The Story of Florence

Passing the Medicean busts at the head of the stairs, the famous Wild Boar and the two Molossian Hounds, we enter the first or eastern corridor, containing paintings of the earlier masters, mingled with ancient busts and sarcophagi. The best specimens of the Giotteschi are an Agony in the Garden (8), wrongly ascribed to Giotto himself; an Entombment (27), ascribed to a Giotto di Stefano, called Giottino, a painter of whom hardly anything but the nickname is known; an Annunciation (28), ascribed to Agnolo Gaddi; and an altar-piece by Giovanni da Milano (32). There are some excellent early Sienese paintings; a Madonna and Child with Angels, by Pietro Lorenzetti, 1340 (15); the Annunciation, by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi (23); and a very curious picture of the Hermits of the Thebaid (16), a kind of devout fairy-land painted possibly by one of the Lorenzetti, in the spirit of those delightfully naïve Vite del Santi Padri. Lorenzo Monaco, or Don Lorenzo, a master who occupies an intermediate position between the Giotteschi and the Quattrocento, is represented by the Mystery of the Passion (40), a symbolical picture painted in 1404, of a type that Angelico brought to perfection in a fresco in San Marco; the Adoration of the Magi (39, the scenes in the frame by a later hand), and Madonna and Saints (41). The portrait of Giovanni dei Medici (43) is by an unknown hand of the Quattrocento. Paolo Uccello's Battle (52) is mainly a study in perspective. The Annunciation (53), by Neri di Bicci di Lorenzo, is a fair example of one of the least progressive painters of the Quattrocento. The pictures by Alessio Baldovinetti (56 and 60) and Cosimo Rosselli (63 and 65) are tolerable examples of very uninteresting fifteenth century masters. The allegorical figures of the Virtues (69-73), ascribed to Piero Pollaiuolo, are second-rate; and the same may be said of an Annunciation (such is the real subject of 81) and the Perseus and Andromeda pictures (85, 86, 87) by Piero di Cosimo. But the real gem of this corridor is the Madonna and Child (74), which Luca Signorelli painted for Lorenzo dei Medici, a picture which profoundly influenced Michelangelo; the splendidly modelled nude figures of men in the background transport us into the golden age.

Tribuna

The famous Tribuna is supposed to contain the masterpieces of the whole collection, though the lover of the Quattrocento will naturally seek his best-loved favourites elsewhere. Of the five ancient sculptures in the centre of the hall the best is that of the crouching barbarian slave, who is preparing his knife to flay Marsyas. It is a fine work of the Pergamene school. The celebrated Venus dei Medici is a typical Græco-Roman work, the inscription at its base being a comparatively modern forgery. It was formerly absurdly overpraised, and is in consequence perhaps too much depreciated at the present day. The remaining three–the Satyr, the Wrestlers, and the young Apollo–have each been largely and freely restored.

Turning to the pictures, we have first the Madonna del Cardellino (1129), painted by Raphael during his Florentine period when under the influence of Fra Bartolommeo, in 1506 or thereabouts, and afterwards much damaged and restored: still one of the most beautiful of his early Madonnas. The St. John the Baptist (1127), ascribed to Raphael, is only a school piece, though from a design of the master's. The Madonna del Pozzo (1125), in spite of its hard and over-smooth colouring, was at one time attributed to Raphael; its ascription to Francia Bigio is somewhat conjectural. The portrait of a Lady wearing a wreath (1123), and popularly called the Fornarina, originally ascribed to Giorgione and later to Raphael, is believed to be by Sebastiano del Piombo. Then come a lady's portrait, ascribed to Raphael (1120); another by a Veronese master, erroneously ascribed to Mantegna, and erroneously said to represent the Duchess Elizabeth of Urbino (1121); Bernardino Luini's Daughter of Herodias (1135), a fine study of a female Italian criminal of the Renaissance; Perugino's portrait of Francesco delle Opere, holding a scroll inscribed Timete Deum, an admirable picture painted in oils about the year 1494, and formerly supposed to be a portrait of Perugino by himself (287); portrait of Evangelista Scappa, ascribed to Francia (1124); and a portrait of a man, by Sebastiano del Piombo (3458). Raphael's Pope Julius II. (1131) is a grand and terrible portrait of the tremendous warrior Pontiff, whom the Romans called a second Mars. Vasari says that in this picture he looks so exactly like himself that "one trembles before him as if he were still alive." Albert Dürer's Adoration of the Magi (1141) and Lucas van Leyden's Mystery of the Passion (1143) are powerful examples of the religious painting of the North, that loved beauty less for its own sake than did the Italians. The latter should be compared with similar pictures by Don Lorenzo and Fra Angelico. Titian's portrait of the Papal Nuncio Beccadelli (1116), painted in 1552, although a decidedly fine work, has been rather overpraised.

