The Duomo II: Its Associations
Dante's picture--Sir John Hawkwood--Ancestor and Descendant--The Pazzi
Conspiracy--Squeamish Montesecco--Giuliano de' Medici dies--Lorenzo's
escape--Vengeance on the Pazzi--Botticelli's cartoon--High
Mass--Luca della Robbia--Michelangelo nearing the end--The Miracles
of Zenobius--East and West meet in splendour--Marsilio Ficino and
the New Learning--Beautiful glass.
Of the four men most concerned in the structure of the Duomo I have
already spoken. There are other men held in memory there, and certain
paintings and statues, of which I wish to speak now.
The picture of Dante in the left aisle was painted by command of
the Republic in 1465, one hundred and sixty-three years after his
banishment from the city. Lectures on Dante were frequently delivered
in the churches of Florence during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and it was interesting for those attending them to have
a portrait on the wall. This picture was painted by Domenico di
Michelino, the portrait of Dante being prepared for him by Alessio
Baldovinetti, who probably took it from Giotto's fresco in the chapel
of the Podestá at the Bargello. In this picture Dante stands between
the Inferno and a concentrated Florence in which portions of the
Duomo, the Signoria, the Badia, the Bargello, and Or San Michele are
visible. Behind him is Paradise. In his hand is the "Divine Comedy". I
say no more of the poet here, because a large part of the chapter on
the Badia is given to him.
Near the Dante picture in the left aisle are two Donatellos--the
massive S. John the Evangelist, seated, who might have given ideas
to Michelangelo for his Moses a century and more later; and, nearer
the door, between the tablets to De Fabris and Squarciaparello, the
so-called Poggio Bracciolini, a witty Italian statesman and Humanist
and friend of the Medici, who, however, since he was much younger than
this figure at the time of its exhibition, and is not known to have
visited Florence till later, probably did not sit for it. But it is
a powerful and very natural work, although its author never intended
it to stand on any floor, even of so dim a cathedral as this. The
S. John, I may say, was brought from the old façade--not Arnolfo's,
but the committee's façade--where it had a niche about ten feet from
the ground. The Poggio was also on this façade, but higher. It was
Poggio's son, Jacopo, who took part in the Pazzi Conspiracy, of which
we are about to read, and was very properly hanged for it.
Of the two pictures on the entrance wall, so high as to be imperfectly
seen, that on the right as you face it has peculiar interest to
English visitors, for (painted by Paolo Uccello, whose great battle
piece enriches our National Gallery) it represents Sir John Hawkwood,
an English free-lance and head of the famous White Company, who
after some successful raids on Papal territory in Provence, put his
sword, his military genius, and his bravoes at the service of the
highest bidder among the warlike cities and provinces of Italy, and,
eventually passing wholly into the employment of Florence (after
harrying her for other pay-masters for some years), delivered her
very signally from her enemies in 1392. Hawkwood was an Essex man,
the son of a tanner at Hinckford, and was born there early in the
fourteenth century. He seems to have reached France as an archer under
Edward III, and to have remained a free-booter, passing on to Italy,
about 1362, to engage joyously in as much fighting as any English
commander can ever have had, for some thirty years, with very good
pay for it. Although, by all accounts, a very Salomon Brazenhead,
Hawkwood had enough dignity to be appointed English Ambassador to Rome,
and later to Florence, which he made his home, and where he died in
1394. He was buried in the Duomo, on the north side of the choir, and
was to have reposed beneath a sumptuous monument made under his own
instructions, with frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi and Giuliano d'Arrigo;
but something intervened, and Uccello's fresco was used instead,
and this, some sixty years ago, was transferred to canvas and moved
to the position in which it now is seen.
Hawkwood's life, briskly told by a full-blooded hand, would make a fine
book. One pleasant story at least is related of him, that on being
beset by some begging friars who prefaced their mendicancy with the
words, "God give you peace," he answered, "God take away your alms";
and, on their protesting, reminded them that such peace was the last
thing he required, since should their pious wish come true he would
die of hunger. One of the daughters of this fire-eater married John
Shelley, and thus became an ancestress of Shelley the poet, who,
as it chances, also found a home for a while in this city, almost
within hailing distance of his ancestor's tomb and portrait, and here
wrote not only his "Ode to the West Wind," but his caustic satire,
"Peter Bell the Third".
