We are now arrived at the epoch which forms the distinctive character of
the Tuscan school, the epoch of Michael Agnolo. In placing him here,
chronology has been less attended to than the spirit of works; for Frà
Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto, and others, his contemporaries or juniors,
belong more properly to the period of Lionardo than his; the elements of
which he gave in the Cartoon of Pisa, and the consummation in the
Capella Sistina, on which his school and the imitation of his style were
founded; and to which the politics of his time, the splendid oligarchy
of the Medici, and the fierce republican spirit of their opponents, gave
an energy and produced efforts, unknown to society in repose.
Notwithstanding the insinuating arts by which the Medici had debauched
public affection, and that undermining power which at last changed
influence to tyranny, they were in less than a century[62] three times
exiled from their country. The first, the banishment of Cosmo, called
the Father of his Country, lasted not above one year, and drew no
consequences; for the interval between it and the next (1494) was marked
with uniform success, and its last twenty years[63] with the splendid
administration and the extended patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent.
His Garden near the church of S. Marco, which he opened as a repository
and a school of art, has been little less celebrated than the Hesperian
ones of old: it contained, if not all that had been discovered, what
could be purchased of antique statues, basso-relievoes, and fragments of
every kind; and the apartments were hung with pictures, cartoons, and
designs of Donatello, Brunellesco, Paolo Uccello. Frà Giovanni da
Fiesole, Masaccio, &c.; here the student was not only instructed, but,
by the magnificence of the founder, supported; and it may without
exaggeration be asserted, that whatever rose to eminence in the art at
that period, was the offspring of Lorenzo's garden.
His death was followed by the expulsion of his sons, Pietro, Giovanni,
afterwards Leo X., and Julian, in the sequel Duke of Nemours. An
immediate anarchy succeeded the expulsion; the populace broke into their
houses, destroyed or carried off their furniture, and demolished the
residence of Giovanni, the garden of Lorenzo, and the palace on the Via
Larga,[64] at once. The numerous partisans of the family, however,
contrived to save much.[65]
Other circumstances conspired to render this interval of anarchy
pernicious to art, till the return of the Medici in 1512. Towards the
close of the fifteenth century, the Dominican Frà Girolamo Savonarola,
of enthusiastic memory, by prophecies and sermons, loaded with
democratic principles, gained gradually such an ascendancy over the
minds of the people, that the Signoria found themselves forced to adopt
a senate at large; in other words, to submit to a democracy. But
Savonarola, not content with political victory, aimed at a total
revolution in morals, and continued to lash the profligacy of public
manners, overflowing in voluptuous song and music, or gazing at the
lascivious nudities of statues and pictures, as irresistible incentives
to vice. It had been customary during carnival, to erect certain cabins
in the market-place, to set them on fire on the eve of Ash-Wednesday,
and bid them farewell amid the shouts of convivial mirth and the frolic
of amorous dalliance. Savonarola instituted in 1497 a public festival of
another kind: a large scaffold was erected in the market-place, a vast
number of the finest specimens in painting and sculpture, offensive from
their nudities, were collected; the pictures placed on the first step;
the sculptures, especially when portraits of first-rate Florentine
belles, disposed on the second; the whole inclosed by foreign precious
tapestry, and that, with great solemnity, set on fire. The scaffolding
of the next year excelled the first in magnificence; its gorgeous
apparel invested the busts of the most celebrated beauties of former
years; those of the Bencina, Lena Morella, Bina and Maria de'Lenzi,
works of the most eminent sculptors; on it was placed a copy of
Petrarca, decorated with gold, missal-painting, and miniatures,
estimated at fifty scudi d'oro; and to prevent theft, the whole was
constantly guarded. The procession approached, surrounded the scaffold,
and amid a concert of consecrating hymns, bells, trumpets, cymbals, and
the acclamations of the Signoria and the people, the victims, sprinkled
with holy water, were delivered to flame by the torches of the
guards.[66] Such was the epidemic influence of this enthusiasm, that
even artists, the gentle Frà Bartolomeo, Lorenzo di Credi, and many more
caught the infection, and contributed to the sacrifice, till the death
of Savonarola and the return of the Medici extinguished the furor.[67]
The democracy, however, gave origin to two works, which not only atoned
for the ravages it had committed, but whose splendour no subsequent æra
of art has been able to eclipse, or perhaps to equal: the two Cartoons
of Lionardo da Vinci and M. Angelo Buonarroti, destined to decorate the
senatorial hall, by order of Pietro Soderini. They produced an immediate
revolution in art, but disappeared like meteors in the tumult that
attended the reinstatement of the Medici and the fall of the
Gonfaloniere, 1512.
The third expulsion of the Medici--Hippolyto and Alessandro, the sons of
Giuliano the Magnificent, and all their relatives--was the consequence
of the sack of Rome, 1527, and the Pontificate of Clemente VII. The
Medici, pressed by the moment, consigned part of their technic treasure,
their bronzes, cameos, &c. to the care of their client Baccio
Bandinelli.[68] During the havoc, Michael Angelo's statue of David lost
an arm,[69] and the waxen figures of Leo X. and Clemente VII. in the
church of the "Annunciata," were mutilated and carried off; and perhaps
much more was lost in the demolition of the suburbs, which took place to
secure the town itself against the siege of 1529. But active resistance
and lampoons proved equally ineffectual; the destiny of the Medici
prevailed, and Florence paid ducal homage in 1530 to Alessandro; whose
assassination, indeed, by Lorenzo his relative, commonly called
Lorenzino, produced, six years afterwards, another sedition and farther
damage to their stores of art by the soldiers, who, at the instigation
of Alessandro Vitelli, broke into and plundered both their houses. Cosmo
the First succeeded Alessandro, and left uninterrupted dominion to his
heirs: but if the consolidation of monarchy prevented the momentary
devastations of insurrection, it failed to re-produce the splendid
period that flashed athwart the storms of democracy.