Michelangelo's Holy Family (1139) is the only existing easel picture that the master completed. It was painted for the rich merchant, Angelo Doni (who haggled in a miserly fashion over the price and was in consequence forced to pay double the sum agreed upon), about 1504, in the days of the Gonfaloniere Soderini, when Michelangelo was engaged upon the famous cartoon for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio. Like Luca Signorelli, Michelangelo has introduced naked figures, apparently shepherds, into his background. "In the Doni Madonna of the Uffizi," writes Walter Pater, "Michelangelo actually brings the pagan religion, and with it the unveiled human form, the sleepy-looking fauns of a Dionysiac revel, into the presence of the Madonna, as simpler painters had introduced other products of the earth, birds or flowers; and he has given to that Madonna herself much of the uncouth energy of the older and more primitive 'Mighty Mother.'" The painters introduced into their pictures what they loved best, in earth or sky, as votive offerings to the Queen of Heaven; and what Signorelli and Michelangelo best loved was the human form. This is reflected in the latter's own lines:–

Nè Dio, sua grazia, mi si mostra altrove,più che'n alcun leggiadro e mortal velo,e quel sol amo, perchè'n quel si specchia.

"Nor does God vouchsafe to reveal Himself to me anywhere more than in some lovely mortal veil, and that alone I love, because He is mirrored therein."

In the strongest possible contrast to Michelangelo's picture are the two examples of the softest master of the Renaissance–Correggio's Repose on the Flight to Egypt (1118), and his Madonna adoring the Divine Child (1134). The former, with its rather out of place St. Francis of Assisi, is a work of what is known as Correggio's transition period, 1515-1518, after he had painted his earlier easel pictures and before commencing his great fresco work at Parma; the latter, a more characteristic picture, is slightly later and was given by the Duke of Mantua to Cosimo II. The figures of Prophets by Fra Bartolommeo (1130 and 1126), the side-wings of a picture now in the Pitti Gallery, are not remarkable in any way. The Madonna and Child with the Baptist and St. Sebastian (1122) is a work of Perugino's better period.

There remain the two famous Venuses of Titian. The so-called Urbino Venus (1117)–a motive to some extent borrowed, and slightly coarsened in the borrowing, from Giorgione's picture at Dresden–is much the finer of the two. It was painted for Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, and, although not a portrait of Eleonora Gonzaga, who was then a middle-aged woman, it was certainly intended to conjure up the beauty of her youth. What Eleonora really looked like at this time, you can see in the first of the two Venetian rooms, where Titian's portrait of her, painted at about the same date, hangs. The Venus and Cupid (1108) is a later work; the goddess is the likeness of a model who very frequently appears in the works of Titian and Palma.

Scuola Toscana

On the left we pass out of the Tribuna to three rooms devoted to the Tuscan school.

The first contains the smaller pictures, including several priceless Angelicos and Botticellis. Fra Angelico's Naming of St. John (1162), Marriage of the Blessed Virgin to St. Joseph (1178), and her Death (1184), are excellent examples of his delicate execution and spiritual expression in his smaller, miniature-like works. Antonio Pollaiuolo's Labours of Hercules (1153) is one of the masterpieces of this most uncompromising realist of the Quattrocento. Either by Antonio or his brother Piero, is also the portrait of that monster of iniquity, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan (30). Sandro Botticelli's Calumny (1182) is supposed to have been painted as a thankoffering to a friend who had defended him from the assaults of slanderous tongues; it is a splendid example of his dramatic intensity, the very statues in their niches taking part in the action. The subject–taken from Lucian's description of a picture by Apelles of Ephesus–was frequently painted by artists of the Renaissance, and there is a most magnificent drawing of the same by Andrea Mantegna at the British Museum, which was copied by Rembrandt. On the judgment-seat sits a man with ears like those of Midas, into which Ignorance and Suspicion on either side ever whisper. Before him stands Envy,–a hideous, pale, and haggard man, seeming wasted by some slow disease. He is making the accusation and leading Calumny, a scornful Botticellian beauty, who holds in one hand a torch and with the other drags her victim by the hair to the judge's feet. Calumny is tended and adorned by two female figures, Artifice and Deceit. But Repentance slowly follows, in black mourning habit; while naked Truth–the Botticellian Venus in another form–raises her hand in appeal to the heavens.

