_Across the Arno_
"Come a man destra, per salire al monte,
dove siede la Chiesa che soggioga
la ben guidata sopra Rubaconte,
si rompe del montar l'ardita foga.
per le scalee che si fero ad etade
ch'era sicuro il quaderno e la doga."
--_Dante._
Across the river, partly lying along its bank and partly climbing up
St. George's hill to the south, lies what was the Sesto d'Oltrarno in
the days when old Florence was divided into sextaries, and became the
Quartiere di Santo Spirito when the city was reorganised in quarters
after the expulsion of the Duke of Athens. It was not originally a
part of the city itself. At the time of building the second walls in
the twelfth century (_see_ chapter i.), there were merely three
_borghi_ or suburbs beyond the Arno, inhabited by the poorest
classes, each of the three beginning at the head of the Ponte Vecchio;
the Borgo Pidiglioso to the east, towards the present Via dei Bardi
and Santa Lucia, where the road went on to Rome by way of Figline and
Arezzo; the Borgo di Santa Felicita, to the south, ending in a gate at
the present Piazza San Felice, where the road to Siena commenced; and
the Borgo San Jacopo to the west, with a gate in the present Piazza
Frescobaldi, on the way to Pisa. A few rich and noble families began
to settle here towards the beginning of the thirteenth century. When
the dissensions between Guelfs and Ghibellines came to a head in 1215,
the Nerli and Rossi were Guelfs, the Gangalandi, Ubbriachi and
Mannelli, Ghibellines; and these were then the only nobles of the
Oltrarno, although Villani tells us that "the Frescobaldi and the
Bardi and the Mozzi were already beginning to become powerful." The
_Primo Popolo_ commenced to wall it in, in 1250, with the stones from
dismantled feudal towers; and it was finally included in the third
circle of the walls at the beginning of the fourteenth century--a
point to which we shall return.
As we saw in chapter iii., it was in the Oltrarno that the nobles made
their last stand against the People in 1343, when the Nerli held the
Ponte alla Carraia, the Frescobaldi and Mannelli the Ponte di Santa
Trinita, and the Rossi and Bardi defended the Ponte Vecchio and the
Ponte Rubaconte, with the narrow streets between. In the following
century it was the headquarters of the faction opposed to the Medici,
the Party of the Mountain, as it was called, from the lofty position
of Luca Pitti's great palace. A century more, and it became the seat
of government under the Medicean Grand Dukes, and the whole was
crowned by the fortress of the Belvedere which Buontalenti built in
1590 for Ferdinand I.
At the head of the Ponte Vecchio, to right and left, the Borgo San
Jacopo and the Via dei Bardi still retain something of their old
characteristics and mediaeval appearance. In the former especially are
some fine towers remaining of the Rossi, Nerli, Barbadori, and other
families; particularly one which belonged to the Marsili, opposite the
church of San Jacopo. A side street, the Via dei Giudei, once
inhabited by Jews, is still very picturesque. The little church of San
Jacopo, originally built in the eleventh century, but entirely
reconstructed in more recent times, still possesses an old Romanesque
portico. In this church some of the more bitter spirits among the
nobles held a council in 1294, and unanimously decided to murder Giano
della Bella. "The dogs of the people," said Messer Berto Frescobaldi,
who was the spokesman, "have robbed us of honour and office, and we
cannot enter the Palace. If we beat one of our own servants, we are
undone. Wherefore, my lords, it is my rede that we should come forth
from this servitude. Let us take up arms and assemble in the piazza;
let us slay the plebeians, friends and foes alike, so that never again
shall we or our children be subjected to them." His plan, however,
seemed too dangerous to the other nobles. "If our design failed," said
Messer Baldo della Tosa, "we should all be killed"; and it was decided
to proceed by more prudent means, and to disorganise the People and
undermine Giano's credit with them, before taking further action.
At the end of the Borgo San Jacopo, the Frescobaldi had their palaces
in the piazza which still bears their name, at the head of the Ponte
Santa Trinita. Here Charles of Valois took up his headquarters in
November 1301, with the intention of keeping this portion of the city
in case he lost his hold of the rest. Opposite the bridge the Capponi
had their palace; the heroic Piero Capponi lived here; and then the
Gonfaloniere Niccolo, who, accused of favouring the Medici, was
deprived of his office, and died broken-hearted just before the siege.
On the left of the Ponte Vecchio the Via dei Bardi, where the nobles
and retainers of that fierce old house made their last stand against
the People after the Frescobaldi had been forced to surrender, has
been much spoilt of recent years, though a few fine palaces remain,
and some towers, especially two, of the Mannelli and Ridolfi, at the
beginning of the street. In the Via dei Bardi, the fine Capponi Palace
was built for Niccolo da Uzzano at the beginning of the Quattrocento.
The church of Santa Lucia has a Della Robbia relief over the entrance,
and a picture of the school of Fra Filippo in the interior. The street
ends in the Piazza dei Mozzi, opposite the Ponte alle Grazie or Ponte
Rubaconte, where stands the Torrigiani Palace, built by Baccio
d'Agnolo in the sixteenth century.
From the Ponte Vecchio the Via Guicciardini leads to the Pitti Palace,
and onwards to the Via Romana and great Porta Romana. In the Piazza
Santa Felicita a column marks the site of one of St. Peter Martyr's
triumphs over the Paterini; the loggia is by Vasari; the historian
Guicciardini is buried in the church, which contains some second-rate
pictures. Further on, on the right, is the house where Machiavelli
died, a disappointed and misunderstood patriot, in 1527; on the left
is Guicciardini's palace.
The magnificent Palazzo Pitti was commenced shortly after 1440 by
Brunelleschi and Michelozzo, for Luca Pitti, that vain and incompetent
old noble who hoped to eclipse the Medici during the closing days of
the elder Cosimo. Messer Luca grew so confident, Machiavelli tells us,
that "he began two buildings, one in Florence and the other at
Ruciano, a place about a mile from the city; both were in right royal
style, but that in the city was altogether greater than any other that
had ever been built by a private citizen until that day. And to
complete them he shrank from no measures, however extraordinary; for
not only did citizens and private persons contribute and aid him with
things necessary for the building, but communes and corporations lent
him help. Besides this, all who were under ban, and whosoever had
committed murder or theft or anything else for which he feared public
punishment, provided that he were a person useful for the work, found
secure refuge within these buildings." After the triumph of Piero dei
Medici in 1466, Luca Pitti was pardoned, but ruined. "Straightway,"
writes Machiavelli, "he learned what difference there is between
success and failure, between dishonour and honour. A great solitude
reigned in his houses, which before had been frequented by vast
throngs of citizens. In the street his friends and relations feared
not merely to accompany him, but even to salute him, since from some
of them the honours had been taken, from others their property, and
all alike were menaced. The superb edifices which he had commenced
were abandoned by the builders; the benefits which had been heaped
upon him in the past were changed into injuries, honours into insults.
