How weary one grows of the ways of a city,--yes, even in Florence, where
every street runs into the country and one may always see the hills and
the sky! But even in Athens, when they built the Parthenon, often, I
think, I should have found my way into the olive gardens and vineyards
about Kephisos: so to-day, leaving the dead beauty littered in the
churches, the palaces, the museums, the streets of Florence, very often
I seek the living beauty of the country, the whisper of the poplars
beside Arno, the little lovely songs of streams. And then Florence is a
city almost without suburbs;[129] at the gate you find the hills, the
olive gardens bordered with iris, the vineyards hedged with the rose.
Many and fair are the ways to Fiesole: you may go like a burgess in the
tram, or like a lord in a coach, but for me I will go like a young man
by the bye ways, like a poor man on my feet, and the dew will be yet on
the roses when I set out, and in the vineyards they will be singing
among the corn--
"Fiorin fiorello,
La mi' Rosina ha il labbro di corallo
E l'occhiettino suo sembra un gioiello."
And then, who knows what awaits one on the way?
"E quando ti riscontro per la via
Abbassi gli occhi e rassembri una dea,
E la fai consumar la vita mia."
Of the ways to Fiesole, one goes by Mugnone and one by S. Gervasio, but
it will not be by them that I shall go, but out of Barriera delle Cure;
and I shall pass behind the gardens of Villa Palmieri, whither after the
second day of the _Decamerone_ Boccaccio's fair ladies and gay lords
passed from Poggio Gherardo by a little path "but little used, which was
covered with herbs and flowers, that opened under the rising sun, while
they listened to the song of the nightingales and other birds." Thus
between the garden walls I shall come to S. Domenico.
S. Domenico di Fiesole is a tiny village half way up the hill of
Fiesole, and on one side of the way is the Dominican convent, and on the
other the Villa Medici, while in the valley of Mugnone is an abbey of
Benedictines, the Badia di Fiesole, founded in 1028. The convent of
Dominican friars, where Fra Angelico and S. Antonino, who was the first
novice here, lived, and Cosimo de' Medici walked so often, looking down
on Florence and Arno there in the evening, was founded in 1405.
Suppressed in the early part of the nineteenth century, the convent was
despoiled of its frescoes, but in 1880 it was bought back by the
Dominicans, so that to-day it is fulfilling its original purpose as a
religious house. The church too has suffered many violations, and to-day
there are but two frescoes left of all the work Angelico did here,--a
triptych in a chapel, a Madonna and Saints restored by Lorenzo di Credi,
and a Crucifixion in the sacristy. Of old, Perugino's Baptism now in the
Uffizi hung here, but that was taken by Grand Duke Leopold, who gave in
exchange Lorenzo di Credi's picture; but the French stole Angelico's
Coronation of the Virgin, now in the Louvre, and gave nothing in return,
so that of all the riches of this little place almost nothing remains,
only (and this is rare about Florence at any rate) the original owners
are in possession, and you may hear Mass here very sweetly.
It is down a lane, again between garden walls, that you must go to the
Badia, once the great shrine of the Fiesolans, but since the eleventh
century an abbey of Benedictines, where S. Romolo once upon a time lay
in peace, till, indeed, the oratory not far from the church was
stupidly destroyed. The Badia itself was rebuilt in the fifteenth
century for Cosimo de' Medici, by the hand, as it is said, of
Brunellesco. Here in the loggia that looks over the city the Platonic
Academy often met, so that these very pillars must have heard the gentle
voice of Marsilio Ficino, the witty speech of the young Lorenzo, the
beautiful words of Pico della Mirandola, the laughter of Simonetta, the
footsteps of Vanna Tornabuoni. It was, however, not for the Benedictines
but for the Augustinians that Cosimo rebuilt the place, giving them,
indeed, one of the most beautiful convents in Italy, and one of the
loveliest churches too, a great nave with a transept under a circular
vaulting, while the façade is part really of the earlier building, older
it may be than S. Miniato or the Baptistery itself, as we now see it;
and there the pupils of Desiderio da Settignano have worked and Giovanni
di S. Giovanni has painted, while Brunellesco is said to have designed
the lectern in the sacristy. Later, Inghirami set up his printing press
here, while in the church Giovanni de' Medici in 1452 was made Cardinal,
and in the convent Giuliano, the Due de Nemours, died in 1516. Returning
from this quiet and beautiful retreat to S. Domenico, one may go very
well on foot, though not otherwise, by the old road to Fiesole, still
between the garden walls; but then, who would go by the new way, noisy
with the shrieking of the trams, while by the old way you may tread in
the footsteps of the Bishops of Fiesole? They would rest on the way from
Florence at Riposo de' Vescovi, and leave their coach at S. Domenico. By
the old way, too, you pass Le Tre Pulzelle, the hostel of the Three
Maidens, or at least the place where it stood, and where Leo X stayed in
1516. Farther, too, is the little church of S. Ansano, where there is a
host of fair pictures, and then suddenly you are in the great Piazza,
littered with the booths of the straw-plaiters, in the keen air of
Fiesole, among a ruder and more virile people, who look down on Florence
all day long.
