The Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele to S. Trinità
A city of trams--The old market--Donatello's figure of Abundance--An
evening resort--A hall of variety--Florentines of to-day--The war
with Turkey--Homecoming heroes--Restaurants--The new market--The
bronze boar--A fifteenth century palace--Old Florentine life
reconstructed--Where changes are few--S. Trinità--Ghirlandaio
again--S. Francis--The Strozzi palace--Clarice de' Medici.
Florence is not simple to the stranger. Like all very old cities
built fortuitously it is difficult to learn: the points of the
compass are elusive; the streets are so narrow that the sky is no
constant guide; the names of the streets are often not there; the
policemen have no high standard of helpfulness. There are trams,
it is true--too many and too noisy, and too near the pavement--but
the names of their outward destinations, from the centre, too rarely
correspond to any point of interest that one is desiring. Hence one
has many embarrassments and even annoyances. Yet I daresay this is
best: an orderly Florence is unthinkable. Since, however, the trams
that are returning to the centre nearly all go to the Duomo, either
passing it or stopping there, the tram becomes one's best friend and
the Duomo one's starting point for most excursions.
Supposing ourselves to be there once more, let us quickly get through
the horrid necessity, which confronts one in all ancient Italian
cities, of seeing the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. In an earlier chapter
we left the Baptistery and walked along the Via Calzaioli. Again
starting from the Baptistery let us take the Via dell' Arcivescovado,
which is parallel with the Via Calzaioli, on the right of it, and
again walk straight forward. We shall come almost at once to the
great modern square.
No Italian city or town is complete without a Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele
and a statue of that monarch. In Florence the sturdy king bestrides
his horse here. Italy being so old and Vittorio Emmanuele so new,
it follows in most cases that the square or street named after
him supplants an older one, and if the Italians had any memory or
imaginative interest in history they would see to it that the old
name was not wholly obliterated. In Florence, in order to honour the
first king of United Italy, much grave violence was done to antiquity,
for a very picturesque quarter had to be cleared away for the huge
brasseries, stores and hotels which make up the west side; which
in their turn marked the site of the old market where Donatello and
Brunelleschi and all the later artists of the great days did their
shopping and met to exchange ideals and banter; and that market in
its turn marked the site of the Roman forum.
One of the features of the old market was the charming Loggia di Pesce;
another, Donatello's figure of Abundance, surmounting a column. This
figure is now in the museum of ancient city relics in the monastery
of S. Marco, where one confronts her on a level instead of looking
up at her in mid sky. But she is very good, none the less.
In talking to elderly persons who can remember Florence forty and fifty
years ago I find that nothing so distresses them as the loss of the
old quarter for the making of this new spacious piazza; and probably
nothing can so delight the younger Florentines as its possession,
for, having nothing to do in the evenings, they do it chiefly in the
Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. Chairs and tables spring up like mushrooms
in the roadway, among which too few waiters distribute those very
inexpensive refreshments which seem to be purchased rather for the
right to the seat that they confer than for any stimulation. It is
extraordinary to the eyes of the thriftless English, who are never
so happy as when they are overpaying Italian and other caterers in
their own country, to notice how long these wiser folk will occupy
a table on an expenditure of fourpence.
I do not mean that there are no theatres in Florence. There are
many, but they are not very good; and the young men can do without
them. Curious old theatres, faded and artificial, all apparently built
for the comedies of Goldoni. There are cinema theatres too, at prices
which would delight the English public addicted to those insidious
entertainments, but horrify English managers; and the Teatro Salvini
at the back of the Palazzo Vecchio is occasionally transformed into a
Folies Bergères (as it is called) where one after another comediennes
sing each two or three songs rapidly to an audience who regard them
with apathy and converse without ceasing. The only sign of interest
which one observes is the murmur which follows anything a little
off the beaten track--a sound that might equally be encouragement
or disapproval. But a really pretty woman entering a box moves
them. Then they employ every note in the gamut; and curiously enough
the pretty woman in the box is usually as cool under the fusillade
as a professional and hardened sister would be. A strange music hall
this to the English eye, where the orchestra smokes, and no numbers
are put up, and every one talks, and the intervals seem to be hours
long. But the Florentines do not mind, for they have not the English
thirst for entertainment and escape; they carry their entertainment
with them and do not wish to escape--going to such places only because
they are warmer than out of doors.