Many of those who had freely given him something of great value, now
demanded it back from him as having been merely lent, and those
others, who had been wont to praise him to the skies, now blamed him
for an ungrateful and violent man. Wherefore too late did he repent
that he had not trusted Niccolo Soderini, and sought rather to die
with honour with arms in hand, than live on in dishonour among his
victorious enemies."
In 1549 the unfinished palace was sold by Luca Pitti's descendants to
Eleonora of Toledo, Duke Cosimo's wife, and it was finished by
Ammanati during the latter half of the sixteenth century; the wings
are a later addition. The whole building, with its huge dimensions and
boldly rusticated masonry, is one of the most monumental and grandiose
of European palaces. It was first the residence of the Medicean Grand
Dukes, then of their Austrian successors, and is now one of the royal
palaces of the King of Italy.
In one of the royal apartments there is a famous picture of
Botticelli's, Pallas taming a Centaur, which probably refers to the
return of Lorenzo the Magnificent to Florence after his diplomatic
victory over the King of Naples and the League, in 1480. The beautiful
and stately Medicean Pallas is wreathed all over with olive branches;
her mantle is green, like that of Dante's Beatrice in the Earthly
Paradise; her white dress is copiously besprinkled with Lorenzo's
crest, the three rings. The Centaur himself is splendidly conceived
and realised--a characteristic Botticellian modification of those
terrible beings who hunt the damned souls of tyrants and robbers
through the river of blood in Dante's Hell. Opposite the Pallas there
is a small tondo, in which the Madonna and four Angels are adoring the
divine Child in a garden of roses and wild strawberries. The latter
was discovered in 1899 and ascribed to Botticelli, but appears to be
only a school piece.
The great glory of the Pitti Palace is its picture gallery, a
magnificent array of masterpieces, hung in sumptuously decorated rooms
with allegorical ceiling-paintings in the overblown and superficial
style of the artists of the decadence--Pietro da Cortona and others of
his kind:--
"Both in Florence and in Rome
The elder race so make themselves at home
That scarce we give a glance to ceilingfuls
Of such like as Francesco."
So Robert Browning writes of one of Pietro's pupils. The Quattrocento
is, with a few noteworthy exceptions, scarcely represented; but no
collection is richer in the works of the great Italians of the
Cinquecento at the culmination of the Renaissance. We can here, as in
the Uffizi, merely indicate the more important pictures in each room.
At the top of the staircase is a marble fountain ascribed to
Donatello. The names of the rooms are usually derived from the
subjects painted on the ceilings; we take the six principal saloons
first.
In the _Sala dell' Iliade_.
First, the three masterpieces of this room. Fra Bartolommeo's great
altar-piece painted in 1512 for San Marco (208), representing Madonna
and Child surrounded by Saints, with a group of Dominicans attending
upon the mystic marriage of St. Catherine of Siena, is a splendid
picture, but darkened and injured; the two _putti_, making melody at
the foot of Madonna's throne, are quite Venetian in character.
Titian's Cardinal Ippolito dei Medici (201) is one of the master's
grandest portraits; the Cardinal is represented in Hungarian military
costume. Ippolito, like his reputed father the younger Giuliano, was
one of the more respectable members of the elder branch of the Medici;
he was brought up with Alessandro, but the two youths hated each other
mortally from their boyhood. Young and handsome, cultured and lavishly
generous, Ippolito was exceedingly popular and ambitious, and felt
bitterly the injustice of Pope Clement in making Alessandro lord of
Florence instead of him. Clement conferred an archbishopric and other
things upon him, but could by no means keep him quiet. "Aspiring to
temporal greatness," writes Varchi, "and having set his heart upon
things of war rather than affairs of the Church, he hardly knew
himself what he wanted, and was never content." The Pope, towards whom
Ippolito openly showed his contempt, complained that he could not
exert any control over so eccentric and headstrong a character, _un
cervello eteroclito e cosi balzano_. After the Pope's death, the
Cardinal intrigued with the Florentine exiles in order to supplant
Alessandro, upon which the Duke had him poisoned in 1535, in the
twenty-fifth year of his age. Titian painted him in 1533.
The famous Concert (185), representing a passionate-faced monk of the
Augustinian order at the harpsichord, while an older and more prosaic
ecclesiastic stands behind him with a viol, and a youthful worldling
half carelessly listens, was formerly taken as the standard of
Giorgione's work; it is now usually regarded as an early Titian.
Although much damaged and repainted, it remains one of the most
beautiful of Venetian painted lyrics.
Andrea del Sarto's two Assumptions, one (225) painted before 1526 for
a church at Cortona, the other (191) left unfinished in 1531, show the
artist ineffectually striving after the sublime, and helplessly pulled
down to earth by the draperies of the Apostles round the tomb. Of
smaller works should be noticed: an early Titian, the Saviour (228);
two portraits by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (224, 207), of which the latter,
a goldsmith, has been ascribed to Leonardo; a lady known as _La
Gravida_ (229), probably by Raphael early in his Florentine period;
Daniele Barbaro by Paolo Veronese (216); Titian's Philip II. of Spain
(200); a male portrait by Andrea del Sarto (184), said, with little
plausibility, to represent himself; a Holy Family (235) by Rubens.
In the _Sala di Saturno_.
Here are some of the choicest pictures in the collection, including a
whole series of Raphael's. Raphael's Madonna del Gran Duca (178)--so
called from its modern purchaser, Ferdinand III.--was painted in 1504
or 1505, either before leaving Urbino or shortly after his arrival in
Florence; it is the sweetest and most purely devotional of all his
Madonnas. Morelli points out that it is strongly reminiscent of
Raphael's first master, Timoteo Viti. The portraits of Angelo Doni and
Maddalena Doni (61 and 59) also belong to the beginning of Raphael's
Florentine epoch, about 1505 or 1506, and show how much he felt the
influence of Leonardo; Angelo Doni, it will be remembered, was the
parsimonious merchant for whom Michelangelo painted the Madonna of the
Tribuna. The Madonna del Baldacchino (165) was commenced by Raphael in
1508, the last picture of his Florentine period, ordered by the Dei
for Santo Spirito; it shows the influence of Fra Bartolommeo in its
composition, and was left unfinished when Pope Julius summoned the
painter to Rome; in its present state, there is hardly anything of
Raphael's about it. The beautiful Madonna della Seggiola (151) is a
work of Raphael's Roman period, painted in 1513 or 1514. The Vision of
Ezekiel (174) is slightly later, painted in 1517 or thereabout, and
shows that Raphael had felt the influence of Michelangelo; one of the
smallest and most sublime of all his pictures; the landscape is less
conventional than we often see in his later works. Neither of the two
portraits ascribed to Raphael in this room (171, 158) can any longer
be accepted as a genuine work of the master.
