The SS. Annunziata and the Spedale degli Innocenti
Andrea del Sarto again--Franciabigio outraged--Alessio
Baldovinetti--Piero de' Medici's church--An Easter Sunday
congregation--Andrea's "Madonna del Sacco"--"The Statue and
the Bust"--Henri IV--The Spedale degli Innocenti--Andrea della
Robbia--Domenico Ghirlandaio--Cosimo I and the Etruscans--Bronzes and
tapestries--Perugino's triptych--S. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi--"Very
sacred human dust".
From S. Marco it is an easy step, along the Via Sapienza, to the
Piazza dell' Annunziata, where one finds the church of that name,
the Palazzo Riccardi-Mannelli, and opposite it, gay with the famous
della Robbia reliefs of swaddled children, the Spedale degli Innocenti.
First the church, which is notable for possessing in its courtyard
Andrea del Sarto's finest frescoes. This series, of which he was the
chief painter, with his friend Franciabigio again as his principal
ally, depict scenes in the life of the Virgin and S. Filippo. The
scene of the Birth of the Virgin has been called the triumph of
fresco painting, and certainly it is very gay and life-like in
that medium. The whole picture very charming and easy, with the
pleasantest colouring imaginable and pretty details, such as the
washing of the baby and the boy warming his hands, while of the two
women in the foreground, that on the left, facing the spectator,
is a portrait of Andrea's wife, Lucrezia. In the Arrival of the
Magi we find Andrea himself, the figure second from the right-hand
side, pointing; while next to him, on the left, is his friend Jacopo
Sansovino. The "Dead Man Restored to Life by S. Filippo" is Andrea's
next best. Franciabigio did the scene of the Marriage of the Virgin,
which contains another of his well-drawn boys on the steps. The injury
to this fresco--the disfigurement of Mary's face--was the work of
the painter himself, in a rage that the monks should have inspected
it before it was ready. Vasari is interesting on this work. He draws
attention to it as illustrating "Joseph's great faith in taking her,
his face expressing as much fear as joy". He also says that the blow
which the man is giving Joseph was part of the marriage ceremony at
that time in Florence.
Franciabigio, in spite of his action in the matter of this fresco,
seems to have been a very sweet-natured man, who painted rather to be
able to provide for his poor relations than from any stronger inner
impulse, and when he saw some works by Raphael gave up altogether,
as Verrocchio gave up after Leonardo matured. Franciabigio was a
few years older than Andrea, but died at the same age. Possibly it
was through watching his friend's domestic troubles that he remained
single, remarking that he who takes a wife endures strife. His most
charming work is that "Madonna of the Well" in the Uffizi, which
is reproduced in this volume. Franciabigio's master was Mariotto
Albertinelli, who had learned from Cosimo Rosselli, the teacher
of Piero di Cosimo, Andrea's master--another illustration of the
interdependence of Florentine artists.
One of the most attractive works in the courtyard must once have
been the "Adoration of the Shepherds" by Alessio Baldovinetti, at
the left of the entrance to the church. It is badly damaged and the
colour has gone, but one can see that the valley landscape, when it
was painted, was a dream of gaiety and happiness.
The particular treasure of the church is the extremely ornate chapel
of the Virgin, containing a picture of the Virgin displayed once a
year on the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25th, in the painting
of which the Virgin herself took part, descending from heaven for
that purpose. The artist thus divinely assisted was Pietro Cavallini,
a pupil of Giotto. The silver shrine for the picture was designed by
Michelozzo and was a beautiful thing before the canopy and all the
distressing accessories were added. It was made at the order of Piero
de' Medici, who was as fond of this church as his father Cosimo was
of S. Lorenzo. Michelozzo only designed it; the sculpture was done
by Pagno di Lapo Portigiani, whose Madonna is over the tomb of Pope
John by Donatello and Michelozzo in the Baptistery.
Among the altar-pieces are two by Perugino; but of Florentine
altar-pieces one can say little or nothing in a book of reasonable
dimensions. There are so many and they are for the most part so
difficult to see. Now and then one arrests the eye and holds it;
but for the most part they go unstudied. The rotunda of the choir
is interesting, for here we meet again Alberti, who completed it
from designs by Michelozzo. It does not seem to fit the church from
within, and even less so from without, but it is a fine structure. The
seventeenth-century painting of the dome is almost impressive.