[Illustration: COSTA S. GEORGIO]
And indeed, whatever the historians may say, scorning wise tales of
old Villani, the Fiesolani are a very different people from the
Florentines; and whether Atlas, with Electra his wife, born in the fifth
degree from Japhet son of Noah, built this city upon this rock by the
counsel of Apollinus, midway between the sea of Pisa and Rome and the
Gulf of Venice, matters little. The Fiesolani are not Florentines,
people of the valley, but Etruscans, people of the hills, and that you
may see in half an hour any day in their windy piazzas and narrow
climbing ways. Rough, outspoken, stark men little women keen and full of
salt, they have not the assured urbanity of the Florentine, who, while
he scorns you in his soul as a barbarian, will trade with you, eat with
you, and humour you, certainly without betraying his contempt. But the
Fiesolano is otherwise; quarrelsome he is, and a little aloof, he will
not concern himself overmuch about you, and will do his business whether
you come or go. And I think, indeed, he still hates the Fiorentino, as
the Pisan does, as the Sienese does, with an immortal, cold, everlasting
hatred, that maybe nothing will altogether wipe out or cause him to
forget. All these people have suffered too much from Florence, who
understood the art of victory as little as she understood the art of
empire. From the earliest times, as it might seem, Florence, a Roman
foundation after all, hated Fiesole, which once certainly was an
Etruscan city. Time after time she destroyed it, generally in
self-defence. In 1010, for instance, Villani tells us that "the
Florentines, perceiving that their city of Florence had no power to rise
much while they had overhead so strong a fortress as the city of
Fiesole, one night secretly and subtly set an ambush of armed men in
divers parts of Fiesole. The Fiesolani, feeling secure as to the
Florentines, and not being on their guard against them, on the morning
of their chief festival of S. Romolo, when the gates were open and the
Fiesolani unarmed, the Florentines entered into the city under cover of
coming to the festa; and when a good number were within, the other armed
Florentines which were in ambush secured the gates; and on a signal made
to Florence, as had been arranged, all the host and power of the
Florentines came on horse and on foot to the hill, and entered into the
city of Fiesole, and traversed it, slaying scarce any man nor doing any
harm, save to those who opposed them. And when the Fiesolani saw
themselves to be suddenly and unexpectedly surprised by the Florentines,
part of them which were able fled to the fortress, which was very
strong, and long time maintained themselves there. The city at the foot
of the fortress having been taken and over run by the Florentines, and
the strongholds and they which opposed themselves being likewise taken,
the common people surrendered themselves on condition that they should
not be slain nor robbed of their goods; the Florentines working their
will to destroy the city, and keeping possession of the bishop's palace.
