all that he was a man of stern resolve, who went straight to his end without scruples or half-measures. By 1540 sentence of death had been pro nounced against 430 contumacious fugitives, and during his reign 146 men and six women actually ascended the scaf fold. He reduced the old republican institutions to empty forms. Cosimo ruled like the independent sovereign of a great state, and always showed the capacity, firmness and courage demanded by that station. Only, his state being small and weak, he was forced to rely chiefly upon his per sonal talent and wealth. It was necessary for him to make heavy loans to the different European sovereigns, especially to Charles V., the most rapacious of them all, and to give enormous bribes to their ambassadors. Besides, he had to carry on wars for the extension of his dominions, and neither his inherited wealth nor the large sums gained by con fiscating the estates of rebellious subjects sufficed for all this outlay. He was accordingly compelled to burden the people -with taxes, and thus begin at once to diminish its strength. 30 FLORENCE During his reign he opposed the popes in order to main tain the independence of his own state ; but later, to ob tain help, he truckled to them in many ways, even to the extent of giving up to the Inquisition his own confidant, Piero Carnesecchi, who, being accused of heresy, was be headed and burned in 1567. In reward for these acts of submission, the popes showed him friendship, and Pius V. granted him the title of grand-duke, conferring the patent and crown upon him in Rome, although the emperor had always withheld his consent. Finally, however, the latter confirmed the title to Cosimo's successor. The measure most injurious to Tuscany was the fiscal system of taxes, of which the sole aim was to extort the greatest possible amount of money. The consequent damage to industry, commerce, and agriculture was immense, and, added to the devastations caused by the Sienese war, led to their utter ruin. Otherwise Cosimo did not neglect useful measures for the interior prosperity of his state. He was no Maece nas, but nevertheless restored the Pisan university, enlarged that of Siena, had the public records classified, and also ex ecuted public works like the Santa Trinita bridge. During the great inundations of 1557 he turned his whole energy to the relief of the sufferers. Francesco I., born in 1541, began to govern as his fa ther's lieutenant in 1564, and was married in 1565 to the arch-duchess Giovanna of Austria. On beginning to reign on his own account in 1574, he speedily manifested his real character. His training in the hands of a Spanish THE MEDICI GRAND DUKES 31 mother had made him suspicious, false and despotic. Hold ing every one aloof, he carried on the government with the assistance of a few devoted ministers. He compelled his stepmother to retire to a convent, and kept his brothers at a distance from Florence. He loved the privileges of power without its burdens. Cosimo had known how to maintain his independence, but Francesco cast himself like a vassal at Austria's feet. He reaped his reward by ob taining from Maximilian II. the title of grand-duke, but he forfeited all independence. Francesco was a slave to his passions, and was led by them to scandalous excesses and deeds of bloodshed. His example and neglect of the affairs of the state soon caused a vast increase of crime even among the people, and, dur ing the first eighteen months of his reign, there occurred no less than one hundred and sixty-eight murders. In default of public events, the historians of this period enlarge upon private incidents, generally of a scandalous or sanguinary kind. In 1575, Orazio Pucci, wishing to avenge his father, whom Cosimo had hanged, determined to get up a conspiracy, but, soon recognizing how firmly the Medicean rule had taken root in the country, desisted from the attempt. But the grand-duke, on hearing of the already abandoned plot, immediately caused Pucci to be hanged from the same window of the Palazzo Vecchio, and even from the same iron stanchion, from which his father before him had hung. His companions, who had fled to France and England, were pursued and murdered 32 FLORENCE by the ducal emissaries. Their possessions were confis cated, and the " Polverina " law applied so that the con spirators' heirs were reduced to penury, and the grand-duke gained more than 300,000 ducats. Next year Isabella de' Medici, Francesco's sister, was strangled in her nuptial bed by her husband, Paolo Gior dano Orsini, whom she had betrayed. Piero de' Medici, Francesco's brother, murdered his wife Eleonora of Toledo from the same motive. Still louder scandal was caused by the duke's own conduct. He was already a married man, when, passing one day through the Piazza of St. Mark in Florence, he saw an exceedingly beautiful woman at the window of a mean dwelling, and at once conceived a passion for her. She was the famous Bianca Cappello, a Venetian of noble birth, who had eloped with a young Florentine named Pietro Buonaventuri, to whom she was married at the time that she attracted the duke's gaze. He made her acquaintance, and, in order to see her frequently, nominated her husband to a post at court. Upon this Buonaventuri behaved with so much insolence, even to the nobility, that one evening he was found murdered in the street. Thus the grand-duke, who was thought to have sanctioned the crime, was able to indulge his passion unchecked. On the death of the grand-duchess in 1578 he was privately united to Bianca, and afterwards married her publicly. But she had no children, and this served to poison her happiness, since the next in succession was her bitter enemy, the car dinal Ferdinand. The latter came to Florence in 1587, THE MEDICI GRAND DUKES 33 and was ostentatiously welcomed by Bianca, who was most anxious to conciliate him. On October i8th of the same year, the grand-duke died at his villa of Poggio a Caiano, of a fever caught on a shooting excursion in the Maremme, and the next day Bianca also expired, having ruined her health by drugs taken to cure her sterility. But rumour asserted that she had prepared a poisoned tart for the cardinal, and that, when he suspiciously insisted on the grand-duke tasting it first, Bianca desperately swallowed a slice and followed her husband to the tomb. Such was the life of Francesco de' Medici, and all that can be said in his praise is that he gave liberal encourage- ment to a few artists, including Giovanni Bologna, who executed for him the group of the Rape of the Sabines. He was the founder of the Uffizi gallery, of the Medici theatre, and the villa of Pratolino; and during his reign the Della Cruscan academy was instituted. Ferdinand I. was thirty-eight years of age when, in 1587, he succeeded his brother on the throne. A cardinal from the age of fourteen, he had never taken holy orders. He showed much tact and experience in the management of ecclesiastical affairs. He was the founder of the Villa Medici at Rome, and the purchaser of many priceless works of art, such as the Niobe group and many other statues afterwards transported by him to Florence. He was in all respects his brother's opposite. Occa sionally, for political reasons, he committed acts unworthy of his character, but he re-established the administration of 34 FLORENCE justice, and sedulously attended to the business of the state and the welfare of his subjects. Ferdinand I. died in 1609, leaving four sons, of whom the eldest Cosimo II. succeeded to the throne. Of his rule there is little to relate. He deserves honour for abandoning all commerce on his own account, but it was no praiseworthy act to pass a law depriving women of almost all rights of inheritance. By this means many daughters of the nobility were driven into convents against their will. He gave scanty attention to the general aff^airs of the state. He was fond of luxury, spent freely on public festivities, and detested trouble. Tuscany was apparently tranquil and prosperous ; but the decay of which the seeds were sown under Cosimo I. and Ferdinand I. was rapidly spread ing, and became before long patent to all and beyond all hope of remedy. The best deed done by Cosimo II. was the protection accorded by him to Galileo Galilei, who had removed to Padua, and there made some of his grandest dis coveries. The grand-duke recalled him to Florence in 1610, and nominated him court mathematician and philoso pher. Cosimo died in February, 1621, after twelve years of a quiet reign marked by no great event. In 1627 Ferdinand II. , then aged seventeen, assumed the reins of government ; but, being of a very gentle disposi tion, he decided on sharing his power with the regents and his brothers, and arranged matters in such wise that each was almost independent of the other. He gained the love of his subjects by his great goodness ; and, when Florence PALAZZO FERRONI GIA SPINI, PIAZZA S. TRINITA THE MEDICI GRAND DUKES 35 and Tuscany were cruelly ravaged by the plague in 1630, he showed admirable courage, and carried out many useful measures. But he was totally incapable of energy as a statesman. When the pope made bitter complaints because the board of health had dared to subject certain monks and priests to the necessary quarantine, the grand-duke insisted on his officers asking pardon on their knees for having done their duty. Cosimo III. succeeded his father in 1670. He was weak, vain, bigoted, and hypocritical. In 1641 he had espoused Louise d'Orleans, niece of Louis XIV., who, being enamoured of Duke Charles of Lorraine., was very reluctant to come to Italy, and speedily detested both her husband and his country, of which she refused to learn the language. She had two sons and one daughter, but after the birth of her third child, Giovan Gastone, her hatred for her husband increased almost to madness. She first with drew to Poggio a Caiano, and then, being unable to get her marriage annulled, returned to France, where, although supposed to live in conventual seclusion, she passed the greater part of her time as a welcome visitor at court. Even her testamentary dispositions attested the violence of her dislike to her husband. Cosimo's hypocritical zeal for religion compelled his sub jects to multiply services and processions, that greatly in fringed upon their working hours. He wasted enormous sums in pensioning converts — even those from other coun tries — and in giving rich endowments to sanctuaries. 36 FLORENCE Meanwhile funds often failed for the payment of govern ment clerks and soldiers. His court was composed of bigots and parasites ; he ransacked the world for dainties for his table, adorned his palace with costly foreign hangings, had foreign servants, and filled his gardens with exotic plants. He purchased from the emperor the title of " Highness " in order to be the equal of the Duke of Savoy. ... So ruin fell upon Tuscany. Crime and misery increased, and the poor, who only asked for work, were given alms and sent oftener to church. This period witnessed the rise of many charitable institutions of a relig ious character under the patronage of the grand-duke, as for instance the congregation of San G'ov^anni Battista. But these could not remedy the general decay. Cosimo III. had passed his eightieth year at the time of his decease in October, 1723, and was succeeded by his son Giovan Gastone, then aged fifty-three. The new sovereign was in bad health, worn out by dissipation, and had neither ambition nor aptitude for rule. His throne was already at the disposal of foreign powers, and his only thought on as cending it was to regain strength enough to pass the re mainder of his days in enjoyment. He dismissed the spies, parasites, and bigots t:hat had formed his father's court, abolished the pensions given to converts, suppressed several taxes, and prohibited the organized espionage established in the family circle. He wished to live and let live, and liked the people to be amused. Everything in fact bore a freer and gayer aspect under his reign, and the Tuscans seemed to THE MEDICI GRAND DUKES 37 feel renewed attachment for the dynasty as the moment of its extinction drew near. But the grand-duke was too feeble and incapable to accomplish any real improvement. Sur rounded by gay and dissipated young men, he entrusted all the cares of government to a certain Giuliano Dami, who drove a profitable trade by the sale of offices and privileges. In this way all things were in the hands of corrupt individ uals; while the grand-duke, compelled to pass the greater part of his time in bed, vainly sought diversion in the com pany of buffoons, and was only tormented by perceiving that all the world disposed of his throne without even ask ing his advice. And when, after prolonged opposition, he had resigned himself to accept Don Carlos as his successor, the latter led a Spanish army to the conquest of Naples, an event afterwards leading to the peace of 1735, by which the Tuscan succession was transferred to Francesco II. , Duke of Lorraine, and husband of Maria Theresa. Giovan Gastone was finally obliged to submit even to this. Spain withdrew her garrisons from Tuscany, and Austrian soldiers took their place and swore fealty to the grand-duke on the 5th of February, 1737. He expired on the 9th of July of the same year. Such was the end of the younger branch of the Medici, which had found Tuscany a prosperous country, where art, letters, commerce, industry, and agriculture flourished, and left her poor and decayed in all ways, drained by taxation, and oppressed by laws contrary to every principle of sound economy, downtrodden by the clergy, and burdened by a weak and vicious aristocracy. THE OLD CITY SUSAN AND JOANNA HORNER FLORENCE, nestling at the foot of low hills, is bounded and sheltered to the north and east by mountains with their projecting spurs, whilst west ward stretches a wide valley as far as Signa, where a nar row gorge connects this part of the country with that around Pisa. At Signa the Lybian Hercules is said to have drained the Golfolina or gulph, which has still the character of a lake or marsh, and to have removed a rock which im peded the course of the Arno. This labour seems, how ever, to have been imperfectly performed, since, when Hannibal passed that way, B. c. 409, the land was still a morass. Hercules, nevertheless, continued in favour, though Mars was considered the tutelar god of Florence. To the north of the city lies Monte Morello, a bold heath-capped mountain which was formerly overgrown with mulberry trees ; to the east is the range of Fiesolan Hills, and in the extreme distance rises the loftier height of Monte Senario, distinguished from various points round Florence by the monastery of the " Servi di Maria," whose white walls, on the summit, are more distinctly visible from their contrast with the dark woods around. Farther east ward, the noble line of hills above Vallombrosa divides the valley of the Arno from the fertile district of the Casentino THE OLD CITY 39 and the lofty mountain of Falterone, whence the Arno and the Tiber have their source. South of Florence are lower ranges of hills, comprising those of San Miniato, San Giorgio and Bellosguardo ; beyond which, range after range of the Apennines divide Florence and Rome. On a hill west of Fiesole may be observed a white tower, which appears to stand sentinel at the passage of the Mug- none through the narrow defile between Monte Morello and the Etruscan city. This insignificant little building has an interest attached to it, because mentioned by Dante as the Uccellatojo or Bird Tower, marking a plantation in which is set a snare for birds. In some well-known lines of the Paradiso, the poet compares this height to Monte- malo or Monte Mario near Rome. As the Eternal City is first descried on the Viterbo road from Monte Mario, so Florence is discovered from the Uccellatojo by the traveller approaching along the old road from Bologna; and as Florence had vied with Rome in the days of her pros perity, so Dante predicts she should surpass her in the depths of her fall — " Fiorenza dentro della cerchia antica Ond' ella toglie ancora e Terza e Nona Si stava in pace sobria e pudica Non avea catinella non cintura Che fosse a veder piu che la persona. ***** Non era vinto ancora Montemalo, Dal vostro Uccellatojo, che com' e vinto Nel montar su, cosi sara nel calo." — Paradiso XV. g^-iii. 40 FLORENCE " Florence, within her ancient boundary From which she taketh still her Tierce and Nones,' Abode in quiet, temperate and chaste. No golden chain she had, nor coronal Nor ladies shod with sandal shoon, nor girdle That caught the eye more than the person did. Nor yet surpassed had Montemalo been By your Uccellatojo, which surpassed Shall in its downfall be, as in its rise." — Longfellow'' s Translation. The river Mugnone, which has at various times diverged from its original channel, after leaving the defile between the Uccellatojo and Fiesole, took once an easterly direction, and joined the Arno below, where is now the monastery of the Salvi ; the course of the river was afterwards turned by the present Porta Pinti, and it flowed westward, below the SS. Annunziata, crossing the Piazza di San Marco, from whence it passed along the Via Cavour, and fell into the Arno below the Ponte alia Carraia. Still later, the river was made again to diverge, by cutting off' an angle, leav ing the church of San Lorenzo on the left instead of the right bank. P"lorence, at a very early period, was divided into quar ters ; San Piero Maggiore to the east ; San Pancrazio to the ' Tierce or None Tierce (Terza) is the first division of the Canonical Day — six to nine ; Nones (None) the third, from twelve to three in the afternoon. The bells of the Badia rang these hours, and they measured the day. THE OLD CITY 41 west ; Santa Maria sopr' Arno to the south ; and to the north the Cathedral, which lay just beyond the oldest circuit of walls, of which the sole record is a slab inserted into a house in the Via Calzaioli. All beyond the second circuit of walls, which included the Cathedral, was called the Borgo or Borough. In the Twelfth Century the division of quarters — quartieri was changed for sestieri — the Oltr' Arno, or district lying on the other side of the Arno ; San Piero Scheraggio, where is now the Uffizi ; the Borgo dei SS. Apostoli ; San Pancrazio ; the Porta del Duomo ; and San Piero Maggiore. After the expulsion of a celebrated tyrant, the Duke of Athens, in the Fourteenth Century, the city was again divided into quarters, which bore the names of Santo Spirito, including all south of the river; San Giovanni ; Santa Maria Novella ; and Sta. Croce. Fi nally, the city was divided in three districts — Terzieri ; viz., Santo Spirito, Santa Maria Novella, and Sta. Croce. The Cerchia Antica, or first historical circuit, has the date A. D. 785 ; Charlemagne built these walls in compli ance with the wishes of the inhabitants, to replace those destroyed by barbarian invaders. A few feet higher up the river than the Uffizi once stood the Castle of Altafronte. From this point the walls skirted the present Piazza del Grano and the Piazza di San Firenze behind the Palazzo Vecchio. At the end of the Borgo de' Greci was the Pos tern Gate, called De' Peruzzi, after the family of Peruzzi, supposed by some to have derived their name from the Church of San Piero Scheraggio, which in those early days 42 FLORENCE was the largest in the city. From the Postern de' Peruzzi, the wall continued to the Postern del Garbo hear the Badia, or ancient Abbey of Florence. This gate stood where is now the Canto or corner of the Pazzi. Beyond the walls lay the Borgo di San Piero, where stood the Church of San Piero Maggiore, of which nothing now remains but a single arch. The family of Portinara, who are by some supposed to have derived their name from this Porta, conferred dis tinction on the quarter, since opposite the gate lived Folco Portinara, who founded the Hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova, and who is still better known to posterity as the father of Beatrice, who inspired Dante with his divine poem. From the Porta San Piero the wall lay in a northerly di rection, passing the little church of Santa Maria in Campo (St. Mary in the Fields), which belonged to the diocese of Fiesole, and to which an image of the Virgin, held in high estimation by the Fiesolans, had been carried from the cathedral of that city. The site of this church has an addi tional interest, because supposed to be that of the Campus Martins (Field of Mars) of the Roman settlers. Where the Via de' Servi joins the Piazza del Duomo, or Cathedral Close, a small gate or postern was called the Porta de' Vis- domini, from a powerful family, who, after the destruction of a church of San Michele, to make room for the Cathe dral, built another San Michele beyond the walls, still ex isting in the Via de' Servi, and placed their own arms, with an inscription commemorating this pious act, over the ad joining gate. >oDZ a! < Oi-J< Oas THE OLD CITY 43 From the Postern of the Visdomini, the wall was carried along the northern side of the Piazza del Duomo to the en trance of the Via de' Martelli, now Via Cavour, where an other postern was called the Spadai after the sword-makers, who inhabited that street. At the corner known as the Canto della Paglia, between the archbishop's palace and a palace erected by Arnolfo di Cambio, stood the Porta del Vescovo, or del Duomo. Passing the Church of Santa Maria Nuova, the Piazza of San Gaetano, and the Palazzo Corsi, the Porta San Pancrazio stood near the old church of that name. San Pancrazio and the SS. Trinita were left outside the walls, but nearly facing this last church, and joining the houses of the Buondelmonti, was the Porta Rossa — Red Gate. Parallel with the Arno, by the Via de' Terme, where were the Thermae or Roman Baths, and leaving the church of the SS. Apostoli on the right, the wall reached the Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge then ex- isdng in Florence. Near this lived the Amidei, the rivals of the Buondelmonti ; and here stood the Porta San Maria, or Porta Regina, the Gate of the Queen of Heaven. Close by was the church of San Maria beneath an arch of which was suspended the great bell of the Caroccio, or War Chariot of Florence. The wall was carried on by the Via Lambertesca and the Via Castellani to the Castle of Alta fronte. Near San Pietro Maggiore, which was now included within the walls, a postern gate was opened called the Porta Pinti ; thence, diverging in a northerly direction, the 44 FLORENCE wall was carried towards San Michele de' Visdomini, just beyond the gate of that name. The corresponding gate was called the Porta delle Balle, from the bales of wool which here entered the city. Where the Via de' Ginori joins the Piazza di San Lorenzo stood the Porta di Borgo San Lorenzo ; and, passing the Canto de' Nelli by the Piazza Madonna, behind the Church of San Lorenzo, a small postern opened on the Campo Corbellini and was called the Porta di Mugnone. The fosse, or ditch beyond the wall has given its name to the street in this quarter, Via de' Fossi, as well as to others at the opposite extremity of the town. From the Porta di Mugnone the wall turned at an angle, and proceeded in nearly a straight line to the Arno, between which and the Porta was the Postern della Bacchiera, named after a family, the Bacchiera della Tosa, allied by marriage with the Visdomini. The wall included the site of the Croce al Trebbio, and followed the whole length of the Via del Moro. From the present Ponte alia Carraia it skirted the Arno as far as the Porta di San Maria ; passing the Castle of Altafronte it reached the Palazzo Alberti near the Ponte Alle Grazie, where stood the Porta de' Buoi, or the Gate of Oxen, the entrance to the old cattle-market; it now turned at an obtuse angle, and was carried outside the Church of San Jacopo tra Fossi to the Piazza di Santa Croce, then called the Isola dell' Arno, from the course of the Arno and Mugnone at one time forming an island here. At the corner of the Via de' Cerchi may still be seen the THE OLD CITY 45 remains of the old hinge on which once turned the postern gate, Porta delle Pere, alluded to by Dante : " I'll tell thee a thing incredible but true One entered the small circuit by a gate Which from the della Pera took its name." — Paradiso XII. (^Longfellow's translation'). In Dante's time it seemed incredible that only a few years earlier so little jealousy should have existed among Florentines that a gate of their city could be called after a private family. This postern communicated with the Porta de' Peruzzi in the old wall behind the Palazzo Vecchio and houses belonging to this family are still situated in the district lying between the two. The wall was continued thence to the Porta San Piero. The city south of the Arno appears to have consisted of scattered dwellings, interspersed with gardens, which gradually became three regular streets ; two of which lay along the river above and below the Ponte Vecchio, and the third led directly from the Arno towards the south. These had gates at either end but no external wall, the houses themselves forming a rampart against any attack from without. The street above the Bridge was first called Borgo Pidigliano, and was inhabited by the lowest of the populace until taken possession of by the Bardi, whose palaces vied with those of the wealthiest families in Florence. The gate at the eastern extremity stood near the present Church of Santa Lucia de' Magnoli, and was 46 FLORENCE called the Porta a Roma because the road through it led to Rome by the cities of Figline and Arezzo. The second suburb below the bridge, the Borgo San Jacopo, had a gate of the same name near the Ponte SS. Trinita, on the site of the Palazzo Frescobaldi. The third suburb, leading directly from the river, was called the Borgo di Piazza Santa Felicita and the gate, the Porta a Piazza. When the second circuit of walls was built, it was thought ex pedient to carry them likewise south of the Arno, and they appeared to have been conducted from the Porta a Roma across the heights of San Giorgio behind the Boboli Gardens and back to the Via de' Serragli, till they met the river at the Ponte alia Carraia. The rapid increase of the population induced the Florentine municipality in 1284 to build a third circuit of walls, embracing a wider circumference for the protection of the citizens, and Arnolfo di Cambio was the architect chosen for the work. He erected a lofty tower, about a hundred ' and twenty feet high, behind Sta. Croce, and thence he carried the wall to the Porta alia Giustizia, through which the prisoners were led to execution. The next gate was that of Sta. Croce del Gorgo, from a whirl pool which had been caused by the meeting of the Arno and Mugnone, when the course of both rivers lay in this direction, and which had been commemorated by a cross. The Porta Guelfa followed ; but the name of this gate was afterwards changed to Porta Ghibellina. Farther on was the Porta Pinti, bearing the same name as that of the THE OLD CITY 47 corresponding gate in the second circuit of walls. At the farther extremity of the Via San Sebastiano was once a gate for the convenience of people coming from Fiesole or Majano to visit the church of the SS. Annunziata. Two small posterns between the Porta San Sebastiano and the Porta San Gallo afforded means of exit during the siege of 1529, when a bastion was placed before the Porta San Gallo. There were two gates on the site of the present Fortezza del Basso. First in order was the Porta a Faenza — a name derived from the native city of one Ugoletto Cascianemici, whose wife Umilta, in 1281, established a convent of Vallombrosian nuns near this spot ; she employed Niccolo Pisano as her architect, and dedicated the sacred foundation to St. John the Evangelist. Umilta was canonized for her pious act ; and she has been further immortalized by the painter Buffalmacco in a picture now in the Florentine Academy. The second gate, on the site of the Fortezza del Basso, was appropriately called the Porta Polverosa — Dusty Gate. The Porta al Prato, which follows, stood near a spacious meadow, on which a portion of the suburbs leading to the Church of Ogni Santi was afterwards built. The postern of the Mulino, or Mill, near the present weir, and another smaller postern which was opened during the siege of 1529, brought the wall down to the Arno. Crossing the river it was continued on the other side, enclosing a wide extent of land to the south. The first gate was the Porta Fred- iano, also called Verzaia, from the verdant fields and 48 FLORENCE gardens in the midst of which it was erected. It was by this gate that the French King Charies VIII. entered Flor ence in November, 1494. The next gate was the Porta Camaldoli, called after a monastery of Camaldolese friars dedicated to San Salvadore in this neighbourhood. The gate of San Piero Gattolino, now the Porta Romana, is still one of the principal entrances to the city and near it was formerly another gate, used during the siege of 1529. The walls were carried over the crest of the hill from the Porta Romana to the Porta San Giorgio; following the abrupt descent, they reached the Porta San Miniato or San Francesco, called after the two monasteries on the height above. The Porta San Niccolo, the last gate south of the Arno, had its name from the church of San Niccolo in that district. The material for the last circuit of walls was ob tained from the towers of the nobles, which by order of the Florentine municipality were reduced from their formidable height, and which had, until that time, been used by their owners as fortresses within the walls of the city. THE CITY OF LILIES LOUISE DE LA RAMEE {OUIDA) SUDDENLY, with a sharp bend, the road sheered downward into a wide valley, white and gray with the blossoming woods of the olive. In the midst of that silvery sea was stretched the fairest city of all the empires of the world. The sun was setting. Over the whole Val d' Arno there was everywhere a faint ethereal golden mist that rose from the water and the woods. The town floated on it as upon a lake ; her spires and domes and towers and palaces bathed at their base in its amber waves, and rising upward into the rose-hued radiance of the upper air. The mountains that encircled her took all the varying hues of the sunset on their fair pale heights until they flushed to scarlet, glowed to violet, wavered with flame and paled to whiteness, as the opal burns and fades. Warmth, fragrance, silence, loveliness encompassed her ; and in the great stillness the bell of the basilica tolled slowly in the evening call to prayer. Thus Florence rose before me. A strange tremor of exceeding joy thrilled through me as I beheld the reddened shadows of those close-lying roofs, and those marble heights of towers and of temples. 50 FLORENCE At last my eyes gazed on her ! — the daughter of flowers, the mistress of art, the nursing mother of liberty and of aspiration. I fell on my knees and thanked God. I pity those who, in such a moment, have not done likewise. My eyes were dim, but my heart was strong and beat high with hope as I, rose and stumbled down the rugged way, onwards, to the entrance of her gates ; always with the great dome shining before me in the golden haze ; al ways with the clouds light as a breath, scarlet as a flame, hovering above me in the windless air. The afterglow was still warm in the heavens when I reached the city walls and entered the shadows of her his toric streets. I wandered all the evening unconscious of fatigue, until the streets were all ablaze with lights, and all astir with people. I remembered then, for the first time, that it was the last Domenica of the year's Carnival. The great white Santa Trinita shone like snow against the golden air. Monte Oliveto rose dark against the rosy glory of the west. There was a sweet sea-wind blowing which fanned out as it went all the spiced odours of the pharmacies and all the scents of the budding woods. The shops of the goldsmiths and mosaic-sellers and alabaster- workers gleamed and sparkled in the light. Everywhere there was some beauty, some fragrance, some treasure ; and above it all rose the wondrous shaft of the Campanile glancing like gold and ivory in the sun. SANTA TRINITA THE CITY OF LILIES 51 Where lies the secret of the spell of Florence ? — a spell that strengthens and does not fade with time .? It is a strange, sweet, subtle charm that makes those who love her at all, love her with a passionate, close cling ing faith in her as the fairest thing that men have ever builded where she lies amidst her lily-whitened meadows. Perhaps it is because her story is so old and her beauty is so young. Behind her lie such abysses of mighty memories. Upon her is shed such radiance of sunlight and of life. The very stones of her are dark with the blood of so many genera tions, but her hair is bright with the blossoms of so many flowers ; even as the eyes of her people have in them more sadness than lies in tears, whilst their lips have the gayest laughter that ever made music in the weariness of the world. Rome is terrible in her old age. It is the old age of a mighty murderess of men. About her there is ever the scent of death, the abomination of desolation. She was, in her days of power and of sorcery, a living lie. She called herself the mother of freed men and she conceived but slaves. The shame of her and the sin cling to her still and the blood that she shed ofttimes makes heavy and horrible the air that she respires. Her head is crowned with ashes and her lips, as they mutter of dead days, breathe pestilence. But Florence, where she sits throned amidst her meadows white with lilies, Florence is never terrible, Florence is 52 FLORENCE never old. In her infancy they fed her on the manna of freedom, and that fairest food gave her eternal youth. In her early years she worshipped, ignorantly indeed, but truly always, the day-star of liberty ; and it has been with her al ways, so that the light shed upon her is always as the light of morning. Does this sound a fanciful folly ? Nay, there is a real truth in it. The past is so close to you in Florence. You touch it at every step. It is not the dead past that men bury and then forget. It is an unquenchable thing ; beautiful and full of lustre, even in the tomb, like the gold from the sepulchres of the Etruscan kings that shines on the breast of some fair living woman, undimmed by the dust and the length of the ages. The music of the old greatness thrills through all the commonest things of life, like the grilli's ' chant through the wooden cages on Ascension Day ; and, like the song of the grilli, its poetry stays in the warmth of the common hearth for the ears of the little children, and loses nothing of its melody. The beauty of the past in Florence is like the beauty of the great Duomo. About the Duomo there is stir and strife at all times ; crowds come and go ; men buy and sell ; lads laugh and fight ; piles of fruit blaze gold and crimson ; metal pails clash down on the stones with shrillest clangour ; on the steps 1 Cricket. THE CITY OF LILIES 53 boys play at dominoes; and women give their children food, and merry maskers grin in Carnival fooleries ; but there in their midst is the Duomo all unharmed and undegraded, a poem and a prayer in one, its marbles shin ing in the upper air, a thing so majestic in its strength, and yet so human in its tenderness, that nothing can assail and nothing equal it. Other, though not many, cities have histories as noble, treasures as vast; but no other city has them living and ever present in her midst, familiar as household words, and touched by every baby's hand and peasant's step, as Florence has. Every line, every rood, every gable, every tower has some story of the past present in it. Every tocsin that sounds is a chronicle ; every bridge that unites the two banks of the river unites also the crowds of the living with the heroism of the dead. In the winding dusky irregular streets, with the outlines of their loggie and arcades, and the glow of colour that fills their niches and galleries, the men who " have gone before " walk with you ; not as elsewhere mere gliding shades clad in the pallor of a misty memory, but present, as in their daily lives, shading their dreamful eyes against the noonday sun or setting their brave brows against the mountain wind, laughing and jesting in their manful mirth and speaking as brother to brother of great gifts to give the world. All this while, though the past is thus close about you, the present is beautiful also, and does not shock you 54 FLORENCE by discord and unseemliness as it will ever do elsewhere. The throngs that pass you are the same in likeness as those that brushed against Dante or Cavalcanti ; the populace that you move amidst is the same bold, vivid, fearless, eager people with eyes full of dreams, and lips braced close for war, which welcomed Vinci and Cimabue and fought from Montaperto to Solferino. And as you go through the streets you will surely see at every step some colour of a fresco on a wall,, some quaint curve of a bas-relief on a lintel, some vista of Tuscan arches in a palace court, some dusky interior of a smith's forge or a wood-seller's shop, some Renaissance seal ring glimmering on a trader's stall, some lovely hues of fruits and herbs tossed down in a Trecento window, some gigantic mass of blossoms being borne aloft on men's shoulders for a church festivity of roses, something at every step that has some beauty or some charm in it, some graciousness of the ancient time, or some poetry of the present hour. The beauty of the past goes with you at every step in Florence. Buy eggs in the market, and you buy them where Donatello bought those which fell down in a broken heap before the wonder of the crucifix. Pause in a nar row by-street in a crowd, and it shall be that Borgo Allegri, which the people so baptized for love of the old painter and the new-born art. Stray into a great dark church at evening-time, where peasants tell their beads in the vast marble silence, and you are where the whole city flocked, weeping, at midnight to look their last upon the face of THE CITY OF LILIES 55 their Angelo. Pace up the steps of the Palace of the Signoria, and you tread the stone that felt the feet of him to whom so bitterly was known '•'¦com' e duro calle, lo scendere e'l salir per raltrzii scale." Buy a knot of March anemones or April arum lilies, and you may bear them with you through the same city ward in which the child Ghirlandajo once played amidst the gold and silver garlands that his father fashioned for the young heads of the Renaissance. Ask for a shoemaker, and you shall find the cobbler sitting with his board in the same old twisting, shadowy street- way where the old man Toscarelli drew the charts that served a fair-haired sailor of Genoa, called Columbus. Toil to fetch a tinker through the squalor of San Niccolo, and there shall fall on you the shadow of the bell-tower where the old sacristan saved to the world the genius of the Night and Day. Glance up to see the hour of the evening time, and there, sombre and tragical, will loom above you the walls on which the traitors hung, to be perpetuated by the