But one can forget and forgive all the church's gaudiness and floridity
when the choir is in good voice and the strings play Palestrina as
they did last Easter Sunday. The Annunziata is famous for its music,
and on the great occasions people crowd there as nowhere else. At High
Mass the singing was fine but the instrumental music finer. One is
accustomed to seeing vicarious worship in Italy; but never was there
so vicarious a congregation as ours, and indeed if it had not been
for the sight of the busy celibates at the altar one would not have
known that one was worshipping at all. The culmination of detachment
came when a family of Siamese or Burmese children, in native dress,
entered. A positive hum went round, and not an eye but was fixed
on the little Orientals. When, however, the organ was for a while
superseded and the violas and violins quivered under the plangent
melody of Palestrina, our roving attention was fixed and held.
I am not sure that the Andrea in the cloisters is not the best of
all his work. It is very simple and wholly beautiful, and in spite
of years of ravage the colouring is still wonderful, perhaps indeed
better for the hand of Time. It is called the "Madonna del Sacco"
(grain sack), and fills the lunette over the door leading from the
church. The Madonna--Andrea's favourite type, with the eyes set widely
in the flat brow over the little trustful nose--has her Son, older than
usual, sprawling on her knee. Her robes are ample and rich; a cloak
of green is over her pretty head. By her sits S. Joseph, on the sack,
reading with very long sight. That is all; but one does not forget it.
For the rest the cloisters are a huddle of memorial slabs and
indifferent frescoes. In the middle is a well with nice iron work. No
grass at all. The second cloisters, into which it is not easy to get,
have a gaunt John the Baptist in terra-cotta by Michelozzo.
On leaving the church, our natural destination is the Spedale, on the
left, but one should pause a moment in the doorway of the courtyard (if
the beggars who are always there do not make it too difficult) to look
down the Via de' Servi running straight away to the cathedral, which,
with its great red warm dome, closes the street. The statue in the
middle of the piazza is that of the Grand Duke Ferdinand by Giovanni da
Bologna, cast from metal taken from the Italians' ancient enemies the
Turks, while the fountains are by Tacca, Giovanni's pupil, who made
the bronze boar at the Mercato Nuovo. "The Synthetical Guide Book,"
from which I have already quoted, warns its readers not to overlook
"the puzzling bees" at the back of Ferdinand's statue. "Try to count
them," it adds. (I accepted the challenge and found one hundred and
one.) The bees have reference to Ferdinand's emblem--a swarm of these
insects, with the words "Majestate tantum". The statue, by the way,
is interesting for two other reasons than its subject. First, it is
that to which Browning's poem, "The Statue and the Bust," refers, and
which, according to the poet, was set here at Ferdinand's command to
gaze adoringly for ever at the della Robbia bust of the lady whom he
loved in vain. But the bust no longer is visible, if ever it was. John
of Douay (as Gian Bologna was also called)--
John of Douay shall effect my plan,
Set me on horseback here aloft,
Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,
In the very square I have crossed so oft:
That men may admire, when future suns
Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,
While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze--
Admire and say, "when he was alive
How he would take his pleasure once!"
The other point of interest is that when Maria de' Medici, Ferdinand's
niece, wished to erect a statue of Henri IV (her late husband) at the
Pont Neuf in Paris she asked to borrow Gian Bologna. But the sculptor
was too old to go and therefore only a bronze cast of this same horse
was offered. In the end Tacca completed both statues, and Henri IV
was set up in 1614 (after having fallen overboard on the voyage from
Leghorn to Havre). The present statue at the Pont Neuf is, however,
a modern substitute.
