S. Lorenzo and Michelangelo
A forlorn façade--The church of the Medici--Cosimo's
parents' tomb--Donatello's cantoria and pulpits--Brunelleschi's
sacristy--Donatello again--The palace of the dead Grand Dukes--Costly
intarsia--Michelangelo's sacristy--A weary Titan's life--The victim
of capricious pontiffs--The Medici tombs--Mementi mori--The Casa
Buonarroti--Brunelleschi's cloisters--A model library.
Architecturally S. Lorenzo does not attract as S. Croce and S. Maria
Novella do; but certain treasures of sculpture make it unique. Yet it
is a cool scene of noble grey arches, and the ceiling is very happily
picked out with gold and colour. Savonarola preached some of his most
important sermons here; here Lorenzo the Magnificent was married.
The façade has never yet been finished: it is just ragged brickwork
waiting for its marble, and likely to wait, although such expenditure
on marble is going on within a few yards of it as makes one gasp. Not
very far away, in the Via Ghibellina, is a house which contains some
rough plans by a master hand for this façade, drawn some four hundred
years ago--the hand of none other than Michelangelo, whose scheme
was to make it not only a wonder of architecture but a wonder also
of statuary, the façade having many niches, each to be filled with
a sacred figure. But Michelangelo always dreamed on a scale utterly
disproportionate to the foolish little span of life allotted to us
and the S. Lorenzo façade was never even begun.
The piazza which these untidy bricks overlook is now given up to stalls
and is the centre of the cheap clothing district. Looking diagonally
across it from the church one sees the great walls of the courtyard
of what is now the Riccardi palace, but was in the great days the
Medici palace; and at the corner, facing the Borgo S. Lorenzo, is
Giovanni delle Bande Nere, in stone, by the impossible Bandinelli,
looking at least twenty years older than he ever lived to be.
S. Lorenzo was a very old church in the time of Giovanni de' Medici,
the first great man of the family, and had already been restored
once, in the eleventh century, but it was his favourite church,
chosen by him for his own resting-place, and he spent great sums
in improving it. All this with the assistance of Brunelleschi, who
is responsible for the interior as we now see it, and would, had he
lived, have completed the façade. After Giovanni came Cosimo, who also
devoted great sums to the glory of this church, not only assisting
Brunelleschi with his work but inducing Donatello to lavish his genius
upon it; and the church was thus established as the family vault of
the Medici race. Giovanni lies here; Cosimo lies here; and Piero;
while Lorenzo the Magnificent and Giuliano and certain descendants
were buried in the Michelangelo sacristy, and all the Grand Dukes in
the ostentatious chapel behind the altar.
Cosimo is buried beneath the floor in front of the high altar,
in obedience to his wish, and by the special permission of the
Roman Church; and in the same vault lies Donatello. Cosimo, who
was buried with all simplicity on August 22nd, 1464, in his last
illness recommended Donatello, who was then seventy-eight, to his son
Piero. The old sculptor survived his illustrious patron and friend
only two and a half years, declining gently into the grave, and his
body was brought here in December, 1466. A monument to his memory
was erected in the church in 1896. Piero (the Gouty), who survived
until 1469, lies close by, his bronze monument, with that of his
brother, being that between the sacristy and the adjoining chapel,
in an imposing porphyry and bronze casket, the work of Verrocchio, one
of the richest and most impressive of all the memorial sculptures of
the Renaissance. The marble pediment is supported by four tortoises,
such as support the monoliths in the Piazza S. Maria Novella. The
iron rope work that divides the sacristy from the chapel is a marvel
of workmanship.