brush of Sarto, in everlasting infamy, and the tower of Giotto, like a thing of paradise, fair and fresh in its perfect grace as though angels had builded it in the night just past. Everywhere there are flowers, and breaks of songs and rills of laughter and wonderful eyes that look as if they, too, like their Poet's, had gazed into the heights of heaven and the depths of hell. And then you will pass out at the gates beyond the city walls, and all around you there will be a radiance and serenity of light that seems to throb in its intensity, and 56 FLORENCE yet is divinely restful, like the passion and the peace of love when it has all to adore and nothing to desire. The water will be broad and gold, and darkened here and there into shadows of porphyrine amber. Amidst the gray and green of the olive and acacia foliage there will arise the low pale roofs and flat-topped towers of innumer able villages. Everywhere there will be a wonderful width of amethystine hills and mystical depths of seven-chorded light. Above masses of rosy cloud will drift like rose- leaves leaning on a summer wind. And, like a magic girdle that has shut her out from all the curse of age and death and man's oblivion, and given her a youth and love liness which will endure so long as the earth itself endures, there will be the circle of the mountains, purple and white and golden lying around Florence. Who, having known her, can forsake her for lesser loves ? Who, having once abode with her, can turn their faces from the rising sun and set the darkness of the hills be twixt herself and them i A STROLL THROUGH FLORENCE EDWARD HUTTON FLORENCE is like a lily in the midst of a garden gay with wild flowers ; a broken lily that we have tied up and watered and nursed into a semblance of life, an image of ancient beauty — as it were the memento mori of that Latin spirit which contrived the Renaissance of mankind. As of old, so to-day, she stands in the plain at the foot of the Apennines, that in their sweetness and strength lend her still something of their nobility. Around her are the hills covered with olive gardens where the corn and the wine and the oil grow together between the iris and the rose ;. and everywhere on those beautiful hills there are villas among the flowers, real villas such as Alberti de scribes for us, full of coolness and rest, where a fountain splashes in an old courtyard, and the grapes hang from the pergolas, and the corn is spread in July and beaten with the flail. And since the vista of every street in Florence ends in the country, it is to these hills you find your way very often if your stay be long, fleeing from the city herself, perhaps to hide your disappointment, in the simple joy of country life. More and more as you live in Florence that country life- becomes your consolation and your delight : for there abide the old ways and the ancient songs, which 58 FLORENCE you will not find in the city. And indeed the great treas ure of Florence is this bright and smiling country in which she lies : the old road to Fiesole, the ways that lead from Settignano to Compiobbi, the path through the woods from S. Martino a Mensola, that smiling church by the wayside, to Vincigliata, to Castel di Poggio, the pilgrimage from Bagno a Ripoli to the Incontro. There, on all those beau tiful gay roads, you will pass numberless villas whispering with summer, laughing with flowers ; you will see the contadini at work in the poderi, you will hear the rispetti and stornelli of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries sung perhaps by some love-sick peasant girl among the olives from sunrise till evening falls. And the ancient ways are not forgotten there, for they still reap with the sickle and sing to the beat of the flail ; while the land itself, those places " full of nimble air, in a laughing country of sweet and lovely views, where there is always fresh water, and everything is healthy and pure," of which Leon Alberti tells us, are still held and cultivated in the old way under the old laws by the contadino and his padrone. This ancient order, quietness, and beauty, which you may find every where in the country round about Florence, is the true Tuscany. The vulgarity of the city, for even in Italy the city life has become insincere, blatant, and for the most part a life of the middle class, seldom reaches an hundred yards beyond the barriera : and this is a charm in Florence, for you may so easily look on her from afar. And so, if one comes to her from the country, or returns to her from PIAZZA AND CHURCH OF THE OGNISSANTI A STROLL THROUGH FLORENCE 59 her own hills, it is ever with a sense of loss, of sadness, of regret ; she has lost her soul for the sake of the stranger, she has forgotten the splendid past for an ignoble present, a strangely wearying dream of the future. Yet for all her modern ways, her German beer-houses, her English tea-shops, her noisy trams on Lung' Arno, her air as of a museum, her eagerness to show her contempt for the stranger while she sells him her very soul for money, Florence remains one of the most delightful cities of Italy to visit, to live with, to return to again and again. Yet I for one would never live within her walls if I could help it, or herd with those barbarian exclamatory souls who in gut tural German or cockney English snort or neigh at the beauties industriously pointed out by a loud-voiced cicerone, quoting in American all the appropriate quotations. Brown ing before Filippo Lippi, Ruskin in S. Croce, Mrs. Brown ing at the door of S. Felice, Goethe everywhere. No, I will live a little way out of the city on the hillside, perhaps towards Settignano, not too far from the pine woods, nor too near the gate. And my garden there shall be a vineyard, bordered with iris, and among the vines shall be a garden of olives, and under the olives there shall be the corn. And the yellow roses will litter the courtyard, and the foun tain shall be full of their petals, and the red roses shall strew the paths, and the white roses shall fall upon the threshold ; and all day long the bees will linger in the pas sion-flowers by the window when the mulberry trees have been stripped of leaves, and the lilies of Madonna, before 6o FLORENCE the vines, are tall and like ghosts in the night, the night that is blue and gold, where a few fire-flies linger yet, sail ing faintly over the stream, and the song of the cicale is the burden of endless summer. Then very early in the morn ing I will rise from my bed under the holy branch of Olive, I will walk in my garden before the sun is high, I will look on my beloved city. Yes, I shall look over the near olives across the valley to the hill of cypresses, to the poplars be side Arno that tremble with joy ; and first I shall see l^orre del Gallo and then S. Miniato, that Strange and beautiful place, and at last my eyes will rest on the city herself, beau tiful in the mist of morning : first the tower of S. Croce, like a tufted spear ; then the tower of Liberty, and that was built for pride ; and at last, like a mysterious rose lifted above the city, I shall see the dome, the rosy dome of Bru- nellesco, beside which, like a slim lily, pale, immaculate as a pure virgin, rises the inviolate Tower of the Lowly, that Giotto built for God. And I shall come into the city by Porta alia Croce for love, because I am but newly returned, and presently through the newer ways I shall come to the oldest of all, Borgo degli Albizzi, where the roofs of the beautiful palaces al most touch, and the way is cool and full of shadow. There, amid all the hurry and bustle of the narrow splendid way, I shall think only of old things for a time, I shall remember the great men who founded and established the city, I shall recall the great families of Florence. Here in this Borgo the Albizzi built their towers when they came from Arezzo, A STROLL THROUGH FLORENCE 6i giving the city more than an hundred officers. Priori and Gonfalonieri, till Cosimo de' Medici thrust them out with the help of Eugenius IV. The grim, scornful figure of Rinaldo seems to haunt the old palace still. How often in those September days must he have passed to and fro be tween his palace and the Bargello close by, the Palace of the Podesta: but the people, fearing they knew not what, barricaded the place so that Rinaldo was persuaded to con sult with the Pope in the S. Maria Novella. At dawn he dismissed his army, and remained alone. Then the friends of Cosimo in exile went to the Pope and thanked him, thus, as some have thought, surprising him into an abandonment of Rinaldo. However that may be, Rinaldo was expelled, leaving the city with these words, " He is a blind man with out a guide, who trusts the word of a Pope." And what figure haunts Palazzo Altovite, the home of that fierce Ghibelline house loved by Frederick II., if not that hero who expelled the Duke of Athens. Palazzo Pazzi and Palazzo Nonfinito at the Canto dei Pazzi where the Borgo degli Albizzi meets Via del Proconsolo, brings back to me that madman who first set the Cross upon the walls of Jerusa lem in 1099, and who for this cause was given some stones from Christ's sepulchre by Godfrey de Bouillon, which he brought to Florence and presented to the Republic. They were placed in S. Reparata, which stood where the Duomo now is, and, as it is said, the " new fire " was struck from them every Holy Saturday, and the clergy, in procession, brought that sacred flame to the other churches of the city. 62 FLORENCE And the Pazzi, because of their gift, gave the guard of honour in this procession : and this they celebrated with much pomp among themselves ; till at last they obtained permission to build a carro, which should be lighted at the door of S. Reparata by some machine of their invention, and drawn by four white oxen to their houses. And even to this day you may see this thing, and to this day the car is borne to their canto. But above all I see before that " unfinished " place the ruined hopes of those who plotted to murder Lorenzo de' Medici with his brother at the Easter Mass in the Duomo. Even now, amid the noise of the street, I seem to hear the shouting of the people, Vive le Palle, Morte ai Pazzi. So I shall come into the Proconsolo beside the Bargello, where so many great and splendid people are remembered, and she, too, who is so beautiful that for her sake we forget everything else, Vanna degli Albizzi, who married Lorenzo de' Tornabuoni, whom Verrocchio carved and Ghirlandajo painted. Then I shall follow the Via del Corso past S. Margherita, close to Dante's mythical home, into Via Cal zaioli, the busiest street of the city, and I shall think of the strange difference between these three great ways. Via del Proconsolo, Via Calzaioli, and Via Tornabuoni, which mark and divide the most ancient city. I shall turn towards Or San Michele, where on St. John's Day the banners of the guilds are displayed above the statues, and for a little time I shall look again on Verrocchio's Christ and St. Thomas. Then in this pilgrimage of remembrance I shall A STROLL THROUGH FLORENCE 63 pass up Via Calzaioli, past the gay cool cafe of Gilli, into the FiazT.^ del Duomo. And again, I shall fear lest the tower may fall like a lopped lily, and I shall wish that Giotto had made it ever so little bigger at the base. Then I shall pass to the right past the Misericordia, where for sure I shall meet some of the confraternita, past the great gazing statue of Brunellesco, till, at the top of Via del Pro consolo, I shall turn to look at the Duomo, which, seen from here, seems like a great Greek cross under a dome, that might cover the world. And so I shall pass round the apse of the Cathedral till I come to the door of the Cintola, where Nanni di Banco has marvellously carved Madonna in an almond-shaped glory : and this is one of the fairest things in Florence. And I shall go on my way, past the Gate of Paradise to the open door of the Baptistery, and returning find the tomb of Baldassare Cossa, soldier and antipope, carved by Donatello : and here, in the most an cient church of Florence, I shall thank St. John for my re turn. Out in the Piazza once more, I shall turn into Borgo S. Lorenzo, and follow it till I come to Piazza di S. Lorenzo, with its bookstalls where Browning found that book, " small quarto size, part print, part manuscript," which told him the story of " The Ring and the Book." There I shall look once more on the ragged, rugged front of S. Lorenzo, and entering, find the tomb of Piero de' Medici, made by Ver rocchio, and thinking a while of those other tombs where Michelangelo hard by carved his Night and Day, Twilight 64 FLORENCE and Dawn, I shall find my way again into the Piazza del Duomo, and, following Via Cerretani, that busy street, I shall come at last into Piazza S. Maria Novella, and there on the north I shall see again the bride of Michelangelo, the most beautiful church in Florence, S. Maria Novella of the Dominicans. Perhaps I shall rest there a little before Duccio's Madonna on her high altar, and linger under the grave, serene work of Ghirlandajo; but it may be the sky will be too fair for any church to hold me, so that passing down the way of the Beautiful Ladies, and taking Via dei Serpi on my left, I shall come into Via Tornabuoni, that smiling, lovely way just above the beautiful Palazzo Antinori, whence I may see Palazzo Strozzi, but without the great lamp at the corner where the flowers are heaped and there are always so many loungers. Indeed, the whole street is full of flowers and sunshine and cool shadow, and in some way, I know not what, it remains the most beauti ful gay street in Florence, where past and present have met and are friends. And then I know if I follow this way I shall come to Lung' Arno, — I may catch a glimpse of it even from the corner of Via Porta Rossa over the cabs, past the Column of S. Trinita ; but the morning is gone : it is already long past midday, it is necessary to eat. Luncheon over, I shall follow Via Porta Rossa, with its old palaces of the Torrigiani (now. Hotel Porta Rossa), and the Davanzati into Mercato Nuovo, where, because it is Thursday, the whole place will be smothered with flowers and children, little laughing rascals as impudent as Lippo A STROLL THROUGH FLORENCE 65 Lippi's Angiolini, who play about the Tacca and splash themselves with water. And so I shall pass at last into Piazza della Signoria, before the marvellous palace of the people with its fierce, proud tower, and I shall stand on the spot before the fountains where Humanism avenged itself on Puritanism, where Savonarola, that Ferrarese who burned the pictures and would have burned the city, was himself burned in the fire he had invoked. And I shall look once more on the Loggia dei Lanzi, and see Cellini's young contadino masquerading as Perseus, and in my heart I shall remember the little wax figure he made for a model, now in Bargello, which is so much more beautiful than this young giant. So, under the cool cloisters of Palazzo degli Uffizi I shall come at last on to Lung' Arno, where it is very quiet, and no horses may pass, and the trams are a long way off. And I shall lift up my eyes and behold once more the hill of gardens across Arno, with the Belvedere just within the old walls, and S. Miniato, like a white and fragile ghost in the sunshine, and La Bella Villanella couched like a brown bird under the cypresses above the gray olives in the wind and the sun. And something in the gracious sweep of the hills, in the gentje nobility of that holy mountain which Michelangelo has loved and defended, which Dante Alighieri has spoken of, which Gianozzo Manetti has so often climbed, will bring the tears to my eyes, and I shall turn away towards Ponte Vecchio, the oldest and most beautiful of the bridges, where the houses lead one over the river, and the little shops of the 66 FLORENCE jewellers still sparkle and smile with trinkets. And in the midst of the bridge I shall wait a while and look on Arno. Then I shall cross the bridge and wander upstream towards Porta S. Niccolo, that gaunt and naked gate in the midst of the way, and there I shall climb through the gardens up the steep hill . " Per salire al monte Dove siede la chiesa "... to the great Piazzale, and so to the old worn platform be fore S. Miniato itself, under the strange glowing mosaics of the facade : and, standing on the graves of dead Florentines, I shall look down on the beautiful city. Marvellously fair she is on a summer evening as seen from that hill of gardens, Arno like a river of gold before her, leading over the plain lost in the farthest hills. Be hind her the mountains rise in great amphitheatres, — Fiesole on the one side, like a sentinel on her hill ; on the other, the Apennines, whose gesture, so noble, precise, and splendid, seems to point ever towards some universal sovereignty, some perfect domination, as though this place had been ordained for the resurrection of man. Under this mighty symbol of annunciation lies the city, clear and perfect in the lucid light, her towers shining under the serene evening sky. Meditating there alone for a long time in the profound silence of that hour, the whole history of this city that witnessed the birth of the modern world, the resurrection of the gods, will come to me. PIAZZALE MICHELANGIOLO, WITH MONUMENT IN HONOUR OF MICHELANGELO A STROLL THROUGH FLORENCE 67 Out of innumerable discords, desolations, hopes unfilled, everlasting hatred and despair, I shall see the city rise four square within her rosy walls between the river and the hills ; I shall see that lonely, beautiful, and heroic figure, Matilda the great Countess ; I shall suffer the dream that consumes her, and watch Germany humble in the snow. And the Latin cause will tower a red lily beside Arno; one by one the great nobles will go by with cruel alien faces, prisoners, to serve the Lily or to die. Out of their hatred will spring that mongrel cause of Guelph and Ghibelline, and I shall see the Amidei slay Buondelmonte Buondelmonti. Through the year of victories I shall rejoice, when Pistoia falls, when Siena falls, when Volterra is taken, and Pisa forced to make peace. Then in tears I shall see the flight at Monteaperti, I shall hear the thunder of the horses, and with hate in my heart I shall search for Bocca degli Abati, the traitor, among the ten thousand dead. And in the council I shall be by when they plot the destruction of the city, and I shall be afraid : then I shall hear the heroic, scornful words of Farinata degli Uberti, when in his pride he spared Flor ence for the sake of his birth. And I shall watch the ban ners at Campaldino, I shall hear the intoxicating words of Corso Donati, I shall look into his very face and read the truth. And at dawn I shall walk with Dante, and I shall know by the softness of his voice when Beatrice passeth, but I shall not dare to lift my eyes. I shall walk with him through the city, I shall hear Giotto speak to him of St. Francis, and Arnolfo will tell us of his dreams. And at 68 FLORENCE evening Petrarch will lead me into the shadow of S. Giovanni and tell me of Madonna Laura. But it will be a morning of spring when I meet Boccaccio, ah, in S. Maria Novella, and as we come into the sunshine I shall laugh and say, "Tell me a story." And Charles of Valois will pass by, who sent Dante on that long journey ; and Henry VII., for whom he had prayed ; and I shall hear the trumpets of Montecatini, and I shall understand the hate Uguccione had for Castracani. And I shall watch the entry of the Duke of Athens, and I shall see his cheek flush at the thought of a new tyranny. Then for the first time I shall hear the sinister, fortunate name Medici. Under the ban ners of the Arti I shall hear the rumour of their names, Silvestro who urged on the Ciompi, Vieri who once made peace; nor will the death of Gian Galeazzo of Milan, nor the tragedy of Pisa, hinder their advent, for I shall see Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici proclaimed Gonfaloniere of the city. Then they will troop by more splendid than princes, the universal bankers, lords of Florence : Cosimo the hard old man, Pater Patriae, the greatest of his race ; Piero, the weakling ; Lorenzo il Magnifico, tyrant and art ist; and over his shoulder I shall see the devilish, sensual face of Savonarola. And there will go by Giuliano, the lover of Simonetta; Piero the exile; Giovanni the mighty pope, Leo X. ; Giulio the son of Giuliano, Clement VII. ; Ippolito the Cardinal, Alessandro the cruel, Lorenzino his assassin, Cosimo Invitto, Grand Duke of Tuscany, bred in a convent and mourned forever. A STROLL THROUGH FLORENCE 69 So they pass by, and their descendants follow after them, even to poor, unhappy, learned Gian Gastone, the last of his race. And around them throng the artists ; yes, I shall see them all. Angelico will lead me into his cell and show me the meaning of the Resurrection. With Lippo Lippi I shall play with the children, and talk with Lucrezia Buti at the convent gate ; Ghirlandajo will take me where Madonna Vanna is, and with Baldovinetti I shall watch the dawn. And Botticelli will lead me into a grove apart : I shall see the beauty of those three women who pass, who pass like a season, and are neither glad nor sorry ; and with him I shall understand the joy of Venus, whose son was love, and the tears of Madonna, whose Son was Love also. And I shall hear the voice of Leonardo; and he will play upon his lyre of silver, that lyre in the shape of a horse's head which he made for Sforza of Milan ; and I shall see him touch the hands of Monna Lisa. And I shall see the statue of snow that Buonarotti made ; I shall find him un der S. Miniato, and I shall weep with him. So I shall dream in the sunset. The Angelus will be ringing from all the towers, I shall have celebrated my re turn to the city that I have loved. The splendour of the dying day will lie upon her; in that enduring and marvel lous hour, when in the sound of every bell you may find the names that are in your heart, I shall pass again through the gardens, I shall come into the city when the little lights before Madonna will be shining at the street corners, and 70 FLORENCE streets will be full of the evening, where the river, stained with fading gold, steals into the night to the sea. And under the first stars I shall find my way to my hill side. MEMORIES OF FLORENCE CHARLES DICKENS BUT, how much beauty of another kind is here, when, on a fair clear morning, we look, from the summit of a hill, on Florence ! See where it lies before us in a sun-lighted valley, bright with the winding Arno, and shut in by swelling hills ; its domes, and towers, and palaces, rising from the rich country in a glittering heap, and shining in the sun like gold ! Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of beauti ful Florence ; and the strong old piles of building make such heaps of shadow, on the ground and in the river, that there is another and a different city of rich forms and fan cies, always lying at our feet. Prodigious palaces, con structed for defence, with small distrustful windows heavily barred, and walls of great thickness formed of huge masses of rough stone, frown, in their old sulky state, on every street. In the midst of the city— in the Piazza of the Grand Duke, adorned with beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune — rises the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging battlements, and the Great Tower that watches over the whole town. In its courtyard — worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its ponderous gloom — is a massive staircase that the heaviest waggon and the stout- 72 FLORENCE est team of horses might be driven up. Within it, is a Great Saloon, faded and tarnished in its stately decorations, and mouldering by grains, but recording yet, in pictures on its walls, the triumphs of the Medici and the wars of the old Florentine people. The prison is hard by, in an adja cent courtyard of the building — a foul and dismal place, where some men are shut up close, in small cells like ovens ; and where others look through bars and beg ; where some are playing draughts, and some are talking to their friends, who smoke, the while, to purify the air ; and some are buy ing wine and fruit of women-vendors ; and all are squalid, dirty, and vile to look at. " They are merry enough, Sig- nore," says the Jailer. " They are all blood-stained here," he adds, indicating, with his hand, three-fourths of the whole building. Before the hour is out, an old man, eighty years of age, quarrelling over a bargain with a young girl of seventeen, stabs her dead, in the market-place full of bright flowers ; and is brought in prisoner, to swell the number. Among the four old bridges that span the river, the Ponte Vecchio— that bridge which is covered with the shops of Jewellers and Goldsmiths — is a most enchanting feature in the scene. The space of one house, in the centre, being left open, the view beyond is shown as in a frame ; and that precious glirtipse of sky, and water, and rich buildings, shining so quietly among the huddled roofs and gables on the bridge, is exquisite. Above it, the Gallery of the Grand Duke crosses the river. It was built to connect the PORTICO OF THE UFFIZI AND THE PALAZZO VECCHIO MEMORIES OF FLORENCE 73 two Great Palaces by a secret passage; and it takes its jealous course among the streets and houses, with true des potism : going where it lists, and spurning every obstacle away before it. The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage through the streets, in his black robe and hood, as a member of the Compagnia della Misericordia, which brotherhood includes all ranks of men. If an accident take place, their office is to raise the sufferer, and bear him tenderly to the Hos pital. If a fire break out, it is one of their functions to re pair to the spot, and render their assistance and protection. It is, also, among their commonest offices, to attend and console the sick ; and they neither receive money, nor eat, nor drink, in any house they visit for this purpose. Those who are on duty for the time, are all called together, on a moment's notice, by the tolling of the great bell of the Tower ; and it is said that the Grand Duke has been seen, at this sound, to rise from his seat at table, and quietly withdraw to attend the summons. In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind of market is held, and stores of old iron and other small mer chandise are set out on stalls, or scattered on the pavement, are grouped together, the Cathedral with its great Dome, the beautiful Italian Gothic Tower, the Campanile, and the Baptistery with its wrought bronze doors. And here, a small untrodden square in the pavement, is " the Stone of Dante," where (so runs the story) he was used to bring his stool, and sit in contemplation. I wonder was he ever. 74 FLORENCE in his bitter exile, withheld from cursing the very stones in the streets of Florence the ungrateful, by any kind remem brance of this old musing-place, and its association with gentle thoughts of little Beatrice ! The chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels of Florence ; the church of Santa Croce where Michael Angelo lies buried, and where every stone in the cloisters is elo quent on great men's deaths ; innumerable churches, often masses of unfinished heavy brickwork externally, but sol emn and serene within ; arrest our lingering steps, in stroll ing through the city. In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters, is the Museum of Natural History, famous through the world for its preparations in wax ; beginning with models of leaves, seeds, plants, inferior animals ; and gradually ascending, through separate organs of the human frame, up to the whole structure of that wonderful creation, exquisitely presented, as in recent death. Few admonitions of our frail mortality can be more solemn and more sad, or strike so home upon the heart, as the counterfeits of Youth and Beauty that are lying there, upon their beds, in their last sleep. Beyond the walls, the whole sweet Valley of the Arno, the convent at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, Boccaccio's house, old villas and retreats ; innumerable spots of inter est, all glowing in a landscape of surpassing beauty steeped in the richest light ; are spread before us. Returning from so much brightness, how solemn and how grand the streets again, with their great, dark, mournful palaces, and many MEMORIES OF FLORENCE 75 legends : not of siege, and war, and might, and Iron Hand alone, but of the triumphant growth of peaceful Arts and Sciences. What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from amidst these rugged Palaces of Florence ! Here, open to all comers, in their beautiful and calm retreats, the ancient Sculptors are immortal, side by side with Michael Angelo, Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, Poets, Historians, Philosophers — those illustrious men of history, beside whom its crowned heads and harnessed warriors show so poor and small, and are so soon forgotten. Here, the imperishable part of noble minds survives, placid and equal, when strong holds of assault and defence are overthrown ; when the tyranny of the many, or the few, or both, is but a tale ; when Pride and Power are so much cloistered dust. The fire within the stern streets, and among the massive Palaces and Towers, kindled by rays from Heaven, is still burning brightly, when the flickering of war is extinguished and the household fires of generations have decayed ; as thousands upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife and passion of the hour, have faded out of the old Squares and public haunts, while the Nameless Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion by a Painter's hand, yet lives on, in enduring grace and youth. Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when its shining Dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheerful Tuscany, with a bright remembrance of it; for Italy will be the fairer for the recollection. FIRST IMPRESSIONS HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE A CITY complete in itself having its own arts and edifices, lively and not too crowded, a capitol and not too large, beautiful and gay — such is the first idea of Florence. One wanders along carelessly over the large slabs with which the streets are paved. From the Palazzo Strozzi to the Piazza Santa Trinita there -is a humming crowd con stantly renewing itself. In hundreds of places we see the constantly recurring signs of an agreeable and intellectual life : cafes almost brilliant, print-shops, alabaster pietra dura and mosaic embellishments, bookstores, an elegant reading- room and a dozen theatres. Of course the ancient city of the Fifteenth Century still exists and constitutes the body of the city; but it is not mouldy as at Siena, consigned to one corner as at Pisa, befouled as in Rome, enveloped in mediaeval cobwebs or plastered with modern life as if vyith a parasite incrustation. The past is here reconciled with the present ; the refined vanity of the monarchy is perpetuated by the refined invention of the republic; the paternal gov ernment of the German grand-dukes is perpetuated by the pompous government of the Italian grand-dukes. At the close of the Eighteenth and the beginning of the Nineteenth FIRST IMPRESSIONS 77 Century, Florence formed a little oasis in Italy, and was called gli felicissimi stati. People built as formerly, held festivals and conversed together ; the social spirit had not perished as elsewhere under a rude despotic hand or through the respectable inertia of ecclesiastical rigour. The Florentine, as formerly the Athenian under the Caesars, remained a critic and a wit, proud of his good taste, his sonnets, his academies, of the language which gave law to Italy, and of his undisputed judgments in matters of literature and the fine arts. There are races so refined that they cannot wholly degenerate ; mind is an integrant force with them ; they may become corrupt but never be destroyed ; they may be converted into dilettanti and sophist but not into mutes and fools. It is then, indeed, that their underlying nature appears ; we recognize that with them, as with the Greeks of the Lower Empire, intelligence con stitutes character, since it persists after this has deteriorated. Already under the first Medicis, the keenest enjoyment is that of the intellect and the leading mental characteristics are gaiety and subtlety. Gravity subsides ; like the Athenians in the time of Demosthenes the Florentines care only for amusement, and, like Demosthenes, their leaders admonish them. " Your life," says Savonarola, " is passed in bed, in gos siping, in promenading, in orgies, and in debauchery." And Bruto, the historian, adds that they infuse " politeness into slander and gossip, and sociability into criminal com plaisance ; " he reproaches them for doing " everything 78 FLORENCE languidly, effeminately, irregularly, and of accepting in dolence and baseness as the rule of their life." These are severe expressions. All the moralists use the same language and elevate their voices in order to make themselves heard. It is clear, however, that, towards the middle of the Fifteenth Century, the trained and cultivated senses, expert in all matters of pleasure, ostentation and emotion, are sovereign in Florence. We realize this in their art. Their Renaissance has in it nothing of the austere or tragic. Only old palaces built of enormous blocks bristle with knotty bosses, grated windows and obscure angles, indicat ing the insecurity of feudal life and the assaults they have undergone. Everywhere else a taste for elegant and joyous beauty declares itself. The principal buildings are covered with marble from top to bottom. Loggie, open to the air and sunshine, rest on Corinthian columns. We see that architecture emancipated itself immediately from the Gothic, abstracting from it only one point of originality and of fancy, and that her natural tendency from the first led her to the light and simple forms of Pagan antiquity. You walk on and you observe the apse of a church peopled with intelligent and expressive statues ; a solid wall where the pretty Italian arcade is inlaid and developed into a border ; a file of slender columns whose tops expand in order to sup port the roof of a promenade, and, terminating a street, a panel of green hill, or some blue mountain top. I have just passed an hour on the Piazza delF Annunzi ata, seated on a flight of steps. Opposite to me is a FIRST IMPRESSIONS 79 church, and on either side of this, a convent — all three with a peristyle of light half Ionic half Corinthian columns, ter minating in arcades. Overhead are brown roofs of old tile intersecting the pure blue of the sky, and, at the end of a street, stretching away in the warm shadow, the eye is ar rested by a round mountain. Within this frame, so nat ural and so noble, is a market; stalls protected by white awnings contain rolls of dry goods ; countless women in violet shawls and straw hats come and go and are buying and chatting ; there are scarcely any beggars or ragged peo ple ; the eyes are not saddened by spectacles of misery or savage brutality ; the people seem to be at their ease and active without being excited. From the middle of this variegated crowd and these open airy stalls rises an eques trian statue, and near this a fountain empties its waters into a basin of bronze. These contrasts are similar to those of Rome ; but, instead of clashing, they produce har mony. The beautiful is as original but it inclines to the pleasing and harmonious and not towards disproportion and enormity. You turn back. A beautiful stream of clear water, spotted here and there with white sand-banks, flows by the side of a magnificent quay. Houses seeming to be palaces, modern yet monumental, form a bordering to it. In the distance you observe trees donning their spring verdure, a soft and pleasing landscape like those of temperate climes ; beyond, rounded summits and hillsides, and farther on, an amphitheatre of barren rocks. 