Then the Florentines made a covenant, that whosoever desired to leave
the city of Fiesole and come and dwell in Florence might come safe and
sound with all his goods and possessions, or might go to any place which
pleased him, for the which thing they came down in great numbers to
dwell in Florence, whereof there were and are great families in
Florence. And when this was done, and the city was without inhabitants
and goods, the Florentines caused it to be pulled down and destroyed,
all save the bishop's palace and certain other churches and the
fortress, which still held out, and did not surrender under the said
conditions." Fifteen years later we read again: "In the year of Christ
1125 the Florentines came with an army to the fortress of Fiesole, which
was still standing and very strong, and it was held by certain gentlemen
_cattani_ which had been of the city of Fiesole, and thither resorted
highwaymen and refugees and evil men, which sometimes infested the roads
and country of Florence; and the Florentines carried on the siege so
long that for lack of victuals the fortress surrendered, albeit they
would never have taken it by storm, and they caused it to be all cast
down and destroyed to the foundations, and they made a decree that none
should ever dare to build a fortress again at Fiesole."[130]
Now whether Villani is strictly right in his chronicle matters little
or nothing. We know that Fiesole was an Etruscan city, that with the
rise of Rome, like the rest, she became a Roman colony; all this too her
ruins confirm. With the fall of Rome, and the barbarian invasions, she
was perfectly suited to the needs of the Teutonic invader. What hatred
Florence had for her was probably due to the fact that she was a
stronghold of the barbarian nobles, and the fact that in 1010, as
Villani says, the Fiesolani were content to leave the city and descend
to Florence, while the citadel held out and had to be dealt with later,
goes to prove that the fight was rather between the Latin commune of
Florence and the pirate nobles of Fiesole than between Florence and
Fiesole itself. Certainly with the destruction of the alien power at
Fiesole the city of Florence gained every immediate security; the last
great fortress in her neighbourhood was destroyed.
To-day Fiesole consists of a windy Piazza, in which a campanile towers
between two hills covered with houses and churches and a host of narrow
lanes. In the Piazza stands the Duomo, founded in 1028 by Bishop Jacopo
Bavaro, who no doubt wished to bring his throne up the hill from the
Badia, where of old it was established. Restored though it is, the
church keeps something of its old severity and beauty, standing there
like a fortress between the hills and between the valleys. It is of
basilica form, with a nave and aisles flanked by sixteen columns of
sandstone. As at S. Miniato, the choir is raised over a lofty crypt.
There is not perhaps much of interest in the church, but over the west
door you may see a statue of S. Romolo, while in the choir in the
Salutati Chapel there is the masterpiece of Mino da Fiesole, the tomb of
Bishop Salutati, who died in 1465, and opposite a marble reredos of
Madonna between S. Antonio and S. Leonardo, by the same master. The
beautiful bust of Bishop Leonardo over his tomb is an early work, and
the tomb itself is certainly among the most original and charming works
of the master. If the reredos is not so fine, it is perhaps only that
with so splendid a work before us we are content only with the best of
all.
But it is not to see a church that we have wandered up to Fiesole, for
in the country certainly the churches are less than an olive garden, and
the pictures are shamed by the flowers that run over the hills. Lounging
about this old fortress of a city, one is caught rather by the aspect of
natural things--Val d'Arno, far and far away, and at last a glimpse of
the Apennines; Val di Mugnone towards Monte Senario, the night of
cypresses about Vincigliata, the olives of Maiano--than by the churches
scattered among the trees or hidden in the narrow ways that everywhere
climb the hills to lose themselves at last in the woodland or in the
cornlands among the vines. You wander behind the Duomo into the Scavi,
and it is not the Roman Baths you go to see or the Etruscan walls and
the well-preserved Roman theatre: you watch the clouds on the mountains,
the sun in the valley, the shadows on the hills, listen to a boy singing
to his goats, play with a little girl who has slipped her hand in yours
looking for soldi, or wonder at the host of flowers that has run even
among these ruins. Even from the windows of the Palazzo Pretorio, which
for some foolish reason you have entered on your way to the hills, you
do not really see the statues and weapons of these forgotten Etruscan
people, but you watch the sun that has perhaps suddenly lighted up the
Duomo, or the wind that, like a beautiful thought, for a moment has
turned the hills to silver. Or if it be up to S. Francesco you climb,
the old acropolis of Fiesole, above the palace of the bishop and the
Seminary, it will surely be rather to look over the valley to the
farthest hills, where Val di Greve winds towards Siena, than to enter a
place which, Franciscan though it be, has nothing to show half so fair
as this laughing country, or that Tuscan cypress on the edge of that
grove of olives.
