Croce and Santa Maria Novella, all leaped into being within a few years,
almost simultaneously. The Duomo was founded, as some say, in 1294, the
same year in which Santa Croce was begun, or, according to others, in
1298; and between these two dates, in 1296, the Palace of the Signoria,
the seat of the Commonwealth, the center of all public life, had its
commencement. All these great buildings, Arnolfo designed and began, and
his genius requires no other evidence. The stern strength of the
Palazzo, upright and strong like a knight in mail, and the large and
noble lines of the Cathedral, ample and liberal and majestic in ornate
robes and wealthy ornaments, show how well he knew to vary and adapt his
art to the different requirements of municipal and religious life and to
the necessities of the age.
We are not informed who they were who carried out the design of the
Duomo. Arnolfo only lived to see a portion of this, his greatest work,
completed--"the three principal tribunes which were under the cupola,"
and which Vasari tells us were so solid and strongly built as to be able
to bear the full weight of Brunelleschi's dome, which was much larger
and heavier than the one the original architect had himself designed.
Arnolfo died when he had built his Palazzo in rugged strength, as it
still stands, with walls like living rock and heavy Tuscan cornices--tho
it was reserved to the other masters to put upon it the wonderful crown
of its appropriate tower--and just as the round apse of the cathedral
approached completion; a hard fate for a great builder to leave such
noble work behind him half done, yet the most common of all fates. He
died, so far as there is any certainty in dates, in 1300, during the
brief period of Dante's power in Florence, when the poet was one of the
priors and much engaged in public business; and the same eventful year
concluded the existence of Cimabue, the first of the great school of
Florentine painters--he whose picture was carried home to the church in
which it was to dwell for all the intervening centuries with such pride
and acclamation that the Borgo Allegri is said to have taken its name
from this wonderful rejoicing....
No more notable or distinct figure than Giotto is in all the history of
Florence. He was born a peasant, in the village of Vespignano in the
Mugello, the same district which afterward gave birth to Fra Angelico.
Giotto had at least part of his professional training in the great
cathedral at Assisi built over the bones of St. Francis, was one of
those homely, vigorous souls, "a natural person," like his father, whom
neither the lapse of centuries nor the neighborhood of much greater and
more striking persons about them, can deprive of their naive and genuine
individuality. Burly, homely, characteristic, he carries our attentions
always with him, alike on the silent road, or in the king's palace, or
his own simple shop. Wherever he is, he is always the same, shrewd,
humorous, plain-spoken, seeing through all pretenses, yet never
ill-natured in doing so--a character not very lofty or elevated, and to
which the racy ugliness of a strong, uncultivated race seems
natural--but who under that homely nature carried appreciations and
conceptions of beauty such as few fine minds possess.
Of all the beautiful things with which Giotto adorned his city, not one
speaks so powerfully to the foreign visitor--the forestiere whom he and
his fellows never took into account, tho who occupy so large a space
among the admirers of his genius nowadays--as the lovely Campanile which
stands by the great cathedral like the white royal lily beside the Mary
of the Annunciation, slender and strong and everlasting in its delicate
grace. It is not often that a man takes up a new trade when he is
approaching sixty, or even goes into a new path out of his familiar
routine. But Giotto seems to have turned without a moment's hesitation
from his paints and panels to the less easily-wrought materials of the
builder and sculptor, without either faltering from the great enterprise
or doubting his own power to do it. His frescoes and altarpieces and
crucifixes, the work he had been so long accustomed to, and which he
could execute pleasantly in his own workshop or on the cool new walls of
church or convent, with his trained school of younger artists round to
aid him, were as different as possible from the elaborate calculations
and measurements by which alone the lofty tower, straight, and lightsome
as a lily, could have sprung so high and stood so lightly against that
Italian sky.
Like the poet or the romancist when he turns from the flowery ways of
fiction and invention, where he is unencumbered by any restrictions save
those of artistic keeping and personal will, to the grave and beaten
path of history--the painter must have felt when he too turned from the
freedom and poetry of art to this first scientific undertaking. The
Cathedral was so far finished by this time, its front not scarred and
bare as afterward, but adorned with statues according to old Arnolfo's
plan, who was dead more than thirty years before; but there was no
belfry, no companion peal of peace and sweetness to balance the hoarse
old vacca with its voice of iron.