8o FLORENCE Florence lies in a mountain basin like a statuette in the middle of a vast fountain, and its stone lace-work becomes silvery under the bright lustre of the evening reflections. You follow the course of the river and reach the Cascine. Fresh green and the delicate tints of distant poplars undu late with charming sweetness against the blue mountains. Tall trees and dense evergreen hedges protect the prome- nader from the north wind. It is so pleasant on the ap proach of spring to feel one's self stirred by the fresh warm sunshine ! The azure of the sky glows magnificently be tween the budding branches of the beeches, on the pale verdure of the ilex and on the blue-tinted needles of the pine. Everywhere between gray trunks animated with sap are blooming tufts of shrubbery that have not succumbed to winter's sleep, and fresh blossoms combining with their youthful vivacity, to fill the avenues with colour and fra grance. The light laurel shows its grave tops in profile against the river-bank, as in a picture, while the broad Arno tranquilly expands its ruddy gleaming waves in sunset glow. You leave the city and ascend an eminence in order to embrace it and its valley in one view in the rounded vase in which it lies : nothing could be more charming. Com fort and prosperity appear on all sides. Thousands of country-houses dot the surface with their white spots, rising above each other from slope to slope even to the mountain heights. On every declivity the tops of the olive-trees cluster together like sober grazing flocks. The soil is sup- FIRST IMPRESSIONS 8i ported by walls and forms terraces. Man's intelligent hand converts all to profit and at the same time to beauty. The soil, thus arranged, assumes an architectural shape ; gardens are grouped together in stories amongst balustrades, statues and fountains. There are no great forests, there is no lux uriance of abundant vegetation ; it is only northern eyes that need to feast themselves on the universal softness and freshness of vegetable growth ; the grouping of stones suf fices for the Italians, and the neighbouring mountain fur nishes them, according to fancy, with beautiful white or bluish blocks, sober and refined in tone. They arrange themselves nobly in symmetrical lines ; the marble fronts of the houses glisten in the transparent atmosphere, accom panied with a few grand trees always green. One can here enjoy sunshine in winter and shade in summer, while the eye idly wanders over the surrounding landscape. Afar in the distance a gateway is seen, also a campanile and a church. This is San Miniato, situated on a hill and developing its facade of variegated marbles. This is one of the oldest churches in Florence, belonging to the Eleventh Century. On entering it you find an almost Latin basilica, capitals almost Grecian and light polished shafts bearing round arcades. The crypt is similar. There is nothing lugubrious about it, or overburdened ; ever the up-springing column terminating in harmonious curves. Florentine architecture from the very first derives or re sumes the antique tradition of light and solid forms. Early historians call Florence " the noble city, the daughter of 82 FLORENCE Rome." It seems as if the melancholy spirit of the middle ages had only glided over it. She is an elegant pagan, who, as soon as she first thought, declared herself, at first timidly and afterwards openly, elegant and pagan. A CRADLE OF ART OSCAR BROWNING NO city in Italy has a better right to be called a cradle of art than Florence. If Rome preserves most completely the traditions which made her the mistress of the world, if Ravenna in her ancient churches and her pine-wood growing on the harbour which once held the Roman fleet recalls to the mind the union between the Eastern and Western Empires, Florence is the centre of the new Italian life, of the spirit which has given Italy her predominance among the nations of Europe, and which has made her the place of pilgrimage for all peoples of the earth. Florence is pre-eminently the city of towers, domes and spires. As we climb one of the gently-sloping hills which surround the town, and look down upon its white houses with red-tiled roofs and the multitudinous villas which, if collected within one wall, would make an other Florence, we see her towers group in picturesque diversity. We have abundant choice in our point of view. We may ascend the hill of Fiesole, the old Etruscan cita del, still guarded by its Cyclopean walls, the refuge of the remnant of Catiline's conspirators who formed the nucleus of the future capital of Tuscany. The most convenient 84 FLORENCE point of view will be the terrace of the Villa Mozzi, once the home of the Medici, where the dining-room still exists which was to have served the Pazzi as the murdering place of the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano. On passing to the other side of the Arno we may mount the hill of Arcetri, where Galileo lived and was visited by Milton, where through " optick glass " the Tuscan artist viewed the moon and surveyed rivers or mountains, in her spotty globe; or we may see a different view from the ilex- shaded gardens of Boboli ; or we may choose an easier task in wandering to the Villa of Bellosguardo, or the convent of Oliveto where the evening bell swings heavily between the sister guardians of the cypress and the pine. Varied as the view will be from each of these points, it will pre sent the same features and recall to us the same memories. High in the air rises the tall tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the old palace of the popular government. It overhangs and dominates the square which has now recovered its old name of the Square of the Signory. High in the tower is the little room which served as prison to Cosimo de' Medici ; higher still is the bell which on occasions of crises summoned the people to parliament. Close by is the tower of the Badia, a light and elegant spire, which reminds us that at the entrance of its portal hangs the masterpiece of Lippino Lippi, The Appearance of the Virgin to San Bruno,'' near to its side is the slim square tower of the Bargello, the residence of the podesta, a foreign judge brought in every year to settle judicial questions between the warring fac- A CRADLE OF ART 85 tions of the commonwealth. Conspicuous above these is the huge dome of the Cathedral — Our Lady of the Flower — the masterpiece of Brunelleschi, larger than but not so lofty as the dome of St. Peter's at Rome. Next to it is seen the variegated campanile of Giotto, brilliant with all the rich colours of varied marble, but wanting the golden crown which was intended one day to complete the edifice. Two more domes are visible, one covering the Church of San Lorenzo, where lie the remains of the proud family of the Medici, whose humble members who have left no fame or celebrity of their own are immortalized by the sculpture of Michael Angelo ; the other flatter and less conspicuous, vaulting the little Church of San Giovanni, the parent church of the city, where the poet Dante once broke the marble font in order to save a child from drowning. One spire remains at a little distance, less beautiful than the rest, but not less illustrious. It marks the Church of Santa Croce, the Westminster Abbey of Florence, where repose her illustrious dead. Here are the tombs of Dante, the city's most famous son, who, exiled during his life, has re paid her ingratitude by a deathless immortality ; of Galileo, whose name is only second to that of Newton; of MachiaveUi, the coldest and most passionless of the ob servers of mankind; of Alfieri, who in the times of Italy's deepest abasement reminded the world that she was a coun try not only of memories but of hopes. Such is the view which will meet our eyes from which ever point we look — this and much more than this — and 86 FLORENCE swift as an arrow through the middle of the town, lo ! the rushing Arno, yellow as the Tiber, roaring over its shal lows, spanned by its three historical bridges, and hurrying through the Val d' Arno to Pisa and the sea. One of the peculiarities of Florentine art is that it busied itself not only on statues and pictures — on the larger ve hicles of artistic expression, but in the perfection of little details which would escape notice/ if they were not searched for by a careful eye. In the same street as the Church of San Michele, on the left hand side a little higher up, stands the ancient palace of the Strozzi family. Its base is formed of rusticated stones, afterwards to be outstripped by the larger masses which form the lower tier of the Pitti Palace, the home of the rival family. The windows are remarkable for their simple and elegant design, in which the entwined crescents of the Strozzi form a prominent part. But the most striking thing about the building is the richly-worked knocker that hangs on the door, and of the same workmanship is the large iron lamp which projects from the corner of the house. It is most elaborate iron work of Italian-Gothic design, and it bears, wherever it is possible, the arms of the house to which it belongs. It was wrought by Caparra, an artist who, like many other Florentine artists, was best known by his nickname. Caparra in Italian means a coin given as a pledge for fu ture payments — the Greek arrhabon. Caparra, being a cautious man, never accepted a commission unless part at least of the price had been paid beforehand, and from that A CRADLE OF ART 87 excellent practice the name is derived which is the most honoured among the descendants of Tubal Cain. Other houses are decorated by beautiful designs in terra cotta — generally a Holy Family in a lunette over the door way. These are the work of Luca della Robbia, who, begin ning as a carver in marble, eventually devoted himself to this kind of pottery. The most characteristic remains of his work are the infants in swaddling clothes which form a frieze to the Foundling Hospital, or, as it is called in Florence, the Hospital of the Innocents. The galleries of the Uffizi and the Pitti, taken together, are undoubtedly the finest collection of pictures in the world. It may be doubted if any other could rival them single-handed. Some years ago it was a long journey from one to the other; the traveller crossed the Ponte Vecchio, and ascended the hill of Boboli ; now a passage, which was constructed in the Sixteenth Century by the painter Vasari, to connect the two palaces for the convenience of the Medici, has been opened to the public. As we pass down this long gallery we see the walls covered with sketches by great masters, and with the early engravings of Marc An tonio. We surprise the painter in his workshop, and travel from his first conception, through all his subsidiary studies, to the finished masterpiece. Further on, the walls are hung with rich tapestries, their colours bright and fresh as ever — signs of the magnificence of the home of the Medici. At last we find ourselves across the Arno, and can mount to the royal suite of drawing-rooms where Raphael's master- 88 FLORENCE pieces are hung, or descend to the alleys of the garden, where the clustered domes and towers bf the city show most beautifully under the Italian heaven. Much more might be said of Florence as a cradle of art. Florence was once the capital of Italy, better perhaps if she had remained so. But in accepting this distinction she sacrificed herself to her country as she had often done be fore. The walls which girdled her like a coronet of flowers, and which had long been the bulwark of freedom, were pulled down, the narrow streets which made her palaces appear immense were widened to make room fbr modern omnibuses, the Tetto de Pisani, the rough building erected by the captive Pisans, was enlarged for a modern post-office until it dwarfed the beautiful Loggia of Orcagna, which Michael Angelo wished to continue all round the Square of the Signory. And the castellated church of San Miniato, which looked down on the rushing Arno like a proud for tress, has been made to seem petty and insignificant by the huge boulevard which affords to modern Florentines a broad avenue for their evening drive. " In a few years," a Flor entine once said to us, " Florence will be quite a little Paris." That fate is happily far distant, and in spite of builder and restorer, of speculator and vandal, Florence is still to the traveller of taste the most cherished and the best remembered cradle of Christian art. THE PALAZZO VECCHIO AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE THE Palazzo Vecchio della Signoria was built for the Gonfalonier and Priors, in whose hands was the government of the Florentine Republic, by Arnolfo di Lapo. The architect was restricted as to form and size by the resolve of the then powerful Guelfs that no foot of ground should be used which had ever been occupied by a Ghibelline building, and to which one of that faction might put forward any possible future claim. Arnolfo en treated to trespass upon the open space where the palace of the traitor Uberti had stood, but the people absolutely re fused — " Where the traitor's nest had been, there the sacred foundations of the house of the people should not be laid." The square battlements are typical of the Guelfs, the forked battlements on the tower were added later when the Ghib ellines came into power. To build the palace, part of an ancient church was de molished, called San Piero Scheraggio, in which the Car- roccio of Fiesole, taken in lOio, was preserved, as well as a beautiful marble pulpit, also brought from Fiesole, which still exists in the church of S. Leonardo in Arcetri, outside the Porta San Giorgio. The tower of the Vacca family was used by Arnolfo as the sub-structure of his own tower. 90 FLORENCE ; which is 330 feet high. Its bell continued to bear the name of " La Vacca," and when it tolled, men said, " La Vacca mugghia " — " the cow lows." The Via de' Leoni, on the east of the palace, commemorates the lions which were kept by the city of Florence, partly in honour of Will iam of Scotland, who interceded with Charlemagne for the liberties of the town ; and partly on account of the Mar- zocco, the emblem of the city. These were maintained in an enclosure called the Serraglio till 1550, when Cosimo I. removed them to S. Marco, and they were only finally dis carded in 1777. In 1349, a stone platform was raised against the northern facade of the Palazzo, and was called the Ringhiera. Hence the Signory always addressed the people, and here it was that the Prior and Judges sat and looked on. May 23, 1498, when " Savonarola's soul went out in fire." The Ringhiera was not removed till 18 12. Its northern angle is still marked by the famous Marzocco of Donatello, occupying the place of an older Marzocco erected in 1377. A still earlier Marzocco stood on this site, which the Pisan captives were forced ignominiously to kiss in 1364. The origin of the name Marzocco is unknown. It is a seated lion, with one paw resting upon a shield, which bears the Giglio of Florence. In ancient times it bore an enamel crown set in gold, with the motto, by Francesco Sacchetti : — PALAZZO VECCHIO, THE PALAZZO VECCHIO 91 " Corona porto, per la patria degna, Accioche liberto ciascum mantegna." On the left of the entrance to the Palazzo stood the David of Michelangelo, removed by the present govern ment. On the right is the Hercules and Cacus of Baccio Bandinelli, executed in 1546 on a block of marble selected by Michelangelo at Carrara, but which he was unable to use, as he was summoned to Rome at that time for his fresco of the Last Judgment. Before reaching Florence, the marble fell into the Arno, and was extricated with difficulty, which caused the Florentine joke that it had attempted to drown itself rather than submit to the in ferior hands of Bandinelli. By the same artist are the two terminal statues called Baucis and Philemon, which were intended to support an iron chain in front of the gate. The monogram of Christ over the entrance was placed here in 1517 by the Gonfalonier Niccolo Capponi. " In order to prove his attachment to liberty, he proposed in council that Jesus Christ should be elected King of Florence, a pledge that the Florentines would accept no ruler but the King of Heaven. The contemporary historian, Varchi, describes how the Gonfalonier, when presiding at this great council, Feb. 9, 1527, repeated almost verbatim a sermon of Savonarola, and then throw ing himself on his knees, exclaimed in a loud voice, echoed by the whole council, ' Misericordia I ' and how he pro- 92 FLORENCE posed that Christ the Redeemer should be chosen King of Florence. The old chronicler, Cambi, further relates that on the lOth of June in the following year, 1528, the clergy of the cathedral met in the Piazza della Signoria, where an altar had been erected in front of the palace ; the word Jesus was then disclosed before the assembled citizens, who finally accepted him as their King. The shields of France and Pope Leo were accordingly re moved from their place, and the name of the Saviour on a tablet was inserted over the entrance to the palace," (Horner). Inserted, probably, at the same time, and with the same meaning is the inscription on the parapet of the tower : " Jesus Christus Rex Gloriae venit in pace, Deus Homo factus est, Et Verbum caro factum est." This tower, which is worth ascending for the sake of the view, contains the prison of Savonarola. " Among so many monuments whose architectural forms are the ever true and living expression of public manners and passions, there is not one that better reproduces in its harsh energy the character of the old Guelfic city than the Palazzo Vecchio. A veritable type of the Florentine architecture that took and kept so personal and distinct a stamp, between the Roman and Gothic styles and the architecture of the Renaissance, this palace completely represents the idea one forms of what the Palace of the Signory of Florence might have been. By its quadrangular mass, its narrow door, its few openings. THE PALAZZO VECCHIO 93 and, lastly, by its loopholes and its battlements that sur mount a square tower that formerly bore the communal belfry, does it not represent in its sombre and severe beauty the essentially militant life of the republic of which it might be called the new capital ? " Notwithstanding the changes which Vasari made in the interior in 1540, nothing could conform more with its intent and history than this splendid Florentine palace. Nothing better recalls with a faint reminiscence of Etruscan traditions the application of the Roman style combined with the imitation of the great Greek or Roman edifices, which, at the close of the Middle Ages, still covered the soil of Tuscany. What makes us feel still more strongly this historical and entirely local character of the Palazzo Vecchio is the series of armorial shields of the various governments, republican, oligarchical and mon archical, that successively ruled Florence, which we note in the arcatures of the machicolation that supports the entablature. There we see the white lily of the Commune, the red lily of the Ghibellines, the keys of the Guelfs, the tools of the wool-carders, then the six balls of the Medicis, and even the monogram of Christ, whom the Florentines, tired after exhausting every form of government, elected solemnly as king in 1527" (Dantier). The beautiful little solemn court of the Palazzo is sur rounded by a colonnade, of which the pillars were richly decorated in honour of the marriage of Francesco de' Medici in 1565. In the centre is an exquisite fountain by 94 FLORENCE Verrocchio, adorned with an animated laughing boy playing with a dolphin. It was originally ordered for Careggi by Lorenzo de' Medici. " Nothing can be gayer or more lively than the expression or action of this child, and there is no modern bronze combining such beautiful treatment with such perfection of art. A half-flying, half-running motion is represented, its varied action still true to the centre of gravity " (Rumohr). Ascending the staircase on the left of the corridor we reach on the first floor a small frescoed gallery. On the left is the Sala dei Dugento, where the Councils of War assembled. Into this room, in 1378, burst Michel Lando, the wool-comber, bearing the standard of Justice, at the head of the Ciompi — or wooden-shoes, as they were called, in token of contempt, and here his wild followers insisted on placing him at the head of the government, and pro claiming him Gonfalonier of Florence. A passage leads hence to the vast Sala dei Cinquecento, built c. 1495 by the desire of Savonarola, to accommodate the popular Council after the expulsion of Piero de' Medici. The architect of this hall was Simone di Tommaso del Pollajuolo, surnamed II Cronaca. It is 170 feet long by seventy-seven broad. Cartoons for frescoes for the walls were prepared by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, but were destroyed upon the return of the Medici in 15 12. The existing frescoes are by Vasari and his pupils, and commemorate the exploits of Cosimo I. In one of them (the first on left) he is seen leading the attack upon Siena, THE PALAZZO VECCHIO 95 attended by his favourite dwarf, Tommaso Tafredi, in armour. Beneath the central arch is a statue of Leo X., and on the other side Giovanni de' Medici delle Bande Nere, father of Cosimo I., and Duke Alessandro by Bandinelli. Here Victor Emmanuel opened his first parliament in Florence. Another suite of chambers on this floor called " the Medici Rooms," because adorned with frescoes by Vasari relating to that family, are ap proached by a different staircase. The second flight of stairs leads (left) first to the Sala del Orologio, so called from the Orrery which it once con tained, to show the movements of the planets, the work of Lorenzo di Volpaia. It has a splendid ceiling. The left wall is covered by a grand but injured fresco painted by R. Ghirlandajo in 1482. It represents S. Zenobia throned in state, with mitre and pastoral staff. In the architectural compartments at the sides are Brutus, Scaevola, and Camil- lus, Decius Mus, Scipio, and Cicero. Hence by a beautiful door, the work of Benedetto da Majano, we enter the Sala deW Udienza, surrounded by frescoes from Roman History by Francesco de' Rossi Salviati. " The six Priors of the Arts, composing the Council of the Signory, who were first created in 1282, exercised their duties in the Sala dell' Udienza. Their term of office was two months, and none could be re-elected within two years. They were maintained at the public cost, eating at one table, and during their two months of office were rarely 96 FLORENCE allowed to quit the walls of the Palazzo. All their acts were conducted with religious solemnity ; the wine brought to their table was consecrated on the sacred altar of Or San Michele, and in the small chapel of St. Bernard, leading out of this chamber, the Priors invoked Divine aid before commencing business " (Horner). A door inscribed — Sol Justitia Christus Deus noster regnat in aeternum — leads into the Chapel of S. Bernardo. It is beautifully painted in fresco by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo. The ceiling has a gold ground. In the centre is the Trinity, the other compartments are occupied by nobly solemn apostles and exquisitely beautiful cherubs : opposite the altar is the Annunciation, in which the Piazza della An nunziata is introduced. Here Savonarola received the last sacraments before his execution. Hence is the entrance to'four rooms which were given by Cosimo I. to his wife Eleanora of Toledo. The ceil ings are painted with the lives of good women by Jean Stradan of Bruges. In the last of these rooms a cruel murder was committed in 1441. " A Florentine named Baldassare Orlandini, while com missary for the army during a war with the Milanese, basely abandoned a pass in the Apennines, allowing Nic colo Piccinino, the hostile general, to penetrate the valley of the Arno. His conduct was boldly denounced by Bal- daccio d' Anghiari, a faithful soldier of the Republic, who led the Florentine infantry. Some years later, in 1441, when the chronicler Francesco Giovanni was Prior, Or- THE PALAZZO VECCHIO 97 landini, who had been chosen Gonfalonier, with apparent friendliness, sent for d' Anghiari to the palace. Suspect ing treachery, he hesitated to obey, and sought advice from Cosimo Vecchio, who, fearing that the virtue and ability of d' Anghiari might be prejudicial to Medicean interest, cunningly replied that obedience was the first duty in a citizen. Baldaccio accordingly repaired to the palace, where Orlandini received him with courtesy, and was lead ing him by the hand to his own chamber, when ruffians, hired by the Gonfalonier for the purpose, and placed in concealment, rushed on their intended victim, and after despatching him with their daggers, threw his body into the cortile below. His head was cut off and his mangled remains exposed in the Piazza, where he was proclaimed a traitor to the Republic. A part of his confiscated property was, however, restored to the prayers of his widow, Anna- lena, who, after the death of her infant son, retired from the world, and converted her dwelling in the Via Romana into a convent which bore her name " (Horner). Opening from this chamber is a very small Chapel in tended for the use of the Grand Duchess, adorned with admirable frescoes by Bronzino. In the tower is the prison called Alberghettino, where, in 1423, Cosimo de' Medici was imprisoned before his exile and where MachiaveUi narrates that the future " Father of his country " refused all nourishment except a piece of bread for four days, from fear of poison. PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA, AND THE LOGGIA DEI LANZI EDWARD HUTTON ALL the love that founded the city, the beauty that has given her fame, the immense confusion that is her history, the hatred that has destroyed her, lingers yet in that strange and lovely place where Palazzo Vecchio stands like a violated fortress, where the Duke of Athens was expelled the city, where the Ciompi rose against the Ghibellines, where Jesus Christ was proclaimed King of the Florentines, where Savonarola was burned, and Alessandro de' Medici made himself Duke. It is not any great and regular space you come upon in the Piazza della Signoria, such as the huge empty Place de la Concorde of Paris, but one that is large enough for beauty, and full of the sweet variety of the city ; it is the symbol of Florence — a beautiful symbol. In the morning the whole Piazza is full of sunlight, and swarming with people: there, is a stall for newspapers; here, a lemonade merchant dispenses his sweet drinks. Every one is talking; at the corner of Via Calzaioli a crowd has assembled, a crowd that moves and seems about to dissolve, that constantly reforms itself without ever breaking up. On the benches of the Loggia men lie asleep in the LOGGIA DEI LANZI (PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA) PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA 99 shadow, and children chase one another among the statues. Everywhere and from all directions cabs pass with much cracking of whips and hallooing. There stand two Cara- binieri in their splendid uniforms, surveying this noisy world, and an officer passes with his wife, leading his son by the hand ; you may see him lift his sword as he steps on the pavement. A group of tourists go by, urged on by a gesticulating guide ; he is about to show them the statues in the Loggia; they halt under the Perseus. He begins to speak of it, while the children look up at him as though to ' catch what he is saying in that foreign tongue. And surely the Piazza, which has seen so many strange and splendid things, may well tolerate this also ; it is so gay, so full of life. Very fair she seems under the sun light, picturesque too, with her buildings so different and yet so harmonious. On the right the gracious beauty of Loggia dei Lanzi ; then before you the lofty, fierce old Palazzo Vecchio; and beside it the fountains play in the farther Piazza. Cosimo I. rides by as though into Siena, while behind him rises the palace of the Uguccioni, which Folfi made ; and beside you the Calzaioli ebbs and flows with its noisy life, as of old the busiest street of the city. The Palazzo Vecchio, peaceful enough now, but still with fierce gesture of war strewn on one side, facing the Piazza, a fortress of huge stones four storeys high ; the last, thrust out from the wall and supported by arches on brackets of stone, as though crowning the palace itself. It stands almost four-square, and above rises the beautiful loo FLORENCE tower, the highest tower in the city, with a gallery similar to the last storey of the palace, and above a loggia borne by four pillars, from which spring the great arches of the canopy that supports the spire ; and whereas the battle ments of the palazzo are square and Guelph, those of the tower are Ghibelline in the shape of the tail of the swal low. Set not in the centre of the square, nor made to close it, but on one side, it was thus placed, it is said, in order to avoid the burned houses of the Uberti, who had been expelled the city. However this may be, and its po sition is so fortunate that it is not likely to be due to any such chance, Arnolfo di Cambio began it in February, 1299, taking as his model, so some have thought, the Rocca of the Count Guidi of the Casentino, which Lapo his father had built. Under the arches of the fourth storey are painted the coats of the city and its gonfaloni. And there you may see the most ancient device of the city, the lily argent on a field gules, the united coats gules and argent of Fiesole and Florence in lOio. The coat of Guelph Flor ence, a lily gules on a field argent, and, among the rest, the coat of Charles of Anjou, the lilies or on a field azure. On the platform, or ringhiera, before the great door, the Priori watched the greater festas, and made their proclama tions, before the Loggia dei Lanzi was built in 1387 ; and here in 1532 the last signoria of the Republic proclaimed Alessandro de' Medici first Duke of Florence, in front of the Judith and Holofernes of Donatello, whose warning went unheeded. And indeed, that group, part of the plun- PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA loi der that the people found in Palazzo Riccardi, in the time of Piero de' Medici, who sought to make himself tyrant, once stood beside the great gate of Palazzo Vecchio, whence it was removed at the command of Alessandro, who placed there instead Bandinelli's feeble Hercules and Cacus. Opposite to it Michelangelo's David once stood, till it was removed in our own time to the Accademia. Over the great door where of old was set the monogram of Christ, you may read still Rex Regum et Dominus Dom- inantium, and within the gate is a court most splendid and lovely, built after the design of Arnolfo, and once sup ported by his pillars of stone, but now the columns of Michelozzo, made in 1450, and covered with stucco dec oration in the Sixteenth Century, form the cortile in which over the fountain of Vasari Verrocchio's lovely Boy Play ing with the Dolphin, ever half turns in his play. Alto gether lovely in its naturalism, its humorous grace, Verroc chio made it for Lorenzo Magnifico, who placed it in his gardens at Careggi, whence it was brought here by Cosimo I. Passing through that old palace, up the great staircase into the Salone dei Cinquecenti, where Savonarola was tried, with the Cappella di S. Bernardo, where he made his last communion, and at last up the staircase into the tower, where he was tortured and imprisoned, it is ever of that mad pathetic figure, self-condemned and self-murdered, that you think, till at last, coming out of the Palazzo, you seek the spot of his awful death in the Piazza. As you enter the Loggia dei Lanzi, gay with children I02 FLORENCE now, once the lounge of the Swiss Guard, whose barracks were not far away, you wonder who can have built so gay, so happy a place beside the fortress of the Signoria. Yet, in truth, it was for the Priori themselves that Loggia was built, though not by Orcagna, as it is said, to provide, per haps, a lounge in summer for the fathers of the city, and for a place of proclamation that all Florence might hear the laws they had made. Yes, and to-day, too, do they not proclaim the tombola where once they announced a vic tory ? Even now, in spite of forgotten greatness, it is still a garden of statues. Looking ever over the Piazza stands the Perseus of Cellini, with the head of Medusa held up to the multitude, the sword still gripped in his hand. It is the masterpiece of one who,Jike all the greatest artists of the Renaissance — Giotto, Orcagna, Leonardo, Michel angelo,. Raphael — did not confine himself to one art, but practised many. And though it would be unjust to com pare such a man as Cellini with the greatest of all, yet he was great not only as a sculptor and a goldsmith, but as a man of letters and as a man of the world. His Perseus, a little less than a demigod, is indeed not so lovely as the wax model he made for it, which is now in the Bargello ; but in the gesture with which he holds out the severed head from him, in the look of secret delight that is already half re morseful for all that dead beauty, in the heroic grace with which he stands there after the murder, the dead body mar vellously fallen at his feet, Cellini has proved himself the greatest sculptor of his time. That statue cost him dear PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA 103 enough, as he tells you in his Memoirs, but, as Gaurier said, it is worth all it cost. On the pedestal you may see the deliverance of Androm eda ; but the finest of these reliefs has been taken to the Bargello. The only other bronze here is the work of Donatello — a Judith and Holofernes, under the arch towards the Uffizi. It is Donatello's only large bronze group, and was probably designed for the centre piece of a fountain, the mattress on which Holofernes has fallen hav ing little spouts for water. Judith stands over her victim, who is already dead, her sword lifted to strike again ; and you may see by her face that she will strike if it be neces sary. Beneath you read — '•'¦ Exemplum salut. publ. cives posuere, MCCCCXV." Poor as the statue appears in its present position, the three bronze reliefs of the base gain here what they must lose in the midst of a fountain, yet even they too are unfortunate. Indeed, very few statues of this sort were made by the sculptors of the Renaissance ; for the most part they confined themselves to single figures and to groups in relief: even Michelangelo but rarely at tempted the " freestanding group." It is, however, to such a work we come in the splendidly composed Rape of the Sabines by Giovanni da Bologna in the Loggia itself. Spoiled a little by its too laboured detail, its chief fault lies in the fact that it is top-heavy, the sculptor having placed the mass of the group so high that the base seems unsub stantial and unbalanced. Bologna's other group here, Hercules and Nessus, which once stood at the foot of the I04 FLORENCE Ponte Vecchio, is dramatic and well composed, but the forms are feeble and even insignificant. The antique group of Ajax dragging the body of Patrocles, is not a very im portant copy of some great work, and it is much restored : it was found in a vineyard near Rome. The great fountain which plays beside the Palazzo, where of old the houses of the Uberti stood, is rich and grandiose perhaps, but in some unaccountable way adds much to the beauty of the Piazza. How gay and full of life it is even yet, that splendid and bitter place, that in its beauty and various, everlasting life seems to stand as the symbol of this city, so scornful even in the midst of the overwhelming foreigner who has turned her into a museum, a vast cemetery of art. Only here you may catch some thing of the old life that is not altogether passed away. Still, in spite of your eyes, you must believe there are Florentines somewhere in the city, that they are still as in Dante's day proud and wise and easily angry, scornful too, a little turbulent, not readily curbed, but full of ambition — great nobles, great merchants, great bankers. Does such an one never come to weep over dead Florence in this the centre of her fame, the last refuge of her greatness, in the night, perhaps, when none may see his tears, when all is hushed that none may mark his sorrow ? It was past midnight when once more I came out of the narrow ways, almost empty at that hour, when every foot fall resounds between the old houses, into the old Piazza to learn this secret. Far away in the sky the moon swung PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA 105 like a censer, filling the place with a fragile and lovely light. Standing there in the Piazza, quite deserted now save for some cloaked figure who hurried away up the Calzaioli, and two Carabinieri who stood for a moment at the Uffizi corner and then turned under the arches, I seemed to understand something of the spirit that built that marvellous fortress, that thrust that fierce tower into the sky ; — yes, surely at this hour some long dead Florentine must venture here to console the living, who, for sure, must be gay so sadly and with so much regret. In the Loggia dei Lanzi the moonlight fell among the statues, and in that fairy light I seemed to see in those ghostly still figures of marble and bronze some strange fantastic parable, the inscrutable prophecy of the scornful past. Gian Bologna's Sabine woman, was she not Florence struggling in the grip of the modern vandal ; Cellini's Perseus with Medusa's head, has it not in truth turned the city to stone ? THE BARGELLO EDMUND G. GARDINER EVEN as the Palazzo Vecchio, or Palace of the Priors, is essentially the monument of the Secondo Popolo, so the Palazzo del Podesta, or Palace of the Com mune, belongs to the Prima Popolo ; it was commenced in 1255, in that first great triumph of the democracy, although mainly finished towards the middle of the following century. Here sat the Podesta, with his assessors and retainers, whom he brought with him to Florence — himself always an alien noble. Originally he was the chief officer of the Republic, for the six months during which he held office, led the burgher forces in war, and acted as chief justice in peace ; but he gradually sunk in popular estimation before the more democratic Captain of the People (who was himself, it will be remembered, normally an alien Guelf noble). A little later, both Podesta and Captain were eclipsed by the Gon faloniere of Justice. In the Fifteenth Century the Podesta was still the president of the chief civil and criminal court of the city, and his office was only finally abolished during the Gonfalonierate of Piero Soderini at the beginning of the Cinquecento. Under the Medicean grand dukes the Bar gello, or chief of police, resided here — hence the present name of the palace ; and it is well to repeat, once for all, BARGELLO, MUSEO NAZIONALE THE BARGELLO 107 that when the Bargello, or Court of the Bargello, is men tioned in Florentine history — in grim tales of torture and executions and the like — it is not this building, but the residence of the Executore of Justice, now incorporated into the Palazzo Vecchio, that is usually meant. It was in this Palace of the Podesta, however, that Guido Novello resided and ruled the city in the name of King Manfred, during the short period of Ghibelline tyranny that followed Montaperti, 1 260-1 266, and which the Via Ghibellina, first opened by him, recalls. The Palace was broken into by the populace in 1295, just before the fall of Giano della Bella, because a Lombard Podesta had unjustly acquitted Corso Donati for the death of a burgher at the hands of his riotous retainers. Here, too, was Cante dei Gabbrielli of Gubbio installed by Charles of Valois, in November, 1301, and from its gates issued the Crier of the Republic that summoned Dante Alighieri and his companions in misfortune to appear be fore the Podesta's court. In one of those dark vaulted rooms on the ground floor, now full of a choice collection of medixval arms and armour, Cante's successor, Fulcieri da Calvoli, tortured those of the Bianchi who fell into his cruel hands. " He sells their flesh while it is still alive," says Dante in the Purgatorio, " then slayeth them like a worn out brute : many doth he deprive of life, and him self of honour." Some died under the torments, others were beheaded. " Messer Donato Alberti," writes Dino Compagni, io8 FLORENCE " mounted vilely upon an ass in a peasant's smock, was brought before the Podesta. And when he saw him, he asked him : ' Are you Messer Donato Alberri ? ' He replied : ' I am Donato. Would that Andrea da Cerreto were here before us, and Niccola Acciaioli, and Baldo d'Aguglione, and Jacopo da Certaldo, who have destroyed Florence.' ' Then he was fastened to the rope and the cord adjusted to the pulley, and so they let him stay; and the windows and doors of the Palace were opened, and many citizens called in under other pretexts, that they might see him tortured and derided." In the rising of the Ciompi, July, 1378, the palace was forced to surrender to the insurgents after an assault of two hours. They let the Podesta escape, but burnt all books and papers, especially those of the hated Arte della Lana. At night as many as the palace could hold quar tered themselves here. The beautiful court and stairway, surrounded by statues and armorial bearings, the ascent guarded by the symbolical lion of Florence and leading to an open loggia, is the work of Benci di Cione and Neri di Fioraventi, I333-I34S. The palace is now the National Museum of Sculpture and kindred arts and crafts. Keeping to the left, round the court itself, we see a marble St. Luke by Niccolo di Piero Lamberti, of the end of the Fourteenth Century, from the niche of the Judges and Notaries at Or San Michele ; a 'These were the burghers and lawyers of the black faction, the PodestVs allies and friends. This was in the spring of 1303. THE BARGELLO 109 magnificent Sixteenth Century portalantern in beaten iron ; the old marble St. John Evangelist, contemporaneous with the St. Luke, and probably by Piero di Giovanni Tedesco, from the niche of the Arte della Seta at Or San Michele ; some allegorical statues by Giovanni da Bologna and Vincenzo Danti, in rather unsuccessful imi tation of Michelangelo ; a dying Adonis, questionably ascribed