_From the Bargello past Santa Croce_
"Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto,
ch'un marmo solo in se non circonscriva
col suo soverchio; e solo a quello arriva
la man che ubbidisce all'intelletto."
--_Michelangelo Buonarroti._
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 Commune belongs to the _Primo 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 Gonfaloniere 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
Bargello, or chief of police, resided here--hence the present name of
the palace; and it is well to repeat, once for all, that when the
Bargello, or Court of the Bargello, is mentioned 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,
1260-1266, 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 before the Podesta's court. In one
of those dark vaulted rooms on the ground floor, now full of a choice
collection of mediaeval 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 himself of honour." Some died under the torments,
others were beheaded.
"Messer Donato Alberti," writes Dino Compagni, "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 Alberti?' 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.'[34] 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."
[34] These were the burghers and lawyers of the black faction, the
Podesta's allies and friends. This was in the spring of 1303.
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 quartered themselves here.
[Illustration: BARGELLO COURTYARD AND STAIRCASE]
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, 1333-1345. 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 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 imitation 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 superstition; 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.[35]
[35] Such, at least, seems the more obvious interpretation; but there
is a certain sensuality and cruelty about the victor's expression,
which, together with the fact that the vanquished undoubtedly has
something of Michelangelo's own features, lead us to suspect that the
master's sympathies were with the lost cause.
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 1511 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 the ordeal of fire. Here is the unfinished bust of
Brutus (111) 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 the 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 Michelangelo'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. Of this 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 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 monument to Gattamelata at Padua--a hall of such
noble proportions 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 6th, 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 symbolical
lion of Florence protecting the shield of the Commune, 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 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 idealised
condottiere of the Quattrocento; St. John the Baptist 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 Donatello; 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
Brunette 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 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 pictures commissioned by
pious Podestas in 1490 and 1491, 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 masterpieces of the fifteenth century. Here are
the famous trial plates for the great competition for the second
bronze gates of the Baptistery, announced in 1401, 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 Brunelleschi'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 Il 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 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 Della
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 expression 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 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 savage 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 Lucca (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 studying 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
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is fully illustrated in this
room, and there is at the same time a peculiar tenderness 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 Rossellino, and a tondo by the same master
representing the Adoration of the Shepherds; Andrea Verrocchio's
Madonna and Child; Verrocchio's Lady with the Bouquet (181), 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 Sacrament. 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; portrait 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 Benedetto da Maiano;
Bacchus, by Jacopo Sansovino; and Michelangelo's second David (224),
frequently miscalled 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. Passing along the Via Ghibellina, we
presently come on the right to what was originally the _Stinche_, a
prison for nobles, _in qua carcerentur et custodiantur magnates_, so
called from a castle of the Cavalcanti captured by the Neri in 1304,
from which the prisoners were imprisoned here: it is now a part of the
Teatro Pagliano. Later it became the place of captivity of the lowest
criminals, and a first point of attack in risings of the populace. It
contains, in a lunette on the stairs, a contemporary fresco
representing the expulsion of the Duke of Athens on St. Anne's Day,
1343. St. Anne is giving the banners of the People and of the Commune
to a group of stern Republican warriors, while with one hand she
indicates the Palace of the Priors, fortified with the tyrant's towers
and battlements. By its side rises a great throne, from which the Duke
is shrinking in terror from the Angel of the wrath of God; a broken
sword lies at his feet; the banner of Brienne lies dishonoured in the
dust, with the scales of justice that he profaned and the book of the
law that he outraged. In so solemn and chastened a spirit could the
artists of the Trecento conceive of their Republic's deliverance. The
fresco was probably painted by either Giottino or Maso di Banco; it
was once wrongly ascribed to Cennino Cennini, who wrote the _Treatise
on Painting_, which was the approved text-book in the studios and
workshops of the earlier masters.