Hawkwood's name is steeped sufficiently in carnage; but we get to the
scene of bloodshed in reality as we approach the choir, for it was
here that Giuliano de' Medici was assassinated, as he attended High
Mass, on April 26th, 1478, with the connivance, if not actually at the
instigation, of Christ's Vicar himself, Pope Sixtus IV. Florentine
history is so eventful and so tortuous that beyond the bare outline
given in chapter V, I shall make in these pages but little effort to
follow it, assuming a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the
reader; but it must be stated here that periodical revolts against
the power and prestige of the Medici often occurred, and none was
more desperate than that of the Pazzi family in 1478, acting with
the support of the Pope behind all and with the co-operation of
Girolamo Riario, nephew of the Pope, and Salviati, Archbishop of
Pisa. The Pazzi, who were not only opposed to the temporal power
of the Medici, but were their rivals in business--both families
being bankers--wished to rid Florence of Lorenzo and Giuliano in
order to be greater both civically and financially. Girolamo wished
the removal of Lorenzo and Giuliano in order that hostility to his
plans for adding Forli and Faenza to the territory of Imola, which
the Pope had successfully won for him against Lorenzo's opposition,
might disappear. The Pope had various political reasons for wishing
Lorenzo's and Giuliano's death and bringing Florence, always headstrong
and dangerous, to heel. While as for Salviati, it was sufficient that
he was Archbishop of Pisa, Florence's ancient rival and foe; but he
was a thoroughly bad lot anyway. Assassination also was in the air,
for Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan had been stabbed in church in 1476,
thus to some extent paving the way for this murder, since Lorenzo
and Sforza, when acting together, had been practically unassailable.
In 1478 Lorenzo was twenty-nine, Giuliano twenty-five. Lorenzo had
been at the head of Florentine affairs for nine years and he was
steadily growing in strength and popularity. Hence it was now or never.
The conspirators' first idea was to kill the brothers at a banquet
which Lorenzo was to give to the great-nephew of the Pope, the
youthful Cardinal Raffaello Riario, who promised to be an amenable
catspaw. Giuliano, however, having hurt his leg, was not well enough to
be present, but as he would attend High Mass, the conspirators decided
to act then. That is to say, it was then, in the cathedral, that the
death of the Medici brothers was to be effected; meanwhile another
detachment of conspirators under Salviati was to rise simultaneously to
capture the Signoria, while the armed men of the party who were outside
and inside the walls would begin their attacks on the populace. Thus,
at the same moment Medici and city would fall. Such was the plan.
The actual assassins were Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini,
who were nominally friends of the Medici (Francesco's brother Guglielmo
having married Bianca de' Medici, Lorenzo's sister), and two priests
named Maffeo da Volterra and Stefano da Bagnone. A professional bravo
named Montesecco was to have killed Lorenzo, but refused on learning
that the scene of the murder was to be a church. At that, he said,
he drew the line: murder anywhere else he could perform cheerfully,
but in a sacred building it was too much to ask. He therefore did
nothing, but, subsequently confessing, made the guilt of all his
associates doubly certain.
When High Mass began it was found that Giuliano was not present,
and Francesco de' Pazzi and Bandini were sent to persuade him to
come--a Judas-like errand indeed. On the way back, it is said, one
of them affectionately placed his arm round Giuliano--to see if he
wore a shirt of mail--remarking, to cover the action, that he was
getting fat. On his arrival, Giuliano took his place at the north
side of the circular choir, near the door which leads to the Via de'
Servi, while Lorenzo stood at the opposite side. At the given signal
Bandini and Pazzi were to stab Giuliano and the two priests were to
stab Lorenzo. The signal was the breaking of the Eucharistic wafer,
and at this solemn moment Giuliano was instantly killed, with one stab
in the heart and nineteen elsewhere, Francesco so overdoing his attack
that he severely wounded himself too; but Lorenzo was in time to see
the beginning of the assault, and, making a movement to escape, he
prevented the priest from doing aught but inflict a gash in his neck,
and, springing away, dashed behind the altar to the old sacristy,
where certain of his friends who followed him banged the heavy bronze
doors on the pursuing foe. Those in the cathedral, mean-while, were in
a state of hysterical alarm; the youthful cardinal was hurried into
the new sacristy; Guglielmo de' Pazzi bellowed forth his innocence
in loud tones; and his murderous brother and Bandini got off.