The rather striking portrait of a painter (1163) is usually supposed to be Andrea Verrocchio, by Lorenzo di Credi, his pupil and successor; Mr Berenson, however, considers that it is Perugino and by Domenico Ghirlandaio. On the opposite wall are two very early Botticellis, Judith returning from the camp of the Assyrians (1156) and the finding of the body of Holofernes (1158), in a scale of colouring differing from that of his later works. The former is one of those pictures which have been illumined for us by Ruskin, who regards it as the only picture that is true to Judith; "The triumph of Miriam over a fallen host, the fire of exulting mortal life in an immortal hour, the purity and severity of a guardian angel–all are here; and as her servant follows, carrying indeed the head, but invisible–(a mere thing to be carried–no more to be so much as thought of)–she looks only at her mistress, with intense, servile, watchful love. Faithful, not in these days of fear only, but hitherto in all her life, and afterwards for ever." Walter Pater has read the picture in a different sense, and sees in it Judith "returning home across the hill country, when the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come, and the olive branch in her hand is becoming a burden."

The portrait of Andrea del Sarto by himself (280) represents him in the latter days of his life, and was painted on a tile in 1529, about a year before his death, with some colours that remained over after he had finished the portrait of one of the Vallombrosan monks; his wife kept it by her until her death. The very powerful likeness of an old man in white cap and gown (1167), a fresco ascribed to Masaccio, is more probably the work of Filippino Lippi. The famous Head of Medusa (1159) must be seen with grateful reverence by all lovers of English poetry, for it was admired by Shelley and inspired him with certain familiar and exceedingly beautiful stanzas; but as for its being a work of Leonardo da Vinci, it is now almost universally admitted to be a comparatively late forgery, to supply the place of the lost Medusa of which Vasari speaks. The portrait (1157), also ascribed to Leonardo, is better, but probably no more authentic. Here is a most dainty little example of Fra Bartolommeo's work on a small scale (1161), representing the Circumcision and the Nativity, with the Annunciation in grisaille on the back. Botticelli's St. Augustine (1179) is an early work, and, like the Judith, shows his artistic derivation from Fra Lippo Lippi, to whom indeed it was formerly ascribed. His portrait of Piero di Lorenzo dei Medici (1154), a splendid young man in red cap and flowing dark hair, has been already referred to in chapter iii.; it was formerly supposed to be a likeness of Pico della Mirandola. It was painted before Piero's expulsion from Florence, probably during the life-time of the Magnificent, and represents him before he degenerated into the low tyrannical blackguard of later years; he apparently wishes to appeal to the memory of his great-grandfather Cosimo, whose medallion he holds, to find favour with his unwilling subjects. The portraits of Duke Cosimo's son and grandchild, Don Garzia and Donna Maria (1155 and 1164), by Bronzino, should be noted. Finally we have the famous picture of Perseus freeing Andromeda, by Piero di Cosimo (1312). It is about the best specimen of his fantastic conceptions to be seen in Florence, and the monster itself is certainly a triumph of a somewhat unhealthy imagination nourished in solitude on an odd diet.

In the second room are larger works of the great Tuscans. The Adoration of the Magi (1252) is one of the very few authentic works of Leonardo; it was one of his earliest productions, commenced in 1478, and, like so many other things of his, never finished. The St. Sebastian (1279) is one of the masterpieces of that wayward Lombard or rather Piedmontese–although we now associate him with Siena–who approached nearest of all to the art of Leonardo, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, known still as Sodoma. Ridolfo Ghirlandaio's Miracles of Zenobius (1277 and 1275) are excellent works by a usually second-rate master. The Visitation with its predella, by Mariotto Albertinelli (1259), painted in 1503, is incomparably the greatest picture that Fra Bartolommeo's wild friend and fellow student ever produced, and one in which he most nearly approaches the best works of Bartolommeo himself. "The figures, however," Morelli points out, "are less refined and noble than those of the Frate, and the foliage of the trees is executed with miniature-like precision, which is never the case in the landscapes of the latter." Andrea del Sarto's genial and kindly St. James with the orphans (1254), is one of his last works; it was painted to serve as a standard in processions, and has consequently suffered considerably. Bronzino's Descent of Christ into Hades (1271), that "heap of cumbrous nothingnesses and sickening offensivenesses," as Ruskin pleasantly called it, need only be seen to be loathed. The so-called Madonna delle Arpie, or our Lady of the Harpies, from the figures on the pedestal beneath her feet (1112), is perhaps the finest of all Andrea del Sarto's pictures; the Madonna is a highly idealised likeness of his own wife Lucrezia, and some have tried to recognise the features of the painter himself in the St. John:–