Further down the Via Ghibellina is the Casa Buonarroti, which once
belonged to Michelangelo, and was bequeathed by his family to the
city. It is entirely got up as a museum now, and not in the least
suggestive of the great artist's life, though a tiny little study and
a few letters and other relics are shown. There are, however, a
certain number of his drawings here, including a design for the facade
of San Lorenzo, which is of very questionable authenticity, and a
Madonna. Two of his earliest works in marble are preserved here,
executed at that epoch of his youth when he frequented the house and
garden of Lorenzo the Magnificent. One is a bas-relief of the Madonna
and Child--somewhat in the manner of Donatello--with two Angels at the
top of a ladder. The other is a struggle of the Centaurs and Lapithae,
a subject suggested to the boy by Angelo Poliziano, full of motion and
vigour and wonderfully modelled. Vasari says, "To whoso considers this
work, it does not seem from the hand of a youth, but from that of an
accomplished and past master in these studies, and experienced in the
art." The former is in the fifth room, the latter in the antechamber.
There are also two models for the great David; a bust of the master in
bronze by Ricciarelli, and his portrait by his pupil, Marcello
Venusti. A predella representing the legend of St. Nicholas is by
Francesco Pesellino, whose works are rare. In the third room (among
the later allegories and scenes from the master's life) is a large
picture supposed to have been painted by Jacopo da Empoli from a
cartoon by Michelangelo, representing the Holy Family with the four
Evangelists; it is a peculiarly unattractive work. The cartoon,
ascribed to Michelangelo, is in the British Museum; and I would
suggest that it was originally not a religious picture at all, but an
allegory of Charity. The cross in the little Baptist's hand does not
occur in the cartoon.
Almost at the end of the Via Ghibellina are the Prisons which occupy
the site of the famous convent of _Le Murate_. In this convent
Caterina Sforza, the dethroned Lady of Forli and mother of Giovanni
delle Bande Nere, ended her days in 1509. Here the Duchessina, or
"Little Duchess," as Caterina dei Medici was called, was placed by the
Signoria after the expulsion of the Medici in 1527, in order to
prevent Pope Clement VII. from using her for the purpose of a
political marriage which might endanger the city. They seem to have
feared especially the Prince of Orange. The result was that the
convent became a centre of Medicean intrigue; and the Signoria, when
the siege commenced, sent Salvestro Aldobrandini to take her away.
When Salvestro arrived, after he had been kept waiting for some time,
the little Duchess came to the grill of the parlour, dressed as a nun,
and said that she intended to take the habit and stay for ever "with
these my reverend mothers." According to Varchi, the poor little
girl--she was barely eleven years old, had lost both parents in the
year of her birth, and was practically alone in the city where the
cruellest threats had been uttered against her--was terribly
frightened and cried bitterly, "not knowing to what glory and felicity
her life had been reserved by God and the Heavens." But Messer
Salvestro and Messer Antonio de' Nerli did all they could to comfort
and reassure her, and took her to the convent of Santa Lucia in the
Via di San Gallo; "in which monastery," says Nardi, "she was received
and treated with the same maternal love by those nuns, until the end
of the war."
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 convent, which Arnolfo di Cambio commenced for the Franciscans 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 penitential 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 few 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, announcing 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 Vecchio,
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 tournament given here
by Lorenzo dei Medici in 1467, to celebrate 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, "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."[36] 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 sumptuous
entertainment of the same sort was given by Giuliano dei 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
accomplices. 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.
[36] Quoted in Mr Armstrong's _Lorenzo de' Medici_.
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 graceful 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 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 decoration 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 Westminster, "the
recognised shrine of Italian genius." On the pavement beneath our
feet, outstretched on their tombstones, 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 defence 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 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 philosophy 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 England 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.
[Illustration: SANTA CROCE]
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 canonised brother, the Franciscan Bishop St. Louis of
Toulouse. This St. Louis, the patron saint of the Parte Guelfa, had
been ordered by 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 dei 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 Michelangelo, 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 dei Medici in the Pazzi conspiracy; the comparatively 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
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 Machiavelli (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. Beyond Padre
Lanzi's grave, over the tomb of the learned Franciscan Fra 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 undoubtedly
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 preserved in the
convent. M. Reymond has shown that this Annunciation is not an early
work of the master's, as Vasari 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 outstretched 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 interesting.
Opposite Leonardo Bruni's tomb is that of his successor, 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, perhaps, symbolise
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 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 carrying 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. Donatello's is, perhaps, somewhat more
realistic and less refined.