But we go too fast: the church before the sacristy, and the glories of
the church are Donatello's. We have seen his cantoria in the Museum of
the Cathedral. Here is another, not so riotous and jocund in spirit,
but in its own way hardly less satisfying. The Museum cantoria has
the wonderful frieze of dancing figures; this is an exercise in
marble intarsia. It has the same row of pillars with little specks
of mosaic gold; but its beauty is that of delicate proportions and
soft tones. The cantoria is in the left aisle, in its original place;
the two bronze pulpits are in the nave. These have a double interest
as being not only Donatello's work but his latest work. They were
incomplete at his death, and were finished by his pupil Bertoldo
(1410-1491), and since, as we shall see, Bertoldo became the master of
Michelangelo, when he was a lad of fifteen and Bertoldo an old man of
eighty, these pulpits may be said to form a link between the two great
S. Lorenzo sculptors. How fine and free and spirited Bertoldo could
be, alone, we shall see at the Bargello. The S. Lorenzo pulpits are
very difficult to study: nothing wants a stronger light than a bronze
relief, and in Florence students of bronze reliefs are accustomed
to it, since the most famous of all--the Ghiberti doors--are in the
open air. Only in course of time can one discern the scenes here. The
left pulpit is the finer, for it contains the "Crucifixion" and the
"Deposition," which to me form the most striking of the panels.
The other piece of sculpture in the church itself is a ciborium
by Desiderio da Settignano, in the chapel at the end of the
right transept--an exquisite work by this rare and playful and
distinguished hand. It is fitting that Desiderio should be here, for
he was Donatello's favourite pupil. The S. Lorenzo ciborium is wholly
charming, although there is a "Deposition" upon it; the little Boy is
adorable; but one sees it with the greatest difficulty owing to the
crowded state of the altar and the dim light. The altar picture in
the Martelli chapel, where the sympathetic Donatello monument (in the
same medium as his "Annunciation" at S. Croce) is found--on the way to
the Library--is by Lippo Lippi, and is notable for the pretty Virgin
receiving the angel's news. There is nice colour in the predella.
As I have said in the first chapter, we are too prone to ignore the
architect. We look at the jewels and forget the casket. Brunelleschi is
a far greater maker of Florence than either Donatello or Michelangelo;
but one thinks of him rather as an abstraction than a man or forgets
him altogether. Yet the S. Lorenzo sacristy is one of the few perfect
things in the world. What most people, however, remember is its tombs,
its doors, and its reliefs; the proportions escape them. I think its
shallow easy dome beyond description beautiful. Brunelleschi, who had
an investigating genius, himself painted the quaint constellations in
the ceiling over the altar. At the Pazzi chapel we shall find similar
architecture; but there extraneous colour was allowed to come in. Here
such reliefs as were admitted are white too.
The tomb under the great marble and porphyry table in the centre is
that of Giovanni di Bicci, the father, and Piccarda, the mother, of
Cosimo Pater, and is usually attributed to Buggiano, the adopted son
of Brunelleschi, but other authorities give it either to Donatello
alone or to Donatello with Michelozzo: both from the evidence of
the design and because it is unlikely that Cosimo would ask any one
else than one of these two friends of his to carry out a commission
so near his heart. The table is part of the scheme and not a chance
covering. I think the porphyry centre ought to be movable, so that
the beautiful flying figures on the sarcophagus could be seen. But
Donatello's most striking achievement here is the bronze doors, which
are at once so simple and so strong and so surprising by the activity
of the virile and spirited holy men, all converting each other, thereon
depicted. These doors could not well be more different from Ghiberti's,
in the casting of which Donatello assisted; those in such high relief,
these so low; those so fluid and placid, and these so vigorous.
Donatello presides over this room (under Brunelleschi). The vivacious,
speaking terra-cotta bust of the young S. Lorenzo on the altar is
his; the altar railing is probably his; the frieze of terra-cotta
cherubs may be his; the four low reliefs in the spandrels, which it
is so difficult to discern but which photographs prove to be wonderful
scenes in the life of S. John the Evangelist--so like, as one peers up
at them, plastic Piranesis, with their fine masonry--are his. The other
reliefs are Donatello's too; but the lavabo in the inner sacristy is
Verrocchio's, and Verrocchio's tomb of Piero can never be overlooked
even amid such a wealth of the greater master's work.