"You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.This must suffice me here. What would one have?In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance–Four great walls in the New JerusalemMeted on each side by the Angel's reed,For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and meTo cover–the three first without a wife,While I have mine! So–still they overcomeBecause there's still Lucrezia,–as I choose."

The full-length portrait of Cosimo the Elder (1267), the Pater Patriae (so the flattery of the age hailed the man who said that a city destroyed was better than a city lost), was painted by Pontormo from some fifteenth century source, as a companion piece to his portrait here of Duke Cosimo I. (1270). The admirable portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent by Vasari (1269) is similarly constructed from contemporary materials, and is probably the most valuable thing that Vasari has left to us in the way of painting. The unfinished picture by Fra Bartolommeo (1265), representing our Lady enthroned with St. Anne, the guardian of the Republic, watching over her and interceding for Florence, while the patrons of the city gather round for her defence, was intended for the altar in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio of the Palazzo Vecchio; it is conceived in something of the same spirit that made the last inheritors of Savonarola's tradition and teaching fondly believe that Angels would man the walls of Florence, rather than that she should again fall into the hands of her former tyrants, the Medici. The great Madonna and Child with four Saints and two Angels scattering flowers, by Filippino Lippi (1268), was painted in 1485 for the room in the Palazzo Vecchio in which the Otto di Pratica held their meetings. The Adoration of the Magi (1257), also by Filippino Lippi, painted in 1496, apart from its great value as a work of art, has a curious historical significance; the Magi and their principal attendants, who are thus pushing forwards to display their devotion to Our Lady of Florence and the Child whom the Florentines were to elect their King, are the members of the younger branch of the Medici, who have returned to the city now that Piero has been expelled, and are waiting their chance. See how they have already replaced the family of the elder Cosimo, who occupy this same position in a similar picture painted some eighteen years before by Sandro Botticelli, Filippino's master. At this epoch they had ostentatiously altered their name of Medici and called themselves Popolani, but were certainly intriguing against Fra Girolamo. The old astronomer kneeling to our extreme left is the elder Piero Francesco, watching the adventurous game for a throne that his children are preparing; the most prominent figure in the picture, from whose head a page is lifting the crown, is Pier Francesco's son, Giovanni, who will soon woo Caterina Sforza, the lady of Forlì, and make her the mother of Giovanni delle Bande Nere; and the precious vessel which he is to offer to the divine Child is handed to him by the younger Pier Francesco, the father of Lorenzaccio, that "Tuscan Brutus" whose dagger was to make Giovanni's grandson, Cosimo, the sole lord of Florence and her empire.29

Granacci's Madonna of the Girdle (1280), over the door, formerly in San Piero Maggiore, is a good example of a painter who imitated most of his contemporaries and had little individuality. On easels in the middle of the room are (3452) Venus, by Lorenzo di Credi, a conscientious attempt to follow the fashion of the age and handle a subject quite alien to his natural sympathies–for Lorenzo di Credi was one of those who sacrificed their studies of the nude on Savonarola's pyre of the Vanities; and (3436) an Adoration of the Magi, a cartoon of Sandro Botticelli's, coloured by a later hand, marvellously full of life in movement, intense and passionate, in which–as though the painter anticipated the Reformation–the followers of the Magi are fighting furiously with each other in their desire to find the right way to the Stable of Bethlehem!