Sitting here and watching their ironical negligence of the stage and
their interest in each other's company; their animated talk and rapid
decisions as to the merits and charms of a performer; the comfort of
their attitudes and carelessness (although never quite slovenliness)
in dress; one seems to realize the nation better than anywhere. The
old fighting passion may have gone; but much of the quickness, the
shrewdness and the humour remains, together with the determination of
each man to have if possible his own way and, whether possible or not,
his own say.
Seeing them in great numbers one quickly learns and steadily
corroborates the fact that the Florentines are not beautiful. A
pretty woman or a handsome man is a rarity; but a dull-looking man
or woman is equally rare. They are shrewd, philosophic, cynical, and
very ready for laughter. They look contented also: Florence clearly
is the best place to be born in, to live in, and to die in. Let all
the world come to Florence, by all means, and spend its money there;
but don't ask Florence to go to the world. Don't in fact ask Florence
to do anything very much.
Civilization and modern conditions have done the Florentines no
good. Their destiny was to live in a walled city in turbulent
days, when the foe came against it, or tyranny threatened from
within and had to be resisted. They were then Florentines and
everything mattered. To-day they are Italians and nothing matters
very much. Moreover, it must be galling to have somewhere in the
recesses of their consciousness the knowledge that their famous city,
built and cemented with their ancestors' blood, is now only a museum.
When it is fine and warm the music hall does not exist, and it is
in the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele that the Florentines sit and talk,
or walk and talk, or listen to the band which periodically inhabits a
stand near the centre; and it was here that I watched the reception
of the news that Italy had declared war on Turkey, a decision which
while it rejoiced the national warlike spirit of the populace could
not but carry with it a reminder that wars have to be paid for. Six
or seven months later I saw the return to Florence of the first
troops from the war, and their reception was terrific. In the mass
they were welcome enough; but as soon as units could be separated
from the mass the fun began, for they were carried shoulder high to
whatever destination they wanted, their knapsacks and rifles falling
to proud bearers too; while the women clapped from the upper windows,
the shrewd shopkeepers cheered from their doorways, and the crowd which
followed and surrounded the hero every moment increased. As for the
heroes, they looked for the most part a good deal less foolish than
Englishmen would have done; but here and there was one whose expression
suggested that the Turks were nothing to this. One poor fellow had
his coat dragged from his back and torn into a thousand souvenirs.
The restaurants of Florence are those of a city where the natives
are thrifty and the visitors dine in hotels. There is one expensive
high-class house, in the Via Tornabuoni--Doney e Nipoti or Doney
et Neveux--where the cooking is Franco-Italian, and the Chianti and
wines are dear beyond belief, and the venerable waiters move with a
deliberation which can drive a hungry man--and one is always hungry
in this fine Tuscan air--to despair. I like better the excellent
old-fashioned purely Italian food and Chianti and speed at Bonciani's
in the Via de Panzani, close to the station. These twain are the
best. But it is more interesting to go to the huge Gambrinus in
the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele, because so much is going on all the
time. One curious Florentine habit is quickly discovered and resented
by the stranger who frequents a restaurant, and that is the system of
changing waiters from one set of tables to another; so that whereas
in London and Paris the wise diner is true to a corner because it
carries the same service with it, in Florence he must follow the
service. But if the restaurants have odd ways, and a limited range of
dishes and those not very interesting, they make up for it by being
astonishingly quick. Things are cooked almost miraculously.
The Florentines eat little. But greediness is not an Italian fault. No
greedy people would have a five-syllabled word for waiter.