Andrea del Sarto and Fra Bartolommeo are likewise represented by
masterpieces. The Friar's Risen Christ with Four Evangelists (159),
beneath whom two beautiful _putti_ hold the orb of the world, was
painted in 1516, the year before the painter's death; it is one of the
noblest and most divine representations of the Saviour in the whole
history of art. Andrea's so-called _Disputa_ (172), in which a group
of Saints is discussing the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, painted in
1518, is as superbly coloured as any of the greatest Venetian
triumphs; the Magdalene is again the painter's own wife. Perugino's
Deposition from the Cross (164), painted in 1495, shows the great
Umbrian also at his best.
Among the minor pictures in this room may be noted a pretty little
trifle of the school of Raphael, so often copied, Apollo and the Muses
(167), questionably ascribed to Giulio Romano; and a Nymph pursued by
a Satyr (147), supposed by Morelli to be by Giorgione, now assigned to
Dosso Dossi of Ferrara.
In the _Sala di Giove_.
The treasure of this room is the _Velata_ (245), Raphael's own
portrait of the woman that he loved, to whom he wrote his sonnets, and
whom he afterwards idealised as the Madonna di San Sisto; her
personality remains a mystery. Titian's _Bella_ (18), a rather stolid
rejuvenation of Eleonora Gonzaga, is chiefly valuable for its
magnificent representation of a wonderful Venetian costume. Here are
three works of Andrea del Sarto--the Annunciation (124), the Madonna
in Glory, with four Saints (123), and St John the Baptist (272); the
first is one of his most beautiful paintings. The picture supposed to
represent Andrea and his wife (118) is not by the master himself.
Bartolommeo's St Mark (125) was painted by him in 1514, to show that
he could do large figures, whereas he had been told that he had a
_maniera minuta_; it is not altogether successful. His Deposition from
the Cross (64) is one of his latest and most earnest religious works.
The Three Fates (113) by Rosso Fiorentino is an undeniably powerful
and impressive picture; it was formerly ascribed to Michelangelo. The
Three Ages (110), ascribed to Lorenzo Lotto here, was by Morelli
attributed to Giorgione, and is now assigned by highly competent
critics to a certain Morto da Feltre, of whom little is known save
that he is said to have been Giorgione's successful rival for the
favours of a ripe Venetian beauty; the picture itself, though injured
by restoration, belongs to the same category as the Concert. "In such
favourite incidents of Giorgione's school," writes Walter Pater,
"music or music-like intervals in our existence, life itself is
conceived as a sort of listening--listening to music, to the reading
of Bandello's novels, to the sound of water, to time as it flies."
In the _Sala di Marte_.
The most important pictures of this room are: Titian's portrait of a
young man with a glove (92); the Holy Family, called of the
_Impannata_ or "covered window" (94), a work of Raphael's Roman
period, painted by his scholars, perhaps by Giulio Romano; Cristofano
Allori's Judith (96), a splendid and justly celebrated picture,
showing what exceedingly fine works could be produced by Florentines
even in the decadence (Allori died in 1621); Andrea del Sarto's scenes
from the history of Joseph (87, 88), panels for cassoni or bridal
chests, painted for the marriage of Francesco Borgherini and
Margherita Acciaiuoli; a Rubens, the so-called Four Philosophers (85),
representing himself with his brother, and the scholars Lipsius and
Grotius; Andrea del Sarto's Holy Family (81), one of his last works,
painted in 1529 for Ottaviano dei Medici and said to have been
finished during the siege; Van Dyck's Cardinal Giulio Bentivoglio
(82). It is uncertain whether this Julius II. (79) or that in the
Tribuna of the Uffizi is Raphael's original, but the present picture
appears to be the favourite; both are magnificent portraits of this
terrible old warrior pontiff, who, for all his fierceness, was the
noblest and most enlightened patron that Raphael and Michelangelo had.
It was probably at his bidding that Raphael painted Savonarola among
the Church's doctors and theologians in the Vatican.
In the _Sala di Apollo_ and _Sala di Venere_.
Here, first of all, is Raphael's celebrated portrait of Pope Julius'
unworthy successor, Leo X. (40), the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent;
on the left--that is, the Pope's right hand--is the Cardinal Giulio
dei Medici, afterwards Pope Clement VII.; behind the chair is the
Cardinal Luigi dei Rossi, the descendant of a daughter of Piero il
Gottoso. One of Raphael's most consummate works.
Andrea del Sarto's Pieta (58) was painted in 1523 or 1524 for a
convent of nuns in the Mugello, whither Andrea had taken his wife and
household while the plague raged in Florence; it is one of his finest
works. Titian's Magdalene (67) has been called by Ruskin a
"disgusting" picture; as a pseudo-religious work, it would be hard to
find anything more offensive; but it has undeniably great technical
qualities. His Pietro Aretino (54), on the other hand, is a noble
portrait of an infamous blackguard. Noteworthy are also Andrea del
Sarto's portrait (66), apparently one of his many representations of
himself, and Murillo's Mother and Child (63).
In the _Sala di Venere_, are a superb landscape by Rubens (14),
sometimes called the Hay Harvest and sometimes the Return of the
Contadini; also a fine female portrait, wrongly ascribed to Leonardo
(140); the Triumph of David by Matteo Rosselli (13). It should be
observed that the gems of the collection are frequently shifted from
room to room for the benefit of the copyist.
The _Sala dell' Educazione di Giove_ and following rooms.
A series of smaller rooms, no less gorgeously decorated, adjoins the
Sala dell' Iliade. In the _Sala dell' Educazione di Giove_ are: Fra
Bartolommeo's Holy Family with St. Elizabeth (256), over the door; the
Zingarella or Gipsy Girl (246), a charming little idyllic picture by
Boccaccino of Cremona, formerly ascribed to Garofalo; Philip IV. of
Spain (243) by Velasquez. Carlo Dolci's St Andrew (266) is above his
usual level; but it is rather hard to understand how Guido Reni's
Cleopatra (270) could ever be admired.