Giotto seems to have thrown himself into work not only without
reluctance but with enthusiasm. The foundation-stone of the building was
laid in July of that year, with all the greatness of Florence looking
on; and the painter entered upon his work at once, working out the most
poetic effort of his life in marble and stone, among the masons'
chippings and the dust and blaze of the public street. At the same time
he designed, tho it does not seem sure whether he lived long enough to
execute, a new façade for the Cathedral, replacing Arnolfo's old statues
by something better.
Of the Campanile itself it is difficult to speak in ordinary words. The
enrichments of the surface, which is covered by beautiful groups set in
a graceful framework of marble, with scarcely a flat or unadorned spot
from top to bottom, have been ever since the admiration of artists and
of the world. But we confess, for our own part, that it is the structure
itself that affords us that soft ecstasy of contemplation, sense of a
perfection before which the mind stops short, silenced and filled with
the completeness of beauty unbroken, which Art so seldom gives, tho
Nature often attains it by the simplest means, through the exquisite
perfection of a flower or a stretch of summer sky.
Just as we have looked at a sunset we look at Giotto's tower, poised far
above in the blue air, in all the wonderful dawns and moonlights of
Italy, swift darkness shadowing its white glory at the tinkle of the Ave
Maria, and a golden glow of sunbeams accompanying the mid-day angelus.
Between the solemn antiquity of the old baptistery and the historical
gloom of the great cathedral, it stands like the lily--if not, rather,
like the great angel himself hailing her who was blest among women, and
keeping up that lovely salutation, musical and sweet as its own beauty,
for century after century, day after day. Giotto made not only the
design, but even, Vasari assures us, worked at the groups and
"bassi-relievi" of these "stories in marble, in which are depicted the
beginning of all the arts." ...
Filippo of Ser Brunellescho of the Lapi, which is, according to
Florentine use, his somewhat cumbrous name, or Brunelleschi for short,
as custom permitted him to be called, was the son of a notary, who as
notaries do, hoped and expected his boy to follow in his steps and
succeed to his practise. But, like other sons doomed their fathers' soul
to cross, Filippo took to those "figuretti" in bronze which were so
captivating to the taste of the time, and preferred rather to be a
goldsmith, to hang upon the skirts of art, than to work in the paternal
office. He was, as Vasari insinuates, small, puny, and ugly, but full of
dauntless and daring energy as well as genius. From his gold and silver
work, the "carvings" which old Bartoluccio had been so glad to escape,
and from his "figuretti," the ambitious lad took to architectural
drawing, of which, according to Vasari, he was one of the first
amateurs, making "portraits" of the Cathedral and baptistery, of the
Palazzo Pubblico, and the other chief buildings of the city. He was so
eloquent a talker that a worthy citizen declared of him that he seemed
"a new St. Paul;" and in his thoughts he was continually busy planning
or imagining something skilful and difficult.
The idea of completing the Cathedral by adding to it a cupola worthy of
its magnificent size and proportions seems to have been in the young
man's head before the Signoria or the city took any action in the
matter. Arnolfo's designs are said to have been lost, and all the young
Filippo could do was to study the picture in the Spanish chapel of Santa
Maria Novella, where the cathedral was depicted according to Arnolfo's
intention; and this proof to the usefulness of architectural
backgrounds, no doubt, moved him to those pictures of building which he
was fond of making.
After his failure in the competition with Ghiberti for the baptistery
gates, Filippo went to Rome, accompanied by Donato. Here the two friends
lived and studied together for some time, one giving himself to
sculpture, the other to architecture. Brunelleschi, according to Vasari,
made this a period of very severe study. He examined all the remains of
ancient buildings with the keenest care; studying the foundations and
the strength of the walls, and the way in which such a prodigious load
as the great dome, which already he saw in his mind's eye, could best be
supported.
So profound were his researches that he was called the treasure-hunter
by those who saw him coming and going through the streets of Rome, a
title so far justified that he is said in one instance to have actually
found an ancient earthenware jar full of old coins. While engaged in
these studies, his money failing him, he worked for a jeweller according
to the robust practise of the time, and after making ornaments and
setting gems all day, set to work on his buildings, round and square,
octagons, basilicas, arches, colosseums, and amphitheaters, perfecting
himself in the principles of his art.