Continuing along the Via dell' Arcivescovado, which after the Piazza
becomes the Via Celimana, we come to that very beautiful structure
the Mercato Nuovo, which, however, is not so wonderfully new, having
been built as long ago as 1547-1551. Its columns and arched roof are
exquisitely proportioned. As a market it seems to be a poor affair,
the chief commodity being straw hats. For the principal food market one
has to go to the Via d'Ariento, near S. Lorenzo, and this is, I think,
well worth doing early in the morning. Lovers of Hans Andersen go to
the Mercato Nuovo to see the famous bronze boar (or "metal pig," as it
was called in the translation on which I was brought up) that stands
here, on whose back the little street boy had such adventures. The
boar himself was the work of Pietro Tacca (1586-1650), a copy from
an ancient marble original, now in the Uffizi, at the top of the
entrance stairs; but the pedestal with its collection of creeping
things is modern. The Florentines who stand in the market niches are
Bernardo Cennini, a goldsmith and one of Ghiberti's assistants, who
introduced printing into Florence in 1471 and began with an edition of
Virgil; Giovanni Villani, who was the city's first serious historian,
beginning in 1300 and continuing till his death in 1348; and Michele
Lando, the wool-carder, who on July 22nd, 1378, at the head of a mob,
overturned the power of the Signory.
By continuing straight on we should come to that crowded and fussy
little street which crosses the river by the Ponte Vecchio and
eventually becomes the Roman way; but let us instead turn to the
right this side of the market, down the Via Porta Rossa, because
here is the Palazzo Davanzati, which has a profound interest to
lovers of the Florentine past in that it has been restored exactly
to its ancient state when Pope Eugenius IV lodged here, and has been
filled with fourteenth and fifteenth century furniture. In those days
it was the home of the Davizza family. The Davanzati bought it late
in the sixteenth century and retained it until 1838. In 1904 it was
bought by Professor Elia Volpi, who restored its ancient conditions
and presented it to the city as a permanent monument of the past.
Here we see a mediaeval Florentine palace precisely as it was when its
Florentine owner lived his uncomfortable life there. For say what one
may, there is no question that life must have been uncomfortable. In
early and late summer, when the weather was fine and warm, these
stone floors and continuous draughts may have been solacing; but in
winter and early spring, when Florentine weather can be so bitterly
hostile, what then? That there was a big fire we know by the smoky
condition of Michelozzo's charming frieze on the chimney piece; but
the room--I refer to that on the first floor--is so vast that this
fire can have done little for any one but an immediate vis-à-vis;
and the room, moreover, was between the open world on the one side,
and the open court (now roofed in with glass) on the other, with
such additional opportunities for draughts as the four trap-doors
in the floor offered. It was through these traps that the stone
cannon-balls still stacked in the window seats were dropped, or a few
gallons of boiling oil poured, whenever the city or a faction of it
turned against the householder. Not comfortable, you see, at least
not in our northern sense of the word, although to the hardy frugal
Florentine it may have seemed a haven of luxury.
The furniture of the salon is simple and sparse and very hard. A bust
here, a picture there, a coloured plate, a crucifix, and a Madonna
and Child in a niche: that was all the decoration save tapestry. An
hour glass, a pepper mill, a compass, an inkstand, stand for utility,
and quaint and twisted musical instruments and a backgammon board
for beguilement.
In the salle-à-manger adjoining is less light, and here also is
a symbol of Florentine unrest in the shape of a hole in the wall
(beneath the niche which holds the Madonna and Child) through which
the advancing foe, who had successfully avoided the cannon balls
and the oil, might be prodded with lances, or even fired at. The
next room is the kitchen, curiously far from the well, the opening
to which is in the salon, and then a bedroom (with some guns in it)
and smaller rooms gained from the central court.
The rest of the building is the same--a series of self-contained
flats, but all dipping for water from the same shaft and all depending
anxiously upon the success of the first floor with invaders. At the
top is a beautiful loggia with Florence beneath it.