to Michelangelo. And, finally (numbered 18), there stands Michelangelo's so-called " Victory," the triumph of the ideal over outworn tyranny and supersti tion ; a radiant youth, but worn and exhausted by the struggle, rising triumphantly over a shape of gigantic eld, so roughly hewn as to seem lost in the mist from which the young hero has gloriously freed himself.' Also on the ground floor, to the left, are two rooms full of statuary. The first contains nothing important, save perhaps the Madonna and Child with St. Peter and St. Paul, formerly above the Porta Romana. In the second room, a series of bas-reliefs by Benedetto da Rovezzano, begun in 15 11 and terribly mutilated by the imperial soldiery during the siege, represent scenes connected with the life and miracles of St. Giovanni Gualberto, including the famous trial of Peter Igneus, who, in order to convict the Bishop of Florence of simony, passed unharmed through * Such, at least, seems the more obvious interpretation ; but there is a certain sensuality and crueUy about the victor's expression, which, to gether with the fact that the vanquished undoubtedly has something of Michelangelo's own features, lead us to suspect that the master's sym pathies were with the lost cause. IIO FLORENCE the ordeal of fire. Here is the unfinished bust of Brutus (ill) by Michelangelo, one of his latest works, and a significant expression of the state of the man's heart, when he was forced to rear sumptuous monuments for the new tyrants who had overthrown his beloved Republic. Then a chimney-piece by Benedetto da Rovezzano from the Casa Borgherini, one of tl^e most sumptuous pieces of domestic furniture of the Renaissance ; a very beautiful tondo of the Madonna and Child with the little St. John (123) by Michelangelo, made for Bartolommeo Pitti early in the Cinquecento ; the mask of a grinning faun with gap-teeth, traditionally shown as the head struck out by the boy Michelangelo in his first visit to the Medici Gardens, when he attracted the attention of Lorenzo the Magnificent — but probably a comparatively modern work suggested by Vasari's story ; a sketch in marble for the martyrdom of St. Andrew, supposed to be a juvenile work of Michel angelo's, but also doubtful. Here too is Michelangelo's drunken Bacchus (128), an exquisitely-modelled intoxicated vine-crowned youth, behind whom a sly little satyr lurks, nibbling grapes. It is one of the master's earliest works, very carefully and delicately finished, executed during his first visit to Rome, for Messer Jacopo Galli, probably about 1497. ^f ^'^'^ statue Ruskin wrote, while it was still in the Uffizi: " The white lassitude of joyous limbs, panther-like, yet passive, fainting with their own delight, that gleam among the Pagan formalisms of the Uffizi, far away, separating themselves in their lustrous lightness as THE BARGELLO iii the waves of an Alpine torrent do by their dancing from the dead stones, though the stones be as white as they." Shelley, on the contrary, found it " most revolting," " the idea of the deity of Bacchus in the conception of a Catholic." Near it is a tondo of the Virgin and Child with the Baptist, by Andrea Ferrucci. At the top of the picturesque and richly ornamented staircase, to the right of the loggia on the first floor, opens a great vaulted hall, where the works of Donatello, casts and originals, surround a cast of his great equestrian monu ment to Gattamelata at Padua — a hall of such noble pro portions that even Gattamelata looks insignificant, where he sits his war-horse between the Cross of the People and the Lily of the Commune. Here the general council of the Commune met — the only council (besides the special council of the Podesta) in which the magnates could sit and vote, and it was here, on July 6, 1295, that Dante Alighieri first entered public life ; he spoke in support of the modifications of the Ordinances of Justice — which may have very probably been a few months before he definitely associated himself with the People by matriculating in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali. Among the casts and copies that fill this room, there are several original and splendid works of Donatello ; the Marzocco, or sym bolical lion of Florence protecting the shield of the Com mune, which was formerly in front of the Palace of the Priors ; the bronze David, full of Donatello's delight in the exuberance of youthful manhood just budding; the 112 FLORENCE San Giovannino or little St. John; the marble David, inferior to the bronze, but heralding Michelangelo ; the bronze bust of a youth, called the son of Gattamelata; Love trampling upon a snake (bronze) ; St. George in marble from Or San Michele, an idealized condottiere of the Quattrocento; St. John the Baprist from the Baptistery ; and a bronze relief of the Crucifixion. The coloured bust is now believed by many critics to be neither the portrait of Niccolo da Uzzano nor by Dona tello ; it is possibly a Roman hero by some sculptor of the Seicento. The next room is the audience chamber of the Podesta. Besides the Cross and the Lilies on the windows, its walls and roof are covered with the gold lion on azure ground, the arms of the Duke of Athens. They were cancelled by decree of the Republic in 1343, and renewed in 1861 ; as a patriotically worded tablet on the left, under the window, explains. Opening out of this is the famous Chapel of the Podesta — famous for the frescoes on its walls — once a prison. From out of these terribly ruined frescoes stands the figure of Dante (stands out, alas, because completely repainted — a mere rifacimento with hardly a trace of the original work left) in what was once a Paradiso • the dim figures on either side are said to represent Brunetto Latini and either Corso Donati or Guido Cavalcanti. In spite of a very pleasant fable, it is absolutely certain that this is not a contemporaneous portrait of Dante (although it may be regarded as an authentic likeness, to some extent) and was THE BARGELLO 113 not painted by Giotto ; the frescoes were executed by some later follower of Giotto (possibly by Taddeo Gaddi, who painted the lost portraits of Dante and Guido in Santa Croce) after 1345. The two paintings below on either side. Madonna and Child and St. Jerome, are votive pic tures commissioned by pious Podestas in 1490 and 149 1, the former by Sebastiano Mainardi, the brother-in-law of Domenico Ghirlandaio. The third room contains small bronze works by Tuscan masters of the Quattrocento. In the centre, Verrocchio's David (22), cast for Lorenzo dei Medici, one of the mas- . terpieces of the Fifteenth Century. Here are the famous trial plates for the great competition for the second bronze gates of the Baptistery, announced in 140 1, the Sacrifice of Abraham, by Brunelleschi and Ghiberti respectively ; the grace and harmony of Ghiberti's composition (12) contrast strongly with the force, almost violence, the dramatic action and movement of Brunelleschi's (13). Ghiberti's, unlike his rival's, is in one single piece ; but, until lately, there has been a tendency to underrate the excellence of Brunel leschi's relief. Here, too, are Ghiberti's reliquary of St. Hyacinth, executed in 1428, with two beautiful floating Angels (21); several bas-reliefs by Bertoldo, Donatello's pupil and successor; the effigy of Marino Soccino, a lawyer of Siena, by the Sienese sculptor II Vecchietta (16); and, in a glass case, Orpheus by Bertoldo, Hercules and Antaeus by Antonio Pollaiuolo, and Love on a Scallop Shell by Donatello. The following room contains mostly bronzes 114 FLORENCE by later masters, especially Cellini, Giovanni da Bologna, Vincenzo Danti. The most noteworthy of its contents are Daniele Ricciarelli's striking bust of Michelangelo (37); Cellini's bronze sketch for Perseus (38), his bronze bust of Duke Cosimo I. (39), his wax model for Perseus (40), the liberation of Andromeda, from the pedestal of the statue in the Loggia dei Lanzi (42); and above all, Giovanni da Bologna's flying Mercury (82), showing what exceedingly beautiful mythological work could still be produced when the golden days of the Renaissance were over. It was cast in 1565, and, like many of the best bronzes of this epoch, was originally placed on a fountain in one of the Medicean villas. On the second floor, first a long room with seals, etc., guarded by Rosso's frescoed Justice. Here, and in the room on the left, is a most wonderful array of the works in enamelled terra-cotta of the Delia Robbias — Luca and Andrea, followed by Giovanni and their imitators. In the best work of Luca and Andrea — and there is much of their very best and most perfect work in these two rooms — religious devotion received its highest and most perfect ex pression in sculpture. Their Madonnas, Annunciations, Nativities and the like, are the sculptural counterpart to Angelico's divinest paintings, though never quite attaining to his spiritual insight and supra-sensible gaze upon life. Andrea's work is more pictorial in treatment than Luca's, has less vigour and even at times a perceptible trace of sentimentality ; but in sheer beauty his very best creations THE BARGELLO 115 do not yield to those of his great master and uncle. Both Luca and Andrea kept to the simple blue and white — in the best part of their work — and surrounded their Madonnas with exquisite festoons of fruit and leaves: "wrought them," in Pater's words, " into all sorts of marvellous frames and garlands, giving them their natural colours, only subdued a little, a little paler than nature." To the right of the first Della Robbia room, are two more rooms full of statuary, and one with a collection of medals, including that commemorating Savonarola's Vision of the Sword of the Lord. In the first room — taking merely the more important — we may see Music, wrongly ascribed to Orcagna, probably earlier (139); bust of Charles VIII. of France (164), author uncertain ; bust in terra-cotta of a young warrior, by Antonio Pollaiuolo (161), as grandly insolent and confident as any of Signorelli's sav age youths in the Orvieto frescoes. Also, bust of Matteo Palmieri, the humanist and suspected heretic, by Antonio Rossellino (160); bust of Pietro Mellini by Benedetto da Maiano (153); portrait of a young lady, by Matteo Civitali of Luca (142) ; a long relief (146) ascribed to Verrocchio and representing the death of a lady of the Tornabuoni family in child-birth, which Shelley greatly admired and described at length, under the impression that he was study ing a genuine antique : " It is altogether an admirable piece," he says, "quite in the spirit of Terence." The uncompromising realism of the male portraiture of the Fif teenth and early Sixteenth Centuries is fully illustrated in 1x6 FLORENCE this room, and there is at the same time a peculiar tender ness and winsomeness in representing young girls, which is exceedingly attractive. In the next room there are many excellent portraits of this kind, named and unnamed. Of more important works, we should notice the San Giovannino by Antonio Rossel lino, and a tondo by the same master representing the Ado ration of the Shepherds ; Andrea Verrocchio's Madonna and Child; Verrocchio's Lady with the Bouquet (i8i), with those exquisite hands of which Gabriele D'Annunzio has almost wearied the readers of his Gioconda ; by Matteo Civitali of Lucca, Faith gazing ecstatically upon the Sacra ment. By Mino da Fiesole are a Madonna and Child, and several portrait busts — of the elder Piero dei Medici (234) and his brother Giovanni di Cosimo (236), and of Rinaldo della Luna. We should also notice the statues of Christ and three Apostles, of the school of Andrea Pisano ; por trait of a girl by Desiderio da Settignano ; two bas-reliefs by Luca della Robbia, representing the Liberation and Crucifixion of St. Peter, early works executed for a chapel in the Duomo ; two Sixteenth Century busts, representing the younger Giuliano dei Medici and Giovanni delle Bande Nere ; and, also, a curious Fourteenth Century group (222) apparently representing the coronation of an emperor by the Pope's legate. In the centre of the room are St. John Baptist by Bene detto da Maiano ; Bacchus, by Jacopo Sansovino ; and Michelangelo's second David (224), frequently miscalled THE BARGELLO 117 Apollo, made for Baccio Valori after the siege of Florence, and pathetically different from the gigantic David of his youth, which had been chiselled more than a quarter of a century before, in all the passing glory of the Republican restoration. When the Duke of Athens made himself tyrant of Florence, King Robert urged him to take up his abode in this palace, as Charles of Calabria had done, and leave the Palace of the People to the Priors. The advice was not taken, and, when the rising broke out, the palace was easily captured, before the Duke and his adherents in the Palazzo Vecchio were forced to surrender. LA BADIA AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE LA BADIA was founded by Willa, wife of the Marquis of Tuscany, in 993, for the Black Bene- dicrines. She presented the abbot with a knife, to show that he might curtail or dispose of the property at his pleasure ; the staff of pastoral authority ; a branch of a tree, as lord of the soil ; a glove, the sign of investiture ; and finally caused herself to be expelled to prove that she re signed all her former rights. The abbey was greatly en riched by her son Ugo, who was governor of Tuscany for Otto III. Losing his way in a forest, he had a terrible vision of human souls tormented by devils, and, selling his property, endowed therewith seven religious houses, in ex piation of the seven deadly sins. Ugo is annually com memorated on S. Thomas's day. The existing abbey was built by Arnolfo di Lapo in 1250, but much altered by Segaloni in 1625. The present graceful bell-tower was built in 1320, the original campanile having been pulled down as a punishment to the Abbot, because he refused to pay his taxes, and rang the bells to summon the Florentine nobles to support him. The door, of 1495, is by Benedetto da Rovezzano. LA BADIA 119 The Church in the form of a Greek cross, once con tained many frescoes by Giotto, which have since been des troyed, but it is still interesting from its tombs. On the right of the entrance, under a delicately sculptured arch, is the sarcophagus of Gianozzo Pandolfini. Close by is an altar with beautiful reliefs by Benedetto da Majano (1442-97). In the north transept is an exquisite tomb by Mino da Fiesole to Bernardo Giugni, a famous Guelfic Gonfalonier, who died in 1466. In the south transept is the tomb of the semi-founder. Count Ugo of Tuscany, who died in lOOO, erected by the monks in 1498. " The architectural features of Count Ugo's monument are, like those of the finest Tuscan tombs, an arched recess, within which is placed the re cumbent statue upon a sarcophagus ; a charming Madonna and Child in relief in the lunette, below which is a figure of Charity somewhat too long in its proportions ; flying angels with a memorial tablet, two genii bearing shields, and an architrave sculptured with festoons and shells in low relief, compose its sculptured features " (Perkins). Above this tomb is an Assumption by G. Vasari. On the left of this transept is the Chapel of the Bianchi, con taining the Apparition of the Virgin to S. Bernard, the best easel picture of Filippino Lippi. It was painted in 1480 by order of Francesco del Pugliese for the church at La Camfora outside the walls, and was removed hither for safety during the siege of Florence in 1529. There is a double cloister, with a well, and many frescoes I20 FLORENCE in the upper story, telling the history of S. Benedict and Subiaco by Nicolo d' Alunno. Near the entrance is the tomb of the ill-fated Francesco Valori, the friend of Savo narola, who perished in the riot when S. Marco was be sieged. THE PIAZZA AND CHURCH OF SANTA CROCE EDMUND G. GARDINER IN the centre of the oblong Piazza di Santa Croce rises the statue and monument of Dante Alighieri, erected on the occasion of the sixth centenary of his birth, in those glowing early days of the first completion of Italian unity ; at its back stand the great Gothic church and con vent, which Arnolfo di Cambio commenced for the Fran ciscans in 1294, while Dante was still in Florence — the year before he entered political life. The great Piazza was a centre of festivities and stirring Florentine life, and has witnessed many historical scenes, in old times and in new, from the tournaments and jousts of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance to the peniten tial processions of the victims of the Inquisition in the days of the Medicean Grand Dukes, from the preaching of San Bernardino of Siena to the missionary labours of the Jesuit Segneri. On Christmas Day, 1301, Niccolo dei Cerchi was passing through this Piazza with a fev/ friends on horseback on his way to his farm and mill — for that was hardly a happy Christmas for Guelfs of the white faction in Florence — while a friar was preaching in the open air, an- 122 FLORENCE nouncing the birth of Christ to the crowd ; when Simone Donati with a band of mounted retainers gave chase, and, when he overtook him, killed him. In the scuffle Simone himself received a mortal wound, of which he died the same night. "Although it was a just judgment," writes Villani, " yet was it held a great loss, for the said Simone was the most accomplished and virtuous squire in Florence, and of the greatest promise, and he was all the hope of his father, Messer Corso." It was in the convent of Santa Croce that the Duke of Athens took up his abode in 1342, with much parade of religious simplicity, when about to seize upon the lordship of Florence ; here, on that fateful September 8th, he assembled his followers and adherents in the Piazza, whence they marched to the Parliament at the Palazzo Vec chio, where he was proclaimed Signor of Florence for life. But in the following year, when he attempted to celebrate Easter with great pomp and luxury, and held grand jousts in this same Piazza for many days, the people sullenly held aloof and very few citizens entered the lists. Most gorgeous and altogether successful was the tourna ment given here by Lorenzo de' Medici in 1467, to cele brate his approaching marriage with Clarice Orsini, when he jousted against all comers in honour of the lady of his sonnets and odes, Lucrezia Donati. There was not much serious tilting about it, but a magnificent display of rich costumes and precious jewelled caps and helmets, and a glorious procession which must have been a positive feast of colour. " To follow the custom," writes Lorenzo himself. .1 PIAZZA S. CROCE, WITH STATUE OF DANTE SANTA CROCE 123 " and do like others, I gave a tournament on the Piazza Santa Croce at great cost and with much magnificence ; I find that about 10,000 ducats were spent on it. Although I was not a very vigorous warrior, nor a hard hitter, the first prize was adjudged to me, a helmet inlaid with silver and a figure of Mars as the crest." ' He sent a long account of the proceedings to his future bride, who answered : " I am glad that you are successful in what gives you pleasure, and that my prayer is heard, for I have no other wish than to see you happy." Luca Pulci, the luckless brother of Luigi, wrote a dull poem on the not very inspiring theme. A few years later, at the end of January, 1478, a less sump tuous entertainment of the same sort was given by Giuliano de' Medici ; and it was apparently on this occasion that Poliziano commenced his famous stanzas in honour of Giuliano and his lady love, Simonetta, — stanzas which were interrupted by the daggers of the Pazzi and their accom plices. It was no longer time for soft song or courtly sport when prelates and nobles were hanging from the palace windows, and the thunders of the Papal interdict were about to burst over the city and her rulers. Entering the Church through the unpleasing modern facade (which is, however, said to have followed the design of Cronaca himself, the architect of the exceedingly grace ful convent of San Salvadore al Monte on the other side of the river), we catch a glow of colour from the east end, from the stained glass and frescoes in the choir. The vast 1 Quoted in Mr. Armstrong's Lorenzo de' Medici, 124 FLORENCE and spacious nave of Arnolfo — like his Palazzo Vecchio, partly spoiled by Vasari — ends rather abruptly in the line of ten chapels with, in the midst of them, one very high recess which represents the apse and choir, thus giving the whole the T shape which we find in the Italian Gothic churches which were reared for the friars preachers and friars minor. The somewhat unsightly appearance, which many churches of this kind present in Italy, is due to the fact that Arnolfo and his school intended every inch of wall to be covered with significant fresco paintings, and this coloured decora tion was seldom completely carried out, or has perished in the course of time. Fergusson remarks that " an Italian Church without its coloured decoration is only a framed canvas without harmony or meaning." ' Santa Croce is, in the words of the late Dean of West minster, " The recognized shrine of Italian genius." On the pavement beneath our feet, outstretched on their tomb stones, lie effigies of grave Florentine citizens, friars of note, prelates, scholars, warriors ; in their robes of state or of daily life, in the Franciscan garb or in armour, with arms folded across their breasts, or still clasping the books they loved and wrote (in this way the humanists, such as Leonardo Bruni, were laid out in state after death) ; the knights have their swords by their sides, which they had wielded in de fence of the Republic, and their hands clasped in prayer. Here they lie, waiting the resurrection. Has any echo of the Risorgimento reached them ? In their long sleep, have they dreamed aught of the movement that has led Florence SANTA CROCE 125 to raise tablets to the names of Cavour and Mazzini upon these walls ? The tombs on the floor of the nave are mostly of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries ; the second from the central door is that of Galileo dei Galilei, like the other scholars lying with his hands folded across the book on his breast, the ancestor of the immortal astronomer : " This Galileo of the Galilei was, in his time, the head of philoso phy and medicine; who also in the highest magistracy loved the Republic marvellously." About the middle of the nave is the tomb of John Catrick, Bishop of Exeter, who had come to Florence on an embassy from Henry V. of Eng land to Pope Martin V., in 1419. But those on the floor at the end of the right aisle and in the short right transept are the earliest and most interesting to the lover of early Florentine history ; notice, for instance, the knightly tomb of a warrior of the great Ghibelline house of the Ubaldini, dated 1358, at the foot of the steps to the chapel at the end of the right transept ; and there is a similar one, only less fine, on the opposite side. Larger and more pretentious tombs and monuments of more recent date, to the heroes of Italian life and thought, pass in series along the side walls of the whole church, between the altars of the south and north (right and left) aisles. Over the central door, below the window whose stained glass is said to have been designed by Ghiberti, is Donatello's bronze statue of King Robert's canonized brother, the Franciscan Bishop St. Louis of Toulouse. This St. Louis, the patron saint of the Parte Guelfa, had been ordered by 126 FLORENCE the captains of the Party for their niche at San Michele in Orto, from which he was irreverently banished shortly after the restoration of Cosimo de' Medici, when the Parte Guelfa was forced to surrender its niche. On the left of the entrance should be noticed with gratitude the tomb of the historian of the Florentine Republic, the Italian patriot, Gino Capponi. In the right aisle are the tomb and monument of Michel angelo, designed by Giorgio Vasari ; on the pillar opposite to it, over the holy water stoop, a beautiful Madonna and Child in marble by Bernardo Rossellino, beneath which lies Francesco Nori, who was murdered whilst defending Lorenzo de' Medici in the Pazzi conspiracy; the compara tively modern monument to Dante, whose bones rest at Ravenna and for whom Michelangelo had offered in vain to raise a worthy sepulchre. Two sonnets by the great sculptor supply to some extent in verse what he was not suffered to do in marble : I quote the finer of the two, from Addington Symonds' excellent translation : — From Heaven his spirit came, and, robed in clay. The realms of justice and of mercy trod : Then rose a living man to gaze on God, That he might make the truth as clear as day For that pure star, that brightened with its ray The undeserving nest where I was born. The whole wide world would be a prize to scorn : None but his Maker can due guerdon pay. I speak of Dante, whose high work remains Unknown, unhonoured by that thankless brood SANTA CROCE 127 Who only to just men deny their wage. Were I but he ! Born for like lingering pains. Against his exile coupled with his good I'd gladly change the world's best heritage. Then comes Canova's monument to Vittorio Alfieri, the great tragic dramatist of Italy (died 1803) ; followed by an Eighteenth Century monument to MachiaveUi (died 1527), and the tomb of Padre Lanzi, the Jesuit historian of Italian art. The pulpit by a pillar in the nave is considered the most beautiful pulpit in Italy, and is, perhaps, Benedetto da Maiano's finest work; the bas-reliefs in marble represent scenes from the life of St. Francis and the martyrdom of some of his friars, with figures of the virtues below. Be yond Padre Lanzi's grave, over the tomb of the learned Franciscan Era Benedetto Cavalcanti, are two exceedingly powerful figures of saints in fresco, the Baptist and St. Francis ; they have been ascribed to various painters, but are almost certainly the work of Domenico Veneziano, and closely resemble the figures of the same saints in his un doubtedly genuine picture in the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco in the Uffizi. The adjacent Annunciation by Donatello, in pietra serena, was also made for the Cavalcanti ; its fine Renaissance architectural setting is likewise Donatello's work. Above it are four lovely wooden Putti, who seem embracing each other for fear of tumbling off from their height ; originally there were six, and the other two are pre served in the convent. M. Reymond has shown that this Annunciation is not an early work of the master's, as Vasari 128 FLORENCE and others state, but is of the same style and period as the Cantoria of the Duomo, about 1435. Lastly, at the end of the right aisle is the splendid tomb of Leonardo Bruni (died 1444), secretary of the Republic, translator of Plato, historian of Florence, biographer of Dante, — the out stretched recumbent figure of the grand old humanist, watched over by Mary and her Babe with the Angels, by Bernardo Rossellino. A worthy monument to a noble soul, whose memory is dear to every lover of Dante. Yet we may, not without advantage, contrast it with the simpler Gothic sepulchres on the floor of the transepts, — the marble slabs that cover the bones of the old Florentines who, in war and peace, did the deeds of which Leonardo and his kind wrote. The tombs and monuments in the left aisle are less inter esting. Opposite Leonardo Bruni's tomb is that of his suc cessor. Carlo Marsuppini, called Carlo Aretino (died 1453), by Desiderio da Settignano ; he was a good Greek scholar, a fluent orator and a professed Pagan, but accomplished no literary work of any value ; utterly inferior as a man and as an author to Leonardo, he has an even more gorgeous tomb. In this aisle there are modern monuments to Vespasiano Bisticci and Donatello ; and, opposite to Michelangelo's tomb, that of Galileo himself (died 1642), with traces of old Fourteenth Century frescoes round it, which may, per haps, symbolize for us the fleeting phantoms of mediaeval thought fading away before the advance of science. In the central chapel of the left or northern transept is SANTA CROCE 129 the famous wooden Crucifix by Donatello, which gave rise to the fraternal contest between him and Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi told his friend that he had put upon his cross a contadino and not a figure like that of Christ. " Take some wood then," answered the nettled sculptor, " and try to make one thyself." Filippo did so ; and when it was finished Donatello was so stupefied with admiration, that he let drop all the eggs and other things that he was carry ing for their dinner. " I have had all I want for to-day," he exclaimed ; " if you want your share, take it : to thee is it given to carve Christs and to me to make contadini." The rival piece may still be seen in Santa Maria Novella, and there is not much to choose between them. Dona tello's is, perhaps, somewhat more realistic and less re fined. The first two chapels of the left transept (fifth and fourth from the choir, respectively,) contain Fourteenth Century frescoes ; a warrior of the Bardi family rising to judgment, the healing of Constantine's leprosy and other miracles of St. Sylvester, ascribed to Maso di Banco; the martyrdom of St. Lawrence and the martyrdom of St. Stephen, by Bernardo Daddi (the painter to whom it is attempted to as cribe the famous Last Judgment and Triumph of Death in the Pisan Campo Santo). All these imply a certain Dan- tesque selection ; these subjects are among the examples quoted for purposes of meditation or admonition in the Divina Commedia, The coloured terra-cotta relief is by Giovanni della Robbia. The frescoes of the choir, by I30 FLORENCE Agnolo Gaddi, are among the finest works of Giotto's school. They set forth the history of the wood of the True Cross, which, according to the legend, was a shoot of the tree of Eden planted by Seth on Adam's grave ; the Queen of Sheba prophetically adored it, when she came to visit Sol omon during the building of the Temple ; cast into the pool of Bethsaida, the Jews dragged it out to make the Cross for Christ ; then, after it had been buried on Mount Calvary for three centuries, St. Helen discovered it by its power of raising the dead to life. These subjects are set forth on the right wall ; on the left, we have the taking of the relic of the Cross by the Persians under Chosroes, and its recovery by the Emperor Heraclius. In the scene where the Em peror barefooted carries the Cross into Jerusalem, the painter has introduced his own portrait, near one of the gates of the city, with a small beard and a red hood. Vasari thinks poorly of these frescoes ; but the legend of the True Cross is of some importance to the student of Dante, whose pro found allegory of the Church and Empire in the Earthly Paradise, at the close of the Purgatorio, is to some extent based upon it. The two Gothic chapels to the right of the choir contain Giotto's frescoes — both chapels were originally entirely painted by him — rescued from the whitewash under which they were discovered, and, in part at least, most terribly "restored." The frescoes in the first, the Bardi Chapel, illustrating the life of St. Francis, have suffered most ; all the peculiar Giottesque charm of face has disappeared, and, SANTA CROCE 131 instead, the restorer has given us monotonous countenances, almost deadly in their uniformity and utter lack of expres sion. Like all mediaeval frescoes dealing with St. Francis, they should be read with the Fioretti or with Dante's Para diso, or with one of the old lives of the Seraphic Father in our hands. On the left (beginning at the top) we have his renunciation of the world in the presence of his father and the Bishop of Assisi — innanzi alia sua spirital corte, et coram patre, as Dante puts it ; on the right, the confirmation of the order by Pope Honorius ; on the left, the apparition of St. Francis to St. Antony of Padua ; on the right, St. Francis and his followers before the Soldan — nella presenza del Soldan superba — in the ordeal of fire; and, below it, St. Francis on his death-bed, with the apparition to the sleep ing bishop to assure him of the truth of the stigmata. Op posite, left, the body is surrounded by weeping friars, the incredulous judge touching the wound in the side, while the simplest of the friars, at the saint's head, sees his soul car ried up to heaven in a little cloud. This conception of saintly death was, perhaps, originally derived from Dante's dream of Beatrice in the Vita Nuova : " I seemed to look towards. heaven, and to behold a multitude of Angels who were returning upwards, having before them an exceedingly white cloud ; and these Angels were singing together glo riously." It became traditional in early Italian painting. On the window wall are four great Franciscans. St. Louis the King (one whom Dante does not seem to have held in honour), a splendid figure, calm and noble, in one hand the 132 FLORENCE sceptre and in the other the Franciscan cord, his royal robe besprinkled with the golden lily of France over the armour of the warrior of the Cross ; his face absorbed in celestial contemplation. He is the Christian realization of the Pla tonic philosopher king; "St. Louis," says Walter Pater, " precisely because his whole being was full of heavenly vision, in self-banishment from it for a while, led and ruled the French people so magnanimously alike in peace and war." Opposite him is St. Louis of Toulouse, with the royal crown at his feet ; below are St. Elizabeth of Hun gary, with her lap full of flowers ; and, opposite to her, St. Clare, of whom Dante's Piccarda tells so sweetly in the Paradiso — that lady on high whom " perfected life and lofty merit doth enheaven." On the vaulted roof of the chapel are the glory of St. Francis and symbolical representations of the three vows — Poverty, Chastity, Obedience ; not rendered as in Giotto's great allegories at Assisi, of which these are, as it were, his own later simplifications, but merely as the three mystical Angels that met Francis and his friars on the road to Siena, crying " Welcome, Lady Poverty." The picture of St. Francis on the altar, ascribed by Vasari to Cimabue, is probably by some unknown painter at the close of the Thirteenth Century. The frescoes in the following, the Chapel of the Peruzzi, are very much better preserved, especiaUy in the scene of Herod's feast. Like all Giotto's genuine work, they are eloquent in their pictorial simplicity of diction ; there are no useless crowds of spectators, as in the later work of Ghir- SANTA CROCE 133 landaio and his contemporaries. On the left is the life of St. John the Baptist — the Angel appearing to Zacharias, the birth and naming of the Precursor, the dance of the daughter of Herodias at Herod's feast. This last has suf fered less from restoration than any other work of Giotto's in Florence ; both the rhythmically moving figure of the girl herself and that of the musician are very beautiful, and the expression on Herod's face is worthy of the psycho logical insight of the author of the Vices and Virtues in the Madonna's chapel at Padua. Ruskin talks of " the striped curtain behind the table being wrought with a variety and fantasy of playing colour which Paul Veronese could not better at his best." On the right wall is the life of the Evangelist, John the Divine, or rather its closing scenes ; the mystical vision at Patmos, the seer dormendo con lafaccia arguta, like the solitary elder who brought up the rear of the triumphal pageant in Dante's Earthly Paradise ; the raising of Drusiana from the dead; the assumption of St. John. The curious legend represented in this last fresco — that St. John was taken up body and soul, con le due stole, into heaven after death, and that his disciples found his tomb full of manna — was, of course, based upon the saying that went abroad among the brethren, " that that disciple should not die " ; it is mentioned as a pious belief by St. Thomas, but is very forcibly repudiated by Giotto's great friend, Dante ; in the Paradiso St. John admonishes him to tell the world that only Christ and the Blessed Virgin rose from the dead. " In the earth my body is earth, and shall be 134 FLORENCE there with the others, until our number be equalled with the eternal design." In the last chapel of the south transept, there are two curious frescoes apparently of the beginning of the Four teenth Century, in honour of St. Michael ; they represent his leading the Angelic hosts against the forces of Lucifer, and the legend of his apparition at Monte Gargano. The frescoes in the chapel at the end of the transept, the Baron celli chapel, representing scenes in the life of the Blessed Virgin, are by Giotto's pupil, Taddeo Gaddi ; they are similar to his work at Assisi. The Assumption opposite was painted by Sebastiano Mainardi from a cartoon by Domenico Ghirlandaio. In the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament there are more frescoed lives of saints by Taddeo's son, Agnolo Gaddi, less admirable than his work in the choir ; and statues of two Franciscans, of the Della Robbia school. The monument of the Countess of Albany may interest English admirers of the Stuarts, but hardly concerns the story of Florence. From the right transept a corridor leads off to the chapel of the Noviciate and the Sacristy. The former, built by Michelozzo for Cosimo, contains some beautiful terra-cotta work of the school of the Delia Robbia, a tabernacle by Mino da Fiesole, and a Coronation of the Blessed Virgin ascribed to Giotto. This Coronation was originally the altar-piece of the Baroncelli chapel, and is an excellent picture, although its authenticity is not above suspicion ; the signature is almost certainly a forgery ; this title of SANTA CROCE 135 Magister was Giotto's pet aversion, as we know from Boc caccio, and he never used it. Opening out of the Sacristy is a chapel, decorated with beautiful frescoes of the life of the Blessed Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene, now held to be the work of Taddeo Gaddi's Lombard pupil, Giovanni da Milano. There is, as has already been said, very little individuality in the work of Giotto's followers, but these frescoes are among the best of their kind. The first Gothic cloisters belong to the epoch of the foundation of the church, and were probably designed by Arnolfo himself; the second, early Renaissance, are Bru nelleschi's. The Refectory, which is entered from the first cloisters, contains a fresco of the Last Supper — one of the earliest renderings of this theme for monastic dining- rooms — which used to be assigned to Giotto, and is prob ably by one of his scholars. This room had the invidious honour of being the seat of the Inquisition, which in Flor ence had always — save for a very brief period in the Thir teenth Century — been in the hands of the Franciscans, and not the Dominicans. It never had any real power in Flor ence — the bel viver fiorentino, which, even in the days of tyranny, was always characteristic of the city, was opposed to its influence. The beautiful chapel of the Pazzi was built by Brunelleschi; its frieze of Angels' heads is by Donatello and Desiderio ; within are Luca della Robbia's Apostles and Evangelists. Jacopo Pazzi had headed the conspiracy against the Medici in 1478, and, after attempt ing to raise the people, had been captured in his escape. 