CHURCHES NORTH OF ARNO: OGNISSANTI--S. TRINITÀ--SS. APOSTOLI--S.
STEFANO--BADIA--S. PIERO--S. AMBROGIO--S. MARIA MADDALENA DE'
PAZZI--ANNUNZIATA--OSPEDALE DEGLI INNOCENTI--LO SCALZO--S. APOLLONIA--S.
ONOFRIO--S. SALVI
To pass through Florence for the most part by the old ways, from church
to church, is too often like visiting forgotten shrines in a museum.
Something seems to have been lost in these quiet places; it is but
rarely after all that they retain anything of the simplicity which once
made them holy. To their undoing, they have been found in possession of
some beautiful thing which may be shown for money, and so some of them
have ceased altogether to exist as churches or chapels or convents; you
find yourself walking through them as through a gallery, and if you
should so far forget yourself as to uncover your head, some official
will eagerly nudge you and say, "It is not necessary for the signore to
bare his head: here is no longer a church, but a public monument." A
public monument! But indeed, as we know, the Italian "public" is no
longer capable of building anything that is beautiful. If it is a bridge
they need, it is not such a one as the Trinità that will be built, but
some hideous structure of iron, as in Pisa, Venice, and Rome. If it is a
monument they wish to carve, they will destroy numberless infinitely
precious things, and express themselves as vulgarly as the Germans could
do, as in the monument of Vittorio Emmanuele at Rome, which is founded
on the ruined palaces of nobles, the convents of the poor. If it is a
Piazza they must make, they are no longer capable of building such place
as Piazza Signoria, but prefer a hideous and disgusting clearing, such
as Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele in Florence. How often have I sat at the
little cafe there on the far side of the square, wondering why the house
of Savoy should have brought this vandalism from Switzerland. Nor is
this strange monarchy content with broken promises and stolen dowries;
in its grasping barbarism it must rename the most famous and splendid
ways of Italy after itself: thus the Corso of Rome has become Corso
Umberto Primo, and we live in daily expectation that Piazza Signoria of
Florence will become Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele II. If that has not yet
befallen, it is surely an oversight; the Government has been so busy
renaming Roman places--the Villa Borghese, for instance--that Florence
has so far nearly escaped. Not altogether, however: beyond the Carraja
bridge, just before the Pescaia in the Piazza Manin, is the suppressed
convent (now a barracks) of the Humiliati, that democratic brotherhood
which improved the manufacture of wool almost throughout Italy. What has
the Venetian Jew, Daniel Manin, to do with them? Yet he is remembered by
means of a bad statue, while the Humiliati and the Franciscans are
forgotten: yet for sure they did more for Florence than he. But no doubt
it would be difficult to remind oneself tactfully of those one has
robbed, and a Venetian Jew looks more in place before a desecrated
convent than S. Francis would do. Like the rest of Italy, Florence seems
always to forget that she had a history before 1860; yet here at least
she should have remembered one of her old heroes, for in the convent
garden Giano della Bella, who fought at Campaldino, and was
anti-clerical too and hateful to the Pope, the hero of the Ordinances of
Justice, used to walk with his friends. _Perisca innanzi la città_, say
I, _che tante opere rie si sostengano_. By this let even Venetian Jews,
to say nothing of Switzer princes, know how they are like to be
remembered when their little day is over.
[Illustration: OGNISSANTI]
It was in 1256 that the Humiliati founded here in Borgo Ognissanti the
Church of S. Caterina, and carved their arms, a woolpack fastened with
ropes, over the door. Originally founded by certain Lombard exiles in
Northern Germany, the Humiliati were at first at any rate a lay
brotherhood, which had learned in exile the craft of weaving wool. Such
wool as was to be had in Tuscany, a land of olives and vines, almost
without pasture, was poor enough, and it seems to have been only after
the advent of the Humiliati that the great Florentine industry began to
assert itself, foreign wools being brought in a raw state to the city
and sold, dressed and woven into cloth, in all the cities of Europe and
the East. This brotherhood, however, in 1140 formed itself into a
Religious Order under a Bull of Innocent III, and though from that time
the brethren seem no longer to have worked at their craft themselves,
they directed the work of laymen whom they enrolled and employed,
busying themselves for the most part with new inventions and the
management of what soon became an immense business. Their fame was
spread all over Italy, for, as Villari tells us,[111] "wherever a house
of their Order was established, the wool-weaving craft immediately made
advance," so that in 1239 the Commune of Florence invited them to
establish a house near the city, as they did in S. Donato a Torri, which
was given them by the Signoria. By 1250 we read that the Guild Masters
were already grumbling at their distance from the city, so that they
removed to S. Lucia sul Prato, under promise of exemption from all
taxes; and in 1256 they founded a church and convent in Borgo
Ognissanti. The Church of S. Lucia sul Prato still stands, but the
Humiliati were robbed of it in 1547 by Cosimo I, who, strangely enough,
had taken the old convent of S. Donato a Torri from the friars who had
acquired it, in order to build a fortification, and now wished to give
them the Church of S. Lucia sul Prato. It is said that the friars began
to build their convent, but four years later abandoned the work,
removing to S. Jacopo on the other side Arno. However this may be, the
Franciscans certainly succeeded the Humiliati in their convent in Borgo
Ognissanti about this time, and in 1627 they rebuilt S. Caterina,
renaming it S. Salvadore. To-day there is but little worth seeing in
this seventeenth-century church,--a St. Augustine by Botticelli, a St.