Order being restored, Lorenzo was led by a strong bodyguard to
the Palazzo Medici, where he appeared at a window to convince the
momentarily increasing crowd that he was still living. Meanwhile
things were going not much more satisfactorily for the Pazzi at
the Palazzo Vecchio, where, according to the plan, the gonfalonier,
Cesare Petrucci, was to be either killed or secured. The Archbishop
Salviati, who was to effect this, managed his interview so clumsily
that Petrucci suspected something, those being suspicious times,
and, instead of submitting to capture, himself turned the key on his
visitors. The Pazzi faction in the city, meanwhile, hoping that all
had gone well in the Palazzo Vecchio, as well as in the cathedral
(as they thought), were running through the streets calling "Viva la
Libertà!" to be met with counter cries of "Palle! palle!"--the palle
being the balls on the Medici escutcheon, still to be seen all over
Florence and its vicinity and on every curtain in the Uffizi.
The truth gradually spreading, the city then rose for the Medici and
justice began to be done. The Archbishop was handed at once, just as
he was, from a window of the Palazzo Vecchio. Francesco de' Pazzi,
who had got home to bed, was dragged to the Palazzo and hanged too. The
mob meanwhile were not idle, and most of the Pazzi were accounted for,
together with many followers--although Lorenzo publicly implored them
to be merciful. Poliziano, the scholar-poet and friend of Lorenzo,
has left a vivid account of the day. With his own eyes he saw the
hanging Salviati, in his last throes, bite the hanging Francesco de
Pazzi. Old Jacopo succeeded in escaping, but not for long, and a day
or so later he too was hanged. Bandini got as far as Constantinople,
but was brought back in chains and hanged. The two priests hid in
the Benedictine abbey in the city and for a while evaded search,
but being found they were torn to pieces by the crowd. Montesecco,
having confessed, was beheaded in the courtyard of the Bargello.
The hanging of the chief conspirators was kept in the minds of the
short-memoried Florentines by a representation outside the Palazzo
Vecchio, by none other than the wistful, spiritual Botticelli; while
three effigies, life size, of Lorenzo--one of them with his bandaged
neck--were made by Verrocchio in coloured wax and set up in places
where prayers might be offered. Commemorative medals which may be
seen in the Bargello, were also struck, and the family of Pazzi was
banished and its name removed by decree from the city's archives. Poor
Giuliano, who was generally beloved for his charm and youthful spirits,
was buried at S. Lorenzo in great state.
I have often attended High Mass in this Duomo choir--the theatre of
the Pazzi tragedy--but never without thinking of that scene.
Luca della Robbia's doors to the new sacristy, which gave the young
cardinal his safety, had been finished only eleven years. Donatello was
to have designed them, but his work at Padua was too pressing. The
commission was then given to Michelozzo, Donatello's partner,
and to Luca della Robbia, but it seems likely that Luca did nearly
all. The doors are in very high relief, thus differing absolutely
from Donatello's at S. Lorenzo, which are in very low. Luca's work
here is sweet and mild rather than strong, and the panels derive
their principal charm from the angels, who, in pairs, attend the
saints. Above the door was placed, at the time of Lorenzo's escape,
the beautiful cantoria, also by Luca, which is now in the museum of
the cathedral, while above the door of the old sacristy was Donatello's
cantoria. Commonplace new ones now take their place. In the semicircle
over each door is a coloured relief by Luca: that over the bronze doors
being the "Resurrection," and the other the "Ascension"; and they are
interesting not only for their beauty but as being the earliest-known
examples in Luca's newly-discovered glazed terra-cotta medium,
which was to do so much in the hands of himself, his nephew Andrea,
and his followers, to make Florence still lovelier and the legend
of the Virgin Mary still sweeter. But of the della Robbias and their
exquisite genius I shall say more later, when we come to the Bargello.