136 FLORENCE tortured and hanged. It was said that he had cried in dy ing that he gave his soul to the devil ; he was certainly a notorious gambler and blasphemer. When buried here, the peasants believed that he brought a curse upon their crops ; so the rabble dug him up, dragged the body through the streets, and finally with every conceivable indignity threw it into the Arno. OR SAN MICHELE CHARLES TRIARTE ANDREA ORCAGNA first distinguished himself as an architect in connection with Or San Michele. Arnolfo had built upon the site of an old Lombard church dedicated to St. Michael a plain corn mart, a sort of Loggia of the kind so common in Italy, the vaulted roof resting on brick columns with open arches between them. A celebrated painter of his day, Ugolino of Siena, had decorated one of these columns with a Madonna, and about the middle of the Thirteenth Century this became a place of pilgrimage. In 1294 it was rumoured that a miracle had been wrought there in the presence of the people, and people came there on market-days with votive offerings until at last the wealthy corn-merchants determined to erect a building more worthy of the object of their worship. The opportunity occurred in 1304, when, by the careless ness of a prior of San Piero Schieraggio, still known as the Neri degli Abbati, the corn-market was burnt down, together with seven hundred houses and towers. At the joint initiative of the corn-merchants and of a lay order which had assumed the guard of the Madonna, and the members of which styled themselves captains of Or San Michele {Or being derived from Horreum, grznTixy), 138 FLORENCE it was resolved to rebuild the Loggia, and the work was entrusted to Taddeo Gaddi, at that time chief architect (Capo Maestro) of the Commune. Above the part set for the corn-trade he built two stories, one for the Adminis tration, and the other for the granaries, which will account for the peculiar shape of what is now the church. The first stone was laid with great pomp, and two years later the Corporation of Silk- Weavers [Arte della Seta) having asked permission to place the statue of their patron saint in one of the niches of the new building, the other corporations asked a like favour. Thus it was that in course of time the original destination of the building was changed, and it came to be a consecrated place of worship. Large sums were continually being bequeathed to it, and in fifty years the gifts of the pilgrims alone amounted to 350,000 florins. When the plague raged in Tuscany, carrying off three-fifths of the population of Florence, four-fifths of the population of Pisa, and eighty thousand inhabitants of Siena, the Florentines might have been seen kneeling night and day before the Virgin of the Pillar, offering to dedicate their fortune to her if they were spared. The Signoria, acting in accordance with the popular feeling, passed a law by which the captains of Or San Michele were to receive a third of the property of persons who had slain one of their relatives to obtain his or her inheritance. It was in these circumstances that Andrea Orcagna was called in to transform the granary into a church, and the circumstances under which it was built, and the position in OR SAN MICHELE OR SAN MICHELE 139 which it stands, make it one of the most interesting monu ments in Florence. There it stands, without perspective or set-off, as impossible to sketch or to photograph as to see, situated in a narrow and ill-built street, along which, as is so often the case at Florence, one might pass without noticing it. Orcagna closed in the open arches with Gothic windows, and placed the niches for the different patron saints of the guilds between each window. The famous painting of Ugolino of Siena was enclosed by him in a shrine, a work unique of its kind. This shrine is of white marble and Gothic in style, the sculptures representing the principal episodes in the life of the Virgin. The holy image is in the centre of the com position, which is surmounted by an open-worked lid, with statuettes of the Archangel Michael and an angel above. There is a whole mass of bas-reliefs, statues, busts, mosaics, incrusted stones, brilliant enamels and stained glass, the great variety of material not marring the general harmony. Perkins, in his Italian Sculptors, gives the following complete description of it, accompanied by etchings of some of the bas-reliefs. He says : " Upon three sides of the base, in octagonal recesses, are bas-reliefs representing the Birth, Presentation, and Marriage of the Virgin, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration pf the Magi, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and an angel an nouncing to the Virgin her approaching end. The Virgin, represented as an aged woman, is looking with an expres sion of hope and submission at the divine messenger, and I40 FLORENCE is receiving a palm-branch, which will render her body invisible to the Jews when carried to the tomb. The sub jects are divided by small bas-reliefs, representing the Christian Virtues, and surrounded by small figures personi fying the Virtues, the Sciences and the Arts. Above the base and behind the shrine there is a large panel represent ing the death of the Madonna, laid out upon her bed and surrounded by the Apostles, and her ascent in the mystic Mandorla, whence she lets fall her belt, to convince the doubting St. Thomas." It is worth noting that Orcagna, instead of concealing his identity, as was the case with so many of his contem poraries, made a point of signing his works, and on the shrine in San Michele may be read in Gothic letters, the inscrip tion, " Andreas Cionis, pictor Fiorentinus . . . extitit hujus LIXMCCC. He also reproduced his own features in one of the bas-reliefs of this shrine, executed, as the inscription proves, when he was only thirty years of age." The celebrated Madonna by Ugolino, which caused the Loggia to be converted into a church, has not, unfor tunately, survived, for he painted " alia Greca," and as he transferred it at once on " Intonaco," to use the term of the day, it had either been destroyed by the fire of 1304, or had gradually been consumed by the damp air before Orcagna made the shrine. But an artist whose name is unknown — some pupil of Giotto, no doubt — painted a Madonna on canvas for it. Orcagna was ten years about this work, beginning by OR SAN MICHELE 141 closing in the arcades, and by opening a door on to the Via Calimara, completely changing the appearance which the Loggia had when built by Taddeo Gaddi. The church, as we see it now, is the result of two cen turies of embellishments, but it was in the Fifteenth Cen tury more especially that the guilds showed the greatest liberality, the result of the respective donations of the wood-carders, the butchers, the smiths, the farriers, etc., being a sort of external altar in the open air, very peculiar in shape, and a mass of variegated ornamentation, which is typical of the development of the sculptor's art in Florence. Apart from its artistic importance Or San Michele is worthy of admiration because it symbolizes the strength and influence of the guilds of Florence, which, it may be said, made the city not only wealthy and famous, but noble and beautiful. The guilds, in short, were the first and most beneficent patrons of art in Florence and throughout Italy. There were fourteen niches on the outside, and these were gradually filled with the statues of the patron saint of each guild, while on the festival of St. Anne the banners of the guilds were displayed from them. This ceremony, which was one of the most imposing of the year, was first observed upon the expulsion of the Duke of Athens, and notwithstanding the dissolution of the guilds, it is still car ried on. Beginning at the northwest we see the statue of St. Matthew, by Michelozzo Michelozzi, and a careful in- 142 FLORENCE spection of the hem of the cloak which the saint is repre sented as wearing will disclose the following inscrip tion : — " Opus Universitatis cansorum, Florentia An. Dom. MDCCCXX." The niche itself was designed by Niccolo Aretino, and the guild of money-changers bore the cost. Lorenzo Ghiberti did the statue of St. Stephen, in the second niche for the Guild of Wool-combers. The Guild of Smiths employed Nanni, the son of Antonio di Banco, less famous than Ghiberti, but an artist of sterling ability, to carve their statue ; and Nanni, in a bas-relief at the foot, represents the bishop under whose invocation this guild has placed itself, in the act of shoeing a horse possessed by a devil. This facade, looking on to a dark, narrow street, is often overlooked by visitors ; but with its singular corridor connecting the upper stories of Or San Michele with the neighbouring house, is very picturesque. The street in question is called Sdrucciolo di San Michele. The flax mer chants obtained permission to place the statue of their patron saint (St. Mark) in the first niche of the south side, and the work was intrusted to Donatello, who carved a statue which is not so much admired as many of his works, though Michael Angelo is reported to have said of it, " How can any one not believe the Gospel, when preached by a saint whose countenance is honesty itself.? " Donatello also did the statue of St. George for the armourers, and this is one of the finest specimens of the sculptor's art. St. George is in full armour, standing up right, and with one hand leaning on his shield. The noble OR SAN MICHELE 143 and tranquil dignity of the saint, defying as it were, an in visible enemy, is the most striking feature in this remark able work.' Next to St. George is the statue of St. John the Evan gelist, executed by Baccio da Montelupo for the Guild of the Por Santa Maria, and above these niches, in the span drels, Luca della Robbia placed the arms and emblems of the different guilds done in terra-cotta, or majolica. The facade, which is most noticed, overlooking as it does one of the most crowded streets of Florence, has in its centre a splendid niche, the architectural design of which is by Donatello, the niche itself containing the figure of St. Thomas thrusting his finger into the side of our Lord, by Verrocchio, the tribunal of the Mercanzia, having found the funds for this effective composition. Giovanni da Bologna, at a later period, executed for the Guild of Judges and Notaries the statue of St. Luke, which is upon one side of Donatello's niche, while that of St. Peter on the other side, is by Donatello himself, who did it for the Guild of Butchers. The Guild of Shoemakers instructed Nanni di Banco to carve a statue of St. Philip for the second niche on the north front, and the Carpenters and Masons employed him to erect a group of four uncrowned saints martyred under Diocletian. An anecdote, which proves what a great in- ' Donatello's statue was taken from its niche and placed in the Na tional Museum in the Bargello in 1893. Its place was filled by a cast of the original figure. — E. S. 144 FLORENCE fluence Donatello possessed over the artists of his day, is told in connection with this work. When the saints were finished Nanni discovered that they were too big for the niche, and he consulted Donatello, who promised to help him out of his trouble if he would give a supper to him and his workmen. Donatello set to work, and after knocking off portions of the shoulders and arms of the four saints, brought them into such close contact that they could be placed in the niche without difficulty. It will be seen, therefore, that Or San Michele is a true sanctuary of Flor entine art. In the interior, which is, like the exterior, a work of successive generations, the magnificent altar sculp tured by Orcagna, and representing the history of the Vir gin, first takes the attention. The first altar to the right is modern, while that consecrated to St. Anne dates from the close of the last century, in the centre being a handsome group of St. Anne, the Virgin and Child, by San Gallo, an artist with something of Michael Angelo's manner. Simon da Fiesole had decorated the rear altar for the Guild of Grocers, but it has been entirely removed, and, excepting the handsome vaulted roof and Orcagna's shrine, the interior has not the attractions of the exterior. Still there is no sanctuary in Florence more venerated, the sacred picture of Ugolino helping to inspire the people of the present day with the same respect which was shown it in the Middle Ages. There are two very striking legends, also, in connection with the group of the Virgin and Child by Simon da Fiesole. One of these is that a Jew having. OR SAN MICHELE 145 in 1493, struck them a blow on the face, he was pursued and stoned to death by the children of Florence, and an inscription at the base of the statue commemorates the oc currence. It was reported again in 1628 that the Virgin had been seen to move and blink her eyes, and as the plague occurred in Florence two years later this was of course said to have been a presage of the calamity. It is very difficult to obtain good illustrations of this building, owing to its cramped position. THE DUOMO EDMUND G. GARDINER IN the last decade of the Thirteenth Century, when the People and Commune of Florence were in an un usually peaceful state, after the tumults caused by the reforms and expulsion of Giano della Bella had subsided, the new Cathedral was commenced on the site of the older church of Santa Reparata. The first stones and founda tions were blessed with great solemnity in 1296 ; and, in this golden age of the democracy, the work proceeded apace, until in a document of April, 1299, concerning the exemp tion of Arnolfo di Cambio from all taxation, it is stated that "by reason of his industry, experience and genius, the Commune and People of Florence from the magnificent and visible beginning of the said work of the said church, commenced by the same Master Arnolphus, hope to have a more beautiful and more honourable temple than any other which there is in the regions of Tuscany." But although the original design and beginning were un doubtedly Arnolfo's, the troublous times that fell upon Florence appear to have interrupted the work ; and it was almost abandoned for lack of funds until 1334, when Giotto was appointed capo-maestro of the Commune and of the CATHEDRAL OF SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE (THE DUOMO) THE DUOMO 147 work of Santa Reparata, as it was still called. The Cathedral was now in charge of the Arte della Lana, as the Baptistery was in that of the Arte di Calimala. It is not precisely known what Giotto did with it ; but the work languished again after his death, until Francesco Talenti was appointed capo-maestro, and, in July, 1357, the founda tions were laid of the present church of Santa Maria del Fiore, on a larger and more magnificent scale. Arnolfo's work appears to have been partly destroyed, partly enlarged and extended. Other capo-maestri carried on what Fran cesco Talenti had commenced, until, in 1378, just at the end of mediaeval Florence, the fourth and last great vault was closed, and the main work finished. The completion of the Cathedral belongs to that inter mediate epoch which saw the decline of the great democracy and the dawn of the Renaissance, and ran from 1378 to 1421, in which latter year the third tribune was finished. Filippo Brunelleschi's dome or cupola, raised upon a frieze or drum high above the three great semi-domes, with a large window in each of the eight sides, was commenced in 1420 and finished in 1434, the year which witnessed the estab lishment of the Medicean regime in Florence. Vasari waxes most enthusiastic over this work. " Heaven willed," he writes, " after the earth had been for so many years without an excellent soul or a divine spirit, that Filippo should leave to the world from himself, the greatest, the most lofty and the most beauteous construction of all others made in the time of the moderns and even in that of the 148 FLORENCE ancients." And Michelangelo imitated it in St. Peter's at Rome, turning back, as he rode away from Florence, to gaze upon Filippo's work, and declaring that he could not do anything more beautiful. Some modern writers have passed a very different judgment. Fergusson says : — " The plain, heavy, simple outlined dome of Brunelleschi acts like an extinguisher, crushing all the lower part of the composi tion, and both internally and externally destroying all harmony between the parts." Brunelleschi also designed the Lantern, which was commenced shortly before his death (1446) and finished in 1461. The palla or ball, which crowns the whole, was added by Andrea Verrocchio. In the fresco in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, you shall see the Catholic Church symbolized by the earlier church of Santa Reparata ; and, as the fresco was executed before the middle of the Fourteenth Century, it apparently represents the designs of Arnolfo and Giotto. Vasari, in deed, states that it was taken from Arnolfo's model in wood. " From this painting," he says, " it is obvious that Arnolfo had proposed to raise the dome immediately over the piers and above the first cornice, at that point namely where Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, desiring to render the building less heavy, interposed the whole space wherein we now see the windows, before adding the dome." ' The Duomo has had three facades. Of the first facade, • " There is only one point from which the size of the Cathedral of Florence is felt ; and that is from the corner of the Via de' Balestrieri, op posite the southeast angle, where it happens that the dome is seen rising instantly above the apse and transepts " (^Seven Lamps'). THE DUOMO 149 the facade of Arnolfo's church before 1357, only two statues remain which probably formed part of it; one of Boni face VIII. within the Cathedral, of which more presently, and a statue of a Bishop in the sacristy. The second fa9ade, commenced in 1357, and still in progress in 1420, was left unfinished, and barbarously destroyed towards the end of the Sixteenth Century. A fresco by Poccetti in the first cloister of San Marco, the fifth to the right of the entrance, representing the entrance of St. Antoninus into Florence to take possession of his see, shows this second facade. Some of the statues that once decorated it still exist. The Boniface reappeared upon it from the first facade, between St. Peter and St. Paul ; over the principal gate was Our Lady of the Flower herself, presenting her Child to give His blessing to the Florentines — and this is still preserved in the Opera del Duomo — by an unknown artist of the latter half of the Fourteenth Century ; she was formerly attended by Zenobius and Reparata, while Angels held a canopy over her — these are lost. Four Doctors of the Church, now mutilated and transformed into poets, are still to be seen on the way to Poggio Imperiale — by Niccolo d'Arezzo and Piero di Giovanni Tedesco (1396); some Apostles, probably by the latter, and very fine works, are in the court of the Riccardi Palace. The last statues made for the facade, the four Evangelists, of the first fifteen years of the Quattrocento, are now within the present church, in the chapels of the Tribune of St. Zenobius. There is a curious tradition that Donatello placed Farinata degli Uberti I50 FLORENCE on the facade; and few men would have deserved the honour better. After the Sixteenth Century the fa9ade re mained a desolate waste down to our own times. The present facade, gorgeous but admirable in its way, was de signed by De Fabris, and finished between 1875 and 1887; the first stone was laid by Victor Emmanuel in i860. Thus has the United Italy of to-day completed the work of the great Republic of the Middle Ages. The four side gates of the Duomo are among the chief artistic monuments of Florentine sculpture in the epoch that intervened between the setting of Andrea Pisano and Orcagna, and the rising of Donatello and Ghiberti. Nearer the facade, south and north, the two plainer and earlier portals are always closed ; the two more ornate and later, the gate of the canons on the south and the gate of the Mandorla on the north, are the ordinary entrances into the aisles of the cathedral. Earliest of the four is the minor southern portal near the Campanile, over which the pigeons cluster and coo. Our Lady of the Pigeons, in the tympanum, is an excellent work of the school of Nino Pisano (Andrea's son) rather later than the middle of the Trecento. The northern minor portal is similar in style, with sculpture subordinated to polychromatic decoration, but with beautiful twisted columns, of which the two outermost rest upon grand mediaeval lions, who are helped to bear them by delicious little winged putti. Third in order of construction comes the chief southern portal, the Porta dei Canonici, belonging THE DUOMO 151 to the last decade of the Fourteenth Century. The pilasters are richly decorated with sculptured foliage and figures of animals in the intervals between the leaves. In the tym panum above, the Madonna and Child with two adoring Angels — statues of great grace and beauty — are by Lorenzo di Giovanni d'Ambrogio, 1402. Above are Angels bearing, a tondo of the Pieta. The Porta della Mandorla is one of the most perfect examples of Florentine decorative sculpture that exists. M. Reymond calls it " le produit le plus pur du genie fior- entine dans toute Find'ependance de sa pens'ee." It was commenced by Giovanni di Ambrogio, the chief master of the canons' gate ; and finished by Niccolo da Arezzo, in the early years of the Fifteenth Century. The decorations of its pilasters, with nude figures amidst the conventional foliage between the angels with their wings and scrolls, are already almost in the spirit of the Renaissance. The mosaic over the door, representing the Annunciation, was executed by Domenico Ghirlandaio in 1490. "Amongst modern mas ters of mosaic," says Vasari, " nothing has yet been seen better than this. Domenico was wont to say that painting is mere design, and that the true painting for eternity is mosaic." The two small statues of Prophets are the earliest works of Donatello, 1405-1406. Above is the famous re lief which crowns the whole, and from which the door takes its name — the glorified Madonna of the Mandorla. For merly ascribed to Jacopo della Querela, it is now recognized as the work of Nanni di Banco, whose father Antonio col- 152 FLORENCE laborated with Niccolo da Arezzo on the door. It repre sents the Madonna borne up in the Mandorla surrounded by Angels, three of whom above are hymning her triumph. With a singularly sweet yet majestic maternal gesture, she consigns her girdle to the kneeling Thomas on the left ; on the right among the rocks, a bear is either shaking or climb ing a tree. This work, executed slightly before 1420, is the best example of the noble manner of the Fourteenth Century united to the technical mastery of the Fifteenth. Though matured late, it is the most perfect fruit of the school of Orcagna. Nanni died before it was quite com pleted. The precise symbolism of the bear is not easy to determine ; it occurs also in Andrea Pisano's relief of Adam and Eve labouring, on the Campanile. According to St. Buonaventura, the bear is an emblem of Lust ; accord ing to the Bestiaries, of Violence. The probability is that here it merely represents the evil one, symbolizing the Fall in the Adam and Eve relief, and now implying that Mary healed the wound that Eve had dealt the human race — la piaga che Maria richiuse ed unse. The interior is somewhat bare, and the aisles and vaults are so proportioned and constructed as to destroy much of the effect of the vast size both of the whole and of the parts. The nave and aisles lead to a great octagonal space beneath the dome, where the choir is placed, extending into three polygonal apses, those to right and left representing the transepts. Over the central door is a fine but restored mosaic of the THE DUOMO 153 Coronation of Madonna, by Giotto's friend and contempo rary, Gaddo Gaddi, which is highly praised by Vasari. On either side stand two great equestrian portraits in fresco of condottieri, who served the Republic in critical times ; by Andrea del Castagno is Niccolo da Tolentino, who fought in the Florentine pay with average success and more than average fidelity, and died in 1435, a prisoner in the hands of Filippo Maria Visconti ; by Paolo Uccello is Giovanni Aguto, or John Hawkwood, a greater captain, but of more dubious character, who died in 1394. Let it stand to Hawkwood's credit that St. Catherine of Siena once wrote to him, O carissimo e dolcissimo fratello in Cristo Gesit. By the side of the entrance is the famous statue, mutilated but extraordinarily impressive, of Boniface VIII., ascribed by Vasari to Andrea Pisano, but which is certainly earlier, and may possibly, according to M. Reymond, be assigned to Arnolfo di Cambio himself. It represents the terrible Pontiff in the flower of his age ; hardly a portrait, but an idealized rendering of a Papal politician, a papa re of the Middle Ages. Even so might he have looked when he received Dante and his fellow-ambassadors alone, and addressed to them the words recorded by Dino Compagni : " Why are ye so obstinate f Humble yourselves before me. I tell you in very truth that I have no other intention, save for your peace. Let two of you go back, and they shall have my benediction if they bring it about that my will be obeyed." As though in contrast with this worldly Pope, on the 154 FLORENCE first pillars in the aisles are pictures of two ideal pastors; on the left, St. Zenobius enthroned with Eugenius and Crescentius, by an unknown painter of the school of Orcagna ; on the right, a similar but comparatively modern picture of St. Antonius giving his blessing. In the middle of the nave, is the original resting-place of the body of Zenobius ; here the picturesque blessing of the roses takes place on his feast-day. The right and left aisles contain some striking statues and interesting monuments. First on the right is a statue of a Prophet (sometimes called Joshua), an early Donatello, said to be the portrait of Gian- nozzo Manetti, between the monuments of Brunelleschi and Giotto ; the bust of the latter is by Benedetto da Maiano, and the inscription by Poliziano. Opposite these, in the left aisle, is a most lifelike and realistic statue of a Prophet by Donatello, said to be the portrait of Poggio Bracciolini, between modern medallions of De Fabris and Arnolfo. Further on, on the right, are Hezekiah by Nanni di Banco, and a fine portrait bust of Marsilio Ficino by Andrea Ferrucci (1520) — the mystic dreamer caught in a rare moment of inspiration, as on that wonderful day when he closed his finished Plato, and saw young Pico della Mirandola before him. Opposite them, on the left, are David by Ciuffagni, and a bust of the musician Squarcialupi by Benedetto da Maiano. On the last pillars of the nave, right and left, stand later statues of the Apostles — St. Matthew by Vincenzo de' Rossi, and St. James by Jacopo Sansovino. Under Brunelleschi's vast dome — the effect of which is THE DUOMO 155 terribly marred by miserable frescoes by Vasari and Zuc- cheri — are the choir and the high altar. The stained glass in the windows in the drum is from designs of Ghiberti, Donatello (the Coronation), and Paolo Uccello. Behind the high altar is one of the most solemn and pathetic works of art in existence — Michelangelo's last effort in sculpture, the un finished Deposition from the Cross ; " the strange spectral wreath of the Florence Pieta, casting its pyramidal, dis torted shadow, full of pain and death, among the faint pur ple lights that cross and perish under the obscure dome of Santa Maria del Fiore." ' It is a group of four figures more than life-size; the body of Christ is received in the arms of His mother, who sustains Him with the aid of St. Mary Magdalene and the standing Nicodemus, who bends over the group at the back with a countenance full of unutterable love and sorrow. Although, in a fit of im patience, Michelangelo damaged the work and allowed it to be patched up by others, he had intended it for his own sepulchre, and there is no doubt that the Nicodemus — whose features to some extent are modelled from his own — represents his own attitude as death approached. His sonnet to Giorgio Vasari is an expression of the same temper, and the most precious commentary upon his work: — Now hath my life across a stormy sea. Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all Are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall Of good and evil for eternity. I Modern Painters, Vol. II., " Of Imagination Penetrative." 156 FLORENCE Now know I well how that fond phantasy. Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall Of earthly art, is vain; how criminal Is that which all men seek unwillingly. Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed. What are they when the double death is nigh ? The one I know for sure, the other dread. Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest My soul that turns to His great Love on high. Whose arms, to clasp us, on the Cross were spread. {John Addington Symonds' s translation^ The apse at the east end, or tribuna di San Zenobio, ends in the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, which is also the shrine of Saint Zenobius. The reliquary which contains his remains is the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti, and was finished in 1446 ; the bronze reliefs set forth his principal miracles, and there is a most exquisite group of those fly ing Angels which Ghiberti realizes so wonderfully. Some of the glass in the windows is also from his design. The seated statues in the four chapels, representing the four Evangelists, were originally on the facade ; the St. Luke, by Nanni di Banco, in the first chapel on the right, is the best of the four ; then follow St. John, a very early Donatello, and, on the other side, St. Matthew by Ciuffagni and St. Mark by Niccolo da Arezzo (slightly earlier than the others). The two Apostles standing on guard at the en trance of the tribune, St. John and St. Peter, are by Benedetto da Rovezzano. To right and left are the south ern and northern sacristies. Over the door of the southern THE DUOMO 157 sacristy is a very beautiful bas-relief by Luca della Robbia, representing the Ascension (1446), like a Era Angelico in enamelled terra-cotta ; within the sacristy are two kneeling Angels also by Luca (1448), practically his only isolated statues, of the greatest beauty and harmony ; and also a rather indifferent St. Michael, a late work of Lorenzo di Credi. Over the door of the northern sacristy is the Res urrection by Luca della Robbia (1443), perhaps his earliest extant work in this enamelled terra-cotta. The bronze doors of this northern sacristy are by Michelozzo and Luca della Robbia, assisted by Maso and Giovanni di Bartolom meo, and were executed between 1446 and 1467. They are composed of ten reliefs with decorative heads at the corners of each, as in Lorenzo Ghiberti's work. Above are Madonna and Child with two Angels ; the Baptist with two Angels ; in the centre the four Evangelists, each with two Angels ; and below, the four Doctors, each with two Angels. M. Reymond has shown that the four latter are the work of Michelozzo. Of Luca's work, the four Evangelists are later than the two topmost reliefs, and are most beautiful ; the Angels are especially lovely, and there are admirable decorative heads between. Within, are some characteristic putti by Donatello. The side apses, which represent the right and left tran septs, guarded by Sixteenth Century Apostles, and with frescoed Saints and Prophets in the chapels by Bicci di Lorenzo, are quite uninteresting. By the door that leads out of the northern aisle into the 158 FLORENCE street, is a wonderful picture, painted in honour of Dante by order of the State in 1465, by Domenico di Michelino, a pupil of Fra Angelico, whose works, with this exception, are hardly identified. At the time that this was painted, the authentic portrait of Dante still existed in the (now lost) fresco at Santa Croce, so we may take this as a fairly probable likeness ; it is, at the same time, one of the earliest efforts to give pictorial treatment to the Purgatorio. Out side the gates of Florence stands Dante in spirit, clothed in the simple red robe of a Florentine citizen, and wearing the laurel wreath which was denied to him in life ; in his left hand he holds the open volume of the Divina Commedia, from which rays of burning light proceed and illumine all the city. But it is not the mediseval Florence that the divine singer had known, which his ghost now revisits, but the Florence of the Quattrocento — with the completed Cathedral and the cupola of Brunelleschi rising over it, with the Campanile and the great tower of the Palazzo della Signoria completed — the Florence which has just lost Cosimo de' Medici, Pater Patriae, and may need fresh guidance, now that great mutations are at hand in Italy. With his right hind he indicates the gate of Hell and its ante-chamber; but it is not the torments of its true inmates that he would bid the Florentines mark, but the shameful and degrading lot of the cowards and neutrals, the trimmers, who would follow no standard upon earth, and are now rejected by Heaven and Hell alike ; " the crew of caitiffs hateful to God and to His enemies," who now are com- THE DUOMO 159 pelled, goaded on by hornets and wasps, to rush forever after a devil-carried ensign, " which whirling ran so quickly that it seemed to scorn all pause." Behind, among the rocks and precipices of Hell, the monstrous fiends of schism, treason and anarchy glare through the gate, prepar ing to sweep down upon the City of the Lily, if she heeds not the lesson. In the centre of the picture, in the distance, the Mountain of Purgation rises over the shore of the lonely ocean, on the little island where rushes alone grow above the soft mud. The Angel at the gate, seated upon the rock of diamond, above the three steps of contri tion, confession, and satisfaction, marks the brows of the penitent souls with his dazzling sword, and admits them into the terraces of the mountain, where Pride, Anger, Envy, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust (the latter, in the purifying fire of the seventh terrace, merely indicated by the flames on the right) are purged away. On the top of the mountain Adam and Eve stand in the Earthly Paradise, which symbolizes blessedness of this life, the end to which an ideal ruler is to lead the human race, and the state of innocence to which the purgatorial pains restore man. Above and around sweep the spheres of the planets, the lower moving heavens, from which the angelic influences are poured down upon the Universe beneath their sway. Thirteen years after this picture was painted, the Duomo saw Giuliano de' Medici fall beneath the daggers of the Pazzi and their confederates on Sunday, April 26, 1478. The bell that rang for the Elevation of the Host was the i6o FLORENCE signal. Giuliano had been moving round about the choir, and was standing not far from the picture of Dante, when Bernardo Baroncelli and Francesco Pazzi^struck the first blows. Lorenzo, who was on the opposite side of the choir, beat off his assailants with his sword and then fled across into the northern sacristy, through the bronze gates of Michelozzo and Luca della Robbia, which Poliziano and the Cavalcanti now closed against the conspirators. The boy cardinal, Raffaello Sansoni, whose visit to the Medi cean brothers had furnished the Pazzi with their chance, fled in abject terror into the other sacristy. Francesco Nori, a faithful friend of the Medici, was murdered by Baroncelli in defending his masters' lives ; he is very prob ably the bareheaded figure kneeling behind Giuliano in Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi.' But of all the scenes that have passed beneath Brunel leschi's cupola, the most in accordance with the spirit of Dante's picture are those connected with Savonarola. It was here that his most famous and most terrible sermons were delivered ; here, on that fateful September morning when the French host was sweeping down through Italy, he gazed in silence upon the expectant multitude that thronged the building, and then, stretching forth his hands, cried aloud in a terrible voice the ominous text of Genesis : • The Duomo has fairer memories of the Pazzi than this deed of blood and treachery. Their ancestor at th? Crusades had carried the sacred fire from Jerusalem to Florence, and still, on Easter Eve, an artificial dove sent from the high altar lights the car of fireworks in the Piazza — the Carro dei Pazzi — in front of the church, in honour of their name. THE DUOMO i6i " Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth ;" and here, too, the fatal riot commenced which ended with the storming of the convent. And here, in a gentler vein, the children of Florence were wont to await the coming of their father and prophet. " The children," writes Simone Filipepi, " were placed all together upon certain steps made on purpose for them, and there were about three thousand of them ; they came an hour or two before the sermon ; and, in the meanwhile, some read psalms and others said the rosary, and often choir by choir they sang lauds and psalms most devoutly ; and when the Father appeared, to mount up into the pulpit, the said children sang the Ave Maris Stella, and likewise the people answered back, in such wise that all that time, from early morning even to the end of the sermon, one seemed to be verily in Paradise." The Opera del Duomo or Cathedral Museum contains, besides several works of minor importance (including the Madonna from the second facade), three of the great achieve ments of Florentine sculpture during the Fifteenth Cen tury ; the two cantorie, or organ galleries, of Donatello and Luca della Robbia ; the silver altar for the Baptistery, with the statue of the Baptist by Michelozzo, and reliefs in sil ver by Antonio Pollaiuolo and Andrea Verrocchio, represent ing the Nativity of the Baptist by the former, the dance of the daughter of Herodias and the Decollation of the Saint by the latter. The two organ galleries, facing each other and finished almost simultaneously (about 1440), are an utter contrast i62 FLORENCE both in spirit and in execution. There is nothing specially angelic or devotional about Donatello's wonderful frieze of dancing genii, winged boys that might well have danced round Venus at Psyche's wedding-feast, but would have been out of place among the Angels who, as the old mystic puts it, " rejoiced exceedingly when the most Blessed Vir gin entered the Heavenly City." The beauty of rhythmic movement, the joy of living and of being young, exultancy, baldanza — these are what they express for us. Luca della Robbia's boys and girls, singing together and playing mu sical instruments, have less exuberance and motion, but more grace and repose ; they illustrate in ten high reliefs the verses of the psalm, Laudate Dominum in Sanctis ejus, which is inscribed upon the Cantoria ; and those that dance are more