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
ascribe the famous Last Judgment and Triumph of Death in the Pisan
Campo Santo). All these imply a certain Dantesque selection; these
subjects are among the examples quoted for purposes of meditation or
admonition in the _Divina Commedia_. The coloured terracotta relief is
by Giovanni della Robbia. The frescoes of the choir, by 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 Solomon
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 Emperor
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 profound 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, instead, the restorer has given us monotonous
countenances, almost deadly in their uniformity and utter lack of
expression. Like all mediaeval frescoes dealing with St. Francis, they
should be read with the _Fioretti_ or with Dante's _Paradiso_, 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 alla 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 sleeping bishop to assure
him of the truth of the Stigmata. Opposite, 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 carried 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 gloriously." 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 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 realisation of the
Platonic 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
Hungary, 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, especially 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 Ghirlandaio 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 suffered 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 psychological 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 la faccia 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 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 fourteenth 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 Baroncelli 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 terracotta work of the school of the
Della 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 _Magister_ was Giotto's pet
aversion, as we know from Boccaccio, 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 Brunelleschi'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 probably by one of his
scholars. This room had the invidious honour of being the seat of the
Inquisition, which in Florence had always--save for a very brief
period in the thirteenth century--been in the hands of the
Franciscans, and not the Dominicans. It never had any real power in
Florence--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 attempting to raise the people, had been captured in his
escape, tortured and hanged. It was said that he had cried in dying
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.
Behind Santa Croce two streets of very opposite names and traditions
meet, the _Via Borgo Allegri_ (which also intersects the Via
Ghibellina) and the _Via dei Malcontenti_; the former records the
legendary birthday of Italian painting, the latter the mournful
processions of poor wretches condemned to death.
According to the tradition, Giovanni Cimabue had his studio in the
former street, and it was here that, in Dante's words, he thought to
hold the field in painting: _Credette Cimabue nella pittura tener lo
campo._ Here, according to Vasari, he was visited by Charles the Elder
of Anjou, and his great Madonna carried hence in procession with music
and lighted candles, ringing of bells and waving of banners, to Santa
Maria Novella; while the street that had witnessed such a miracle was
ever after called _Borgo Allegri_, "the happy suburb:" "named the Glad
Borgo from that beauteous face," as Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts
it. Unfortunately there are several little things that show that this
story needs revision of some kind. When Charles of Anjou came to
Florence, the first stone of Santa Maria Novella had not yet been
laid, and the picture now shown there as Cimabue's appears to be a
Sienese work. The legend, however, is very precious, and should be
devoutly held. The king in question was probably another Angevin
Charles--Carlo Martello, grandson of the elder Charles and titular
King of Hungary, Dante's friend, who was certainly in Florence for
nearly a month in the spring of 1295, and made himself exceedingly
pleasant. Vasari has made a similar confusion in the case of two
emperors of the name of Frederick. The picture has doubtless perished,
but the Joyous Borgo has not changed its name.
The Via dei Malcontenti leads out into the broad Viale Carlo Alberto,
which marks the site of Arnolfo's wall. It formerly ended in a postern
gate, known as the Porta della Giustizia, beyond which was a little
chapel--of which no trace is left--and the place where the gallows
stood. The condemned were first brought to a chapel which stood in the
Via dei Malcontenti, near the present San Giuseppe, and then taken out
to the chapel beyond the gate, where the prayers for the dying were
said over them by the friars, after which they were delivered to the
executioner.[37] In May 1503, as Simone Filipepi tells us, a man was
beheaded here, whom the people apparently regarded as innocent; when
he was dead, they rose up and stoned the executioner to death. And
this was the same executioner who, five years before, had hanged
Savonarola and his companions in the Piazza, and had insulted their
dead bodies to please the dregs of the populace. The tower, of which
the mutilated remains still stand here, the _Torre della Zecca
Vecchia_, formerly called the _Torre Reale_, was originally a part of
the defences of a bridge which it was intended to build here in honour
of King Robert of Naples in 1317, and guarded the Arno at this point.
After the siege, during which the Porta della Giustizia was walled up,
Duke Alessandro incorporated the then lofty Torre Reale into a strong
fortress which he constructed here, the Fortezza Vecchia. In later
days, offices connected with the Arte del Cambio and the Mint were
established in its place, whence the present name of the Torre della
Zecca Vecchia.
[37] See Guido Carocci, _Firenze Scomparsa_, here and generally.
[Illustration: OLD HOUSES ON THE ARNO]