In 1407 he returned to Florence, and then there began a series of
negotiations between the artist and the city, to which there seemed at
first as if no end could come. They met, and met again, assemblies of
architects, of city authorities, of competitors less hopeful and less
eager than himself. His whole heart, it is evident, was set upon the
business. Hearing Donatello at one of these assemblies mention the
cathedral at Orvieto, which he had visited on his way from Rome,
Filippo, having his mantle and his hood on, without saying a word to
anyone, set straight off from the Piazza on foot, and got as far as
Cortona, from whence he returned with various pen-and-ink drawings
before Donato or any one else had found out that he was away.
Thus the small, keen, determined, ugly artist, swift and sudden as
lightning, struck through all the hesitations, the consultations, the
maunderings, the doubts, and the delays of the two authorities who had
the matter in hand, the Signoria and the Operai, as who should say the
working committee, and who made a hundred difficulties and shook their
wise heads, and considered one foolish and futile plan after another
with true burgher hesitation and wariness.
At last, in 1420, an assembly of competitors was held in Florence, and a
great many plans put forth, one of which was to support the proposed
vault by a great central pillar, while another advised that the space to
be covered should be filled with soil mixed with money, upon which the
dome might be built, and which the people would gladly remove without
expense afterward for the sake of the farthings! An expedient most droll
in its simplicity. Brunelleschi, impatient of so much folly, went off to
Rome, it is said, in the middle of these discussions, disgusted by the
absurd ignorance which was thus put in competition with his careful
study and long labor. Finally the appointment was conceded to him.
The greatest difficulty with which he had to contend was a strike of his
workmen, of whom, however, there being no trades' unions in those days,
the imperious master made short work. And thus, day by day, the great
dome swelled out over the shining marble walls and rose against the
beautiful Italian sky. Nothing like it had been seen before by living
eyes. The solemn grandeur of the Pantheon at Rome was indeed known to
many, and San Giovanni[34] was in some sort an imitation of that; but
the immense structure of the cupola, so justly poised, springing with
such majestic grace from the familiar walls to which it gave new
dignity, flattered the pride of the Florentines as something unique,
besides delighting the eyes and imagination of so beauty-loving a race.
With that veiled and subtle pride which takes the shape of pious fear,
some even pretended to tremble, lest it should be supposed to be too
near an emulation of the blue vault above, and that Florence was
competing with heaven; others, with the delightful magniloquence of the
time, declared that the hills around the city were scarcely higher than
the beautiful Duomo; and Vasari himself has a doubt that the heavens
were envious, so persistent were the storms amid which the cupola arose.
Yet there it stands to this day, firm and splendid, uninjured by
celestial envy, more harmonious than St. Peter's, the crown of the
beautiful city. Its measurements and size and the secrets of its
formation we do not pretend to set forth; the reader will find them in
every guide-book. But the keen, impetuous, rapid figure of the
architect, impatient, and justly impatient, of all rivalry, the murmurs
and comments of the workmen; the troubled minds of the city authorities,
not knowing how to hold their ground between that gnome of majestic
genius who had fathomed all the secrets of construction and built a
hundred Duomos in his mind, while they were pottering over the
preliminaries of one; have all the interest of life for us.
Through the calm fields of art he goes like a whirlwind, keen, certain,
unfailing in his aim, unsparing in means, carried forward by such an
impulse of will and self-confidence that nothing can withstand him. Sure
of his own powers, as he was when he carved in secret the crucifix which
was to cover poor Donatello with confusion, he saw before him, over his
carvings, as he worked for the Roman goldsmith, the floating vision of
the great dome he was to build--and so built it, all opposition
notwithstanding, clearing out of his way with the almost contemptuous
impatience of that knowledge which has no doubt of itself, the competing
architects.
GHIBERTI'S GATES[35]
BY CHARLES YRIARTE
The Baptistery is the most ancient building in Florence. If not of pagan
origin it dates from the earliest ages of Christianity. It was coated
with marble of different colors by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1293, while in
the sixteenth century Agnolo Gaddi designed the lantern; but long before
Arnolfo's time it had been employed as a Christian place of worship,
being used as a cathedral up to 1128, when it was converted into a
baptistery.