The third room of the Tuscan School contains some of the truest masterpieces of the whole collection. The Epiphany, by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1295), painted in 1487, is one of that prosaic master's best easel pictures. The wonderful Annunciation (1288), in which the Archangel has alighted upon the flowers in the silence of an Italian twilight, with a mystical landscape of mountains and rivers, and far-off cities in the background, may possibly be an early work of Leonardo da Vinci, to whom it is officially assigned, but is ascribed by contemporary critics to Leonardo's master, Andrea Verrocchio. The least satisfactory passage is the rather wooden face and inappropriate action of the Madonna; Leonardo would surely not have made her, on receiving the angelic salutation, put her finger into her book to keep the place. After Three Saints by one of the Pollaiuoli (1301) and two smaller pictures by Lorenzo di Credi (1311 and 1313), we come to Piero della Francesca's grand portraits of Federigo of Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and his wife, Battista Sforza (1300); on the reverse, the Duke and Duchess are seen in triumphal cars surrounded with allegorical pageantry. Federigo is always, as here, represented in profile, because he lost his right eye and had the bridge of his nose broken in a tournament. The three predella scenes (1298) are characteristic examples of the minor works of Piero's great pupil, Luca Signorelli of Cortona.

On the opposite wall are four Botticellian pictures. The Magnificat (1267 bis)–Sandro's most famous and familiar tondo–in which the Madonna rather sadly writes the Magnificat, while Angels cluster round to crown their Queen, to offer ink and book, or look into the thing that she has written, while the Dove hovers above her, is full of the haunting charm, the elusive mystery, the vague yearning, which makes the fascination of Botticelli to-day. She already seems to be anticipating the Passion of that Child–so unmistakably divine–who is guiding her hand. The Madonna of the Pomegranate (1289) is a somewhat similar, but less beautiful tondo; the Angel faces, who are said to be idealised portraits of the Medicean children, have partially lost their angelic look. The Fortitude (1299) is one of Sandro's earliest paintings, and its authenticity has been questioned; she seems to be dreading, almost shrinking from some great battle at hand, of which no man can foretell the end. The Annunciation (1316) is rather Botticellian in conception; but the colouring and execution generally do not suggest the master himself. Antonio Pollaiuolo's Prudence (1306) is a harsh companion to Sandro's Fortitude. The tondo (1291) of the Holy Family, by Luca Signorelli, is one of his best works in this kind; the colouring is less heavy than is usual with him, and the Child is more divine. Of the two carefully finished Annunciations by Lorenzo di Credi (1314, 1160), the latter is the earlier and finer. Fra Filippo's little Madonna of the Sea (1307), with her happy boy-like Angel attendants, is one of the monk's most attractive and characteristic works; perhaps the best of all his smaller pictures. And we have left to the last Fra Angelico's divinest dream of the Coronation of the Madonna in the Empyrean Heaven of Heavens (1290), amidst exultant throngs of Saints and Angels absorbed in the Beatific Vision of Paradise. It is the pictorial equivalent of Bernard's most ardent sermons on the Assumption of Mary and of the mystic musings of John of Damascus. Here are "the Angel choirs of Angelico, with the flames on their white foreheads waving brighter as they move, and the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of many suns upon a sounding sea, listening in the pauses of alternate song, for the prolonging of the trumpet blast, and the answering of psaltery and cymbal, throughout the endless deep, and from all the star shores of heaven."30

Sala di maestri diversi Italiani

In the small room which opens out of the Tribune, on the opposite side to these three Tuscan rooms, are two perfect little gems of more northern Italian painting. Mantegna's Madonna of the Quarries (1025), apart from its nobility of conception and grand austerity of sentiment, is a positive marvel of minute drawing with the point of the pennello. Every detail in the landscape, with the winding road up to the city on the hill, the field labourers in the meadow, the shepherds and travellers, on the left, and the stone-cutterss among the caverns on the right, preparing stone for the sculptors and architects of Florence and Rome, is elaborately rendered with exquisite delicacy and finish. It was painted at Rome in 1488, while Mantegna was working on his frescoes (now destroyed) for Pope Innocent VIII. in a chapel of the Vatican. The other is a little Madonna and Child with two Angels playing musical instruments, by Correggio (1002), a most exquisite little picture in an almost perfect state of preservation, formerly ascribed to Titian, but entirely characteristic of Correggio's earliest period when he was influenced by Mantegna and the Ferrarese.

Beyond are the Dutch, Flemish, German, and French pictures which do not come into our present scope–though they include several excellent works as, notably, a little Madonna by Hans Memlinc and two Apostles by Albert Dürer. The cabinet of the gems contains some of the treasures left by the Medicean Grand Dukes, including work by Cellini and Giovanni da Bologna.