In the _Sala di Prometeo_ are some earlier paintings; but those
ascribed to Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, and Ghirlandaio are merely
school-pieces. Fra Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child with the
Pomegranate (343) is a genuine and excellent work; in the background
are seen the meeting of Joachim and Anne, with the Nativity of the
Blessed Virgin. Crowe and Cavalcasella observe that "this group of the
Virgin and Child reminds one forcibly of those by Donatello or
Desiderio da Settignano," and it shows how much the painters of the
Quattrocento were influenced by the sculptors; the Madonna's face, for
no obvious reason, is said to be that of Lucrezia Buti, the girl whom
Lippo carried off from a convent at Prato. A curious little allegory
(336) is ascribed by Morelli to Filippino Lippi. We should also notice
the beautiful Madonna with Angels adoring the Divine Child in a rose
garden (347), a characteristic Florentine work of the latter part of
the Quattrocento, once erroneously ascribed to Filippino Lippi; an
Ecce Homo in fresco by Fra Bartolommeo (377); a Holy Family by
Mariotto Albertinelli (365); and a tondo by Luca Signorelli (355), in
which St. Catherine is apparently writing at the dictation of the
Divine Child. But the two gems of this room are the head of a Saint
(370) and the portrait of a man in red dress and hat (375) by one of
the earlier painters of the Quattrocento, probably Domenico Veneziano;
"perhaps," writes Mr Berenson, "the first great achievements in this
kind of the Renaissance." Here, too, is a fine portrait by Lorenzo
Costa (376) of Giovanni Bentivoglio.
In the _Sala del Poccetti_, _Sala della Giustizia_, _Sala di Flora_,
_Sala dei Putti_, the pictures are, for the most part, unimportant.
The so-called portrait of the _bella Simonetta_, the innamorata of
Giuliano dei Medici (353), is not authentic and should not be ascribed
to Sandro Botticelli. There are some fairly good portraits; a Titian
(495), a Sebastiano del Piombo (409), Duke Cosimo I. by Bronzino
(403), Oliver Cromwell by Lely (408). Calumny by Francia Bigio (427)
is curious as a later rendering of a theme that attracted the greatest
masters of the Quattrocento (Botticelli, Mantegna, Luca Signorelli all
tried it). Lovers of Browning will be glad to have their attention
called to the Judith of Artemisia Gentileschi (444): "a wonder of a
woman painting too."
A passage leads down two flights of steps, with occasional glimpses
of the Boboli Gardens, through corridors of Medicean portraits,
Florentine celebrities, old pictures of processions in piazza, and the
like. Then over the Ponte Vecchio, with views of the Arno on either
hand as we cross, to the Uffizi.
* * * * *
Behind the Pitti Palace are the delicious Boboli Gardens, commenced
for Duke Cosimo I., with shady walks and exquisitely framed views of
Florence. In a grotto near the entrance are four unfinished statues by
Michelangelo; they are usually supposed to have been intended for the
tomb of Julius II., but may possibly have been connected with the
projected facade of San Lorenzo.
Nearly opposite the Palazzo Pitti is the Casa Guidi, where the
Brownings lived and wrote. Here Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in
June 1861, she who "made of her verse a golden ring linking England to
Italy"; these were the famous "Casa Guidi windows" from which she
watched the liberation and unification of Italy:--
"I heard last night a little child go singing
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
_O bella liberta, O bella!_--stringing
The same words still on notes he went in search
So high for, you concluded the upspringing
Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch
Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,
And that the heart of Italy must beat,
While such a voice had leave to rise serene
'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street."
The church in question, San Felice, contains a good picture of St.
Anthony, St. Rock and St. Catherine by some follower of Botticelli and
Filippino Lippi; also a Crucifixion of the school of Giotto. Thence
the Via Mazzetta leads into the Piazza Santo Spirito, at the corner
of which is the Palazzo Guadagni, built by Cronaca at the end of the
Quattrocento; with fine iron work, lantern holders and the like, on
the exterior.
The present church of Santo Spirito--the finest Early Renaissance
church in Florence--was built between 1471 and 1487, after
Brunelleschi's designs, to replace his earlier building which had been
burned down in 1471 on the occasion of the visit of Galeazzo Maria
Sforza to Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother. It is a fine
example of Brunelleschi's adaptation of the early basilican type, is
borne upon graceful Corinthian columns and nobly proportioned. The
octagonal sacristy is by Giuliano da San Gallo and Cronaca, finished
in 1497, and the campanile by Baccio d'Agnolo at the beginning of the
sixteenth century.
The stained glass window over the entrance was designed by Perugino.
In the right transept is an excellent picture by Filippino Lippi;
Madonna and Child with the little St. John, St. Catherine and St.
Nicholas, with the donor, Tanai de' Nerli, and his wife. Also in the
right transept is the tomb of the Capponi; Gino, the conqueror of Pisa
and historian of the Ciompi; Neri, the conqueror of the Casentino; and
that great republican soldier and hero, Piero Capponi, who had saved
Florence from Charles of France and fell in the Pisan war. The vision
of St. Bernard is an old copy from Perugino. None of the other
pictures in the church are more than school pieces; there are two in
the left transept ascribed to Filippino's disappointing pupil,
Raffaellino del Garbo--the Trinita with St. Mary of Egypt and St.
Catherine, and the Madonna with Sts. Lawrence, Stephen, John and
Bernard. The latter picture is by Raffaellino di Carlo.
During the last quarter of the fourteenth century the convent of
Santo Spirito--which is an Augustinian house--was the centre of a
circle of scholars, who represent an epoch intermediate between the
great writers of the Trecento and the humanists of the early
Quattrocento. Prominent among them was Coluccio Salutati, who for many
years served the Republic as Chancellor and died in 1406. He was
influential in founding the first chair of Greek, and his letters on
behalf of Florence were so eloquent and powerful that the "great
viper," Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, declared that he dreaded one of
them more than many swords. Also Filippo Villani, the nephew of the
great chroniclers, Giovanni and Matteo, who had succeeded Boccaccio as
lecturer on Dante. They met here with other kindred spirits in the
cell of Fra Luigi Marsili, a learned monk and impassioned worshipper
of Petrarch, upon whose great crusading canzone--_O aspettata in ciel,
beata e bella_--he wrote a commentary which is still extant. Fra Luigi
died in 1394. A century later, the monks of this convent took a
violent part in opposition to Savonarola; and it was here, in the
pulpit of the choir of the church, that Landucci tells us that he
heard the bull of excommunication read "by a Fra Leonardo, their
preacher, and an adversary of the said Fra Girolamo,"--"between two
lighted torches and many friars," as he rather quaintly puts it.