This building contains three gates, which have no parallel in the world.
The oldest is that on the southern side, upon which Pisano spent
twenty-two years of his life, a most beautiful work representing, in
twenty compartments, the life of St. John the Baptist. The frieze which
runs round it was commenced nearly a century afterward by Ghiberti, and
Pollaiuolo had much to do with its completion.
The northern gates are by Ghiberti, and, like those of Pisano, are
divided into twenty compartments, the subject being the life of Christ.
The bronze door-posts are delicately carved with flowers, fruit, and
animals. These gates were first placed on the eastern side, but in 1452
were removed to make room for Ghiberti's still finer work.
On the third façade, that which faces the Duomo, is the Porta del
Paradiso, so named by Michael Angelo, who declared that this gate was
worthy to be the entrance into Paradise. Ghiberti divided each panel
into five parts, taking the following as his subjects, after suggestions
made by Leonardo Bruni Aretino: (1) Creation of Adam and Eve; (2) Cain
and Abel; (3) Noah; (4) Abraham and Isaac; (5) Jacob and Esau; (6)
Joseph in Egypt; (7) Moses on Mount Sinai; (8) The Capture of Jericho;
(9) David Slaying Goliath; (10) The Queen of Sheba and Soloman.
The frieze contains statuettes of the prophets and prophetesses and
portrait-busts of men and women still alive, including Ghiberti himself,
and his father; while the frame-posts, with their masses of vegetation
and flora wrought in bronze, are admirable for their truth to nature.
Bronze groups representing the "Decapitation of St. John the Baptist,"
by Danti, and the "Baptism of our Lord," by Andrea Sansovino, surmount
two of the gates, which were at one time heavily gilded, tho few traces
of this are now visible.
The Baptistery, empty as it appears to the eye upon first entering it,
is replete with beautiful monuments, a description of which would fill a
good-sized volume. It is built, as I have already said, upon an
octagonal plan. The altar, which formerly stood beneath the cupola, has
been removed. On the 24th of June every year the magnificent retablo in
massive silver, which is preserved among the treasures in the Opera del
Duomo, is displayed in the Baptistery. The silver alone weighs 325
pounds, including two center-pieces, two side-pieces, and a silver
crucifix with two statuettes seven feet high, and weighing 141 pounds,
the group being completed by two statues of Peace in engine-turned
silver. Many artists were employed upon the making of it. Finiguerra,
Pollaiuolo, Cione, Michelozzi, Verrocchio, and Cennini made the lower
parts and the bas-reliefs of the front, while the cross, executed in
1456, is by Betto di Francesco, and the base of it by Milano di Domenico
dei and Antonio Pollaiuolo.
The interior of the cupola of San Giovanni is ornamented with some of
the oldest specimens of mosaic decoration in Florence, these Byzantine
artists being the first, after Murano and Altino, to exercise their
craft in Italy, and being succeeded by Jacopo da Turita, Andrea Tafi,
and Gaddo Gaddi.
The handsome tomb of Baldassare Cossa (Pope John XXIII., deposed at the
time of the Council of Constance), was reared in the Baptistery by
Donatello. The Holy of Holies is relatively modern, having been erected
at the expense of the Guild of the "Calimala," as the men who gave the
finishing touch to the woolen stuffs manufactured abroad were called.
The baptismal font, in a building specially used for christening, would,
as a matter of course, be intrusted to artists of great repute, and that
at San Giovanni is attributed to Andrea Pisano. Upon each face is
represented one of the baptisms most famous in the history of the
Catholic religion, an inscription beneath explaining each episode; but
this font is, unfortunately, so much in the background that it escapes
the notice of many visitors.
Donatello carved the wooden statue of the Magdalen which occupies one of
the niches, the thin emaciated face being typical of the artist's
partiality for reproducing in their smallest details the physical
defects of his subject. The exterior aspect of the Baptistery does not
give one the idea of a building restored in the thirteenth, but rather
in the fifteenth century.