Jerome and two large frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandajo,--but in the old
refectory of the convent, which has now become a barracks, is Domenico
Ghirlandajo's fresco of the Last Supper.
Passing from Ognissanti down the Borgo to Piazza Ponte alla Carraja, you
come to the great palace built by Michelozzo for the Ricasoli family: it
is now the Hotel New York. Thence you turn into Via di Parione behind
the palace, where at No. 7 you pass the Palazzo Corsini, coming at last
into Via Tornabuoni, where at the corner is the Church of S. Trinità
facing the Piazza.
This beautiful and very ancient church stands on the site of an oratory
of S. Maria dello Spasimo, destroyed, as it is said, in the tenth
century. It was built by the monks of Vallombrosa, and was therefore in
the hands of Benedictines. Here, in the Cappella Sassetti, Domenico
Ghirlandajo has painted the Life of S. Francis; but it is not with his
commonplace treatment, often irrelevant enough, of a subject which
Giotto had already used with genius, that we are concerned, but perhaps
with the fresco above the altar, and certainly with the marvellous
portraits of Sassetti and Nera Cosi his wife, on either side. Here in
this portrait for once Ghirlandajo seems to have escaped from the
limitations of his cleverness, and to have really expressed himself so
that his talent becomes something more than talent, is full of life and
charm, and only just fails to convince us of his genius.
Many another delightful or surprising thing may be found in the old
church, which has more than once suffered from restoration. In a chapel
in the right aisle Lorenzo Monaco has painted the Annunciation, while,
close by, you may see a beautiful altar by Benedetto da Rovezzano. Over
the high altar is the crucifix which bowed to S. Giovanni Gualberto,
who forbore to slay his brother's murderer; but the chief treasure of
the church is the tomb in the left transept of Benozzo Federighi, Bishop
of Fiesole, by Luca della Robbia. It was in the year 1450 that Luca
finished his most perfect work in marble--begun and finished, as it is
said, within the year--the tomb of Bishop Federighi. And here, as one
might almost expect, remembering his happy expressive art in many a
terra-cotta up and down in Italy, he has thought of death almost with
cheerfulness, not as oblivion, but as just sleep after labour. Amid a
profusion of natural things--fruits, garlands, grapes--the old man lies
half turned towards us, at rest at last. Behind him Luca has carved a
Pietà, and beneath two angels unfold the name of the dead man. The tomb
was removed hither from S. Francesco di Paolo.
Passing now under the Column of the Trinità across the Piazza between
the two palaces, Bartolini Salimbeni and Buondelmonte on the left, and
Palazzo Spini on the right, you come into Borgo Santi Apostoli, where,
facing the Piazzetta del Limbo, is the little church de' Santi Apostoli,
which, if we may believe the inscription on the façade, was founded by
Charlemagne and consecrated by Turpin before Roland and Oliver. However
that may be, it is, with the exception of the Baptistery, the oldest
church on this side Arno, and already existed outside the first walls of
the city. Within, the church is beautiful, and indeed Brunellesco is
reported by Vasari to have taken it as a model for S. Lorenzo and S.
Spirito. In the sacristy lies the stone which Mad Pazzi brought from
Jerusalem, and from which the Easter fire is still struck in the Duomo;
while in the chapel to the left of the high altar is a beautiful
Tabernacle by the della Robbia, and a monument to Otto Altoviti by
Benedetto da Rovezzano. The Altoviti are buried here, and their palace,
which Benedetto built for them, is just without to the south.