That love of country life, no longer characteristic of the Florentines,
which we are too apt to consider almost wholly English, was long ago
certainly one of the most delightful traits of the Tuscan character; for
Siena was not behind Florence in her delight in the life of the
villa.[131] It is perhaps in the Commentaries of Pius II that a love of
country byways, the lanes and valleys about his home, through which,
gouty and old, he would have himself carried in a litter, is expressed
for the first time with a true understanding and appreciation of things
which for us have come to mean a good half of life. No such lovely
descriptions of scenery may be found perhaps in any Florentine writer
before Lorenzo Magnifico, unless indeed it be in the verse of Sacchetti.
Yet the Florentine burgess of the fifteenth century, the very man whose
simple and hard common-sense got him wealth, or at least a fine
competence, and, as he has told us, a good housewife, and made him one
of the toughest traders in Europe, would become almost a poet in his
country house. Old Agnolo Pandolfini, talking to his sons, and teaching
them his somewhat narrow yet wholesome and delightful wisdom,
continually reminds himself of those villas near Florence, some like
palaces,--Poggio Gherardo for instance,--some like castles,--Vincigliata
perhaps,--"in the purest air, in a laughing country of lovely views,
where there are no fogs nor bitter winds, but always fresh water and
everything pure and healthy." Certainly Cosimo de' Medici was not the
first Florentine to retire from the city perhaps to Careggi, perhaps to
S. Domenico, perhaps farther still; for already in Boccaccio's day we
hear the praise of country life,--his description of Villa Palmieri, for
instance, when at the end of the second day of the _Decamerone_ those
seven ladies and their three comrades leave Poggio Gherardo for that
palace "about two miles westward," whither they came at six o'clock of a
Sunday morning in the year 1348. "When they had entered and inspected
everything, and seen that the halls and rooms had been cleaned and
decorated, and plentifully supplied with all that was needed for sweet
living, they praised its beauty and good order, and admired the owner's
magnificence. And on descending, even more delighted were they with the
pleasant and spacious courts, the cellars filled with choice wines, and
the beautifully fresh water which was everywhere round about.... Then
they went into the garden, which was on one side of the palace and was
surrounded by a wall, and the beauty and magnificence of it at first
sight made them eager to examine it more closely. It was crossed in all
directions by long, broad, and straight walks, over which the vines,
which that year made a great show of giving many grapes, hung gracefully
in arched festoons, and being then in full blossom, filled the whole
garden with their sweet smell, and this, mingled with the odours of the
other flowers, made so sweet a perfume that they seemed to be in the
spicy gardens of the East. The sides of the walks were almost closed
with red and white roses and with jessamine so that they gave sweet
odours and shade not only in the morning but when the sun was high, so
that one might walk there all day without fear. What flowers there were
there how various and how ordered, it would take too long to tell, but
there was not one which in our climate is to be praised, which was not
to be found there abundantly. Perhaps the most delightful thing therein
was a meadow in the midst, of the finest grass and all so green that it
seemed almost black, all sprinkled with a thousand various flowers, shut
in by oranges and cedars, the which bore the ripe fruit and the young
fruit too and the blossom, offering a shade most grateful to the eyes
and also a delicious perfume. In the midst of this meadow there was a
fountain of the whitest marble marvellously carved, and within--I do not
know whether artificially or from a natural spring--it threw so much
water and so high towards the sky through a statue which stood there on
a pedestal, that it would not have needed more to turn a mill. The water
fell back again with a delicious sound into the clear waters of the
basin, and the surplus was carried away through a subterranean way into
little waterways most beautifully and artfully made about the meadow,
and afterwards ran into others round about, and so watered every part of
the garden; it collected at length in one place, whence it had entered
the beautiful garden, turning two mills, much to the profit, as you may
suppose, of the signore, and pouring down at last in a stream clear and
sweet into the valley."