The odd thing to remember is that for the poor of Florence, who now
inhabit houses of the same age as the Davanzati palace, the conditions
are almost as they were in the fifteenth century. A few changes have
come in, but hardly any. Myriads of the tenements have no water laid
on: it must still be pulled up in buckets exactly as here. Indeed you
may often see the top floor at work in this way; and there is a row
of houses on the left of the road to the Certosa, a little way out
of Florence, with a most elaborate network of bucket ropes over many
gardens to one well. Similarly one sees the occupants of the higher
floors drawing vegetables and bread in baskets from the street and
lowering the money for them. The postman delivers letters in this
way, too. Again, one of the survivals of the Davanzati to which the
custodian draws attention is the rain-water pipe, like a long bamboo,
down the wall of the court; but one has but to walk along the Via
Lambertesca, between the Uffizi and the Via Por S. Maria, and peer
into the alleys, to see that these pipes are common enough yet.
In fact, directly one leaves the big streets Florence is still
fifteenth century. Less colour in the costumes, and a few anachronisms,
such as gas or electric light, posters, newspapers, cigarettes, and
bicycles, which dart like dragon flies (every Florentine cyclist
being a trick cyclist); but for the rest there is no change. The
business of life has not altered; the same food is eaten, the same
vessels contain it, the same fire cooks it, the same red wine is
made from the same grapes in the same vineyards, the same language
(almost) is spoken. The babies are christened at the same font,
the parents visit the same churches. Similarly the handicrafts can
have altered little. The coppersmith, the blacksmith, the cobbler,
the woodcarver, the goldsmiths in their yellow smocks, must be just
as they were, and certainly the cellars and caverns under the big
houses in which they work have not changed. Where the change is,
is among the better-to-do, the rich, and in the government. For no
longer is a man afraid to talk freely of politics; no longer does he
shudder as he passes the Bargello; no longer is the name of Medici
on his lips. Everything else is practically as it was.
The Via Porta Rossa runs to the Piazza S. Trinità, the church of
S. Trinità being our destination. For here are some interesting
frescoes. First, however, let us look at the sculpture: a very
beautiful altar by Benedetto da Rovezzano in the fifth chapel of the
right aisle; a monument by Luca della Robbia to one of the archbishops
of Fiesole, once in S. Pancrazio (which is now a tobacco factory)
in the Via della Spada and brought here for safe keeping--a beautiful
example of Luca's genius, not only as a modeller but also as a very
treasury of pretty thoughts, for the border of flowers and leaves is
beyond praise delightful. The best green in Florence (after Nature's,
which is seen through so many doorways and which splashes over so
many white walls and mingles with gay fruits in so many shops) is here.
In the fifth chapel of the left aisle is a Magdalen carved in wood
by Desiderio da Settignano and finished by Benedetto da Maiano;
while S. Trinità now possesses, but shows only on Good Friday,
the very crucifix from S. Miniato which bowed down and blessed
S. Gualberto. The porphyry tombs of the Sassetti, in the chapel of
that family, by Giuliano di Sangallo, are magnificent.
It is in the Sassetti chapel that we find the Ghirlandaio frescoes
of scenes in the life of S. Francis which bring so many strangers
to this church. The painting which depicts S. Francis receiving
the charter from the Emperor Honorius is interesting both for its
history and its painting; for it contains a valuable record of what
the Palazzo Vecchio and Loggia de' Lanzi were like in 1485, and also
many portraits: among them Lorenzo the Magnificent, on the extreme
right holding out his hand: Poliziano, tutor of the Medici boys,
coming first up the stairs; and on the extreme left very probably
Verrocchio, one of Ghirlandaio's favourite painters. We find old
Florence again in the very attractive picture of the resuscitation
of the nice little girl in violet, a daughter of the Spini family,
who fell from a window of the Spini palace (as we see in the distance
on the left, this being one of the old synchronized scenes) and was
brought to life by S. Francis, who chanced to be flying by. The
scene is intensely local: just outside the church, looking along
what is now the Piazza S. Trinità and the old Trinità bridge. The
Spini palace is still there, but is now called the Ferroni, and it
accommodates no longer Florentine aristocrats but consuls and bank
clerks. Among the portraits in the fresco are noble friends of the
Spini family--Albrizzi, Acciaioli, Strozzi and so forth. The little
girl is very quaint and perfectly ready to take up once more the
threads of her life. How long she lived this second time and what
became of her I have not been able to discover. Her tiny sister,
behind the bier, is even quainter. On the left is a little group
of the comely Florentine ladies in whom Ghirlandaio so delighted,
tall and serene, with a few youths among them.