THE PONTE VECCHIO[36]
BY CHARLES YRIARTE
Until the close of 1080 the Ponte Vecchio was built of wood, the heavy
masses of timber, tho offering no steady resistance to the stream,
dividing the muddy course of the waters into a thousand small currents,
and breaking its force. But in 1177 occurred one of those inundations
which were so frequent that traces of them may still be seen on the
walls of the quays. These inundations were one of the curses of
Florence, and tho the evil has been, to a certain extent, cured by the
construction of massive quays, they still occur in the direction of the
Cascine. An attempt was accordingly made in the twelfth century to
obviate this inconvenience by the construction of a stone bridge. This,
in turn, was carried away in 1333, and Taddeo Gaddi, who had already
made a name for himself by his architectural skill, was employed to
build a bridge capable of resisting the highest floods. The present
bridge was therefore erected in 1345, being 330 feet long by 44 wide.
With the double object of obtaining an income for the city and of
introducing a novel feature, shops were built on the two pathways, which
were 16 feet wide, and these were let to the butchers of Florence, thus
realizing the Eastern plan of concentrating the meat trade of a town in
one place. This arrangement lasted from 1422 until 1593, but in the
latter year, under Cosimo I., the "Capitani di Parte," who had the
supervision of the streets and highways, ordered that all the goldsmiths
and jewelers should take the place of the butchers, and in a few months,
the Ponte Vecchio became the wealthiest and most crowded thoroughfare of
Florence. In order to avoid shutting out a view of the stream and
interfering with the perspective, an open space had been reserved in the
center, and when the Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi were connected with
the Pitti Palace by means of the large covered way carried over the
bridge, this space was left intact so as to afford a view of the
eminence of San Miniato upon one side, of the windings of the stream on
the other, and of the Cascine shrubberies and the mountains upon the
horizon.
SANTA CROCE[37]
BY CHARLES YRIARTE
Built by Arnolfo, then fifty-four years of age, by order of the Friars
of St. Francis, this venerable temple was raised upon the piazza called
Santa Croce, where formerly stood a small church belonging to the order
of the Franciscan monks. They had resolved to embellish and enlarge
their church, and Cardinal Matteo D'Acquasparta, general of the
Franciscan Order, proclaimed an indulgence to all contributors toward
the undertaking. The church was far enough advanced in 1320 for services
to be held in it, tho the façade was then, as until a very recent period
it remained, a plain brick wall, without facing or any other ornament.
Santa Croce was not singular in this respect, for San Lorenzo and many
other Florentine churches have never been decorated externally.
In 1442 Cardinal Bessarion, the founder of St. Mark's Library at Venice,
was delegated to perform the ceremony of consecration. Donatello and
Ghiberti, incomplete as was the façade, executed some statues and a
stained-glass window for it, but it is only within the last few years
that the city of Florence completed the work, leaving untouched the
grand piazza which had been the scene of so many fêtes and intestine
quarrels, and upon which is now erected a statue to Dante. The façade of
Santa Croce was completed in 1863. The expense was principally borne by
Mr. Francis Sloane, an Englishman.
The interior is striking from its vast size, the church being built in
the shape of a Latin cross with nave, aisles, and transepts, each of the
seven pointed arches being supported on the octagonal column. Opposite
the front entrance is the high altar, while all around the walls and
between the side altars--erected in 1557 by Vasari by order of Cosimo
I.--are the monuments of the illustrious dead. First of all on the left
there is Domenico Sestini, a celebrated numismatist, whose bust was
carved by Pozzetti. While in the first chapel on the right is the tomb
of Michael Angelo, who died at Rome on the 17th of February, 1564; the
monument was designed by Vasari, the bust was executed by Battista
Lorenzo. Two contemporary sculptors, Valerio Cioli and Giovanni
Dell'Opera, did the allegories of Sculpture and Architecture, the
frescoes around the monument being by Battista Naldini. A nobler tomb
might well have been raised to the memory of Michael Angelo. The body
was deposited in the church on the 12th of March, 1564, and lay in
state, for the people of Florence to come and pay him the last tribute
of respect.
The next tomb is only commemorative, for it does not contain the ashes
of Dante, in whose honor it was erected in 1829 by Ricci, as a tardy
homage on the part of Florence to one who suffered so much for her sake
in life.[38]