"The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up," says Browning's Lippo Lippi
to his captors; and the Via Mazzetta and the Via Santa Monaca will
take us to it. This church of the Carmelites, Santa Maria del Carmine,
was consecrated in 1422; and, almost immediately after, the mighty
series of frescoes was begun in the Brancacci Chapel at the end of the
right transept--frescoes which were to become the school for all
future painting. In the eighteenth century the greater part of the
church was destroyed by fire, but this chapel was spared by the
flames, and the frescoes, though terribly damaged and grievously
restored, still remain on its walls.
This Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine plays the same part in the
history of painting as the bronze gates of the Baptistery in that of
sculpture. It was in that same eventful year, 1401, of the famous
competition between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, that the new Giotto was
born--Tommaso, the son of a notary in Castello San Giovanni di
Valdarno. With him, as we saw in chapter iii., the second great epoch
of Italian painting, the Quattrocento, or Epoch of Character, opens.
His was a rare and piquant personality; _persona astrattissima e molto
a caso_, says Vasari, "an absent-minded fellow and very casual."
Intent upon his art, he took no care of himself and thought nothing of
the ordinary needs and affairs of the world, though always ready to do
others a good turn. From his general negligence and untidiness, he was
nicknamed _Masaccio_--"hulking Tom"--which has become one of the most
honourable names in the history of art. The little chapel in which we
now stand and survey his handiwork, or what remains of it, is nothing
less than the birthplace of modern painting. Sculpture had indeed
preceded painting in its return to nature and in its direct study of
the human form, and the influence of Donatello lies as strongly over
all the painters of the Quattrocento. Vasari even states that Masolino
da Panicale (Masolino = "dear little Tom"), Masaccio's master, had
been one of Ghiberti's assistants in the casting of the bronze gates,
but this is questionable; it is possible that he had been Ghiberti's
pupil, though he learned the principles of painting from Gherardo
Starnina, one of the last artists of the Trecento. It was shortly
after 1422 that Masolino commenced this great series of frescoes
setting forth the life of St. Peter; within the next few years
Masaccio continued his work; and, more than half a century later, in
1484, Filippino Lippi took it up where Masaccio had left off, and
completed the series.
Masolino's contribution to the whole appears to be confined to three
pictures: St. Peter preaching, with Carmelites in the background to
carry his doctrines into fifteenth century Florence, on the left of
the window; the upper row of scenes on the right wall, representing
St. Peter and St. John raising the cripple at the Beautiful Gate of
the Temple, and the healing of Tabitha (according to others, the
resuscitation of Petronilla); and the narrow fresco of the Fall of
Adam and Eve, on the right of the entrance. Some have also ascribed to
him the striking figure of St. Peter enthroned, attended by
Carmelites, while the faithful approach to kiss his feet--the picture
in the corner on the left which, in a way, sets the keynote to the
whole--but it is more probably the work of Masaccio (others ascribe it
to Filippino). Admirable though these paintings are, they exhibit a
certain immaturity as contrasted with those by Masaccio: in the
Raising of Tabitha, for instance, those two youths with their odd
headgear might almost have stepped out of some Giottesque fresco; and
the rendering of the nude in the Adam and Eve, though wonderful at
that epoch, is much inferior to Masaccio's opposite. Nevertheless,
Masolino's grave and dignified figures introduced the type that
Masaccio was soon to render perfect.
From the hand of Masaccio are the Expulsion from Paradise; the Tribute
Money; the Raising of the Dead Youth (in part); and (probably) the St.
Peter enthroned, on the left wall; St. Peter and St. John healing the
sick with their shadow, under Masolino's Peter preaching (and the
figure behind with a red cap, leaning on a stick, is Masaccio's pious
portrait of his master Masolino himself); St. Peter baptising, St.
Peter and St. John giving alms, on the opposite side of the window.
Each figure is admirably rendered, its character perfectly realised;
Masaccio may indeed be said to have completed what Giotto had begun,
and freed Italian art from the mannerism of the later followers of
Giotto, even as Giotto himself had delivered her from Byzantine
formalism. "After Giotto," writes Leonardo da Vinci, "the art of
painting declined again, because every one imitated the pictures that
were already done; thus it went on from century to century until
Tommaso of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio, showed by his perfect works
how those who take for their standard any one but Nature--the mistress
of all masters--weary themselves in vain."[54] This return to nature
is seen even in the landscape, notably in the noble background to the
Tribute Money; but above all, in his study of man and the human form.
"For the first time," says Kugler, "his aim is the study of form for
itself, the study of the external conformation of man. With such an
aim is identified a feeling which, in beauty, sees and preserves the
expression of proportion; and in repose or motion, the expression of
an harmonious development of the powers of the human frame." For sheer
dignity and grandeur there is nothing to compare with it, till we come
to the work of Raphael and Michelangelo in the Vatican; the
composition of the Tribute Money and the Healing of the Sick initiated
the method of religious illustration that reached its ultimate
perfection in Raphael--what has been called giving Greek form to
Hebrew thought. The treatment of the nude especially seemed a novel
thing in its day; the wonderful modelling of the naked youth shivering
with the cold, in the scene of St. Peter baptising, was hailed as a
marvel of art, and is cited by Vasari as one of the _cose rarissime_
of painting. In the scene of the Tribute Money, the last Apostle on
our right (in the central picture where our Lord and His disciples are
confronted by the eager collector) whose proud bearing is hardly
evangelical, is Masaccio himself, with scanty beard and untidy hair.
Although less excellent than the Baptism as a study of the nude, the
Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden is a masterpiece of which it is
impossible to speak too highly. Our _primi parenti_, weighed down with
the consciousness of ineffable tragedy, are impelled irresistibly
onward by divine destiny; they need not see the Angel in his flaming
robe on his cloud of fire, with his flashing sword and out-stretched
hand; terrible in his beauty as he is to the spectator, he is as
nothing to them, compared with the face of an offended God and the
knowledge of the _tanto esilio_. Surely this is how Dante himself
would have conceived the scene.
[54] In Richter's _Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci_. Leonardo
rather too sweepingly ignores the fact that there were a few excellent
masters between the two.