From this fascinating room--fascinating both in itself and in its
possessions--we pass, after distributing the necessary largesse to
the sacristan, to a turnstile which admits, on payment of a lira,
to the Chapel of the Princes and to Michelangelo's sacristy. Here is
contrast, indeed: the sacristy, austere and classic, and the chapel
a very exhibition building of floridity and coloured ornateness,
dating from the seventeenth century and not finished yet. In paying
the necessary fee to see these buildings one thinks again what the
feelings of Giovanni and Cosimo and Lorenzo the Magnificent, and
even of Cosimo I, all such generous patrons of Florence, would be,
if they could see the present feverish collection of lire in their
beautiful city.
Of the Chapel of the Princes I have little to say. To pass from
Michelangelo's sacristy to this is an error; see it, if see it you
must, first. While the façade of S. Lorenzo is still neglected and the
cornice of Brunelleschi's dome is still unfinished, this lapidary's
show-room is being completed at a cost of millions of lire. Ever since
1888 has the floor been in progress, and there are many years' work
yet. An enthusiastic custodian gave me a list of the stones which were
used in the designs of the coats of arms of Tuscan cities, of which
that of Fiesole is the most attractive:--Sicily jasper, French jasper,
Tuscany jasper, petrified wood, white and yellow, Corsican granite,
Corsican jasper, Oriental alabaster, French marble, lapis lazuli,
verde antico, African marble, Siena marble, Carrara marble, rose agate,
mother of pearl, and coral. The names of the Medici are in porphyry
and ivory. It is all very marvellous and occasionally beautiful; but...
This pretentious building was designed by a natural son of Cosimo
I in 1604, and was begun as the state mausoleum of the Grand Dukes;
and all lie here. All the Grand Duchesses too, save Bianca Capella,
wife of Francis I, who was buried none knows where. It is strange to
realize as one stands here that this pavement covers all those ladies,
buried in their wonderful clothes. We shall see Eleanor of Toledo,
wife of Cosimo I, in Bronzino's famous picture at the Uffizi, in an
amazing brocaded dress: it is that dress in which she reposes beneath
us! They had their jewels too, and each Grand Duke his crown and
sceptre; but these, with one or two exceptions, were stolen during
the French occupation of Tuscany, 1801-1814. Only two of the Grand
Dukes have their statues--Ferdinand I and Cosimo II--and the Medici
no longer exist in the Florentine memory; and yet the quiet brick
floor is having all this money squandered on it to superimpose costly
marbles which cannot matter to anybody.
Michelangelo's chapel, called the New Sacristy, was begun for Leo X
and finished for Giulio de' Medici, illegitimate son of the murdered
Giuliano and afterwards Pope Clement VII. Brunelleschi's design
for the Old Sacristy was followed but made more severe. This, one
would feel to be the very home of dead princes even if there were no
statues. The only colours are the white of the walls and the brown
of the pillars and windows; the dome was to have been painted, but
it fortunately escaped.
The contrast between Michelangelo's dome and Brunelleschi's is
complete--Brunelleschi's so suave and gentle in its rise, with its
grey lines to help the eye, and this soaring so boldly to its lantern,
with its rigid device of dwindling squares. The odd thing is that
with these two domes to teach him better the designer of the Chapel
of the Princes should have indulged in such floridity.
Such is the force of the architecture in the sacristy that one is
profoundly conscious of being in melancholy's most perfect home;
and the building is so much a part of Michelangelo's life and it
contains such marvels from his hand that I choose it as a place
to tell his story. Michelangelo Buonarroti was born on March 6th,
1475, at Caprese, of which town his father was Podestà. At that time
Brunelleschi had been dead twenty-nine years, Fra Angelico twenty
years, Donatello nine years, Leonardo da Vinci was twenty-three years
old, and Raphael was not yet born. Lorenzo the Magnificent had been
on what was virtually the throne of Florence since 1469 and was a
young man of twenty-six. For foster-mother the child had the wife
of a stone-mason at Settignano, whither the family soon moved, and
Michelangelo used to say that it was with her milk that he imbibed
the stone-cutting art. It was from the air too, for Settignano's
principal industry was sculpture. The village being only three miles
from Florence, from it the boy could see the city very much as we see
it now--its Duomo, its campanile, with the same attendant spires. He
was sent to Florence to school and intended for either the wool or silk
trade, as so many Florentines were; but displaying artistic ability,
he induced his father to apprentice him, at the age of thirteen, to
a famous goldsmith and painter of Florence who had a busy atelier--no
other than Domenico Ghirlandaio, who was then a man of thirty-nine.