This Borgo SS. Apostoli and the Via Lambertesca which continues it are
indeed streets of old palaces and towers. Here the Buondelmonti lived,
and the Torre de' Girolami, where S. Zanobi is said to have dwelt,
still stands, while Via Lambertesca is full of remembrance of the lesser
guilds. Borgo SS. Apostoli passes into Via Lambertesca at the corner of
Por S. Maria, where of old the great gate of St. Mary stood in the first
walls, and the Amidei had their towers. It must have been just here the
Statue of Mars was set, under the shadow of which Buondelmonte was
murdered so brutally; and thus, as Bandello tells us, following Villani,
began the Guelph and Ghibelline factions in Florence.
Just out of Via Lambertesca, on the left, is the little Church of S.
Stefano and S. Cecilia--S. Cecilia only since the end of the eighteenth
century, when that church was destroyed in Piazza Signoria; but S.
Stefano, _ad portam ferram_, since the thirteenth century at any rate.
This church seems to have been confused by many with the little Santo
Stefano, still, I think, a parish church, though now incorporated with
the abbey buildings, of the Badia. You pass out of Via Lambertesca by
Via de' Lanzi, coming thus into Piazza Signoria; then, passing Palazzo
Uguccione, you take Via Condotta to the right, and thus come into Via
del Proconsolo at the Abbey gate.
Here in this quiet Benedictine house one seems really to be back in an
older world, to have left the noise and confusion of to-day far behind,
and in order and in quiet to have found again the beautiful things that
are from of old. The Badia, dedicated to S. Maria Assunta, was founded
in 978 by Countess Willa, the mother of Ugo of Tuscany,[112] and was
rebuilt in 1285 by Arnolfo di Cambio. The present building is, however,
almost entirely a work of the seventeenth century, though the beautiful
tower was built in 1328. Here still, however, in spite of rebuilding,
you may see the tomb of the Great Marquis by Mino da Fiesole. "It was
erected," says Mr. Carmichael, "at the expense of the monks, not of
the Signoria.... Ugo died in 1006, on the Feast of St. Thomas the
Apostle, December 21, and every year on that date a solemn requiem for
the repose of his soul is celebrated in the Abbey Church. His helmet and
breast-plate are always laid upon the catafalque. In times past--down to
1859, I think--a young Florentine used on this occasion to deliver a
panegyric on the Great Prince. I have heard ... that the mass is no
longer celebrated. That is not so; but since the city has ceased to care
about it, it takes place quietly at seven in the morning, instead of
with some pomp at eleven. Then again, it is said that the monks have
allowed the panegyric to drop. That too is not the case; it was not they
but the Florentines who were pledged to this pious office, and it is the
laity alone who have allowed it to fall into desuetude."
[Illustration: VIA POR. S. MARIA]
Even here we cannot, however, escape destruction and forgetfulness. The
monastery has been turned into communal schools and police courts; the
abbot has become a parish priest, and his abbey has been taken from him;
there are but four monks left. But in the steadfast, unforgetful eyes of
that Church which has already outlived a thousand dynasties, and beside
whom every Government in the world is but a thing of yesterday, the
Abbot of S. Maria is abbot still, and no parish priest at all. It is
not, however, such things as this that will astonish the English or
American stranger, whose pathetic faith in "progress" is the one
touching thing about him. He has come here not to think of deprived
Benedictines, or to stand by the tomb of Ugo, of whom he never heard,
but to see the masterpiece of Filippino Lippi, the Madonna and St.
Bernard, with which a thousand photographs have already made him
familiar. Painted in 1480, when Filippino was still, as we may suppose,
under the influence of Botticelli, it was given by Piero del Pugliese to
a church outside Porta Romana, and was removed here in 1529 during the
siege.
Passing down Via della Vigna Vecchia, you come at last to the little
Church of S. Simone, which the monks of the Badia built about 1202, in
their vineyards then, and just within the second walls. At the beginning
of the fourteenth century it became a parish church, but was only taken
from them at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Within, there is
an early picture of Madonna, which comes from the Church of S. Piero
Maggiore, now destroyed. You may reach the Piazza di S. Piero (for it
still bears that name) if you turn into Via di Mercatino. Here the
bishops of Florence were of old welcomed to the city and installed in
the See. Thither came all the clergy of the diocese to take part in a
strange and beautiful ceremony. Attached to the church was a Benedictine
convent, whose abbess seems to have represented the diocese of Florence.