The façade of the Spedale degli Innocenti, or children's hospital, when
first seen by the visitor evokes perhaps the quickest and happiest
cry of recognition in all Florence by reason of its row of della
Robbia babies, each in its blue circle, reproductions of which have
gone all over the world. These are thought to be by Andrea, Luca's
nephew, and were added long after the building was completed. Luca
probably helped him. The hospital was begun by Brunelleschi at the
cost of old Giovanni de' Medici, Cosimo's father, but the Guild of
the Silk Weavers, for whom Luca made the exquisite coat of arms on Or
San Michele, took it over and finished it. Andrea not only modelled
the babies outside but the beautiful Annunciation (of which I give a
reproduction in this volume) in the court: one of his best works. The
photograph will show how full of pretty thoughts it is, but in colour
it is more charming still and the green of the lily stalks is not
the least delightful circumstance. Not only among works of sculpture
but among Annunciations this relief holds a very high place. Few of
the artists devised a scene in which the great news was brought more
engagingly, in sweeter surroundings, or received more simply.
The door of the chapel close by leads to another work of art equally
adapted to its situation--Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Magi: one of
the perfect pictures for children. We have seen Ghirlandaio's Adoration
of the Shepherds at the Accademia: this is its own brother. It has
the sweetest, mildest little Mother, and in addition to the elderly
Magi two tiny little saintlings adore too. In the distance is an
enchanted landscape about a fairy estuary.
This hospital is a very busy one, and the authorities are glad to show
it to visitors who really take an interest in such work. Rich Italians
carry on a fine rivalry in generosity to such institutions. Bologna,
for instance, could probably give lessons in thoughtful charity to
the whole world.
The building opposite the hospital has a loggia which is notable
for a series of four arches, like those of the Mercato Nuovo, and in
summer for the flowers that hang down from the little balconies. A
pretty building. Before turning to the right under the last of the
arches of the hospital loggia, which opens on the Via della Colonna
and from the piazza always frames such a charming picture of houses
and mountains, it is well, with so much of Andrea del Sarto's work
warm in one's memory, to take a few steps up the Via Gino Capponi
(which also always frames an Apennine vista under its arch) to No. 24,
and see Andrea's house, on the right, marked with a tablet.
In the Via della Colonna we find, at No. 26 on the left, the Palazzo
Crocetta, which is now a Museum of Antiquities, and for its Etruscan
exhibits is of the greatest historical value and interest to visitors
to Tuscany, such as ourselves. For here you may see what civilization
was like centuries before Christ and Rome. The beginnings of the
Etruscan people are indistinct, but about 1000 B.C. has been agreed
to as the dawn of their era. Etruria comprised Tuscany, Perugia,
and Rome itself. Florence has no remains, but Fiesole was a fortified
Etruscan town, and many traces of its original builders may be seen
there, together with Etruscan relics in the little museum. For the
best reconstructions of an Etruscan city one must go to Volterra,
where so many of the treasures in the present building were found.
The Etruscans in their heyday were the most powerful people in
the world, but after the fifth century their supremacy gradually
disappeared, the Gauls on the one side and the Romans on the other
wearing them down. All our knowledge of them comes through the
spade. Excavations at Volterra and elsewhere have revealed some
thousands of inscriptions which have been in part deciphered; but
nothing has thrown so much light on this accomplished people as their
habit of providing the ashes of their dead with everything likely
to be needed for the next world, whose requirements fortunately so
exactly tallied with those of this that a complete system of domestic
civilization can be deduced. In arts and sciences they were most
enviably advanced, as a visit to the British Museum will show in
a moment. But it is to this Florentine Museum of Antiquities that
all students of Etruria must go. The garden contains a number of the
tombs themselves, rebuilt and refurnished exactly as they were found;
while on the ground floor is the amazing collection of articles which
the tombs yielded. The grave has preserved them for us, not quite
so perfectly as the volcanic dust of Vesuvius preserved the domestic
appliances of Pompeii, but very nearly so. Jewels, vessels, weapons,
ornaments--many of them of a beauty never since reproduced--are to
be seen in profusion, now gathered together for study only a short
distance from the districts in which centuries ago they were made
and used for actual life.