It is interesting to note that Ghirlandaio in his S. Trinità frescoes
and Benedetto da Maiano in his S. Croce pulpit reliefs chose exactly
the same scenes in the life of S. Francis: interesting because
when Ghirlandaio was painting frescoes at San Gimignano in 1475,
Benedetto was at work on the altar for the same church of S. Fina,
and they were friends. Where Ghirlandaio and Giotto, also in S. Croce,
also coincide in choice of subject some interesting comparisons may
be made, all to the advantage of Giotto in spiritual feeling and
unsophisticated charm, but by no means to Ghirlandaio's detriment
as a fascinating historian in colour. In the scene of the death of
S. Francis we find Ghirlandaio and Giotto again on the same ground,
and here it is probable that the later painter went to the earlier
for inspiration; for he has followed Giotto in the fine thought that
makes one of the attendant brothers glance up as though at the saint's
ascending spirit. It is remarkable how, with every picture that one
sees, Giotto's completeness of equipment as a religious painter becomes
more marked. His hand may have been ignorant of many masterly devices
for which the time was not ripe; but his head and heart knew all.
The patriarchs in the spandrels of the choir are by Ghirlandaio's
master, Alessio Baldovinetti, of whom I said something in the chapter
on S. Maria Novella. They once more testify to this painter's charm
and brilliance. Almost more than that of any other does one regret the
scarcity of his work. It was fitting that he should have painted the
choir, for his name-saint, S. Alessio, guards the façade of the church.
The column opposite the church came from the baths of Caracalla and
was set up by Cosimo I, upon the attainment of his life-long ambition
of a grand-dukeship and a crown. The figure at the top is Justice.
S. Trinità is a good starting-point for the leisurely examination of
the older and narrower streets, an occupation which so many visitors
to Florence prefer to the study of picture galleries and churches. And
perhaps rightly. In no city can they carry on their researches with
such ease, for Florence is incurious about them. Either the Florentines
are too much engrossed in their own affairs or the peering foreigner
has become too familiar an object to merit notice, but one may drift
about even in the narrowest alleys beside the Arno, east and west,
and attract few eyes. And the city here is at its most romantic:
between the Piazza S. Trinità and the Via Por S. Maria, all about
the Borgo SS. Apostoli.
We have just been discussing Benedetto da Maiano the sculptor. If we
turn to the left on leaving S. Trinità, instead of losing ourselves in
the little streets, we are in the Via Tornabuoni, where the best shops
are and American is the prevailing language. We shall soon come, on the
right, to an example of Benedetto's work as an architect, for the first
draft of the famous Palazzo Strozzi, the four-square fortress-home
which Filippo Strozzi began for himself in 1489, was his. Benedetto
continued the work until his death in 1507, when Cronaca, who built
the great hall in the Palazzo Vecchio, took it over and added the
famous cornice. The iron lantern and other smithwork were by Lorenzo
the Magnificent's sardonic friend, "Il Caparro," of the Sign of the
Burning Books, of whom I wrote in the chapter on the Medici palace.
The first mistress of the Strozzi palace was Clarice Strozzi,
née Clarice de' Medici, the daughter of Piero, son of Lorenzo the
Magnificent. She was born in 1493 and married Filippo Strozzi the
younger in 1508, during the family's second period of exile. They
then lived at Rome, but were allowed to return to Florence in
1510. Clarice's chief title to fame is her proud outburst when she
turned Ippolito and Alessandro out of the Medici palace. She died
in 1528 and was buried in S. Maria Novella. The unfortunate Filippo
met his end nine years later in the Boboli fortezza, which his money
had helped to build and in which he was imprisoned for his share in
a conspiracy against Cosimo I. Cosimo confiscated the palace and all
Strozzi's other possessions, but later made some restitution. To-day
the family occupy the upper part of their famous imperishable home,
and beneath there is an exhibition of pictures and antiquities for
sale. No private individual, whatever his wealth or ambition, will
probably ever again succeed in building a house half so strong or
noble as this.