There in S. Piero the Archbishop came to wed her, and thus became the
guardian of the city. The church is destroyed now, and, as we have seen,
all the monks and nuns have departed; the Government has stolen their
dowries and thrust them into the streets. Well might the child, passing
S. Felice, cry before this came to pass, O bella Libertà! But S. Piero
was memorable for other reasons too beside this mystic marriage. There
lay Luca della Robbia, Lorenzo di Credi, Mariotto Albertinelli, Piero di
Cosimo: where is their dust to-day? As we look at their work in the
galleries and churches, who cares what has happened to them, or whether
such graves as theirs are rifled or no? Yet not one of them but has done
more for Italy than Vittorio Emmanuele; not one of them, O Italia Nuova,
but is to-day filling your pockets with gold, while he is nothing in the
Pantheon; yet their graves are rifled and forgotten, and him you have
placed on the Capitol.
It is to another Benedictine convent you come down Via Pietrapiana, past
Borgo Allegri, whence the Florentines say they bore Cimabue's Madonna in
triumph to S. Maria Novella. It is a pity, truly, that it is not his
picture that is in the Rucellai Chapel to-day, and that the name of the
Borgo does not come from that rejoicing, but from the Allegri family,
who here had their towers. Yet here Cimabue lived, and Ghiberti and
Antonio Rossellino. Who knows what beauty has here passed by?
The Benedictine Church and Convent at end of Via Pietrapiana is
dedicated to S. Ambrogio. It was the first convent of nuns built in
Florence, and dates certainly from the eleventh century. Like the rest,
it has been suppressed, and indeed destroyed. To-day it is nothing,
having suffered restoration, beside the other violations. Within,
Verrocchio was buried, and in the Cappella del Miracolo, where in the
thirteenth century a priest found the chalice stained with Christ's
blood, is the beautiful altar by Mino da Fiesole. The church is full of
old frescoes by Cosimo Rosselli, Raffaellino del Garbo, and such, and is
worth a visit, if only for the work of Mino and the S. Sebastian of
Leonardo del Tasso.
It is to another desecrated Benedictine convent you come when, passing
through Via dei Pilastrati and turning into Via Farina, you come at last
in Via della Colonna to S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi. This too is now a
barracks and a school. It was not, however, the nuns who commissioned
Perugino to paint for them his masterpiece, the Crucifixion, in the
refectory, but some Cistercian monks who had acquired the convent in the
thirteenth century. Perugino was painting there in 1496. More than a
hundred years later, Pope Urban VIII, who had some nieces in the
Carmelite Convent on the other side Arno, persuaded the monks to
exchange their home for the Carmine. S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, who
was born Lucrezia, had died in 1607, and later been canonised, so that
when the nuns moved here they renamed the place after her. The body of
S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, however, no longer lies in this desecrated
convent, for the little nuns have carried it away to their new home in
Piazza Savonarola. There in that place, always so full of children,
certain Florentine ladies have nobly built a little church and quiet
house, where those who but for them might have been in the street may
still innocently pray to God.
There, in 1496, as I have said, Perugino finished the fresco of the
Crucifixion that he had begun some years before in the chapter-house of
the old S. Maria Maddalena. In almost perfect preservation still, this
fresco on the wall of that quiet and empty room is perhaps the most
perfect expression of the art of Perugino--those dreams of the country
and of certain ideal people he has seen there; Jesus and His disciples,
Madonna and Mary Magdalen, sweet, smiling, and tearful ghosts passing in
the sunshine, less real than the hills, all perhaps that the world was
able to bear by way of remembrance of those it had worshipped once, but
was beginning to forget. And here at last, in this fresco, the landscape
has really become of more importance than the people, who breathe there
so languidly. The Crucifixion has found something of the expressiveness,
the unction of a Christian hymn, something of the quiet beauty of the
Mass that was composed to remind us of it; already it has passed away
from reality, is indeed merely a memory in which the artist has seen
something less and something more than the truth.