Michelangelo remained with him for three years, and although his
power and imagination were already greater than his master's, he
learned much, and would never have made his Sixtine Chapel frescoes
with the ease he did but for this early grounding. For Ghirlandaio,
although not of the first rank of painters in genius, was pre-eminently
there in thoroughness, while he was good for the boy too in spirit,
having a large way with him. The first work of Ghirlandaio which
the boy saw in the making was the beautiful "Adoration of the Magi,"
in the Church of the Spedale degli Innocenti, completed in 1488, and
the S. Maria Novella frescoes, and it is reasonable to suppose that
he helped with the frescoes in colour grinding, even if he did not,
as some have said, paint with his own hand the beggar sitting on the
steps in the scene representing the "Presentation of the Virgin". That
he was already clever with his pencil, we know, for he had made some
caricatures and corrected a drawing or two.
The three years with Ghirlandaio were reduced eventually to one, the
boy having the good fortune to be chosen as one of enough promise to be
worth instruction, both by precept and example, in the famous Medici
garden. Here he was more at home than in a painting room, for plastic
art was his passion, and not only had Lorenzo the Magnificent gathered
together there many of those masterpieces of ancient sculpture which we
shall see at the Uffizi, but Bertoldo, the aged head of this informal
school, was the possessor of a private collection of Donatellos and
other Renaissance work of extraordinary beauty and worth. Donatello's
influence on the boy held long enough for him to make the low relief
of the Madonna, much in his style, which is now preserved in the
Casa Buonarroti, while the plaque of the battle of the Centaurs and
Lapithae which is also there shows Bertoldo's influence.
The boy's first encounter with Lorenzo occurred while he was modelling
the head of an aged faun. His magnificent patron stopped to watch him,
pointing out that so old a creature would probably not have such a
fine set of teeth, and Michelangelo, taking the hint, in a moment had
not only knocked out a tooth or two but--and here his observation
told--hollowed the gums and cheeks a little in sympathy. Lorenzo
was so pleased with his quickness and skill that he received him
into his house as the companion of his three sons: of Piero, who
was so soon and so disastrously to succeed his father, but was now a
high-spirited youth; of Giovanni, who, as Pope Leo X many years after,
was to give Michelangelo the commission for this very sacristy; and
of Giuliano, who lies beneath one of the tombs. As their companion
he enjoyed the advantage of sharing their lessons under Poliziano,
the poet, and of hearing the conversation of Pico della Mirandola,
who was usually with Lorenzo; and to these early fastidious and
intellectual surroundings the artist owed much.
That he read much, we know, the Bible and Dante being constant
companions; and we know also that in addition to modelling and copying
under Bertoldo, he was assiduous in studying Masaccio's frescoes at
the church of the Carmine across the river, which had become a school
of painting. It was there that his fellow-pupil, Pietro Torrigiano,
who was always his enemy and a bully, broke his nose with one blow
and flew to Rome from the rage of Lorenzo.
It was when Michelangelo was seventeen that Lorenzo died, at the early
age of forty-two, and although the garden still existed and the Medici
palace was still open to the youth, the spirit had passed. Piero, who
succeeded his father, had none of his ability or sagacity, and in two
years was a refugee from the city, while the treasures of the garden
were disposed by auction, and Michelangelo, too conspicuous as a Medici
protégé to be safe, hurried away to Bologna. He was now nineteen.
Of his travels I say nothing here, for we must keep to Florence,
whither he thought it safe to return in 1495. The city was now governed
by the Great Council and the Medici banished. Michelangelo remained
only a brief time and then went to Rome, where he made his first Pietà,
at which he was working during the trial and execution of Savonarola,
whom he admired and reverenced, and where he remained until 1501,
when, aged twenty-six, he returned to Florence to do some of his most
famous work. The Medici were still in exile.