Masaccio died at Rome in 1428, aged twenty-seven years. In his short
life he had set modern painting on her triumphant progress, and his
frescoes became the school for all subsequent painters, "All in
short," says Vasari, "who have sought to acquire their art in its
perfection, have constantly repaired to study it in this chapel, there
imbibing the precepts and rules necessary to be followed for the
command of success, and learning to labour effectually from the
figures of Masaccio." If he is to rank among "the inheritors of
unfulfilled renown," Masaccio may be said to stand towards Raphael as
Keats towards Tennyson. Masolino outlived his great pupil for several
years, and died about 1435.
The fresco of the Raising up of the dead Youth, left unfinished by
Masaccio when he left Florence for Rome, was completed by Filippino
Lippi (the son of that run-a-way Carmelite in whom the spirit of
Masaccio was said to have lived again), in 1484. The five figures on
the left appear to be from Filippino's hand (the second from the end
is said to be Luigi Pulci, the poet), as also the resuscitated boy
(said to be Francesco Granacci the painter, who was then about fifteen
years old) and the group of eight on the right. Under Masaccio's Adam
and Eve, he painted St. Paul visiting St. Peter in prison; under
Masolino's Fall, the Liberation of Peter by the Angel, two exceedingly
beautiful and simple compositions. And, on the right wall of the
chapel, St. Peter and St. Paul before the Proconsul and the
Crucifixion of St. Peter are also by Filippino. In the Crucifixion
scene, which is inferior to the rest, the last of the three spectators
on our right, wearing a black cap, is Filippino's master, Sandro
Botticelli. In the presence of the Proconsul, the elderly man with a
keen face, in a red cap to the right of the judge, is Antonio
Pollaiuolo; and, on our right, the youth whose head appears in the
corner is certainly Filippino himself--a kind of signature to the
whole.
Apart from the Brancacci chapel, the interest of the Carmine is mainly
confined to the tomb of the noble and simple-hearted ex-Gonfaloniere,
Piero Soderini (who died in 1513), in the choir; it was originally by
Benedetto da Rovezzano, but has been restored. There are frescoes in
the sacristy, representing the life of St. Cecilia, by one of Giotto's
later followers, possibly Spinello Aretino, and, in the cloisters, a
noteworthy Madonna of the same school, ascribed to Giovanni da Milano.
Beyond the Carmine, westwards, is the Borgo San Frediano, now, as in
olden time, the poorest part of Florence. It was the ringing of the
bell of the Carmine that gave the signal for the rising of the Ciompi
in 1378. Unlike their neighbours, the Augustinians of Santo Spirito,
the good fathers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel were for the most part
ardent followers of Savonarola, and, on the first of October 1497, one
of them preached an open-air sermon near the Porta San Frediano, in
which he declared that he himself had had a special revelation from
God on the subject of Fra Girolamo's sanctity, and that all who
resisted the Friar would be horribly punished; even Landucci admits
that he talked arrant nonsense, _pazzie_. The parish church of this
district, San Frediano in Cestello, is quite uninteresting. At the end
of the Via San Frediano is the great Porta San Frediano, of which more
presently.
The gates and walls of Oltrarno were built between 1324 and 1327, in
the days of the Republic's great struggle with Castruccio
Interminelli. Unlike those on the northern bank, they are still in
part standing. There are five gates on this side of the river--the
Porta San Niccolo, the Porta San Miniato, the Porta San Giorgio, the
Porta Romana or Por San Piero Gattolino, and the Porta San Frediano.
It was all round this part of the city that the imperial army lay
during the siege of 1529 and 1530.
On the east of the city, on the banks of the Arno, rises first the
Porta San Niccolo--mutilated and isolated, but the only one of the
gates that has retained a remnant of its ancient height and dignity.
In a lunette on the inner side is a fresco of 1357--Madonna and Child
with Saints, Angels and Prophets. Around are carved the lilies of the
Commune. On the side facing the hill are the arms of the Parte Guelfa
and of the People, with the lily of the Commune between them. Within
the gate the Borgo San Niccolo leads to the church of San Niccolo,
which contains a picture by Neri di Bicci and one of the Pollaiuoli,
and four saints ascribed to Gentile da Fabriano. It is one of the
oldest Florentine churches, though not interesting in its present
state. There is an altogether untrustworthy tradition that
Michelangelo was sheltered in the tower of this church after the
capitulation of the city, but he seems to have been more probably in
the house of a trusted friend. Pope Clement ordered that he should be
sought for, but left at liberty and treated with all courtesy if he
agreed to go on working at the Medicean monuments in San Lorenzo; and,
hearing this, the sculptor came out from his hiding place. It may be
observed that San Niccolo was a most improbable place for him to have
sought refuge in, as Malatesta Baglioni had his headquarters close by.
Beyond the Porta San Niccolo is the Piano di Ripoli, where the Prince
of Orange had his headquarters. Before his exile Dante possessed some
land here. It was here that the first Dominican house was established
in Tuscany under St Dominic's companion, Blessed John of Salerno. Up
beyond the terminus of the tramway a splendid view of Florence can be
obtained.
Near the Porta San Niccolo the long flight of stairs mounts up the
hill of _San Francesco e San Miniato_, which commands the city from
the south-east, to the Piazzale Michelangelo just below the church. A
long and exceedingly beautiful drive leads also to this Piazzale from
the Porta Romana--the Viale dei Colli--and passes down again to the
Barriera San Niccolo by the Viale Michelangelo. This Viale dei Colli,
at least, is one of those few works which even those folk who make a
point of sneering at everything done in Florence since the unification
of Italy are constrained to admire. It would seem that even in the
thirteenth century there were steps of some kind constructed up the
hill-side to the church. In that passage from the _Purgatorio_ (canto
xii.) which I have put at the head of this chapter, Dante compares the
ascent from the first to the second circle of Purgatory to this climb:
"As on the right hand, to mount the hill where stands the church which
overhangs the well-guided city, above Rubaconte, the bold abruptness
of the ascent is broken by the steps that were made in the age when
the ledger and the stave were safe."[55]
[55] The ledger and the stave (_il quaderno e la doga_): "In 1299
Messer Niccola Acciaiuoli and Messer Baldo d' Aguglione abstracted
from the public records a leaf containing the evidence of a
disreputable transaction, in which they, together with the Podesta,
had been engaged. At about the same time Messer Durante de'
Chiaramontesi, being officer of the customs for salt, took away a
stave (_doga_) from the standard measure, thus making it
smaller."--_A. J. Butler._
The Piazzale, adorned with bronze copies of Michelangelo's great
statues, commands one of the grandest views of Florence, with the
valley of the Arno and the mountains round, that "in silence listen
for the word said next," as Mrs Browning has it. Up beyond is the
exceedingly graceful Franciscan church of San Salvadore al Monte--"the
purest vessel of Franciscan simplicity," a modern Italian poet has
called it--built by Cronaca in the last years of the fifteenth
century. It contains a few works by Giovanni della Robbia. It was as
he descended this hill with a few armed followers that Giovanni
Gualberto met and pardoned the murderer of his brother; a small chapel
or tabernacle, on the way up from the convent to San Miniato, still
marks the spot, but the Crucifix which is said to have bowed down its
head towards him is now preserved in Santa Trinita.