Divided into three compartments, we see through the beautiful round
arches of some magic casement, as it were, the valleys and hills of
Italy, the delicate trees, the rivers and the sky of a country that is
holy, which man has taken particularly to himself. And then, as though
summoned back from forgetfulness by the humanism of that landscape where
the toil and endeavour of mankind is so visible in the little city far
away, the cultured garden of the world, a dream of the Crucifixion comes
to us, a vision of all that man has suffered for man, summed up, as it
were, naturally enough by that supreme sacrifice of love; and we see not
an agonised Christ or the brutality of the priests and the soldiers, but
Jesus, who loved us, hanging on the Cross, with Mary Magdalen kneeling
at his feet, and on the one side Madonna and St. Bernard, and on the
other St. John and St. Benedict. And though, in a sort of symbolism,
Perugino has placed above the Cross the sun and the moon eclipsed, the
whole world is full of the serene and perfect light of late afternoon,
and presently we know that vision of the Crucifixion will fade away,
and there will be left to us only that which we really know, and have
heard and seen, the valleys and the hills, the earth from which we are
sprung.
There are but six figures in the whole picture, and it is just this
spaciousness, perhaps, earth and sky counting for so much, that makes
this work so delightful. For it is not from the figures at all that we
receive the profoundly religious impression that this picture makes upon
all who look unhurriedly upon it; but from the earth and sky, where in
the infinite clear space God dwells, no longer hanging upon a Cross
tortured by men who have unthinkably made so terrible a mistake, but
joyful in His heaven, moving in every living thing He has made; visible
only in the invisible wind that passes over the streams suddenly at
evening, or subtly makes musical the trees at dawn, walking as of old in
His garden, where one day maybe we shall meet Him face to face.
Turning down Via di Pinti to the left, and then to the right along Via
Alfani, we pass another desecrated monastery in S. Maria degli Angioli,
once a famous house of the monks of Camaldoli. This monastery has
suffered many violations, and is scarcely worth a visit, perhaps, unless
it be to see the fresco of Andrea del Castagno in the cloister, and to
remind ourselves that here, in the fifteenth century, Don Ambrogio
Traversari used to lecture in the humanities, a cynical remembrance
enough to-day.
If we take the second street to the right, Via de' Servi, we shall come
at once into the beautiful Piazza della Santissima Annunziata. Before us
is the desecrated convent of the Servites, now turned into a school, and
the Church of SS. Annunziata itself, now the most fashionable church in
Florence. On the left and right are the beautiful arcades of
Brunellesco, decorated by the della Robbia; the building on the left is
now used for private houses, that on the right is the Ospedale degli
Innocenti. The equestrian statue was made by Giovanni da Bologna, and
represents Ferdinando I.
The Order of Servites, whose church and convent are before us, was
originally founded by seven Florentines of the Laudesi, that Compagnia
di S. Michele in Orto which built Madonna a shrine by the art of Orcagna
in Or S. Michele, as we have seen. "I Servi di Maria" they were called,
and, determined to quit a worldly life, they retired to a little house
where now S. Croce stands; and later, finding that too near the city,
went over the hills of Fiesole beyond Pratolino, founding a hermitage on
Monte Senario. And I, who have heard their bells from afar at sunset,
why should I be sorry that they are no longer in the city. Well, on
Monte Senario, be sure, they lived hardly enough on the charity of
Florence, so that at last they built a little rest-house just without
the city, where SS. Annunziata stands to-day. But in those days Florence
was full of splendour and life; it had no fear of the Orders, and even
loved them, giving alms. Presently the Servi di Maria were able to build
not a rest-house only, but a church and a convent, and then they who
served Madonna were not forgotten by her, for did she not give them
miraculously a picture of her Annunciation, so beautiful and full of
grace that all the city flocked to see it? Thus it used to be. To-day,
as I have said, SS. Annunziata is the fashionable church of Florence.
The ladies go in to hear Mass; the gentlemen lounge in the cloister and
await them. It is not quite our way in England, but then the sun is not
so kind to us. It is true that on any spring morning you may see the
cloister filled with laughing lilies to be laid at Madonna's feet; but
who knows if she be not fled away with her Servi to Monte Senario?
Certainly those bells were passing glad and very sweet, and they were
ringing, too, the Angelus.
However that may be, a committee, we are told, of which Queen Margherita
is patron here, "renders a programme of sacred music, chiefly Masses
from the ancient masters, admirably executed." It is comforting to our
English notions to know that "The subscribers have the right to a
private seat in the choir, and the best society of Florence is to be met
there."
And then, here are frescoes by Cosimo Rosselli, Andrea del Sarto, under
glass too, a Nativity of Christ by Alessio Baldovinetti, not under
glass, which seems unfair; and what if they be the finest work of
Andrea, since you cannot see them. Within, the church is spoiled and
very ugly. On the left is the shrine of Madonna, carved by Michelozzo,
to the order of Piero de' Medici, decorated with all the spoils of the
Grand Dukes. Ah no, be sure Madonna is fled away!