Upstairs we find relics of an older civilization still, the Egyptian,
and a few rooms of works of art, all found in Etruscan soil,
the property of the Pierpont Morgans and George Saltings of that
ancient day, who had collected them exactly as we do now. Certain
of the statues are world-famous. Here, for example, in Sala IX, is
the bronze Minerva which was found near Arezzo in 1554 by Cosimo's
workmen. Here is the Chimæra, also from Arezzo in 1554, which Cellini
restored for Cosimo and tells us about in his Autobiography. Here is
the superb Orator from Lake Trasimene, another of Cosimo's discoveries.
In Sala X look at the bronze situla in an isolated glass case, of such
a peacock blue as only centuries could give it. Upstairs in Sala XVI
are many more Greek and Roman bronzes, among which I noticed a faun
with two pipes as being especially good; while the little room leading
from it has some fine life-size heads, including a noble one of a
horse, and the famous Idolino on its elaborate pedestal--a full-length
Greek bronze from the earth of Pesaro, where it was found in 1530.
The top floor is given to tapestries and embroideries. The collection
is vast and comprises much foreign work; but Cosimo I introducing
tapestry weaving into Florence, many of the examples come from the
city's looms. The finest, or at any rate most interesting, series
is that depicting the court of France under Catherine de' Medici,
with portraits: very sumptuous and gay examples of Flemish work.
The trouble at Florence is that one wants the days to be ten times as
long in order that one may see its wonderful possessions properly. Here
is this dry-looking archaeological museum, with antipathetic custodians
at the door who refuse to get change for twenty-lira pieces: nothing
could be more unpromising than they or their building; and yet you
find yourself instantly among countless vestiges of a past people who
had risen to power and crumbled again before Christ was born--but at
a time when man was so vastly more sensitive to beauty than he now is
that every appliance for daily life was the work of an artist. Well,
a collection like this demands days and days of patient examination,
and one has only a few hours. Were I Joshua--had I his curious gift--it
is to Florence I would straightway fare. The sun should stand still
there: no rock more motionless.
Continuing along the Via della Colonna, we come, on the right,
at No. 8, to the convent of S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, which is
now a barracks but keeps sacred one room in which Perugino painted a
crucifixion, his masterpiece in fresco. The work is in three panels,
of which that on the left, representing the Virgin and S. Bernard,
is the most beautiful. Indeed, there is no more beautiful light
in any picture we shall see, and the Virgin's melancholy face is
inexpressibly sweet. Perugino is best represented at the Accademia,
and there are works of his at the Uffizi and Pitti and in various
Florentine churches; but here he is at his best. Vasari tells us that
he made much money and was very fond of it; also that he liked his
young wife to wear light head-dresses both out of doors and in the
house, and often dressed her himself. His master was Verrocchio and
his best pupil Raphael.
S. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, a member of the same family that plotted
against the Medici and owned the sacred flints, was born in 1566, and,
says Miss Dunbar, [8] "showed extraordinary piety from a very tender
age". When only a child herself she used to teach small children, and
she daily carried lunch to the prisoners. Her real name was Catherine,
but becoming a nun she called herself Mary Magdalene. In an illness in
which she was given up for dead, she lay on her bed for forty days,
during which she saw continual visions, and then recovered. Like
S. Catherine of Bologna she embroidered well and painted miraculously,
and she once healed a leprosy by licking it. She died in 1607.
The old English Cemetery, as it is usually called--the Protestant
Cemetery, as it should be called--is an oval garden of death in the
Piazza Donatello, at the end of the Via di Pinti and the Via Alfieri,
rising up from the boulevard that surrounds the northern half of
Florence. (The new Protestant Cemetery is outside the city on the
road to the Certosa.) I noticed, as I walked beneath the cypresses,
the grave of Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet of "Dipsychus," who died
here in Florence on November 13th, 1861; of Walter Savage Landor,
that old lion (born January 30th, 1775; died September 17th, 1864),
of whom I shall say much more in a later chapter; of his son Arnold,
who was born in 1818 and died in 1871; and of Mrs. Holman Hunt, who
died in 1866. But the most famous grave is that of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, who lies beneath a massive tomb that bears only the initials
E.B.B. and the date 1861. "Italy," wrote James Thomson, the poet of
"The City of Dreadful Night," on hearing of Mrs. Browning's death,
"Italy, you hold in trust
Very sacred human dust."