[Illustration: THE FORTIFICATIONS OF MICHELANGELO]
This Monte di San Francesco e di San Miniato overlooks the whole city,
and Florence lay at the mercy of whoever got possession of it.
Varchi in his history apologises for those architects who built the
walls of the city by reminding us that, in their days, artillery was
not even dreamed of, much less invented. Michelangelo armed the
campanile of San Miniato, against which the fiercest fire of the
imperialists was directed, and erected bastions covering the hill,
enclosing it, as it were, within the walls up from the Porta San
Miniato and down again to the Porta San Niccolo. It was intrusted to
the guard of Stefano Colonna, who finally joined Malatesta Baglioni in
betraying the city. Some bits of Michelangelo's work remain near the
Basilica, which itself is one of the most venerable edifices of the
kind in Tuscany; the earliest Florentine Christians are said to have
met here in the woods, during the reign of Nero, and here Saint
Miniatus, according to tradition the son of an Armenian king, lived in
his hermitage until martyred by Decius outside the present Porta alla
Croce. In the days of Gregory the Great, San Frediano of Lucca came
every year with his clergy to worship the relics of Miniatus; a
basilica already stood here in the time of Charlemagne; and the
present edifice is said to have been begun in 1013 by the Bishop
Alibrando, with the aid of the Emperor St Henry and his wife
Cunegunda. It was held by the Benedictines, first the black monks and
then the Olivetans who took it over from Gregory XI. in 1373. The new
Bishops of Florence, the first time they set foot out of the city,
came here to sing Mass. In 1553 the monastery was suppressed by Duke
Cosimo I., and turned into a fortress.
San Miniato al Monte is one of the earliest and one of the finest
examples of the Tuscan Romanesque style of architecture. Both interior
and exterior are adorned with inlaid coloured marble, of simple
design, and the fine "nearly classical" pillars within are probably
taken from some ancient Roman building. Fergusson remarks that, but
for the rather faulty construction of the facade, "it would be
difficult to find a church in Italy containing more of classical
elegance, with perfect appropriateness for the purposes of Christian
worship." In the crypt beneath the altar is the tomb of San Miniato
and others of the Decian martyrs. The great mosaic on the upper part
of the apse was originally executed at the end of the thirteenth
century. The Early Renaissance chapel in the nave was constructed by
Michelozzo in 1448 for Piero dei Medici, to contain Giovanni
Gualberto's miraculous Crucifix. In the left aisle is the Cappella di
San Jacopo with the monument of the Cardinal James of Portugal, who
"lived in the flesh as if he were freed from it, like an Angel rather
than a man, and died in the odour of sanctity at the early age of
twenty-six," in 1459. This tomb by Antonio Rossellino is the third of
the "three finest Renaissance tombs in Tuscany," the other two being
those of Leonardo Bruni (1444) by Antonio's brother Bernardo, and
Carlo Marsuppini by Desiderio (1453), both of which we have seen in
Santa Croce. Mr Perkins observes that the present tomb preserves the
golden mean in point of ornament between the other two. The Madonna
and Child with the Angels, watching over the young Cardinal's repose,
are especially beautiful. The Virtues on the ceiling are by Luca della
Robbia, and the Annunciation opposite the tomb by Alessio
Baldovinetti. The Gothic sacristy was built for one of the great
Alberti family, Benedetto di Nerozzo, in 1387, and decorated shortly
after with a splendid series of frescoes by Spinello Aretino, setting
forth the life of St. Benedict. These are Spinello's noblest works and
the last great creation of the genuine school of Giotto. Especially
fine are the scenes with the Gothic king Totila, and the death and
apotheosis of the Saint, which latter may be compared with Giotto's
St. Francis in Santa Croce. The whole is like a painted chapter of St.
Gregory's Dialogues.
[Illustration: PORTA SAN GIORGIO]
The Porta San Miniato, below the hill, almost at the foot of the
Basilica, is little more than a gap in the wall. On both sides are the
arms of the Commune and the People, the Cross of the latter outside
the lily of the former. Upwards from the Porta San Miniato to the
Porta San Giorgio a glorious bit of the old wall remains, clad inside
and out with olives, running up the hillside of San Giorgio; even some
remnants of the old towers are standing, two indeed having been only
partially demolished. Beneath the former Medicean fortress and upper
citadel of Belvedere stands the Porta San Giorgio. This, although
small, is the most picturesque of all the gates of Florence. On its
outer side is a spirited bas-relief of St. George and the Dragon in
stone--of the end of the fourteenth century--over the lily of the
Commune; in the lunette, on the inner side, is a fresco painted in
1330--probably by Bernardo Daddi--of Santa Maria del Fiore enthroned
with the Divine Babe between St. George and St. Leonard. This was the
only gate held by the nobles in the great struggle of 1343, when the
banners of the people were carried across the bridge in triumph, and
the Bardi and Frescobaldi fought from street to street; through it the
magnates had secretly brought in banditti and retainers from the
country, and through it some of the Bardi fled when the people swept
down upon their palaces. Inside the gate the steep Via della Costa San
Giorgio winds down past Galileo's house to Santa Felicita. Outside the
gate the Via San Leonardo leads, between olive groves and vineyards,
into the Viale dei Colli. In the curious little church of San Leonardo
in Arcetri, on the left, is an old _ambone_ or pulpit from the
demolished church of San Piero Scheraggio, with ancient bas-reliefs.
This pulpit is traditionally supposed to have been a part of the
spoils in the destruction of Fiesole; it appears to belong to the
latter part of the twelfth century.
The great Porta Romana, or Porta San Piero Gattolino, was originally
erected in 1328; it is still of imposing dimensions, though its
immediate surroundings are somewhat prosaic. Many a Pope and Emperor
has passed through here, to or from the eternal city; the marble
tablets on either side record the entrance of Leo X. in 1515, on his
way from Rome to Bologna to meet Francis I. of France, and of Charles
V. in 1536 to confirm the infamous Duke Alessandro on the throne--a
confirmation which the dagger of Lorenzino happily annulled in the
following year. It was here that Pope Leo's brother, Piero dei Medici,
had made his unsuccessful attempt to surprise the city on April 28th
1497, with some thousand men or more, horse and foot. A countryman at
daybreak had seen them resting and breakfasting on the way, some few
miles from the city; by taking short cuts over the country, he evaded
their scouts who were intercepting all persons passing northwards, and
reached Florence with the news just at the morning opening of the
gate. The result was that the Magnifico Piero and his braves found it
closed in their faces and the forces of the Signoria guarding the
walls, so, after ignominiously skulking for a few hours out of range
of the artillery, they fled back towards Siena.