Passing out of the north transept, you come into the cloisters. Here is,
I think, Andrea's best work, the Madonna del Sacco, and the tomb of a
French knight slain at Campaldino.
Passing out of the SS. Annunziata into S. Maria degli Innocenti, we come
to a beautiful picture by Domenico Ghirlandajo in the great altarpiece,
the Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1488. Though scarcely so lovely as
the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Accademia, perhaps spoiled a
little by over cleaning and restoration, it is one of the most simple
and serene pictures in Florence. The predella to this picture is in the
Ospedale; it represents the Marriage of the Virgin, the Presentation in
the Temple, the Baptism and Entombment of Our Lord. There, too, is a
replica of the Madonna of Lippo Lippi in the Uffizi.
The Ospedale degli Innocenti was founded in 1421 by the Republic, urged
thereto by that Leonardo Bruni who is buried in S. Croce in the tomb by
Rossellino. It appears to have been already open in 1450, and was
apparently under the government of the Guild of Silk, for their arms are
just by the door. It is said to have been the first of its kind in
Europe; originally meant for the reception of illegitimate
children--Leonardo da Vinci, for instance--it is to-day ready to receive
any poor little soul who has come unwanted into the world; it cares for
more than a thousand of such every year.
Passing out of Piazza degli SS. Annunziata through Via di Sapienza into
Piazza di S. Marco, we pass the desecrated convent of the Dominicans,
where Savonarola, Fra Antonino, and Fra Angelico lived, now a museum on
the right; and passing to the right into Via Cavour, come at No. 69 to
the Chiostro dello Scalzo. This is a cloister belonging to the
Brotherhood of St. John, which was suppressed in the eighteenth century.
The Brotherhood of St. John seems to have come about in this way. When
Frate Elias, who succeeded S. Francesco as Minister of the Franciscan
Order, began to rule after his own fashion, the Order was divided into
two parts, consisting of those who followed the Rule and those who did
not. The first were called Observants, the second Conventuals. The
Osservanti, or Observants, remained poor, and observed all the fasts;
perhaps their greatest, certainly their most widely known Vicar-General
was S. Bernardino of Siena. In France the Osservanti were known as the
Recollects, and the reform there having been introduced by John de la
Puebla, a Spaniard, about 1484, these brethren were known as the
Brotherhood of John, or Discalced Friars. In Italy they were called
Riformati. All this confusion is now at an end, for Leo XIII, in the
Constitution "Felicitate quadam," in 1897 joined all the Observants into
one family, giving them again the most ancient and beautiful of their
names, the Friars Minor.
Here, where these little poor men begged or prayed, Andrea del Sarto was
appointed to paint in grisaille scenes from the life of John the
Baptist. They have been much injured by damp, and in fact are not
altogether Andrea's work.
Returning down Via Cavour, if we turn into Via Ventisette Aprile we come
to two more desecrated convents,--that of S. Caterina, now the Commando
Militare, and facing it, S. Appolonia, now a magazine for military
stores.
Here, in the refectory of the latter convent, where Michelangelo is said
to have had a niece, and for this cause to have built the nuns a door,
is the fresco of the Last Supper by Andrea del Castagno; while on the
walls are some portraits, brought here from the Bargello, of Farinata
degli Uberti, Niccolò Acciaiuoli, and others.
In another suppressed convent, S. Onofrio in Via Faenza, not far away
(turn to the left down Via di S. Reparata, and then to the right into
Via Guelfa), is another Last Supper, supposed to be the work of a pupil
of Perugino,--Morelli says Giannicolo Manni, who painted the miracle
picture of Madonna in the Duomo of Perugia.
Another picture of the Last Supper--this by Andrea del Sarto--may be
found in another desecrated monastery, founded in 1048 by the
Vallombrosans, the second monastery of the congregation, S. Salvi, just
without the Barriera towards Settignano. It was in front of this
monastery that Corso Donati was killed in 1307. He was buried by the
monks in the church, and four years later his body was borne away to
Florence by his family. This monastery is now turned into houses, and
the refectory with the Andrea del Sarto is become a national monument.
Like many another desecrated church, convent, or religious house, the
Government, as at S. Marco, Chiostro dello Scalzo, and S. Onofrio,
charges you twenty-five centesimi to see their stolen goods.