chastened in their joy, more in the spirit of David before the Ark. But all are as wrapt and absorbed in their music, as are Donatello's in their wild yet harmonious romp. In detail and considered separately, Luca's more per fectly finished groups, with their exquisite purity of line, are perhaps more lovely than Donatello's more roughly sketched, lower and flatter bas-reliefs; but, seen from a distance and raised from the ground, as they were origi nally intended, Donatello's are decidedly more effective as a whole. It is only of late years that the reliefs have been remounted and set up in the way we now see ; and it is not quite certain whether their present arrangement, in all respects, exactly corresponds to what was originally in tended by the masters. THE DUOMO 163 Under the two cantorie is placed a set of embroideries for church vestments, begun in 1470 for the Baptistery from the designs of Antonio Pollaiuolo, by Paolo di Bartolom meo da Verona and four other workers. They represent the life of the Baptist in twenty-seven scenes, in which, says Vasari, " the figures are represented with the needle as excellently as if Antonio had painted them with his brush." The designs are full of Pollaiuolo's characteristic vigour and vitality. It was in this building, the Opera del Duomo, that Donatello at one time had his school and studio ; and it was here, in the early years of the Cinquecento, that Michelangelo worked upon the shapeless mass of marble which became the gigantic David. THE CAMPANILE HARRY QUILTER FROM my window in the Piazza del Duomo, the lookout this gray April afternoon cannot be called altogether gay. One building alone refuses to succumb to the influences of cloud and rain, refuses to lose its beauty or be deprived of its colours ; its delicate tracer ies, and its shades of red, yellow, black, white and green marble still standing out clearly perceptible through the heavy atmosphere. This is the building which closes the story of Giotto's life ; this is the last and greatest achievement of that genius who joined to his skill of hand a heart tender enough to enter into every human weakness, and sympathies which extended to the animal and vegetable creation, and drew, with as much simple fidelity and honest enjoyment the dog watching the sheep, and the oxen draw ing the wain, as the sufferings of the Saviour, or the faith of the disciples. In shape the Campanile is a square tower without but tress of any kind, rising 292 feet straight from the pave ment of the piazza. It has four stories, but does not diminish towards the top, the only difference being that the windows increase in size, and in this way an appearance of superior lightness is gained by the upper stories. The style GIOTTO'S CAMPANILE THE CAMPANILE 165 of the architecture is Gothic in so far as it makes use of the pointfed arch, but can hardly be described as such with out giving a false impression to those who are accustomed to the Gothic of the north ; and who think of that style as one of varied, if somewhat gloomy, masses, of irregular arches, pinnacles and buttresses ; colourless save for the lichen that grows between the gray stones, and owing their beauty more to the unwearied inventiveness of their builders' fancy than to any symmetrical unity of design. It seems to me that this Campanile, as does the cathedral, partakes much more of the Lombardic element than the Gothic, especially in the use of coloured marbles, which are here employed throughout the whole surface of the tower. One thing is certain, that whatever be the style of the architecture, it has a character of its own which renders it a thing apart. The building is in four stories, the two lowest of which are entirely without windows, the first being adorned with bas-reliefs by Giotto, and with statues by Donatello and others. Intermediate between the lowest series of bas- reliefs and the statues, are four series of bas-reliefs, each seven in number, representing the beatitudes, the works of mercy, the virtues and the sacraments. The second and third stories have each two pointed- arched windows of the same size and design, each of which is divided by a central shaft. This shaft is of exquisite delicacy, in design a richly-carved spiral, ending in a capital, from which spring two trefoiled arches. The sides of these i66 FLORENCE windows are also enriched with a similar shaft, then a rich border of mosaic, inclosed again by a spiral, terminating in a second pointed arch which forms the outer border to the window, above which is a triangular canopy thickly carved. The whole of these windows, with the exception of the mosaic band, are executed in white marble, and surrounded by slabs of green serpentine and red porphyry. The fourth story has but one window, rather larger than both those on the second or third story, and divided by two spirals instead of one. It is noticeable that the sides and canopy of this highest aperture are comparatively simple in form and devoid of sculpture, which practically ceases with the third story. Giotto was too thorough an artist to put elaborate sculpture at a height where it could not be seen, and preferred, instead of substituting coarser work, to de pend for the beauty of this upper story almost entirely upon the effect of boldly designed mosaic. Instead, therefore, of a single narrow band of mosaic above the arch of the window, there are in the fourth story four comparatively wide ones, and above this the triangular space beneath the plain arch is filled with the same work, as are also the spaces beside and above the canopy. Above the canopy, is a still broader band of mosaic, on which the jagged arches of the battlements seem to rest ; and above these again, a last band of mosaic is surmounted by a gallery of white marble about six feet high, pierced with quatre-foils along its whole length. It is wholly impossible to describe the delicacy and finish THE CAMPANILE 167 which the crest of this campanile possesses ; the eye is led on from story to story, the mosaic being used more and more freely, the sculpture more sparingly, as the ascent is made, till at last the sculpture ends in one perfectly shaped window, and the mosaic blossoms forth like a flower into fullest beauty. Gradually the massive base, with its dark bas-reliefs, changes into lighter sculpture, with backgrounds of blue marble, then into figures of the saints, prophets, and patriarchs, breaking the uniformity of which are two long vertical pierced panels of quatre-foils in circles, serving to give light to the interior, but not telling as windows, then two rich bands of mosaic carry on the effect up to the first range of windows. There is no difference between the first and second story, except that the lower one has a rich band of sculpture beneath the window, which is replaced by plain marble in the second ; but above the second, as I have said, the sculpture ceases to be the main feature, the mosaic takes its place, and succeeds in carrying out the unison of rich work and lightness of effect in a way which is as novel as it is beautiful. A few words must be said of the famous range of bas- reliefs, the lowest, all of which were designed by Giotto, though he only lived to execute two. This series is twenty- eight in number, exclusive of those on the small half towers which form the corners of the Campanile. They represent first the creation of man and woman, then the gradual de velopment of knowledge, the gradual increase of man's power over nature, and discovery of his own capacities. i68 FLORENCE These bas-reliefs are in lozenge form, about eighteen inches in height and slightly less in breadth, and entirely surround the tower. Nearly the whole of these were sculptured by Luca della Robbia and Andrea Pisano, to whom was entrusted the carrying out of Giotto's designs. I like to think that that Campanile of " porphyry and jasper " was not raised by one who dwelt amidst cold dreams of architectural proportion, and gave his life to the designing of geometrical ornament, but by the man who could feel the humour of the dog, the patience of the oxen, and loved to have such things carved about the base of his tower ; and as I sit here in its very shadow it seems to me that the most fitting meed of praise is not that he painted the purest and loveliest frescoes in the world ; not that he raised above Florence a tower which has been the wonder and delight of all succeeding ages, but that he was the first to show by his work that Art was useful to man, not only as a teacher, but as a friend. THE SHEPHERD'S TOWER JOHN R USKIN FORTY years ago there was assuredly no spot of ground out of Palestine, in all the round world, on which, if you knew, even but a little, the true course of that world's history, you saw with so much joyful reverence the dawn of morning as at the foot of the Tower of Giotto. For there the traditions of faith and hope, of both the Gentile and Jewish races, met for their beautiful labour; the Baptistery of Florence is the last building raised on the earth by the descendants of the workmen taught by Daedalus; and the Tower of Giotto is the loveliest of those raised on earth under the inspiration of the men who lifted up the tabernacle in the wilderness. Of living Greek work there is none after the Florentine Baptistery ; of all living Christian work, none so perfect as the Tower of Giotto ; and, under the gleam and shadow of their marbles, the morning light was haunted by the ghosts of the Father of Natural Science, Galileo ; of Sacred Art, Angelico, and of the Master of Sacred Song, which spot of sacred ground the modern Florentine has made his prin cipal hackney-coach stand and omnibus station. The hackney-coaches with their more or less farm-yard litter of occasional hay, and smell of variously mixed horse- I70 FLORENCE manure, are yet in more permissible harmony with the place than the ordinary populace of a fashionable promenade would be, with its cigars, spitting, and harlot-painted fineries ; but the omnibus place of call being in front of the door of the tower renders it impossible to stand for a moment near it, to look at the sculptures either of the eastern or southern side ; while the north side is enclosed with an iron railing, and usually encumbered with lumber as well : not a soul in Florence ever caring now for sight of any piece of its old artist's work; and the mass of strangers being on the whole intent on nothing but getting the ominibus to go by steam ; and on seeing the cathedral in one swift circuit, by glimpses between the puffs of it. Deluge of profanity, drowning dome and tower in Stygian pool of vilest thought, — nothing now left sacred, in the places where once nothing was profane. For that is indeed the teaching, if you could receive it, of the Tower of Giotto ; as of all Christian Art in its day. Next to the declaration of the facts of the Gospel, its pur pose (often in actual work the eagerest) was to show the power of the Gospel. History of Christ in due place ; yes, history of all He did, and how He died ; but then, and often, as I say with more animated imagination, the show ing of His risen presence in granting the harvests and guiding the labour of the year. All sun and rain, and length or decline of days received from His hand ; all joy, and grief and strength, or cessation of labour, indulged or endured, as in His sight and to His glory. And the familiar THE SHEPHERD'S TOWER 171 employments of the seasons, the homely toils of the peasant, the lowliest skills of the craftsman, are signed always on the stones of the Church, as the first and truest condition of sacrifice and offering. The importance of the bas-reliefs on this tower to an intelligent reader of Italian history cannot be overrated seeing that they are the only authentic records left of the sculptural design of the man who, as builder, sculptor, painter and theologian, absolutely rebuilt and recoloured the entire mind and faith of Italy in the days of Dante. How much the visions of Dante himself were painted on the walls of his heart and in the inner light of his soul by Giotto, he himself must have been scarcely conscious ; for all inferior men, the engraved and coloured Bible of Giotto and his school became their inevitable master, and a con tinual monitor of all that was dutiful in the work and lovely in the hope of Christian persons. The master's own estimate of these bas-reliefs must have been very high ; for instead of making them a part of such encrusted and continuous decoration as the most powerful sculptor of the Pisan school had accustomed the populace to expect, he sets them as gems in a kind of Etruscan chain round the base of his tower, minute in the extreme com pared to the extent of its surface; so far above the eye as to secure them absolutely from all chance of injury or wear, but by time and its mud and rain ; and entirely unrecom- mended and unassisted by the slightest external minor im ageries of organic form. In all fine northern sculpture of 172 FLORENCE the time, the external courses of foliage and crockets and bosses of pinnacle retrieve the simplicity of falling draperies, and disguise or enrich with picturesque shadow the harsh ness of feature and expression in the figures. But here the master allows only the severest masonry and mouldings to approach or limit his subject ; requires, in concentrated space, undisturbed attention ; and trusts, without the slight est link of decoration, to the inner sequence and consist ency of thought. THE BAPTISTERY— THE DUOMO EDWARD HUTTON ON coming into the Piazza del Duomo, perhaps from the light and space of the Lung' Arno or from the largeness of the Piazza della Signoria, one is apt to think of it as too small for the buildings which it holds, as wanting in a certain spaciousness, such as the Piazza of St. Peter at Rome certainly possesses, or in the light of the meadow of Pisa; and yet this very smallness, only smallness when we consider the great buildings set there so precisely, gives it an element of beauty lacking in the great Piazza of Rome and in Pisa too — a certain deli cate colour and shadow and a sense of nearness, of homeli ness almost ; for the shadow of the dome falls right across the city itself every morning and evening. And indeed the Piazza del Duomo of Florence is still the centre of the life of the city, and though to some this may be matter for re gret, I have found in just that a sort of consolation for the cabs which Ruskin hated so, for the trams which he never saw; for just these two necessary unfortunate things bring one so often there that of all the cathedrals of Italy that of Florence must be best known to the greatest number of people at all hours of the day. And this fact, evil and good working together for life's sake, makes the Duomo a real 174 FLORENCE power in the city, so that every one is interested, often passionately interested, in it : it has a real influence on the lives of the citizens, so that nothing in the past or even to day has ever been attempted with regard to it without win ning the people's leave. Yet it is not the Duomo alone that thus lives in the hearts of the Florentines, but the whole Piazza. There they have established their trophies, and set up their gifts, and lavished their treasure. It was built for all, and it belongs to all ; it is the centre of the city. This enduring vitality of a place so old, so splendid, and so beloved, is, I think, particularly manifest in the Church of S. Giovanni Battista, the Baptistery. It is the oldest building in Florence, built probably with the stones from the Temple of Mars about which Villani tells us, and al most certainly in its place ; every Florentine child, fortu nate at least in this, is still brought there for baptism, and receives its name in the place where Dante was christened, where Ippolito Buondelmonti first saw Dianora de' Bardi, where Donatello has laboured, which Michelangelo has loved. Built probably in the Sixth or Seventh Century, it was Arnolfo di Cambio who covered it in marble in 1288, build ing also three new doorways where before there had been but one, that on the west side, which was then closed. The mere form, those octagonal walls which, so it is said, the Lombards brought into Italy, go to show that the church was used as a Baptistery from the first, though .-5 < Q> Q < THE BAPTISTERY— THE DUOMO 175 Villani speaks of it as the Duomo; and indeed till 1550 it had the aspect of such a church as the Pantheon in Rome, in that it was open to the sky, so that the rain and the sun light have fallen on the very floor trodden by so many gen erations. Humble and simple enough as we see it to-day before the gay splendour of the new facade of the Duomo, it has yet those great treasures which the Duomo cannot boast, the bronze doors of Andrea Pisano and of Ghiberti. Over the south doorway there was placed in the end of the Sixteenth Century a group by Vincenzo Danti, said to be his best work, the Beheading of St. John Baptist ; and under are the gates of Andrea Pisano carved in twenty bronze panels with the story of St. John and certain vir tues : and around the gate Ghiberti has twined an exquisite pattern of leaves and fruits and birds. It is strange to find Ghiberti's work thus completing that of Andrea Pisano, who, as it is said, had Giotto to help him, till we under stand that originally these southern gates stood where now are the " Gates of Paradise " before the Duomo. Standing there as they used to do before Ghiberti moved them, they won for Andrea not only the admiration of the people, but the freedom of the city. To-day we come to them with the praise of Ghiberti ringing in our ears, so that in our hurry to see everything we almost pass them by ; but in their simpler, and, as some may think, more sincere way, they are as lovely as anything Ghiberti ever did, and in comparing them with the great gates that supplanted them, it may be well to remind ourselves that each has its merit 176 FLORENCE in its own fashion. If the doors of Andrea won the praise of the whole city, it was with an ever-growing excitement that Florence proclaimed a public competition, open to all the sculptors of Italy, for the work that remained, those two doors on the north and east. Ghiberti, at that time in Rimini at the court of Carlo Malatesta, at the entreaty of his father returned to Florence, and was one of the two artists out of the thirty-four who competed, to be chosen for the task : the other was Filippo Brunelleschi. You may see the two panels they made in the Bargello side by side on the wall. The subject is the Sacrifice of Isaac, and Ghiberti, with the real instinct of the sculptor, has alto gether outstripped Brunelleschi, not only in the harmony of his composition, but in the simplicity of his intention. Brunelleschi seems to have understood this, and, perhaps liking the lad who was but twenty-two years old, withdrew from the contest. However this may be, Ghiberti began the work at once, and finished the door on the north side of the Baptistery in ten years. There, amid a framework of exquisite foliage, leaves, birds, and all kinds of life, he has set the gospel story in twenty panels, beginning with the Annunciation and ending with the Pentecost ; and around the gate he has set the four Evangelists and the doctors of the Church anjl the prophets. Above you may see the group of a pupil of Verrocchio, the Preaching of St. John. In looking on these beautiful and serene works, we may already notice an advance on the work of Andrea Pisano in THE BAPTISTERY— THE DUOMO 177 a certain ease and harmony, a richness and variety, that were beyond the older master. Ghiberti has already begun to change with his genius the form that has come down to him, to expand it, to break down its limitations so that he may express himself, may show us the very visions he has seen. And the success of these gates with the people cer tainly confirmed him in the way he was going. In the third door, that facing the Duomo, which Michelangelo has said was worthy to be the gate of Paradise, it is really a new art we come upon, the subtle rhythms and perspec tives of a sort of pictorial sculpture, that allows him to carve here in such low relief that it is scarcely more than painting, there in the old manner, the old manner but changed, full of a sort of exuberance which here at any rate is beauty. The ten panels which Ghiberti thus made in his own way are subjects from the Old Testament : the Creation of Adam and Eve, the story of Cain and Abel, of Noah, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph, of Moses on Sinai, of Joshua before Jericho, of David and Goliath, of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. At his death in 1455 they were unfinished, and a host of sculptors, including Brunelleschi and Paolo Uccello, are said to have handled the work, Antonio del Pollajuolo being credited with the quail in the lower frame. Over the door stands the beautiful work of Sansovino, the Baptism of Christ. It is with a certain sense of curiosity that one steps down into the old church ; for in spite of every sort of witness it has the air of some ancient temple : nor do the beautiful 178 FLORENCE antique columns which support the triforium undeceive us. For long enough now the mosaics of the vault have been hidden by the scaffolding of the restorers ; but the beautiful Thirteenth-Century floor of white and black marble, in the midst of which the font once stood, is still undamaged. The font, which is possibly a work of the Pisani, is on one side, set there, as it is said, because of old the roof of the church was open, and many a winter christening spoiled by rain.' It was not, however, till 157 1 that the old font, surrounded by its small basins, one of which Dante broke in saving a man from drowning there, was removed from the church by Francesco I., Grand Duke of Tuscany, for the christen ing of his son. Certain vestiges of the oldest church remain : you may see a sarcophagus, one of those which, before Arnolfo covered the church with marble, stood without and held the ashes of some of the greater families. But the most beautiful thing here is the tomb that Donatello made for Baldassare Cossa, pirate, condottiere, and anti-pope, who, deposed by the Council of Constance (1414), came to Flor ence, and, as ever, was kindly received by the people. It stands beside the north door. On a marble couch sup ported by lions, the gilt bronze statue of this prince of adventurers, who grasped the very chair of St. Peter as ' I give this story for what it is worth. So far as I know, however, the font was placed in its present position in 1658, more than a hundred years after the church was roofed in. It may, however, have occupied another position before that. THE BAPTISTERY— THE DUOMO 179 booty, lies, his brow still troubled, his mouth set firm as though plotting new conquests even in the grave. Below, on the tomb itself, two winged angiolini hold the great scroll on which we read the name of the dead man, Johannes Quondam Papa XXIII. : to which inscription Martin V., Cossa's successful rival at Constance, is said to have taken exception ; but the Medici who had built the tomb an swered in Pilate's words to the Pharisees, " What I have written, I have written." The three marble figures in niches at the base may be by Michelozzo, who worked with Donatello, or possibly by Pagno di Lapo, as the Madonna above the tomb almost certainly is. Coming up once more into the Piazza from that mys terious dim church, dim with the centuries of the history of the city, you come upon two porphyry columns beside the eastern door. They are the gift of Pisa when her ships returned from the Balearic Islands to Florence, who had defended their city from the Lucchesi. The column with the branch of olive in bronze upon it to the north of the Baptistery reminds us of the miracle performed by the body of S. Zenobio in 490. Borne to burial in S. Reparata, the bier is said to have touched a dead olive tree standing on this spot, which immediately put forth leaves : the column commemorates this miracle. So in Florence they remind us of the gods. THE CHILDREN OF FLORENCE ROSE M. BRADLEY THERE is a street in Florence of so little impor tance that, could I recall its name, it would prob ably convey nothing to the vast number of people who yet know and love the city as an intimate friend. It is a long and winding street, and if you follow it far enough it will lead you almost from the heart of Florence where life and business circulate incessantly round the steps of the Duomo right out into the country. There are no obvious treasures to tempt sight-seers to wander down the street, no especial buildings of historic or artistic interest, and yet what an inexhaustible storehouse of mystery and enchantment the most insignificant byway in Florence may become ! Here we have two long lines of yellow houses with brown-tiled roofs, and beneath the wooden carved cornices an even row of green-shuttered windows. Over almost every door is a delicate piece of iron-work, generally fan-shaped and scarcely two alike. But it is on the ground floor that lurks the mystery, in those cavernous depths which now seem to run back to an unfathomable distance, and again, in the very next house, are only a few feet deep, a mere hole in the wall ! Here an archway leads with unexpected abruptness into a beautiful Renaissance court- PIAZZA DEL DUOMO, LOGGIA DI S. MARIA MISERICORDIA (THE BIGALLO) THE CHILDREN OF FLORENCE i8i yard, where the Pandolfini dolphins on the capitals of the columns speak of bygone splendour, whilst a few yards further on, a similar archway will drop the unwary intruder into the cellar of a charcoal-burner. Or, again, the more majestic arch gives way to a tiny doorway, from which a steep stone staircase hurries straight up to unknown regions above. But these things which, to the trained eye of the artist, have an intrinsic value, are in my mind merely a part of the Street of the Children, for by no other name do I know it. It may be that because a love of children is one of the leading characteristics of the Florentine, that it is through her children, through the fanciullini playing in her streets, playing on their mediaeval backgrounds, that I sometimes think I have caught a glimpse into the heart of Florence. Her charm is indefinable, elusive, and therefore it never tires. And the same elusive charm seems to belong to her children. The type appears to have altered little since the days when the great masters, strolling through the streets of their beloved city, caught and immortalized the childish forms and faces, on canvas, in stone and in marble, where with to adorn her loveliness. It is rare to meet an abso lutely plain child in Florence, but it is not only the dark eloquent eyes, the clear-cut features, the clean line of throat and chin, the graceful proportions of the small limbs to the body, but it is also a certain air of distinction and aloofness in their bearing which makes it a pure pleasure to watch these children at their play. I have heard it said i82 FLORENCE that the real living child is almost as important a note in Florentine architecture as those charming putti which smile down upon us from all sorts of unexpected places, in churches, and over windows and archways in the street. Certainly the broad flights of church steps seem to afford the children a natural playground, and the visitor who wishes to enter must have the temerity to cross the chalked squares and circles upon which they play unending and elaborate games of hopscotch. And it is not an unusual sight to find an extremely small baby seated against a mighty church door, such as that of Santa Croce, in com plete and happy solitude. But it is in the street which seems to me to belong to them, above all others, that I have liked best to watch the children. For here they may be seen and studied in their own surroundings, and of the invading forestieri they will take little or no notice. While the daylight lasts the street is their home, and from end to end, except in school hours, it is alive with childish noise and chatter. There are few grown-up people to be seen, and none who show any tendency to interfere with the children. True, about half way down the street there is the gentleman who keeps a Gran Deposito of trunks, one ancient portmanteau repre senting his legitimate business, companioned by a wonderful toy circus cut out in cardboard. Mysterious odds and ends of iron and brasswork fill up the background, and the shop- window is flanked on either side with wire baskets full of hard-boiled eggs. Further up is the old woman who sells THE CHILDREN OF FLORENCE 183 china pots and canzone, sentimental poems about the rose and the nightingale, printed upon pink and blue and orange papers, and fastened on a bare space along the wall of her house. Some of the canzone are not printed at all, but written in a large sprawling hand on a piece of copy-book paper, and then they are sold for only one soldo instead of two, and the ardent lover who is also economical some times has to bring his purchase in to have it read aloud to him. But the children do not care for these things. Near the top of the street is a greengrocer's stall, and who that knows Florence does not know the greengrocer's } This one is content with a mere recess in the wall, with folding shutters which open outwards. Each morning he industri ously hangs his wares upon all the myriad little nails he has driven into his shutters — bunches of pink young radishes, fresh green leeks, strings of onions stretched across the opening. And on the shelf, arranged in skilful picturesque confusion, are cauliflowers, lettuces, red tomatoes, heaps of oranges and lemons, their leaves still clustering upon them, bright patches of colour against the cavernous background ; and where a gap occurs there are always the hard boiled eggs. All the patient industry of the Italian race asserts itself in this unwearied individual, who so elaborately builds up his hottega in the morning, parts apparently with little during the day, and demolishes the whole edifice each evening. At the very entrance to the street is a bird shop, a place of wonder and delight to the children, and indeed to all i84 FLORENCE who have ever given a serious thought to the question of bird-cages. Here are cages of green wood, of red wood, of blue wood, brilliant and faded, bell-shaped, square, large and small, and all arranged with a great and apparent care lessness and as genuine an eye for effect as the leeks and the radishes of the greengrocer. Certainly a curious sense of proportion pertains in Florence. An immense pigeon endeavours to turn itself slowly round for the benefit of an admiring childish audience in a minute wicker cage which can scarcely contain its unwieldy proportions, whilst tiny foreign birds with glowing plumage are able to take quite considerable flights in their green wooden prison which occupies the length of the window. As I have said, the Florentine child takes but little notice of the passing stranger. Even in the street which I regard as their own, and where foreign intruders are few enough, the children are smilingly indifferent to their presence. A boy rather bigger than the rest has found a small hand-wagon, stand ing outside the stall of the greengrocer, who presumably has gone to his dinner. Into this he has crowded his younger brethren, and careers wildly down the street, a cartload of shouting, exultant blue pinafores behind him. The aged, wrinkled grandmother who sells the canzone, presumably in charge of all the community whilst the par ents are at work, looks out of her doorway to admonish them, but very mildly, and she smiles at little Guido with his name embroidered in red letters on his black pinafore who is playing in the gutter. But Guido has caught the THE CHILDREN OF FLORENCE 185 sound of military music far away in the great world, and is clattering up the street as fast as his little legs can carry him. He collides with a row of little girls, who ^rm in arm are dancing down to meet him, their backs indiffer ently turned to that gay scene towards which he is flying. They are not above a coquettish glance at the strangers as they toss their curls out of their eyes and chant their quaint little song of the city which yet seems to have a refrain of La Bella Napola. Presently the row breaks, the little girls group themselves in a circle round a toddling boy they have captured, and as they slowly revolve begin to sing what is obviously the equivalent of " A ring a ring of roses " as danced and sung in approved fashion in an English nursery. The tune, is certainly the same, but the words are addressed to "Maria Giulia," though whether this refers to the baby in the middle or to some pagan deity remains a mystery. Too obvious a curiosity upon the part of the bystander merely results in a dispersal of the ring, and a reforming of the row, which moves to a safer distance. But the noonday sun is exceedingly hot, and one small boy has twisted his graceful limbs round the stone upright fountain, and in this contorted attitude he is endeavouring to adjust his mouth to that of the dolphin from which the water gushes. That a younger boy with a stick at least six times as long as himself should interfere with these efforts is inevitable; but when might has once again proved right, the loan of the stick for three blessed minutes appears to restore complete tranquillity. So the sun blazes and the i86 FLORENCE children shout, and the grandmother sleeps composedly, for customers are few, and it is seldom that a cart or a carriage comes down the street to interrupt them. Only in the dis tance can be heard the roar of grown-up life and business. But just as there are few parents in the street at this hour, so there are very few babies — babies, that is, who are too small to play. The reason of this is not very far to seek. Grandmothers who sell sentimental poems cannot always be trusted, and babies are very precious possessions in Florence. Only half a mile away, on the ground floor of a house, which in greater days might have been a palace, is a nursery where the babies pass happy and well-cared-for days while their mothers are away at work. The creche of Santa Caterina was founded some years ago by a rich and philanthropic Florentine lady, and was confided to the care of the same order of Sisters who are responsible for the well-being of the little foundlings at the Hospital of the Innocenti. The nurseries open off a courtyard surrounded by a little cloister. In the middle of the court are a couple of palms and an ancient well where the pigeons come down to drink and look at the babies. In the evening we come back to the Street of the Chil dren. Upon the door-steps clumps of little girls sit very close together like birds on a perch whispering those secrets which little girls whisper all the world over, and which boys must not hear, and which grown-up people could not pos sibly understand. At a window a fair-haired child, who should surely have wings about her head, leans out to throw THE CHILDREN OF FLORENCE 187 down bread to a little girl in the street below, who holds up her skirt to receive it. Groups of untiring little boys still shout and race up and down the street ; but Guido's father has returned to lead him, an only half-reluctant cap tive, to supper and bed. Down the street come the tired mothers, who, the day's work over, have been to fetch their babies from the creche. Clean, well-fed and sleepy, the little creatures may be exchanging the peaceful atmosphere with which the kind Sisters surround them for the bustle and clatter and discussions of their own less clean and airy homes. But they are quite content, as they nestle against the gaudy handkerchiefs which adorn their mothers' shoul ders, and gaze out upon the shadowy world with dark solemn eyes. For will not they find awaiting them that atmosphere of love which seems to be the indisputable birthright of every child that is born in Florence ? CAMPAGNIA DELLA MISERICORDIA {Brotherhood of Mercy) MABEL SHERMAN CRAWFORD OF the many unfamiliar objects which arrested my attention in the streets of Florence, none excited so forcibly my feelings of curiosity and surprise as the sight of the members of the Brotherhood of the Misericordia. Certainly the garb adopted by this fraternity when on duty is one more likely to suggest the idea of deeds of wickedness than acts of virtue ; and when they are first beheld, clothed in a monastic dress — a mass of black from head to foot — their heads entirely enshrouded in close-fitting hoods, and their eyes glaring out through two small apertures in the black calico veil which hangs down loosely before their faces — they present a sight calculated to startle any individual afflicted with sensitive nerves. Hideous, however, as is the dress, it yet has the merit of fulfilling the object for which it was designed, as it shrouds completely the individual by whom it is worn. Under the folds of that black dress, and beneath the cappa, as the united mask and hood are termed, a wife could not possibly recognize her husband, so perfect is the disguise. The Society of the Misericordia is a time-honoured in stitution, and tradition dates its origin in Florence from an COMPAGNIA DELLA MISERICORDIA CAMPAGNIA DELLA MISERICORDIA 189 early period of the Thirteenth Century. In the many pes tilences which ravaged Tuscany during four centuries, suf fering humanity was comforted and relieved by the indefat igable zeal of the members. Various are the works of charity to which the Florentine fraternity dedicate their time and revenues. At any hour at which their services may be wanted, they transport patients to the hospital : and to the sick amongst the destitute poor they furnish aid in money, linen, medicine, and attendance. The members of the society, consisting of all classes of the community, are divided into sections, numbering about forty in each section ; and to every section is assigned in turn a certain period in which each member must hold him self in readiness — according to his vows, taken generally for a limited period — to obey the call of duty. At the sound of the loud tolling of the great bell, it matters not at what hour — he must instantly obey the summons. Various are the functions to be performed and the duties to be dis charged for which the bell of the great tower, that once called the citizens to arms, now sends out by day or night its mandatory summons to the members of the Misericordia. At the sound of the summoning stroke, such members of the fraternity as are at the time liable to be called out for duty hasten to their church, the appointed place of meeting. This church, situated in the Piazza del Duomo is almost as ancient as the community to which it belongs. It is said to stand on the margin of the gulf which was dug to receive I90 FLORENCE the numerous victims of the pestilence of 1348. On the altar, a few tapers burn night and day continually, whilst six members of the order keep watch in the sanctuary. On the walls are hung the dresses of the community, as well as the torches which are made use of at night and in funeral solemnities ; and along the floor are ranged biers and litters for carrying the sick and dead to their respective destinations. To this church, whose