Near the Porta Romana the Viale dei Colli commences to the left, as
the Viale Machiavelli; and, straight on, the beautifully shady
Stradone del Poggio Imperiale runs up to the villa of that name, built
for Maria Maddalena of Austria in 1622. The statues at the beginning
of the road were once saints on the second facade of the Duomo. It was
on the rising ground that divides the Strada Romana from the present
Stradone that the famous convent of Monticelli stood, recorded in
Dante's _Paradiso_ and Petrarca's _Trionfo della Pudicizia_, in which
Piccarda Donati took the habit of St. Clare, and from which she was
dragged by her brother Corso to marry Rossellino della Tosa:--
"Perfetta vita ed alto merto inciela
donna piu su, mi disse, alla cui norma
nel vostro mondo giu si veste e vela,
perche in fino al morir si vegghi e dorma
con quello sposo ch'ogni voto accetta,
che caritate a suo piacer conforma.
Dal mondo, per seguirla, giovinetta
fuggi'mi, e nel suo abito mi chiusi,
e promisi la via della sua setta.
Uomini poi, a mal piu ch'al bene usi,
fuor mi rapiron della dolce chiostra;
e Dio si sa qual poi mia vita fusi."[56]
[56] "Perfected life and high desert enheaveneth a lady more aloft,"
she said, "by whose rule down in your world there are who clothe and
veil themselves,
That they, even till death, may wake and sleep with that Spouse who
accepteth every vow that love hath made conform with his good
pleasure.
From the world, to follow her, I fled while yet a girl, and in her
habit I enclosed myself, and promised the way of her company.
Thereafter men more used to ill than good tore me away from the sweet
cloister; and God doth know what my life then became."--_Paradiso_
iii. Wicksteed's translation.
It was at Poggio Imperiale, then called the Poggio dei Baroncelli,
that a famous combat took place during the early days of the siege, in
which Ludovico Martelli and Dante da Castiglione fought two
Florentines who were serving in the imperial army, Giovanni Bandini
and Bertino Aldobrandini. Both Martelli, the original challenger, and
Aldobrandini were mortally wounded. Martelli's real motive in sending
the challenge is said to have been that he and Bandini were rivals for
the favours of a Florentine lady, Marietta de' Ricci. Among the many
beautiful villas and gardens which stud the country beyond Poggio
Imperiale, are Galileo's Tower, from which he made his astronomical
observations, and the villa in which he was visited by Milton. Near
Santa Margherita a Montici, to the east, is the villa in which the
articles of capitulation were arranged by the Florentine ambassadors
with Ferrante Gonzaga, commander of the Imperial troops, and Baccio
Valori, commissary of the Pope. But already Malatesta had opened the
Porta Romana and turned his artillery against the city which he had
solemnly sworn to defend.
Beyond the Porta Romana the road to the right of Poggio Imperiale
leads to the valley of the Ema, above which the great Certosa rises on
the hill of Montaguto. Shortly before reaching the monastery the Ema
is crossed--an insignificant stream in which Cacciaguida (in
_Paradiso_ xvi.) rather paradoxically regrets that Buondelmonte was
not drowned on his way to Florence: "Joyous had many been who now are
sad, had God committed thee unto the Ema the first time that thou
camest to the city." The Certosa itself, that "huge battlemented
convent-block over the little forky flashing Greve," as Browning calls
it, was founded by Niccolo Acciaiuoli, the Florentine Grand Seneschal
of Naples, in 1341; it is one of the finest of the later mediaeval
monasteries. Orcagna is said to have built one of the side chapels of
the church, which contains a fine early Giottesque altarpiece; and in
a kind of crypt there are noble tombs of the Acciaiuoli--one, the
monument of the founder, being possibly by Orcagna, and one of the
later ones ascribed (doubtfully) to Donatello. In the chapter-house
are a Crucifixion by Mariotto Albertinelli, and the monument of
Leonardo Buonafede by Francesco da San Gallo. From the convent and
further up the valley, there are beautiful views. About three miles
further on is the sanctuary and shrine of the Madonna dell' Impruneta,
built for the miraculous image of the Madonna, which was carried down
in procession to Florence in times of pestilence and danger.
Savonarola especially had placed great faith in the miraculous powers
of this image and these processions; and during the siege it remained
in Florence ceremoniously guarded in the Duomo, a kind of mystic
Palladium.
Between the Porta Romana and Porta San Frediano some tracts of the
city wall remain, but the whole is painfully prosaic. The Porta San
Frediano itself is a massive structure, erected between 1324 and 1327,
possibly by Andrea Pisano; it need hardly be repeated that we cannot
judge of the original mediaeval appearance of the gates of Florence,
with their towers and ante-portals, even from the least mutilated of
their present remnants. It was through this gate that the Florentine
army passed in triumph in 1363 with their long trains of captured
Pisans; and here, after Pisa had shaken off for a while the yoke,
Charles of France rode in as a conqueror on November 17, 1494,
Savonarola's new Cyrus, and was solemnly received at the gate by the
Signoria. Within the gate a strip of wall runs down to the river, with
two later towers built by Medicean grand dukes. At the end is a chapel
built in 1856, and containing a Pieta from the walls of a demolished
convent--ascribed without warrant to Domenico Ghirlandaio.
It was somewhere near here that S. Frediano, coming from Lucca to pay
his annual visit to the shrine of San Miniato, miraculously crossed
the Arno in flood. Outside the gate, a little off the Leghorn road to
the left, is the suppressed abbey of Monte Oliveto, and beyond it, to
the south, the hill of Bellosguardo--both points from which splendid
views of Florence and its surroundings are obtained.
These dream-like glimpses of the City of Flowers, which every coign of
vantage seems to give us round Florence--might we not, sometimes,
imagine that we had stumbled unawares upon the Platonic City of the
Perfect? There are two lines from one of Dante's canzoni in praise of
his mystical lady that rise to our mind at every turn:--
"Io non la vidi tante volte ancora,
ch'io non trovassi in lei nuova bellezza,"