If this should seem a mere pleasaunce of delight, the vision of a poet,
the garden of a dream, we have only to remember how realistically and
simply Boccaccio has described for us that plague-stricken city,
scarcely more than a mile away, to be assured of its truthfulness: and
then listen to Alberti--or old Agnolo Pandolfini, is it?--in his
_Trattato del Governo della Famiglia_, one of the most delightful books
of the fifteenth century. He certainly was no poet, yet with what
enthusiasm and happiness he speaks of his villa, how comely and useful
it is, so that while everything else brings labour, danger, suspicion,
harm, fear, and repentance, the villa will bring none of these, but a
pure happiness, a real consolation. Yes, it is really as an escape from
all the care and anxiety of business, of the wool or silk trade, which
he praised so much, that he loves the country. "_La Villa_, the country,
one soon finds, is always gracious, faithful, and true; if you govern it
with diligence and love, it will never be satisfied with what it does
for you, always it will add [**Transcriber's Note: undecipherable] to
recompense. In the spring the villa gives you continual delight; green
leaves, flowers, odours, songs and in every way makes you happy and
jocund: all smiles on you and promises a fine harvest, filling you with
good hope, delight, and pleasure. Yes indeed, how courteous is the
villa! She gives you now one fruit, now another, never leaving you
without some of her own joy. For in autumn she pays you for all your
trouble, fruit out of all proportion to your merit, recompense, and
thanks; and how willingly and with what abundance--twelve for one: for a
little sweat, many barrels of wine, and for what is old in the house,
the villa will give you new, seasoned, clear, and good. She fills the
house the winter long with grapes, both fresh and dry, with plums,
walnuts, pears, apples, almonds, filberts, giuggiole, pomegranates, and
other wholesome fruits, and apples fragrant and beautiful. Nor in winter
will she forget to be liberal; she sends you wood, oil, vine branches,
laurels, junipers to keep out snow and wind, and then she comforts you
with the sun, offering you the hare and the roe, and the field to follow
them...." Nor are the joys of summer less, for you may read Greek and
Latin in the shadow of the courtyard where the fountains splash, while
your girls are learning songs and your boys are busy with the contadini,
in the vineyards or beside the stream. It is a spirit of pure delight,
we find there in that old townsman, in country life, simple and quiet,
after the noise and sharpness of the market-place. And certainly, as we
pass from Fiesole down the new road where the tram runs, turning into
the lanes again just by Villa Galetta, on our way to Maiano, we may
fancy we see many places where such a life as that has always been
lived, and, as I know, in some is lived to-day. Everywhere on these
hills you find villas, and every villa has a garden, and every garden
has a fountain, where all day long the sun plays with the slim dancing
water and the contadine sing of love in the vineyards.
Maiano itself is but a group of such places, among them a great villa
painted in the manner of the seventeenth century, spoiled a little by
modernity. You can leave it behind, passing into a lane behind Poggio
Gherardo, where it is roses, roses all the way, for the podere is hedged
with a hedge of roses pink and white, where the iris towers too,
streaming its violet banners. Presently, as you pass slowly on your
way--for in a garden who would go quickly?--you come upon the little
church of S. Martino a Mensola, built, as I think indeed, so lovely it
is, by Brunellesco, on a little rising ground above a shrunken stream,
and that is Mensola on her way to Arno. She lags for sure, because, lost
in Arno, she will see nothing again so fair as her own hills.
[Illustration: OUTSIDE THE GATE]
S. Martino a Mensola is very old, for it is said that in the year 800 an
oratory stood here, dedicated to S. Martino, and that il Beato Andrea di
Scozia, Blessed Andrew of Scotland, then archdeacon to the bishopric of
Fiesole, rebuilt it and endowed a little monastery, where he went to
live with a few companions, taking the rule of St. Benedict. Carocci
tells us that about 1550 it passed from the Benedictines to certain
monks who already had a house at S. Andrea in Mercato Vecchio of
Florence. In 1450 the monastery returned to Benedictines, coming into
the possession of the monks of the Badia. Restored many times, the
church was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, it may well be by
Brunellesco; the portico, restored in 1857, was added in the sixteenth
century. Within, the church is charming, having a nave and two aisles,
with four small chapels and a great one, which belonged to the Zati
family. And then, not without a certain surprise, you come here upon
many pictures still in their own place, over the altars of what is now a
village church. Over the high altar is a great ancona divided into many
compartments: the Virgin with our Lord, S. Maria Maddalena, S. Niccolò,
St. Catharine of Alexandria, S. Giuliano, S. Amerigo of Hungary, S.