pavement is never trod by any foot but that of a member of the fraternity, the summoned brothers of the Misericordia repair to receive and execute the orders given to them by their capo gardia. Enveloped in the black vestments of their order, they issue from their church, marching two by two, preceded by a marshal {bidello) and by four brothers bearing a litter on their shoulders. This litter is adapted with great fore thought to every exigency of the service in which it is used. A light low arching canopy, composed of fine iron wire, over which is extended a quilt, or if occasion needs, a waterproof covering, serves as a protection against the weather for the occupant of the bed. To the lower part of the litter, torches are fastened, in case night should over take the brotherhood whilst discharging the offices of charity to the sick without the city walls ; for, to a circuit of three miles, measured from the centre of the town, ex tend the self-imposed duties of the fraternity. Besides the torches, the lower part of the litter contains a box, in which is to be found everything that the sick might desire or need during transportation to the hospital — water, wine, lemon. CAMPAGNIA DELLA MISERICORDIA 191 sugar, vinegar, hartshorn — all are in readiness for service when required. Provision is even made for the perform ance of the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church in case any occupant of the litter may be placed in a position to require them ; for in the same box with the restoratives is found the Holy Oil, with which the dying may be anointed. The transportation, however, of the sick to hospitals forms but a small part of the self-imposed obligations undertaken towards that class by the brethren of the Misericordia. Not only do the fraternity look after the wants of that helpless class in their own homes, but they leave their comfortable, perhaps luxurious abodes to watch during the night by the bedside of the suffering poor. Not unfrequently in the dwellings of the upper classes the pil lows of the sick are adjusted by the hands of members of the Misericordia; and in all such cases, however humble the renderer, and however rich the recipient of such services may be, the nightly watcher is not permitted to receive the smallest thing, either food, or drink, or money, from the family, under penalty of sudden and ignominious expulsion from the society to which he or she belongs. In order to ascertain if the sick are tended with due care and zeal in spectors go out nightly to visit those dwellings to which the night watcher has been sent. Amongst the benevolent acts of the fraternity deserving of special notice are the offices of charity they perform towards imprisoned criminals. Theirs is the self-appointed task of visiting the gaols, and of seeing that every regula- 192 FLORENCE tion connected with the salubrity of those abodes is duly attended to. The food provided for the prisoners comes under their inspection, and not unfrequently clothes and linen are supplied by them. On certain occasions, such as the great religious festivals of the Church at Christmas, Easter, Quinquagesima, Pentecost and Ascension Day, the inmates of the prison are provided with a feast at the expense of the fraternity. The interment of the dead forms a very important part of the functions of the society. Funeral rites are performed by them in every instance in which the family of the de ceased is too poor to provide means of decent interment. A charity of an essentially Italian character remains yet to be enumerated among the philanthropic acts of the Com pagnia della Misericordia. Young portionless girls are reckoned amongst the class of unfortunates requiring assist ance from the funds of the charitable society. On one par ticular day in every year, marriage portions are distributed with edifying solemnity to various girls belonging to the lower classes of the community. The source from which the Misericordia derives the greatest portions of its revenue is from begging — la questua, as it is termed. This questua is made once a week by ten brothers of the order who take each his way through his allotted district to seek for alms. In ghostly silence he carries on his work, the only mode of solicitation used being the presentation of his begging-box to the passer-by, accom panied by the appealing gaze of eyes that peer through two CAMPAGNIA DELLA MISERICORDIA 193 small apertures in the black mask he wears. Into every shop the quesiuante has free access ; for him the doors of public offices and monasteries unclose ; into his box drop the silver of the rich and the copper of the poor ; the quat- trini of the working-man mingle with the paoli of the noble. Seldom does the begging-box remain unfilled, for rarely does either avarice or poverty refuse to the quesiuante the small coin he seeks. In addition, the funds of the society are sustained by a small annual tax imposed upon the members of the frater nity. This tax can never be less than one paolo (eleven cents) or exceed five of that coin. Before a procession of the black-robed brethren the crowd respectfully open and give way, whilst every hat, from the noble's to the beggar's, is reverentially raised as they go by ; for not unfrequently the highest in the land has donned the garb of the Misericordia for a stated period, either from a motive of a penitential kind, or from one of a purely philan thropic nature. THE MERCATO VECCHIO {the old centre of Florence) AND THE MERCATO NUOVO E. GRIFI WALKING along the Via Calzaioli towards the Piazza della Signoria the second street to the right after leaving the Piazzo del Duomo is the Via degli Speziali, leading directly into the centre of the town. The Via degli Speziali is now a large and clean street, where to the left on the corner of the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele is the Cafe-chantant Trianon. Formerly and not very long ago, it was a narrow, dark and rather dirty street leading to the Colonna di Mercato (Market Column). This was a stone column, surmounted by a stone statue of Abundance, of the Fifteenth Century, which marked with sufficient exactness the centre of the town when Florence did not extend beyond the present Viali. Near this column which arose on the southeast of the Piazza Vittorio Eman uele, in front of the present Cafe Trianon the houses were ugly and small, the streets narrow and the passageway dark. All that region lying between the Via Calzaioli, Cer retani, Tornabuoni and Porta Rossa was included in this quarter which was full of colour, tempting to the artist and ~3 Hzoa, THE PONTE VECCHIO CORRIDOR 295 24th of June, the Anniversary Festival of St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence, when no expense ap pears to have been spared to render the spectacle as impos ing as possible. The pictures contain multitudes of figures, devices, masques, ornaments, etc., used on these occasions, and the locality selected was generally the banks of the Arno, near the Ponte San Trinita, and occasionally the Arno itself. The festival of 15 14 was of surpassing magnificence, for it commemorated the return of the Medici to Florence ; and so great were the attractions, that many cardinals at Rome requested permission from the Pope to be present at the rejoicings. We are told that the preparation of the complicated apparatus, machinery, dresses, cars, standards, emblems, etc., many of which are represented in the pic tures, was entrusted to Francesco Grannaci, a fellow pupil of Michael Angelo, who enjoyed a high reputation for his inventive and artistic powers. To Lorenzo de' Medici belongs the merit of making these exhibitions extremely magnificent, and iUustrating them by political compositions, frequently written by him self. The Canti Carnascialeschi, or Carnival Songs, are ex amples of this nature. They are remarkable for the ex treme purity of the Florentine diction, which is preserved free from adulteration ; so pure, indeed, that the Della Crusca Academy cite these pieces in their celebrated dic tionary as authorities for the Italian language. In connection with these spectacles, troops of dancing 296 FLORENCE girls frequently went through the streets singing Canzoni a Ballo, in concert with the music to which they danced; and although many of their songs are certainly far from moral, it appears that the great Lorenzo not unfrequently participated in this amusement, acting even as director in the evolutions of the dancing girls. He also composed a dancing song ; and as a proof of how warmly Lorenzo patronized these dancing exhibitions, we may state that in the curious edition of the Canzoni a Ballo published at Florence in 1568, the title-page is ornamented with a wood engraving, representing twelve girls dancing before the palace of the Medici, and singing songs. In the foreground of the picture is a representation of Lorenzo, with two girls gaily attired kneeling before him, one of whom presents him with a garland of flowers. Large companies of artisans were also in the habit of de voting much time to these festivities. Villani teUs us that on St. John's day in 1333, no less than one thousand oper atives, one half dressed in yellow garments, the other in white, promenaded the streets daily, carrying flags and flowers, for an entire month, during which time labour was entirely suspended. We have evidence from the pictures and other authori ties, that these spectacles were not unfrequently made use of for religious purposes, sometimes with fatal effect. The most disastrous instance was that when certain persons, de sirous of entertaining Cardinal Nicolo da Prato, and at the same time amending the morals of Florence, informed the THE PONTE VECCHIO CORRIDOR 297 citizens that on an appointed day there would be an exhi bition of the torments destined for those condemned to eternal hell-fire, on the Arno, near the Ponte alia Carraia, to which all citizens were invited. The invitation was eagerly accepted. At the appointed time, thousands of the inhabitants of Florence assembled on the bridge — curious to see the simulated tortures of the damned. These appeared on rafts on the Arno, dressed in robes representing flames, undergoing every kind of horrible torment that the most cruel members of the Inquisition ever invented. Demons, of all conceivable forms, were busy with instruments of torture among the poor wretches, whose cries of anguish were partly drowned by discordant sounds, which mightwell be supposed to proceed from Pandemonium. The greatest excitement now prevailed among the spec tators, in the midst of which, just as the torments of the damned had culminated to extreme agony, the Ponte alia Carraia, which was at that period constructed of wood, gave way, causing hundreds of unfortunate citizens to become chief actors, in the drama. This catastrophe, it is stated, inspired Dante to write his immortal work. Besides the pictures to which we have alluded, there were several battle-pieces in the gallery, portraits of famous war riors and statesmen, and marble busts of eminent individuals. Over the middle of the Ponte Vecchio, the walls of the gallery give place to boards, removable at pleasure. Here the Ducal Court assembled to see the illuminations and fire works on the banks of the Arno. 298 FLORENCE Alternating with the pictures, were various pieces of tapestry, for the most part in excellent preservation, and of great interest. Adjoining the Uffizi, the passage was oc cupied by numerous objects, outpourings from the rooms of the Uffizi, which have long been unable to accommodate advantageously the treasures of that collection. With these particulars respecting this passage and its contents — and they might be amplified — it will scarcely be believed that some persons strongly advocated not only the destruction of this gallery, but also that of the Ponte Vec chio, with its quaint shops, which have furnished half the Florentine mosaic ornaments brought to England by visit ors of that city. The proposition was, however, vetoed by the first authority in the kingdom ; Victor Emmanuel hav ing emphatically declared that on no account whatever should the Ponte Vecchio be destroyed. But the public have to thank the King of Italy for even more than his determination to preserve this interesting old bridge. Conjointly with the municipality he gave permis sion that the gallery should be thrown open to visitors, and appropriated for the exhibition of such pictures and other objects of art as can be seen to the best advantage. Ac cordingly the passage is now fiUed with a collection of pictures and tapestry, and what is even more interesting, with drawings by the old masters that have long been pre served in the Uffizi. THE PTTTI PALACE EUGENE MUNTZ THE history of the Patti Palace is an entire epic. Luca Pitti, bolder than his contemporary Cosmo de' Medici, resolved, in 1440, to build a dwell ing that should eclipse all others in Italy, or, to use the ex pression of MachiaveUi " a greater palace than any that had hitherto been built by a private person." He was served to his desire by Brunelleschi, who furnished the plans, but left the direction of the work to his pupil, Luca Fancelli, the able architect of the Marquis of Mantua. The work progressed so rapidly that in 1466 Luca was able to inau gurate the principal body of the building. At that time the front contained only seven windows. The Pitti, however, were exhausted by this gigantic con struction. In 1549, they had to turn the palace over to Cosmo I., who installed himself in it during the foUowing year. At the same time, this prince engaged Ammanati to arrange the interior and to construct the rear side, that now looks on the Boboli Gardens (1550-1560). But the works of enlargement did not stop there : in the Seven teenth Century, the Parigi tripled the length of the ground floor and the first story, contenting themselves with adding six windows to the upper story; then, between 1763 and 1839, Ruggieri and Poccianti built the two wings. 300 FLORENCE It would be impossible better to develop and complete Brunelleschi's work than these masters have done, or to enter more thoroughly into the ideas of the initiator. The gigantic substructions which support the wings, and which alone are as high as a house, preserve the simplicity and roughness of the lines of the edifice which they frame, as well as Its savage grandeur. The very bareness of the square, thick with coarse pebbles, also contributes to heighten the effect. Inside the palace, there is an atmosphere of royal mag nificence everywhere: on the vaults, brilliant paintings are united with caryatides in stucco of exuberant action; on the walls are rich fabrics of cerise or green silk, which, so un like our painted papers, make no competition with the pictures, because the stuffs absorb the light instead of re flecting it. In front of the masterpieces, or in the cohiers of the rooms, are beautiful gilded chairs on which the most humble visitor is permitted to take a seat. Each of the twelve great rooms takes its name from the paintings with which it is decorated : of the Iliad, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Venus, the Education of Jupiter, Ulysses, Prometheus, Justice, Flora, and of the " Putti." The Pitti Gallery is by no means a duplicate of the Uffizi Gallery. Entirely different principles presided over its formation. In organizing it, the Medicis consulted their personal likings rather than the general interest : after having done so much for the public, they certainly had every right to arrange their private apartments in accordance ON N <;< CL, THE PITTI PALACE 301 with their own tastes ! The result is that the Pitti does not show the same methodical character as the Uffizi ; but if the series there are less complete and if the whole is less instructive, the masterpieces, on the other hand, are far more numerous. In the Uffizi, more than painting is in teresting only inasmuch as it constitutes a document in the history of art ; at the Pitti we are concerned with the indi vidual value only. There is no care about chronology : as if by deliberate intention, the treceniisti and the School of Giotto have been exiled. On the other hand effort — and such an effort as the Medicis knew how to exert — was con centrated upon the period in which Italian painting reached its full bloom, the period that corresponds to the Golden Age and to the Late Renaissance. Perugino, Raphael, Fra Bartolommeo, Andrea del Sarto, Bronzino, Giorgione, Titian and Paul Veronese are the great masters here. For the fol lowing century Rubens and Van Dyck cut a fine figure, one with the portrait of the Four Philosophers and several other canvases, and the other with that of Cardinal Bentivoglio. Murillo has two fine Madonnas, Velasquez three portraits, one of which is that of Philip IV. on Horseback; Rem brandt also has two portraits, one of which represents him self draped in a velvet mantle, steel collar and gold chain. In the Pitti Palace, there are very few Primitives, but they are masterpieces. The Lamentation over the Dead Christ, painted in 1495, is the most eloquent of Perugino's compositions. Portraiture was then one of the glories of the Florentine 302 FLORENCE School. Nothing could be at once more true and more distinguished than those effigies, in profile, or full face, in which the whole of Florentine society, princes and mer chants, noble and middle-class ladies, defile before us. That period did not care for full length portraits, nor attitudes of movement in an interesting stage-setting. It concentrated its whole attention on the face, and we must admit that in this respect it worked miracles. Photography could do no better. The Pitti Palace contains some of these busts of an ab solute sincerity and implacable realism : such is the so- called Simonetta, by Botticelli, with her interminable neck, her long nose, her ill-arranged hair and her sullen look. The portrait of a youth, attributed to Andrea del Castagno possesses grandeur by means of the character in it. Another, painted by Lorenzo Costa of Ferrara, approaches the Flem ings in its brutality. The portrait painters of the following century tried to treat their models more poetically, completing their physiog nomy by giving them a setting. If Rudolfo Ghirlandajo really painted the two portraits that are to-day attributed to him : — the Young Goldsmith and the Nun {Monaco), the latter of which was long exhibited under the name of Leo nardo da Vinci, it must be acknowledged that he added an element to the art of the Primitives : so much vivacity has he put into the first, and nobUity and poetry into the second. The gallery possesses no less than nine or ten Raphaels, THE PITTI PALACE 303 almost all of the first rank : the Virgin of the Grand Duke, the Virgin of the Baldaquin, the Virgin of the Chair, the Vision of Ezekiel, the portraits, still so timid, of Doni and his wife, and those so bold and strong of Inghirami, Julius II. and Leo X. On his arrival at Florence, Raphael, although entirely freed in many other respects, was stUl accustomed to repre sent the Virgin in the timid attitude dear to the Umbrians. Gradually he gave her more freedom, and at the same time renounced this somewhat archaic and conventional type to borrow the features of some beautiful Florentine of his acquaintance. Probably the earliest of these Virgins, con ceived under the sway of new aspirations, is the Virgin of the Grand Duke of the Pitti Palace. The title was given to it because one of the rulers of Tuscany admired it so much that he took it with him whenever he travelled. The atti tude is still somewhat timid : it represents a quite youthful mother standing with eyes cast down and holding an almost naked child ; the latter already presents the master's favourite type. It is a big, chubby boy, with rather short nose, eyes sparkling with life, and fat hands, with a front gaze of more surprise, perhaps, than fear. In one word, the conception of the subject is realistic, but in the best sense of the word: a very sympathetic mother with her child, not the Queen of Heaven with the Saviour of the World. On this subject, let us note the suppleness of Raphael's genius, and his exquisite tact : he is painting for the Um brians, that is to say for worthy provincials who are igno- 304 FLORENCE rant of the licence of Florentine art, or, if not Ignorant, full of aversion for that profane painting that chills all that is most intimate and respectable in their feelings. Very well ! he who has already produced several of his most se ductive Florentine Virgins here returns to the severe tradi tions of the Umbrian School. The Virgin of the Duke of Ripalda with the head covered with a skirt of the mantle, and feet hidden, or at least obscured, under the robe, and grave and almost austere bearing, is as far removed from the Virgin of the Finch of the Uffizi gallery as Umbrian art it self is from Byzantine art. The last in date of the great sacred compositions with which Raphael preluded his role of official painter to the Church of Rome is the Virgin of the Baldaquin. This solemn work, unfortunately unfinished, in arrangement greatly resembles the Marriage of the Infant Jesus with Si. Catherine and the Conception by Fra Bartolommeo, the former being also in the Pitti Palace and the latter in the Uffizi Museum. At first, we are tempted to suspect Raphael of plagiarism, but the date of the Marriage is 15 12, and that of the Conception later still ; so that it is rather Fra Bartolommeo who has laid Raphael under contribution if when coming again into his share of the patrimony acquired in common the eminent Dominican can be accused of hav ing wronged his associate. In Raphael, the composition reveals a richness and solemnity to which the youthful master had not yet accustomed us, although there is more serenity and sprightliness than gravity in the actors, that is THE PITTI PALACE 305 to say in the Four Apostles or Fathers of the Church stand ing before the throne of the Virgin. One likes to imagine the young artist of Urbino strolling about Florence on a fine summer evening, getting inspira tion from the scene so rich and varied, and the sky of such wonderful transparence in which the shadows dissolve in torrents of light, and from all the historic memories of the city. The Virgin of the Finch is a resume of these calm and serene aspirations for which the young master later found a still more perfect formula in the Belle Jardiniere of the Louvre. The Pitti Palace possesses as a complement a garden, the largest and most magnificent in Florence, the Boboli Gar dens (the name comes from the hill on which they were laid out). If elsewhere the Renaissance has set its seal on the stone monuments, here it has fashioned Nature itself without violence — trees, hedges, flower-beds and lawns — and has given to it since the early days of the Medicis the character which it has preserved for more than three cen turies. THE BOBOLI GARDENS E. MARCH PHILLIPS THE garden is laid out on a steep hill at the back of that palace that Luca Pitti sold to Eleanora de' Medici, the widow of Cosimo I., in 1549. Eleanora was an excellent good woman, but she was never popular with the Florentines, who described her as of an insopporiabile graviia. Tribolo laid out the garden for her, together with Buontalenti and Bartolommeo Ammanti helped to ornament and erect many of the buildings. Near the entrance is a grotto, painted with birds and flowers, and adorned with coloured stucco figures, once gay enough, but now rather forlorn and tawdry. Set into its trumpery work, incongruous and particularly out of keeping, are four half-finished statues by Michael Angelo, intended for the monument of Julius II. , the work for which is described as a tragedy by Condivi, the biographer of the great Floren tine. The statues were intended for captives, and im prisoned for ever, as they are, in the marble, half-struggling to light, they have a double significance. In the inner chamber is a Venus by Gian Bologna, the principal figure of a fountain. The main road mounts up the hill to the back of the palace, which, detached and spacious as is its facade, is at BOBOLI GARDENS AMPHITHEATRE THE BOBOLI GARDENS 307 the back, sunk in a deep trench-like cutting, which has necessitated the architect's inventing aU sorts of expedients for filling up and bridging over. A sort of raised gallery, with a very fine and elaborate fountain, fills the main vacuum, towards which the first floor of the palace looks straight out across a paved court. The great open slope immediately at the back of the palace is given up to a really magnificent amphitheatre, one of those mises-en-scenes which bring home to us what regal ideas of entertainment they had in the Renaissance. It is really large, yet amusing as a faint copy of the great classic models from which the idea was taken. It has six tiers of seats in a huge semi circle of stone, which is separated from the arena by a stone balustrade with fluted pUlars, tasteful, even severe, and, like the little niches which ornament the amphitheatre at intervals, and which are fiUed alternately by a vase and a statue, far removed from the florid and flippant style of the baroque, which was just coming into vogue. The view from the right-hand corner of the amphi theatre is famous ; but let Shelley speak of it, for it is not altered at all since he saw it : " You see below Florence, a smokeless city, its domes and spires occupying the vale ; and beyond, to the right, the Apennines, whose base extends even to the walls. The green valleys of these mountains, which gently unfold them selves upon the plain, and the intervening hills covered with vineyards and olive orchards, are occupied by the villas, which are, as it were, another city, a Babylon of 3o8 FLORENCE palaces and gardens. In the midst of the picture rolls the Arno, through woods and bounded by the aerial snow and summits of the Lucchese Apennines." On the left, a magnificent buttress of lofty, craggy hills juts out in many shapes over a lovely vale, and approaches the walls of the city. Cascine and ville occupy the pinnacles and abut ments of those hills, over which is seen at intervals the ethereal mountain line, heavy with snow. The vale below is covered with cypress groups, whose obeliskine forms of intense green pierce the gray shadows of the hUl that over hangs them. The cypresses, too, of this garden form a magnificent foreground of accumulated verdure; pyramids of dark leaves and shining cones rising out of the mass, beneath which are cut, like caverns, recesses which con duct into walks. The cathedral, with its marble campanile, and the domes and spires of Florence, are at our feet." From hardly any other place does one get such a view of the marble bell-tower and Brunelleschi's wonderful brown dome. They seem to stand out above all the surrounding houses, relieved against the sky, and flanked by the grace ful tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, " noblest symbol of civic Hberty in the world," which sends the deep note of its bell across the summer air. Behind the amphitheatre the ground climbs straight up to a plateau, laid out in a sheet of water in a stone setting, in the midst of which a green bronze Neptune moulded by Gian Bologna poises his trident above four crouching mermen. Against the ilexes behind stands a statue of Abundance, a woman with a fair THE BOBOLI GARDENS 309 expressionless face, believed to be a portrait of Joanna of Austria, wife of Francesco I. The statue was executed by Gian Bologna and Tacca and erected in 1636 to com memorate the fact that during the general distress in Italy from wars, Tuscany alone, under the " benevolent prince," Ferdinand II., revelled in plenty. This part of the garden^ like so many old Italian pleasure-grounds, is a good deal spoilt by the planting of deciduous trees, dotted about in a manner quite alien to the conception of the whole. There ought to be a law prohibiting the planting of copper beeches, pampas grass and other ornamental foliage which looks so out of keeping with the close-cut, sober green of the bay and ilex, and the beauty of time-worn stone and marble. On the plateau at the top the flower-garden, or giardino segreto, is laid out. In Italian gardens this is generally near the palace, unless, as in the present instance, it has a good- sized casino attached, in which the guests could spend the day, lie down and rest during the hot hours, and dine if they pleased. The casino, with its gently curving cream walls, is now given up as a storehouse for lemon trees, and the garden itself is not very gay. It is formally laid out in the usual way with a fountain in the middle, round the base of which climb three bronze monkeys. Its inter est lies chiefly in its position. It is situated on the remains of one of those bastions which Michael Angelo constructed in 1529 when he was engineer of the RepubHc, and which he helped to defend during an eleven months' siege. The great brown waUs with one remaining tower, look almost 3IO FLORENCE impregnable, and are in curious contrast to the frivolous little garden planted on them when a hundred years had passed. Here we look over the ridge in the opposite direction to all the rest of the grounds, and very lovely the view is, the Apennines from this point taking an exquisite intense blue, like lapis-lazuli, and groups of dark cypresses standing out against the silver foam of the olive gardens. At the entrance to the garden is a belvedere from which we overlook the town. There are few open spaces in these gardens ; the whole consists of a sort of bocage of ilexes, overarching in dense shade with their rich black trunks and branches looking almost uncanny in the gloom, or clipped into long green walls in which niches are cut for seats and marble statues. A very imposing avenue of tall cypresses leads away from the flower-garden to the southwest down a steep hill ; outside it, on either hand, runs a pleached alley of ilexes ; and half-way down, where it is broken by groups of statuary, a very wide alley branches off to right and left, each ending at a fountain. The effect of this avenue with its dark sentinels against the blue sky and the glimmering forms of god and goddess, is very grand and must have been much more harmonious before the broad pathway was vulgarized by gravel. Formerly, of course, it had only a dark moss-grown road, set across every yard or so, by a low transverse bar of grooved gray stone, like one or two which still remain. The path sweeps down and we come to another en- FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE, BOBOLI GARDENS THE BOBOLI GARDENS 311 closure, a break as striking as, and quite different from, any we have yet seen, illustrating the clever way in which the garden artists of the Renaissance understood how to space out their ground and how to lead up to surprises. The avenue is so stately that it was felt to be necessary that it should have some adequate goal. This is afforded by a giardino del lago, a miniature lake set in close-cut walls like all the rest, and having a fantastically shaped island, an isoloito, which is reached by bridges and boats. It is all balustraded about and set with pots of lemon trees, and over the whole towers one of Gian Bologna's fountains high in the air, with shallow basin upon which stands a figure of Oceanus. A stone pathway with seats at intervals encircles the toy lake. It is a fitting setting for the society of a Court, a place to assemble on a summer evening ; these close paved paths seem made for the tap-tap of high heeled satin slippers, and little voyages could be made round the tiny lake without danger of splashing delicate brocades or ruffling powdered curls. Publicity has well- nigh obliterated the charm of the Court garden, but a little of it may still be recalled. The little meadow beyond was once called I'Ucellaja, and snares were set here for catching small birds. It is now used by the King and his officers as a jumping-ground for horses, and is laid out in all the intricacies of in and out, fences with a drop, a double, a bullfinch, which no doubt the ItaHan officers, who are splendid riders, negotiate very easily in spite of their formidable appearance. 312 FLORENCE Ghosts are not common in Italy, but this old pleasure- ground is credited with one. Boboli was the name of the owner who cultivated the land and sold it to the Medici. After he had parted with it he pined for it, and so great was his love and longing that he could not eat or sleep or banish it from his mind. He was always talking of it, and his refrain was, "you will see, after death I wiU come to it again." Soon after his death it began to be said that the figure of an old man was often seen on moonlight nights, working in the garden. We are assured that to this day it is often beheld, and that the tap of his spade can be heard. SAN MINIATO CHARLES YRIARTE THE basilica of San Miniato, the most venerable monument in Florence, embedded in the fortress built by San Marino, is of great architectural in terest, besides being an ornament for the city of Florence, of which so splendid a view may be had from the heights of Miniato al Monte, the ancient King's Mountain, which doubtless derived its name from some Lombard prince. There was formerly an oratory dedicated to St. Peter there, built, as is supposed, in the Third Century of our era, and this oratory remained in ruins untU 1013, when the Emperor Henry, Queen Cunegonde — who was afterwards canonized — and HUdebrand, Bishop of Florence, built the basilica in its present shape. When the buUding was in progress the body of San Miniato was found at the spot where the Porta Santa to the left of the facade now stands, and this explains why the church bears the name of that martyred saint. In Italy, as in other countries, there is always some annex for the dignitaries and staff of a basilica who form a small colony concentrated around the mother establishment. In 1295 Andrea de Mozzi, Bishop of Florence, built as his episcopal residence the large crenellated palace which 314 FLORENCE touches the church on the southern side. Ricasoli, the successor of Mozzi in the see, added a vast domitory, and then was erected a campanile, which in 1499 was pulled down and rebuilt by Baccio d'Agnolo. The work was sus pended in 1529, and it was on this side that Michael Angelo, transformed for the nonce into a military engineer, constructed his bastion for the defence of the city, and placed the batteries which drew the enemy's fire upon the tower. The church itself is very grand in its outline, which re calls those of the primitive churches, from which, however, it differs very much in respect to the ornaments adopted. The system of incrusting marbles of different colours, which, next to the massive partition of the Palazzo Vecchio, and the solid substructures of the Strozzi and Riccardi Palaces, is the most salient feature of the Florentine school in the facades of palaces, had its origin in the implicit necessity of using in building and ornament the materials which lie ready to hand. The neighbourhood of Florence is rich in marble quarries of different colours, so that the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, the proud Campanile of Giotto, the Baptistery, Santa Maria NoveUa, and the facades of the other principal buildings in Florence naturally contained incrustations of variously coloured marbles, arranged according to the fancy of each architect. Addi tions were made to San Miniato in each century, a sculptor adding a group of statuary and a painter designing some brilliant cartoon ; but as all of them were men of genius. o< < SAN MINIATO 3x5 the homogeneousness of the great basilica was not im paired. The interior is worthy of the exterior, though it is now abandoned, and was even for a time used as a place of burial. It is quite the early basilica, with its three naves and the great arches which span the central nave show by the difference in their dimensions, as in those of the capitals, that there has been a blending of the features of several ancient monuments. The altar is very well placed for decorative effect, two grand marble staircases leading up to it on either side, while in front of the lofty raised choir is the picturesque chapel built by Michelozzo Michelozzi for Piero de' Medici, who deposited in it a crucifix supposed to be endowed with miraculous power, which is now in the church of Santa Trinita. The most striking feature here is the arrangement of the crypt, to which two staircases descend, the vaulted roof being borne up by thirty-six marble columns. In the centre of this crypt, now used as a place of burial, is an altar beneath which the remains of San Miniato are buried. Ascending the staircase leading from the crypt, the attention is caught by the singular arrangement of the bays which light this part of the edifice. The architect, in order to deepen the solemn aspect of this spot, used for the windows a transparent marble which filters the sun's rays and gives them a golden tinge. The walls of the choir are covered with traces of decoration of a very ancient period, executed, no doubt, by Greeks who were contemporaries of Turrita and Taffi. The beautiful 3i6 FLORENCE sacristy is of the Fourteenth Century, and it was constructed by Nerozzo, of" the Alberti family, the pictures which it contains, representing episodes in the life of St. Francis, be ing attributed to Spinello Aretino. The Fifteenth Century did much for San Miniato, as it was then that Piero de' Medici decorated the altar, and that Bishop Alvaro dedicated the chapel to St. James, St. Vincent, and St. Eustache, and deposited in it the remains of Jacopo da PortogaUo, a cardinal who died in Florence at the early age of six-and-thirty. The tomb, like the Chapel itself, is the work of Antonio Gambarelli, surnamed Rossellino, who arranged with Luca della Robbia for the ornamentation ; and the effect produced by the combination of his marble incrustations with the terra-cottas of the latter is very pleasing. The tomb is the main feature in this Chapel, and it may be regarded as only inferior to the two splendid mausoleums of Santa Croce, the heavy looped curtains which fall from the top of the arch on either side of a roundel being the sole defect. The church of San Miniato is not only remarkable for its architectural beauty, but it lends additional beauty to Florence, the view of it from the banks of the Arno at the extremity of the Cascine being very fine. The contrast between the wooded scenery of the park and the mountain covered with ancient buUdings is very striking, and from afar the traveller approaching Florence can distinguish the outline of San Miniato above the battlements of the episcopal palace, the decHvities of which slope gently down SAN MINIATO 317 towards the town at the foot being a wide piazza with terraces. A little farther, half hidden in the verdure, is the quiet little church of the Reformed Franciscans of Monte Miniato which Michael Angelo compared to the " Bella Villanella." Florence is paying dearly now for the days of triumph which lasted so many centuries ; but the aspect of the city, with its domes, its towers, it overshadowing mountains, its mighty river, its Cascine, and its innumerable statues, re mains as impressive as ever. A debt of gratitude is owing to those who, in attempting to embellish her when she became the capital of New Italy, adhered as closely as possible to the principles of art laid down by the Florentines of the Renaissance, endeavouring, with the true artistic sense, to establish a harmony between the natural aspect of Florence and the outlines of her monuments. THE TOWER OF GALILEO LOUISE DE LA RAMEE {OUIDA) HE took me up to the old Star Tower of Galileo among the winding paths of the hiUs, with the gray walls overtopped by white fruit blossoms, and ever and again, at some break in their ramparts of stone, the gleam of the yellow Arno water or the glisten of the marbles of the city shining on us far beneath, through the silvery veU of the olive leaves. It was just in that loveliest moment when winter melts into spring. Everywhere under the vines the young corn was spring ing in that tender vivid greenness that is never seen twice in a year. The sods between the furrows were scarlet with the bright flame of wild tulips, with here and there a fleck of gold where a knot of daffodils nodded. The roots of the olives were blue with nestling pimpernels and hyacinths, and along the old gray walls the long soft thick leaf of the arums grew, shading their yet unborn lilies. The air was full of a dreamy fragrance; the bullocks went on their slow ways with flowers in their leathern frontlets ; the contadini had flowers stuck behind their ears, or in their waistbands; women sat by the wayside, singing THE TOWER OF GALILEO 319 as they plaited their yellow curling lengths of straw ; chil dren frisked and tumbled like young rabbits under the budding maples ; the plum-trees strewed the green land scape with flashes of white Hke newly-fallen snow on alpine grass slopes ; again and again among the tender pallor of the olive woods there rose the beautiful flush of a rosy almond-tree ; at every step the passer-by trod ankle- deep in violets. The air was cool, but so exquisitely stiU and soft and radiant, that as the old people came out of their dark arched stone chambers and sat a little in the sun, and made up into bunches for selling the blossoms which the children gathered by the million without seeming to make the earth the poorer, one felt as if the sun shining on them as it did miist make them young again — as if no one could very long be very old or very sad in Italy. Who was it that called Italy the country of the dead ? Not they surely who have beheld her in the days of spring. About the feet of the old Tower of Galileo, ivy and vervain and the Madonna's herb, and the white sexagons of the stars of Bethlehem grew among the grasses ; pigeons paced to and fro with pretty pride of plumage ; a dog slept on the flags ; the cool, moist, deep-veined creepers climbed about the stones ; there were peach-trees in all the beauty of their blossoms and everywhere about them were close- set olive-trees, with the ground between them scarlet with the tulips and the wild rose-trees. From a window a girl leaned out and hung a cage among 320 FLORENCE the ivy leaves that her bird might sing his vespers to the sun. Who will may see the scene to-day. So little changed — so little, if at all — from the time when the feet of the great student ' wore the timber of the tower- stairs, and the fair-haired scholar,^ who had travelled from the isles in the northern sea, came up between the olive stems to, gaze thence on Vallombrosa. The world has spoiled most of its places of pilgrimage, but the old Star Tower is not harmed as yet, where it stands among its quiet garden-ways and grass-grown slopes, up high among the hiUs, with sounds of dripping water on its court and wild-wood flowers thrusting their bright heads through its stones. Generations have come and gone : tyrannies have risen and fallen ; full many a time the plain below has been red with the invader's fire and the curling flame has burned the fruitful land to blackened barrenness ; full many a time the silence of the olive thickets has been broken by the tumult of war and revolution, and the dead bodies of men have drifted thick as leaves in the blood-stained current of the river. But nothing has been changed here, where the old square pile stands out among the flowering vines. It is as peaceful, as simple, as homely, as closely girt with blossoming boughs and with tulip-crimsoned grasses, now, as then, when from its roof in the still midnights 1 Galileo. 