As different as would be possible to imagine is the genius of that
younger sculptor, the author of the Pietà at the back of the altar,
near where we now stand, who, when Luca finished these bronze doors,
in 1467, was not yet born--Michelangelo Buonarroti. This group, which
is unfinished, is the last the old and weary Titan ever worked at,
and it was meant to be part of his own tomb. Vasari, to whose "Lives
of the Painters" we shall be indebted, as this book proceeds, for so
much good human nature, and who speaks of Michelangelo with peculiar
authority, since he was his friend, pupil, and correspondent, tells us
that once when he went to see the sculptor in Rome, near the end, he
found him at work upon this Pietà, but the sculptor was so dissatisfied
with one portion that he let his lantern fall in order that Vasari
might not see it, saying: "I am so old that death frequently drags
at my mantle to take me, and one day my person will fall like this
lantern". The Pietà is still in deep gloom, as the master would have
liked, but enough is revealed to prove its pathos and its power.
In the east end of the nave is the chapel of S. Zenobius, containing a
bronze reliquary by Ghiberti, with scenes upon it from the life of this
saint, so important in Florentine religious history. It is, however,
very hard to see, and should be illuminated. Zenobius was born at
Florence in the reign of Constantine the Great, when Christianity
was by no means the prevailing religion of the city, although the
way had been paved by various martyrs. After studying philosophy
and preaching with much acceptance, Zenobius was summoned to Rome
by Pope Damasus. On the Pope's death he became Bishop of Florence,
and did much, says Butler, to "extirpate the kingdom of Satan". The
saint lived in the ancient tower which still stands--one of the few
survivors of Florence's hundreds of towers--at the corner of the Via
Por S. Maria (which leads from the Mercato Nuovo to the Ponte Vecchio)
and the Via Lambertesca. It is called the Torre de' Girolami, and
on S. Zenobius' day--May 25th--is decorated with flowers; and since
never are so many flowers in the city of flowers as at that time, it
is a sight to see. The remains of the saint were moved to the Duomo,
although it had not then its dome, from S. Lorenzo, in 1330, and the
simple column in the centre of the road opposite Ghiberti's first
Baptistery doors was erected to mark the event, since on that very
spot, it is said, stood a dead elm tree which, when the bier of the
saint chanced to touch it, immediately sprang to life again and burst
into leaf; even, the enthusiastic chronicler adds, into flower. The
result was that the tree was cut completely to pieces by relic hunters,
but the column by the Baptistery, the work of Brunelleschi (erected on
the site of an earlier one), fortunately remains as evidence of the
miracle. Ghiberti, however, did not choose this miracle but another
for representation; for not only did Zenobius dead restore animation,
but while he was himself living he resuscitated two boys. The one was a
ward of his own; the second was an ordinary Florentine, for whom the
same modest boon was craved by his sorrowing parents. It is one of
these scenes of resuscitation which Ghiberti has designed in bronze,
while Ridolfo Ghirlandaio painted it in a picture in the Uffizi. We
shall see S. Zenobius again in the fresco by Ridolfo's father, the
great Ghirlandaio, in the Palazzo Vecchio; while the portrait on the
first pillar of the left aisle, as one enters the cathedral is of
Zenobius too.
The date of the Pazzi Conspiracy was 1478. A few years later the
same building witnessed the extraordinary effects of Savonarola's
oratory, when such was the terrible picture he drew of the fate of
unregenerate sinners that his listeners' hair was said actually to
rise with fright. Savonarola came towards the end of the Renaissance,
to give it its death-blow. By contrast there is a tablet on the right
wall of the cathedral in honour of one who did much to bring about the
paganism and sophistication against which the impassioned reformer
uttered his fiercest denunciations: Marsilio Ficino (1433-1491),
the neo-Platonist protegé of Cosimo de' Medici, and friend both
of Piero de' Medici and Lorenzo. To explain Marsilio's influence
it is necessary to recede a little into history. In 1439 Cosimo de'
Medici succeeded in transferring the scene of the Great Council of the
Church to Florence. At this conference representatives of the Western
Church, centred in Rome, met those of the Eastern Church, centred
in Constantinople, which was still Christian, for the purpose of
discussing various matters, not the least of which was the protection
of the Eastern Church against the Infidel. Not only was Constantinople
continually threatened by the Turks, and in need of arms as well
as sympathy, but the two branches of the Church were at enmity over
a number of points. It was as much to heal these differences as to
seek temporal aid that the Emperor John Palaeologus, the Patriarch
of Constantinople, and a vast concourse of nobles, priests, and
Greek scholars, arrived in Italy, and, after sojourning at Venice
and Ferrara, moved on to Florence at the invitation of Cosimo. The
Emperor resided in the Peruzzi palace, now no more, near S. Croce;
the Patriarch of Constantinople lodged (and as it chanced, died, for
he was very old) at the Ferrantini palace, now the Casa Vernaccia,
in the Borgo Pinti; while Pope Eugenius was at the convent attached
to S. Maria Novella. The meetings of the Council were held where we
now stand--in the cathedral, whose dome had just been placed upon it
all ready for them.