It was in August, 1501, that the authorities of the cathedral asked
Michelangelo to do what he could with a great block of marble on
their hands, from which he carved that statue of David of which I
tell the story in chapter XVI. This established his pre-eminence as
a sculptor. Other commissions for statues poured in, and in 1504 he
was invited to design a cartoon for the Palazzo Vecchio, to accompany
one by Leonardo, and a studio was given him in the Via Guelfa for
the purpose. This cartoon, when finished, so far established him
also as the greatest of painters that the Masaccios in the Carmine
were deserted by young artists in order that this might be studied
instead. The cartoon, as I relate in the chapter on the Palazzo
Vecchio, no longer exists.
The next year, 1505, Michelangelo, nearing his thirtieth birthday,
returned to Rome and entered upon the second and tragic period of his
life, for he arrived there only to receive the order for the Julius
tomb which poisoned his remaining years, and of which more is said
in the chapter on the Accademia, where we see so many vestiges of it
both in marble and plaster. But I might remark here that this vain
and capricious pontiff, whose pride and indecision robbed the world
of no one can ever say what glorious work from Michelangelo's hand,
is the benevolent-looking old man whose portrait by Raphael is in
the Pitti and Uffizi in colour, in the Corsini Palace in charcoal,
and again in our own National Gallery in colour.
Of Michelangelo at Rome and Carrara, whither he went to superintend
in person the quarrying of the marble that was to be transferred to
life and where he had endless vexations and mortifications, I say
nothing. Enough that the election of his boy friend Giovanni de'
Medici as Pope Leo X in 1513 brought him again to Florence, the Pope
having a strong wish that Michelangelo should complete the façade of
the Medici family church, S. Lorenzo, where we now are. As we know,
the scheme was not carried out, but in 1520 the Pope substituted
another and more attractive one: namely, a chapel to contain the
tombs not only of his father the Magnificent, and his uncle, who had
been murdered in the Duomo many years before, but also his nephew
Piero de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, who had just died, in 1519, and
his younger brother (and Michelangelo's early playmate) Giuliano de'
Medici, Duke of Nemours, who had died in 1516. These were not Medici
of the highest class, but family pride was strong. It is, however,
odd that no memorial of Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, who had been
drowned at the age of twenty-two in 1503, was required; perhaps it
may have been that since it was Piero's folly that had brought the
Medici into such disgrace in 1494, the less thought of him the better.
Michelangelo took fire at once, and again hastened to Carrara to
arrange for marble to be sent to his studio in the Via Mozzi, now the
Via S. Zenobi; while the building stone was brought from Fiesole. Leo
X lived only to know that the great man had begun, the new patron
being Giulio de' Medici, natural son of the murdered Giuliano,
now a cardinal, and soon, in 1523, to become Pope Clement VII. This
Pope showed deep interest in the project, but wished not only to add
tombs of himself and Pope Leo X, but also to build a library for the
Laurentian collection, which Michelangelo must design. A little later
he had decided that he would prefer to lie in the choir of the church,
and Leo X with him, and instead therefore of tombs Michelangelo might
merely make a colossal statue of him to stand in the piazza before the
church. The sculptor's temper had not been improved by his many years'
experience of papal caprice, and he replied to this suggestion with
a letter unique even in the annals of infuriated artists. Let the
statue be made, of course, he said, but let it be useful as well as
ornamental: the lower portion to be also a barber's shop, and the
head, since it would be empty, a greengrocer's. The Pope allowed
himself to be rebuked, and abandoned the statue, writing a mild and
even pathetic reply.