2 John Milton. THE TOWER OF GALILEO 321 of a far-off time, its master read the secrets of the stars. You can see it to-day — any day that you will — this great shadowy hillside place among the fields. But come up softly between the old gnarled olive stems ; tread noiselessly the winding pathway where the wild hyacinth shakes its blue bells on the wind ; be reverent a little — if reverence in this age be possible — as you climb the narrow wooden stair, and through the unglazed arches of the walls look westward where the sea lies, and south ward towards Rome. Be reverent a little, for a little space at least : for here Galileo learned the story of the sun ; and here Milton look ing on Val d' Arno dreamed of Paradise. THE VILLA PALMIERI AND THE VILLA MEDICI E. MARCH PHILLIPS T ¦^HE author of the immortal Decameron, the founder of who can say how many modern novels, is be lieved to have been born by the river Mensola, near Settignano. The villa which belonged to his father has been identified by a contract of sale existing in the archives of Florence and dated 1336, when Giovanni Boccaccio was twenty-three years old. This viUa, now called Villa Boccaccio, stUl lies on the hill above Villa Palmieri. Some old frescoes were found lately in restoring it. All over this fertile land, which must have been almost as thickly studded with habitations in his day, as it is now, the romancer wandered, marrying fiction to reality. He wrote the famous volume of stories of the patient Griselda, of Romeo and Juliet, of Isabella and her pot of Basil ; stories from which Chaucer and Shakespeare and Keats — and who shall say how many others ? — have borrowed through the centuries. And, after more than five hundred years, it is still possible to identify the scenes in which he laid them. Boccaccio was thirty-five the year the great plague came to Florence, where it ravaged and destroyed, and struck THE VILLA PALMIERI 323 such terrror " that the laws of God and man were no more regarded." Some lived licentiously, some temperately, some fled from the city. There was no one to nurse the sick, and numbers passed out of the world without even a witness. In the country, the animals were left to roam at wiU, no one cared to reap the standing corn. Between March and July, a hundred thousand souls perished in the city alone. " What noble palaces were then depopulated to the last inhabitant, what families became extinct ! What vast possessions were left and no known heir to inherit them ! " He frames his tales in the device of a joyous company of seven ladies " all discreet, nobly descended and perfectly accompUshed," who met in Santa Maria Novella, where they agreed to take their maids and to retire to the country seat of one or the other, and were speedily joined by three gentlemen, in whom neither the adversity of the times, nor the loss of friends, nor even fear for themselves, could stifle, or indeed cool, the passion of love. " They accordingly set out next day from the city, and, after they had travelled two short miles, came to the place they had already decided upon." This first halt has been identified as Poggio Gherardo, lying above Settignano. It is an old castellated house standing high above the plain. The entrance-hall is the Loggia mentioned in the Decameron. Here then, the first series of those tales was supposed to be told ; and the Mensola flowing below is that " stream of clear water," to which the joyous company went slowly 324 FLORENCE down to disport themselves at evening, barefooted and with bare arms, till they returned to the palace for supper, music and dancing. " When Sunday came, the queen, with slow steps and accompanied and followed by her ladies and by the three youths, and led by the song of maybe twenty nightingales and other birds, took her way towards the west by an un frequented lane. . . . Gossiping, joking, and laughing with her company, she led them to a beautiful and splendid palace." The " unfrequented lane " may still be followed, and passing by it from Majano to San Dominico, we reach the Villa Palmieri, which then bore the name of Schifanoja, or " banish care," where Boccaccio's fancy pictured the re mainder of the tales being told. " The palace was seated on an eminence in the middle of a large plain. When they had entered and seen the great hall and the chambers most elegantly fitted up, they greatly extolled it, judging its lord to be truly a magnificent person. Going afterwards below stairs and observing the spacious and pleasant court, the cellars stored with the richest wines, and delicate springs of water everywhere running they extolled it yet more. Thence they went to rest in an open gallery which overlooked the court, set out with all the flowers of the season, whither the master of the household brought wine and sweetmeats for their refreshment. " They were now shown into the garden, which was on one side of the palace, and walked about. All round and THE VILLA PALMIERI 325 through the midst of it were broad straight walks flanked with vines. . . . The sides of these walks were closed with white and red roses and jasmine in such a manner as to exclude the morning and even the midday sun. In the midst, what seemed more delightful than anything else was a plot of ground like a meadow the grass of deep green, spangled with a thousand different flowers, and set round with orange and cedar trees. ... In the centre of this meadow was a fountain of white marble beautifully carved . . . a jet of water spurted up which made a most agreeable sound in its fall ; the water which came thence, ran through the meadow by a secret passage, and was car ried to every part of the garden, uniting in one stream at its going out, and falling with such force into the plain as to turn two mills." Boccaccio is evidently painting the villa as he knew it. The two miUs still exist, but were rebuilt after being destroyed in a flood of the Mugnone in 1409. The life his youths and ladies lived, walking about, discoursing and wearing chaplets of flowers, feasting by the side of a foun tain, singing and dancing, reading and playing chess, and after supper going to the meadow by the fountain-side to tell stories, was the way in which much of that society was carried on. The villa belonged at that time to Cioni de' Fini ; the Tolomei bought it soon after, and sold it in the Fifteenth Century to Matteo Palmieri, and by a descendant of his, in 1670, it was rebuilt and called by his own name. The high 326 FLORENCE road to Fiesole at that time ran across where the grand ter race now stretches, and was only cleared away when the Earl of Crawford bought the villa in 1874. Under its present owner. Lady Crawford, Villa Palmieri is as fascinating a resort as you could find for spring and summer days and nights. Its wide bricked terrace, with a balustrade and statues, looking out over the Val d' Arno, would seem the very place for the gathering together of a company of congenial spirits. The double stairway, with its fine graceful sweep, was built by Palmieri's descendant in 1870; it is overgrown with creepers and the air is heavy with perfume. It leads to the flower garden, which has a wall in which round openings at intervals frame exquisite views, and below, the ground falls away into wild and dis tant walks, where irises grow in spring time and where such nightingales sing as might have heralded the coming of Pampinea and her goodly company. The Villa Medici When we stand on the terrace at Villa Medici and think of the records there of Lorenzo, we do not think of the cruel victor of Volterra, or of the destroyer of Florentine liberty, but rather of the man who was the dear friend and patron of the most cultivated and refined minds of the day ; and of all the Medicean vUlas, none was more intimately interwoven than this one with the lives of the most interesting of the group. Three men stand out, interesting and distinguished, in that THE VILLA MEDICI 327 age of remarkable personalities — MarsUio Ficino, the phi losopher, the refined, mystical thinker, whose delicate health was combined with extraordinary literary activity. He was a priest, and secular teacher, and preached very often both in his own parish church and in Florence. His pupUs were devoted to him, and he kept up a large corre spondence with them. His great work was the translation of Plato, which no doubt had a deep influence on the thought of the day. He made many other translations, and left some original work and a mass of very interesting correspondence with such men as the Medici, Federigo da Montefeltro and Bembo. In spite of all the honours paid him, he remained simple and unpretending, loving a quiet life, often melancholy, though with those he loved he was cheerful and sympa thetic. In his last years he was a constant visitor of Lo renzo, at one or other of his villas, and to his last hour Lorenzo was attached to him, and describes him as " Marsilio whom heaven has filled with its own especial grace." The man who was in closest relation to Lorenzo was that Angelo Poliziano, whose name is so connected with Villa Medici. He was commended to Lorenzo, while still young, as the translator of the Iliad. The young Head of the House became his friend and through all changes Poli ziano loved him, till he stood by his death-bed. He be came a great poet, and his verses, the Stanzas, the Sylvee Rusiicus are counted among the gems of the Italian language. 328 FLORENCE The third of this delightful trio was Pico della Miran dola, younger than the others and leaving little of finished work behind him when he died at two-and-thirty ; he yet has left the impress of a personality that has defied time. His is the most brilliant figure of that brilliant circle. We are famUiar with the description of his taU, slender, well- knit form and the handsome face " from which something divine seemed to shine," his costly dress and abstruse learning and the simplicity and sweetness of character which drew all hearts to him. Among these friends Lorenzo passed perhaps his happi est hours, discussing philosophy and politics, and writing verses and sonnets. Poliziano speaks of these visits in his poem Rusiicus : " Such was my song, with idle thought In Fiesole' s cool grottoes wrought. Where from the Medici's retreat On that famed mount, beneath my feet The Tuscan city I survey And winding Arno, far away. Here sometime at happy leisure Bounteous Lorenzo takes his pleasure His friends to entertain and feast {Of Phoebus' sons himself not least). Offering a haven, safe and free To storm-tossed sons of Poesy." ViUa Medici had, however, a darker association for Lo renzo. It was when he was staying here as a youth with THE VILLA MEDICI 329 Giuliano, that the Pazzi conspiracy was formed against him. It had been the intention of the conspirators to com mit the murder when they went to dine with Lorenzo at Fiesole, and it was only after they found that Giuliano would be absent, that they transferred their attempt to the Cathedral ; the lifting of the Host was to give the signal. Giuliano was murdered, and Lorenzo, who escaped by his coolness and presence of mind, took a terrible vengeance on the assassins. The villa which was built by Michelozzo Michelozzi for Lorenzo's father, has been transformed into an Eight eenth Century house, but the arched rooms are there; there must always have been the terrace in front, and the glory of the Villa Medici is its view. It stands high upon the hillside, with the grounds dropping swiftly below, and there lies the whole landscape — Florence spreads over the valley, the low violet hills bound the horizon, Arno winds like a white ribbon, bells come soft through the delicious mountain air. Why does the place bring those men so vividly before one, as one gazes at the blue distance over which time has passed unchanged, at the olives making a silvery tracery against it, at the cypresses, velvet spires as green as when Benozzo Gozzoli set his palette .'' From this spot Lo renzo and Giuliano rode down on that April day to the Duomo, which they could see far away in the valley on that expedition from which one of them was never to come j back. Here they gathered those they loved around them, 330 FLORENCE in the intervals of that thronging life, and we know they felt that thought and leisure and friendship were stiU the best things it had to give. " Once more the world's great age begins anew Once more the blossoms of that marvellous spring unclose." As the sun sinks below the purple Carrara mountains, we picture the group who once often watched it from this terrace ; the Magnificent Medici, dark, saturnine, sympa thetic, the man of marvellous tact and variety, with his brilliant friends full of wit and grave discourse and social gossip, the music of Plato or Homer sounding in their ears. " Then when the stream of thought begins to weary, Pulci breaks the silence with a bran-new canto of Morgante, or a singing-boy is bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer An gelo's last-named ballata," THE CARMINE AND SANTO SPIRITO SUSAN AND JOANNA HORNER THE Church and Monastery of Sta. Maria della Carmine was built for the Carmelite friars by Agnes, widow of Cione Tifa di Praniere Ver- nacci, in fulfillment of her husband's last wUl. The Sod erini, Manetti, Nerli, Ferucci . and Seragli famihes gave generous contributions to the church, which was finished in 1475. In 1771, a great part of the buUding was destroyed by fire, and it was restored in its present form by Giuseppi Ruggieri, chiefly at the expense of the Marchese Lorenzo NiccoHni. The monastery was buUt by Count Guido da Montefeltro, and enlarged by one of the Soderini. The Senator Giovanbattista Michelozzi, who built the canopy for the high altar of Santo Spirito, erected the covered entrance to the cloister in the year 1600, and on that occasion the friars had the barbarity to whitewash and partially destroy a celebrated fresco in the cloister by Ma saccio, which represented the Consecration of the Church, i and contained portraits of the Archbishop Amerigo Corsini, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Giovanni de' Medici, Nicolo da Uzzano, Bartolommeo Valori, Lorenzo Ridolfi, and other celebrated men of the period. As much as remains of this fresco has been uncovered. A Florentine gentleman, in a 332 FLORENCE red dress, is supposed to represent Giovanni de' Medici, the only virtuous citizen of the family which he founded. The face is nearly obliterated, but the figure and action are refined and dignified, and the drapery arranged in grand yet simple folds ; near him two friars converse with animation as they enter the church. Higher up, on the same wall, is a repetition of the favourite subject of hermitages, probably referring to the first hermits on Mount Carmel. On another part of the same wall is the fresco of a knight and a nun, who are presented to the Virgin by their patron saints. This fresco, though of earUer date, is in better preservation. Cavalcaselle attributes it to Giovanni da Milano, the friend of Taddeo Gaddi. The expression of the nun is singularly sweet and earnest, and the saints behind are dignified. The remaining fresco of this cloister represents a series of events in the life of the prophet Elijah, whom the Carmelites claim as the founder of their Order. The interior of the church, which is in the form of a Latin cross, is spacious and lofty, but has no pretension to beauty. The roof is painted in fresco in a bad period of art. The pictures in the chapels on either side of the nave are all mediocre, except one by Pocetti, to the right, repre senting the Eternal appearing to the Virgin, who is mourn ing over her dead Son. The southern transept contains the celebrated Bancacci Chapel, with the paintings by Masaccio and FiHppino Lippi, which commenced a new period in Art, and formed the greatest painters of the Cinque Cento period. Though .^_i^ ^J^^ .Afcv.r; THE CARMINE THE CARMINE AND SANTO SPIRITO 333 preceding Raphael by nearly a century, Masaccio was well worthy of being his master ; and when the youthful artist arrived in Florence, with ideas derived from the conventional types and formal, though correct, drawing of Perugino, he must have delighted in the freedom of hand, the close ob servation and fine selection from nature, the dignity and grace of the figures, as well as the life and ease with which the story is told in these frescoes. As a proof of Raphael's appreciation of these works, and of his unfaUing industry, it is recorded that he copied them seven times. Though injured by the fire of 1777, and in an obscure light, enough can still be distinguished to delight and as tonish the spectator. On the pilasters at the entrance are represented Adam and Eve under the Tree of Knowledge and the Expulsion from Paradise. The walls of the chapel are divided in twelve compartments, including these two frescoes — St. Peter heals Tabitha, and cures a cripple at the Gate of the Temple. He preaches and baptizes; the youth who has just thrown off his garment, and stands shivering with cold, is a figure which, according to Lanzi, formed an epoch in Art. Peter and John heal a cripple : the houses in the background have windows constructed for blinds, before the use of glass ; the two Florentine youths converse in the centre of the composition ; their draperies are finely drawn, and the colouring is soft and agreeable. Peter rescued from Prison : the expression of the angel, who, with a smUe on his countenance, is listening to the apostle, is singularly sweet. The grand figure of St. Paul standing 334 FLORENCE before the prison is by Filippino Lippi, and was introduced by Raphael into his cartoon of Paul preaching at Athens. Peter finding the Tribute Money in the Fish's Mouth is a large compartment, in which the composition is divided in three separate events ; Andrew calls Peter ; Peter seeks for the money in the mouth of the fish ; and in the centre and principal group, the Saviour, a calm and dignified figure, is seated in the midst of the apostles : Peter is eagerly expos tulating with him. The heads of the apostles are very fine and may have suggested to Raphael his group in the cartoon of " Feed my Sheep." A grand range of mountains forms the background, not unlike the Carrara, as seen from the Mediterranean. Below this fresco, St. Peter raises a youth to life, a scene from the apocryphal history of the apostles. Masaccio died when at work on this picture, and the central group of the composition was finished many years later by FUippino Lippi. The kneeling youth is said to have been a portrait of Francesco Granacci, who was born in 1469, and was when painted apparently about sixteen. Among the spectators are several portraits. The first head on the left is Marco Soderini, who died in 1485 ; the poet, Luigi Pulci, is on his right, and the two on each side of monks are Piero Guicciardini, the father of the historian, and Piero del Pugliese. Opposite is one of the finest compositions of the series, Nero condemning Peter to Death, with the Apostle's Cru cifixion, attributed to Filippino Lippi. Nero is seated on a throne, his head crowned with laurel ; to the right, behind THE CARMINE AND SANTO SPIRITO 335 his extended arm, are three portraits ; that to the right of the proconsul is Antonio Pollajuolo; the third from Nero is Masaccio, and resembles the portrait by himself in the Uffizi Gallery, from which it may have been taken. There are also portraits to the left of Nero ; one is probably Filippino, with a bald head seated. At the further end of the com position St. Peter is crucified with his head downwards : the cross is supported by two half-nude executioners who are letting down the saint by a rope; BotticeUi's portrait is among the spectators with sorrowful countenances. FiHp pino likewise executed the remainder of the frescoes in this chapel. As Mrs. Jameson observes : — " In considering these works, their superiority over all that painting had tUl then achieved or attempted is such there seems a kind of break in the progression of Art, as if Masaccio had overleapt suddenly the limits which his predecessors had found im passable; but Ghiberti and his gates explain the seeming wonder. He had learned from Ghiberti not merely the knowledge of form, but the effects of light and shade, in giving relief and roundness to his figures, which, in com parison to those of his predecessors, seemed to start from the canvas. Masaccio added a precision in the drawing of the naked figure, and a softness and harmony in colouring the flesh, never attained before his time, nor since sur passed, till the days of Raphael and Titian. He excelled also in the expression and imitation of natural actions and feeUngs. Add the animation and variety of character in his heads — so that it was said of him that he painted souls as 336 FLORENCE well as bodies — and his free-flowing draperies, quite different from the longitudinal folds of the Giotto school, yet grand and simple, and we can form some idea of the combination of excellence with novelty of style which astonished his con temporaries. The artists who, Vasari informs us, studied here, besides Raphael, were Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, Perugino, and Baccio Bandi nelli. In a chapel of the Sacristy some interesting frescoes have been discovered which are supposed to be by the hand of Agnolo Gaddi. The subject is the legend of St. Cecilia, with her husband, St. Valerian, and their friend, St. Tiber- tius. St. Cecilia is a most lovely woman, and the same fair face, with the delicate features, long golden hair, and dignified, yet sweet and serious expression, are preserved with portrait-Hke fidelity in every representation of the saint. In the lunette on the wall to the left, facing the high altar, is the Marriage of Valerian and Cecilia ; below is the banquet, in which the servants bring in meat, while Cecilia plays on her organ ; and at the opposite end she is seen conversing with her husband. In the lunette above the window an old man is seated on a martyr's tomb, and points out St. Urban to Valerian. In the lunette on the wall to the right of the altar. Valerian is instructed in Chris tianity by an old man, and is baptized by St. Urban. In the second division, on the left wall. Valerian is seen in prayer crowned by angels ; Tibertius is instructed in Chris- THE CARMINE AND SANTO SPIRITO 337 tianity by Valerian and CecUia, and is baptized. On either side of the window. Valerian and Tibertius distribute alms and bury the dead ; they are led before the Prefect ; on the right wall they are on the way to execution, when they con vert their jailer and all his family ; they are prepared for death by Cecilia, and are executed. On the lowest com partment, to the left, Cecilia distributes alms and is taken prisoner ; on her road to execution she instructs the by standers and four thousand persons are converted. On the right wall, Cecilia is beheaded, and the blood is collected as it flows from her neck ; her figure here is especially grace ful ; she is buried in the catacombs, and her house is con secrated as an oratory by St. Urban. In the choir of the church, which was built by the Soderini family, is the monument by Benedetto da Rovez zano, to the memory of the celebrated Piero Soderini, who was Gonfalonier of Florence in 1502, and who died and was buried in Rome. It consists of a plain dark-green marble sarcophagus beneath an arch of white marble, richly decorated with delicate carving, and skulls which have a circle of hair like that of monks. On the supports and other parts of the monument are larger skuUs, with hair starting from the head, giving them a stiU more ghastly ap pearance ; figures of men, animals, genii with scrolls of acanthus leaves, and imitations of antique arabesques are in cluded among the ornaments ; and lower down, leopards, the papal keys, and the favourite Florentine decoration of festoons of fruit. 338 . FLORENCE In the northern transept, which belongs to the Corsini family, built in 1675, is the tomb of Sant' Andrea Corsini, to whom the chapel is dedicated. The painted ceiling is by Luca Giordano. The ponderous ' marble relief of the apotheosis of the saint is by Foggini ; on one side, repre sented in a simUar manner, is the story of a victory of the- Florentines over a famous leader of Free Companies, won by the prayers of Sant' Andrea ; on the other, the Virgin, accompanied by Angels, appears to the Saint. Andrea Corsini died in 1373 ; he was first a Carmelite friar, and afterwards Bishop of Fiesole, and was canonized by Urban VIII. in 1629. Santo Spirito The earliest Church and Monastery of Santo Spirito was built in 1292 by the Augustinians, who received such liberal contributions from the citizens that they were enabled to raise a temple of considerable size, which they adorned with paintings by Cimabue, Simone Memmi and Giottino. After the expulsion of Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens, in 1343, when the city was divided in quartieri — quarters — in place of the old division of sestieri, this important Augustinian monastery gave this quarter the name of San Spirito. The church, however, soon was found too small for the increasing population, and in 1433 a new edifice was commenced under the auspices of Filippo Brunelleschi. He proposed that the church should face the Arno, with a large Piazza THE CARMINE AND SANTO SPIRITO 339 before it ; but the Capponi family, whose houses were along the river, made objections, and the plan was there fore altered. As BruneUeschi died in 1446, the building was not far advanced, and a calamity which occurred in 1470 caused a stUl further delay. Galeazo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, that year paid a visit to Lorenzo de' Medici, when a grand display of ceremonials was arranged for Easter Sunday in the Church of Santo Spirito ; but, from the carelessness of some of the workmen, the building caught fire and was wholly consumed. It was recom menced according to the original design of Brunelleschi, which was followed as closely as possible. A contemporary anonymous author records that Brunelleschi was in the habit of only making a rough model of his architectural compositions, leaving the details vague and uncertain, and giving his directions to the masons as the work proceeded, altering and modifying his design. The fact must account for various defects in Santo Spirito, which some critics have attributed to one Antonio Manetti, a workman who had been a pupil of Brunelleschi, but who later set up as his rival, and ventured to disparage his designs. The church, nevertheless, is a noble example of Brunelleschi's composi tions. The erection occupied above twenty years. The cupola was built after a design by Salvi d' Andrea ; and was only finished in 1482, in which year, according to the diary of Luca Landucci, a Florentine citizen, a sermon was preached here. The sacristy was added in 1488, after a design by Giuliano di San Gallo, and the beautiful little 340 FLORENCE vestibule which connects the sacristy with the church and cloister, was the joint work of Simone Pollaiuolo, surnamed II Cronaca, and Giuliano di San Gallo. The sculpture within was executed by Sansovino (Contucci). The cupola of the sacristy was designed by Antonio del Pollaiuolo. The belfry, which has been much admired for its perfect proportions was the work of Baccio d' Agnolo. The interior of Santo Spirito is very grand from the immense space, the extreme simplicity of the architecture and its beautiful proportions. It is in the form of a Latin cross, 315 feet long and 191 feet across the transepts. The aisles are carried round the nave and transepts by a line of handsome columns of pietra-serena, with Corinthian capitals. These chapels are raised a step above the pave ment, a defect which Brunelleschi is said to have copied from the little Church of the SS. Apostoli, which he so greatly admired that he refused to admit an error in the composition. Some of these chapels contain good altar- pieces. The first to the right of the entrance contains an Assumption of the Virgin with saints, by one of the school of Piero di Cosimo. The second chapel contains a copy of Michael Angelo's Pieta at Rome, by his pupil, Nanni di Baccio Bigio. The third has a wooden statue of San Nicolo, in Tolentino, by Sansovino : the angels on either side are by Franciabigio, the friend of Andrea del Sarto. The rest of the chapels on this side of the nave contain nothing of importance. In the right transept, however, are several interesting THE CARMINE AND SANTO SPIRITO 341 pictures. One of these, in the Capponi Chapel, is in a dark position, and represents a nun enthroned, supposed to be Santa Monaca, the mother of St. Augustine. She is giving the rules of her order to twelve other nuns ; angels kneel on either side. Cavalcaselle considers this picture to be in the style of the PoUaioli, although not one of the best specimens. The nuns, who have very marked counte nances, are portraits of ladies of the Capponi family. The fourteenth chapel from the entrance belongs to the Nerli family and contains a very beautiful picture by FUip pino Lippi, painted in the artist's best manner. The Vir gin is seated on a throne within a shrine, supported by pi lasters, and adorned by lovely cherubs. The Christ-child on her lap is singularly beautiful ; one hand clasps his mother's fingers ; the other rests on a cross offered him by the little St. John, who appears full of earnest devotion. The finest part of the picture is St. Martin who wears a bishop's stole, and presents the donator of the picture to the Virgin. The donator was Tanai de' Nerli, who be longed to one of the most distinguished families among the Florentine citizens ; he was frequently employed on diplo matic missions, and made himself conspicuous by his per secution of Girolamo Savonarola ; he even caused the bell of San Marco, which had been rung to rouse the citizens the night when Savonarola was seized, to be taken from the convent, and carried to San Miniato on an ass's back, as a sign of opprobrium. This fierce persecutor of a good and wise man is here represented kneeling humbly, and his 342 FLORENCE countenance, as well as the action of his hands, express well the mingled wonder and reverence with which he ap proaches the mother of our Lord. On the opposite side of the picture St. Catherine presents the wife of Tanai de' Nerli to the Virgin, who turns her head towards her. In the landscape background is the gate of San Frediano, and Tanai, dismounting from his horse, gives the reins to an attendant, and kisses his little daughter who has come to the door of the house with a servant girl to meet her father. Cavalcaselle observes that no portraits of this time are more admirably real than these of the Nerli family — " Filippino never approached nearer than here to the ideal of simple and grand drapery. His precision in defining form is ad mirable, his ability in depicting popular life in distance as tonishing for its reaHstic truth : his colour is a little raw but pleasant still, and modelled with great breadth and suc cess." The adjoining chapel has a copy of Perugino's picture of St. Bernard appearing to the Virgin, the original of >vhich is in the Munich Gallery. At the angle of the transept, opposite the Capponi Chapel with the altar-piece of Santa Monaca, there is another chapel, likewise belong ing to the Capponi, and containing a marble monument be hind an iron grating, to the memory of the first Gino Capponi, and erected by his son Neri, who is also buried here, as well as Piero the grandson of Neri, celebrated in Florentine history. Gino was born in 1360, and rendered his name famous by the part he played in a war against THE CARMINE AND SANTO SPIRITO 343 Pisa, which city he conquered for the Florentines in 1404 and, when appointed governor, he gained the affection of the Pisans by his gentle behaviour. His son, Neri, whose profile in basso-relievo by Simone di Betto is on this monu ment, was distinguished in the war carried on by the Flor entines against the Duke of Milan, and by his spirited de fence of the republic from the encroachments of Cosimo de' Medici. He died lamented by all his fellow-citizens in 1447. H's grandson Piero was the champion of Floren tine liberty, when threatened by Charles VIII. of France ; and his spirited reply to that monarch's insolent declaration that if the treaty he had dictated were not signed he would sound his trumpets — " Then we shall sound our beUs," will never be forgotten in Florence. Piero Capponi was killed in 1496 in an assault against the Pisans ; his remains were brought up the Arno in a funeral barge, and deposited in his house near the bridge of the SS. Trinita, from whence they were borne to the Church of Santo Spirito, accom panied by the magistrates and a vast multitude of the citi zens. The church was lighted by innumerable tapers, and lined with four ranges of banners, bearing alternately the arms of the Florentine magistracy and of the Capponi family. A funeral oration was delivered over the coffin, proclaiming, in words of the highest praise, the distin guished life of the deceased, and the deep sorrow felt for the loss of the vaHant soldier and eminent citizen. His remains were then deposited in the same tomb which his grandfather Neri had caused to be constructed for his illus- 344 FLORENCE trious great-grandfather, Gino Capponi. The opposite monument is that of Cardinal Luigi Capponi, a lineal de scendant of Piero, who died in 1659. In the nineteenth chapel, which is within the apse, there is an altar-piece with saints by Agnolo Gaddi. In this chapel is buried Piero Vettori, a literary critic of some repu tation, born in 1499 at Florence. Although the Medici were the constant theme of his satire, the Grand-Duke Cosimo I., who had a just estimation for talent in every form, appointed him, in 1538, Professor of Classics ; his lectures were attended by a vast concourse of students, who spread his reputation. He died in 1565. The next altar-piece of a Madonna enthroned with saints on either side, is in the manner of Botticelli. Over the twenty-first altar are Martyrs, by Alessandro Allori ; the predella is in the style of Botticelli, and contains a rep resentation of the Pitti Palace as it appeared when first buUt. The twenty-fourth altar has an Annunciation by Sandro Botticelli ; the twenty-fifth a Madonna and Child with two angels St. Bartholomew and St. John the Evangel ist. The twenty-seventh altar contains a good, though damaged, picture of the Madonna enthroned, with angels, St. Thomas and St. Peter, with the date 1482. Caval caselle supposes these pictures to have been the joint pro duction of Piero di Cosimo and Cosimo Roselli, and he observes that the styles of Ghirlandaio and FiHppino are mingled with that of Cosimo Roselli in both pictures. The altar which follows is enclosed in a fine marble o H3 < a