The Council failed in its purpose, and, as we know, Constantinople
was lost some years later, and the great empire of which John
Palaeologus was the last ruler ceased to be. That, however, at the
moment is beside the mark. The interesting thing to us is that among
the scholars who came from Constantinople, bringing with them numbers
of manuscripts and systems of thought wholly new to the Florentines,
was one Georgius Gemisthos, a Greek philosopher of much personal
charm and comeliness, who talked a bland and beautiful Platonism that
was extremely alluring not only to his youthful listeners but also
to Cosimo himself. Gemisthos was, however, a Greek, and Cosimo was
too busy a man in a city of enemies, or at any rate of the envious,
to be able to do much more than extend his patronage to the old man
and despatch emissaries to the East for more and more manuscripts;
but discerning the allurements of the new gospel, Cosimo directed
a Florentine enthusiast who knew Greek to spread the serene creed
among his friends, who were all ripe for it, and this enthusiast was
none other than a youthful scholar by name Marsilio Ficino, connected
with S. Lorenzo, Cosimo's family church, and the son of Cosimo's own
physician. To the young and ardent Marsilio, Plato became a god and
Gemisthos not less than divine for bringing the tidings. He kept a lamp
always burning before Plato's bust, and later founded the Platonic
Academy, at which Plato's works were discussed, orations delivered,
and new dialogues exchanged, between such keen minds as Marsilio,
Pulci, Landini, Giovanni Cavalcanti, Leon Battista Alberti, the
architect and scholar, Pico dell a Mirandola, the precocious disputant
and aristocratic mystic, Poliziano, the tutor of Lorenzo's sons, and
Lorenzo the Magnificent himself. It was thus from the Greek invasion
of Florence that proceeded the stream of culture which is known as
Humanism, and which, no doubt, in time, was so largely concerned in
bringing about that indifference to spiritual things which, leading
to general laxity and indulgence, filled Savonarola with despair.
I am not concerned to enter deeply into the subject of the
Renaissance. But this must be said--that the new painting and
sculpture, particularly the painting of Masaccio and the sculpture
of Donatello, had shown the world that the human being could be made
the measure of the Divine. The Madonna and Christ had been related
to life. The new learning, by leading these keen Tuscan intellects,
so eager for reasonableness, to the Greek philosophers who were so
wise and so calm without any of the consolations of Christianity,
naturally set them wondering if there were not a religion of Humanity
that was perhaps a finer thing than the religion that required all the
machinery and intrigue of Rome. And when, as the knowledge of Greek
spread and the minute examination of documents ensued, it was found
that Rome had not disdained forgery to gain her ends, a blow was struck
against the Church from which it never recovered;--and how much of this
was due to this Florentine Marsilio, sitting at the feet of the Greek
Gemisthos, who came to Florence at the invitation of Cosimo de' Medici!
The cathedral glass, as I say, is mostly overladen with grime; but the
circular windows in the dome seem to be magnificent in design. They
are attributed to Ghiberti and Donatello, and are lovely in colour. The
greens in particular are very striking. But the jewel of these circular
windows of Florence is that by Ghiberti on the west wall of S. Croce.
And here I leave the Duomo, with the counsel to visitors to Florence
to make a point of entering it every day--not, as so many Florentines
do, in order to make a short cut from the Via Calzaioli to the Via de'
Servi, and vice versâ, but to gather its spirit. It is different every
hour in the day, and every hour the light enters it with new beauty.