Until 1527 Michelangelo worked away at the building and the tombs,
always secretly, behind impenetrable barriers; and then came the
troubles which led to the siege of Florence, following upon the
banishment of Alessandro, Duke of Urbino, natural son of the very
Lorenzo whom the sculptor was to dignify for all time. By the Emperor
Charles V and Pope Clement VII the city was attacked, and Michelangelo
was called away from Clement's sacristy to fortify Florence against
Clement's soldiers. Part of his ramparts at S. Miniato still remain,
and he strengthened all the gates; but, feeling himself slighted and
hating the whole affair, he suddenly disappeared. One story is that he
hid in the church tower of S. Niccolò, below what is now the Piazzale
dedicated to his memory. Wherever he was, he was proclaimed an outlaw,
and then, on Florence finding that she could not do without him,
was pardoned, and so returned, the city meanwhile having surrendered
and the Medici again being restored to power.
The Pope showed either fine magnanimity or compounded with facts
in the interest of the sacristy; for he encouraged Michelangelo to
proceed, and the pacific work was taken up once more after the martial
interregnum, and in a desultory way he was busy at it, always secretly
and moodily, until 1533, when he tired completely and never touched
it again. A year later Clement VII died, having seen only drawings
of the tombs, if those.
But though left unfinished, the sacristy is wholly satisfying--more
indeed than satisfying, conquering. Whatever help Michelangelo may
have had from his assistants, it is known that the symbolical figures
on the tombs and the two seated Medici are from his hand. Of the two
finished or practically finished tombs--to my mind as finished as they
should be--that of Lorenzo is the finer. The presentment of Lorenzo in
armour brooding and planning is more splendid than that of Giuliano;
while the old man, whose head anticipates everything that is considered
most original in Rodin's work, is among the best of Michelangelo's
statuary. Much speculation has been indulged in as to the meaning
of the symbolism of these tombs, and having no theory of my own to
offer, I am glad to borrow Mr. Gerald S. Davies' summary from his
monograph on Michelangelo. The figure of Giuliano typifies energy
and leadership in repose; while the man on his tomb typifies Day and
the woman Night, or the man Action and the woman the sleep and rest
that produce Action. The figure of Lorenzo typifies Contemplation,
the woman Dawn, and the man Twilight, the states which lie between
light and darkness, action and rest. What Michelangelo--who owed
nothing to any Medici save only Lorenzo the Magnificent and had seen
the best years of his life frittered away in the service of them and
other proud princes--may also have intended we shall never know; but
he was a saturnine man with a long memory, and he might easily have
made the tombs a vehicle for criticism. One would not have another
touch of the chisel on either of the symbolical male figures.
Although a tomb to Lorenzo the Magnificent by Michelangelo would
surely have been a wonderful thing, there is something startling and
arresting in the circumstance that he has none at all from any hand,
but lies here unrecorded. His grandfather, in the church itself,
rests beneath a plain slab, which aimed so consciously at modesty
as thereby to achieve special distinction: Lorenzo, leaving no such
directions, has nothing, while in the same room are monuments to
two common-place descendants to thrill the soul. The disparity is in
itself monumental. That Michelangelo's Madonna and Child are on the
slab which covers the dust of Lorenzo and his brother is a chance. The
saints on either side are S. Cosimo and S. Damian, the patron saints
of old Cosimo de' Medici, and are by Michelangelo's assistants. The
Madonna was intended for the altar of the sacristy. Into this work the
sculptor put much of his melancholy and, one feels, disappointment. The
face of the Madonna is already sad and hopeless; but the Child is
perhaps the most splendid and determined of any in all Renaissance
sculpture. He may, if we like, symbolize the new generation that is
always deriving sustenance from the old, without care or thought of
what the old has to suffer; he crushes his head against his mother's
breast in a very passion of vigorous dependence. [4]
Whatever was originally intended, it is certain that in Michelangelo's
sacristy disillusionment reigns as well as death. But how beautiful
it is!
In a little room leading from the sacristy I was shown by a smiling
custodian Lorenzo the Magnificent's coffin, crumbling away, and
photographs of the skulls of the two brothers: Giuliano's with one
of Francesco de' Pazzi's dagger wounds in it, and Lorenzo's, ghastly
in its decay. I gave the man half a lira.