Martino, S. Gregorio, S. Antonio, and the donor, Amerigo Zati. Carocci
suggests Bernardo Orcagna as the painter; whoever he may have been, this
altarpiece is beautiful, and the more beautiful too since it is in its
own place. In the Gherardi Chapel there is an Annunciation given to
Giusto d'Andrea, while in another is a Madonna and Saints by Neri di
Bicci. In the chapel of the Cecchini there is a fine fifteenth-century
work attributed to Cosimo Rosselli. The old monastery is to-day partly
the canonica and partly a villa. Following the stream upwards, we pass
under and then round the beautiful Villa I Tatti that of old belonged to
the Zati family whose altarpiece is in S. Martino, and winding up the
road to Vincigliata, you soon enter the cypress woods. All the way to
your left Poggio Gherardo has towered over you, Poggio Gherardo where
the two first days of the _Decamerone_ were passed. How well Boccaccio
describes the place: "On the top of a hill there stood a palace which
was surrounded by beautiful gardens, delightful meadows, and cool
springs, and in the midst was a great and beautiful court with
galleries, halls, and rooms which were adorned with paintings...." Not
far away, Boccaccio himself lived on the podere of his father. You come
to it if you pass out of the Vincigliata road by a pathway down to
Frassignaja, a little stream which, in its hurry to reach Mensola, its
sister here, leaps sheer down the rocks in a tiny waterfall. This is the
"shady valley" perhaps where in the evening the ladies of the
_Decamerone_ walked "between steep rocks to a crystal brook which poured
down from a little hill, and there they splashed about with bare hands
and feet, and talked merrily with one another." Crossing this brook and
following the path round the hillside, where so often the nightingale
sings, you pass under a little villa by a stony way to Corbignano, and
there, in what may well be the oldest house in the place, at the end of
the street, past the miraculous orange tree, just where the hill turns
out of sight, you see Boccaccio's house, Casa di Boccaccio, as it is
written; and though the old tower has become a loggia, and much has been
rebuilt, you may still see the very ancient stones of the place jutting
into the lane, where the water sings so after the rain, and the olives
whisper softly all night long, and God walks always among the vines.
Turning then uphill, you come at last to a group of houses, and where
the way turns suddenly there is the Oratorio del Vannella, in the parish
of Settignano: it is truly just an old wayside tabernacle, but within is
one of the earliest works, a Madonna and Child, of Botticelli, whose
father had a podere hereabout. If you follow where the road leads, and
turn at last where you may, past the cemetery, you come to Settignano,
founded by Septimus Severus or by the Settimia family, it matters little
which, for its glory now lies with Desiderio the sculptor, who was born,
it seems, at Corbignano, and Antonio and Bernardo Rossellino, who were
born here. There is no other village near Florence that has so smiling a
face as Settignano among the gardens. There is little or nothing to see,
though the church of S. Maria has a lovely terra-cotta of Madonna with
Our Lord between two angels in the manner of the della Robbia; but the
little town is delightful, full of stonecutters and sculptors, still at
work in their shops as they were in the great days of Michelangelo. Far
away behind the hill of cypresses Vincigliata still stands on guard, on
the hilltop Castel di Poggio looks into the valley of Ontignano and
guards the road to Arezzo and Rome. Here there is peace; not too far
from the city nor too near the gate, as I said: and so to Firenze in the
twilight.
NOTE.--_I have said little of the country places about Florence,
Settimo, the Certosa in Val d'Ema, the Incontro and such, because there
seemed to be too much to say, and I wanted to treat of them in a book
that should be theirs only. See my_ Country Walks Round Florence
(_Methuen_, 1908).