While he was working on the tombs Michelangelo had undertaken now and
then a small commission, and to this period belongs the David which we
shall see in the little room on the ground floor of the Bargello. In
1534, when he finally abandoned the sacristy, and, leaving Florence for
ever, settled in Rome, the Laurentian library was only begun, and he
had little interest in it. He never saw it again. At Rome his time was
fully occupied in painting the "Last Judgment" in the Sixtine Chapel,
and in various architectural works. But Florence at any rate has two
marble masterpieces that belong to the later period--the Brutus in
the Bargello and the Pietà in the Duomo, which we have seen--that
poignantly impressive rendering of the entombment upon which the old
man was at work when he died, and which he meant for his own grave.
His death came in 1564, on February 23rd, when he was nearly
eighty-nine, and his body was brought to Florence and buried amid
universal grief in S. Croce, where it has a florid monument.
Since we are considering the life of Michelangelo, I might perhaps
say here a few words about his house, which is only a few minutes'
distant--at No. 64 Via Ghibellina--where certain early works and
personal relics are preserved. Michelangelo gave the house to his
nephew Leonardo; it was decorated early in the seventeenth century with
scenes in the life of the master, and finally bequeathed to the city
as a heritage in 1858. It is perhaps the best example of the rapacity
of the Florentines; for notwithstanding that it was left freely in
this way a lira is charged for admission. The house contains more
collateral curiosities, as they might be called, than those in the
direct line; but there are architectural drawings from the wonderful
hand, colour drawings of a Madonna, a few studies, and two early pieces
of sculpture--the battle of the Lapithae and Centaurs, a relief marked
by tremendous vigour and full of movement, and a Madonna and Child,
also in relief, with many marks of greatness upon it. In a recess
in Room IV are some personal relics of the artist, which his great
nephew, the poet, who was named after him, began to collect early in
the seventeenth century. As a whole the house is disappointing.
Upstairs have been arranged a quantity of prints and drawings
illustrating the history of Florence.
The S. Lorenzo cloisters may be entered either from a side door in
the church close to the Old Sacristy or from the piazza. Although an
official in uniform keeps the piazza door, they are free. Brunelleschi
is again the architect, and from the loggia at the entrance to the
library you see most acceptably the whole of his cathedral dome and
half of Giotto's tower. It is impossible for Florentine cloisters--or
indeed any cloisters--not to have a certain beauty, and these are
unusually charming and light, seen both from the loggia and the ground.
Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana, which leads from them,
is one of the most perfect of sombre buildings, the very home of
well-ordered scholarship. The staircase is impressive, although perhaps
a little too severe; the long room could not be more satisfying to
the eye. Michelangelo died before it was finished, but it is his in
design, even to the ceiling and cases for MSS. in which the library
is so rich, and the rich red wood ceiling. Vasari, Michelangelo's
pupil and friend and the biographer to whom we are so much indebted,
carried on the work. His scheme of windows has been upset on the
side opposite the cloisters by the recent addition of a rotunda
leading from the main room. If ever rectangular windows were more
exquisitely and nobly proportioned I should like to see them. The
library is free for students, and the attendants are very good in
calling stray visitors' attention to illuminated missals, old MSS.,
early books and so forth. One of Galileo's fingers, stolen from his
body, used to be kept here, in a glass case, and may be here still;
but I did not see it. I saw, however, the portraits, in an old volume,
of Petrarch and his Laura.
This wonderful collection was begun by Cosimo de' Medici; others
added to it until it became one of the most valuable in the world,
not, however, without various vicissitudes incident to any Florentine
institution: while one of its most cherished treasures, the Virgil
of the fourth or fifth century, was even carried to Paris by Napoleon
and not returned until the great year of restoration, 1816. Among the
holograph MSS. is Cellini's "Autobiography". The library, in time,
after being confiscated by the Republic and sold to the monks of
S. Marco, again passed into the possession of a Medici, Leo X, son
of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and then of Clement VII, and he it was
who commissioned Michelangelo to house it with dignity.
An old daily custom in the cloisters of S. Lorenzo was the feeding of
cats; but it has long since been dropped. If you look at Mr. Hewlett's
"Earthwork out of Tuscany" you will find an entertaining description
of what it used to be like.