The Story of Florence

CHAPTER X

The Accademia delle Belle Arti–The Santissima Annunziata–And other Buildings

"In Firenze, più che altrove, venivano gli uomini perfetti in tutte l'arti, e specialmente nella pittura."–Vasari.

TURNING southwards from the Piazza di San Marco into the Via Ricasoli, we come to the Accademia delle Belle Arti, with its collection of Tuscan and Umbrian pictures, mostly gathered from suppressed churches and convents.

In the central hall, the Tribune of the David, Michelangelo's gigantic marble youth stands under the cupola, surrounded by casts of the master's other works. The young hero has just caught sight of the approaching enemy, and is all braced up for the immortal moment. Commenced in 1501 and finished at the beginning of 1504, out of a block of marble over which an earlier sculptor had bungled, it was originally set up in front of the Palazzo Vecchio on the Ringhiera, as though to defend the great Palace of the People. It is supposed to have taken five days to move the statue from the Opera del Duomo, where Michelangelo had chiselled it out, to the Palace. When the simple-minded Gonfaloniere, Piero Soderini, saw it, he told the artist that the nose appeared to him to be too large; whereupon Michelangelo mounted a ladder, pretended to work upon it for a few moments, dropping a little marble dust all the time, which he had taken up with him, and then turned round for approval to the Gonfaloniere, who assured him that he had now given the statue life. This gigante di Fiorenza, as it was called, was considerably damaged during the third expulsion of the Medici in 1527, but retained its proud position before the Palace until 1873.

On the right, as we approach the giant, is the Sala del Beato Angelico, containing a lovely array of Fra Angelico's smaller paintings. Were we to attempt to sum up Angelico's chief characteristics in one word, that word would be onestà, in its early mediaeval sense as Dante uses it in the Vita Nuova, signifying not merely purity or chastity, as it came later to mean, but the outward manifestation of spiritual beauty,–the honestas of which Aquinas speaks. A supreme expression of this may be found in the Paradise of his Last Judgment (266), the mystical dance of saints and Angels in the celestial garden that blossoms under the rays of the Sun of Divine Love, and on all the faces of the blessed beneath the Queen of Mercy on the Judge's right. The Hell is, naturally, almost a failure. In many of the small scenes from the lives of Christ and His Mother, of which there are several complete series here, some of the heads are absolute miracles of expression; notice, for instance, the Judas receiving the thirty pieces of silver, and all the faces in the Betrayal (237), and, above all perhaps, the Peter in the Entry into Jerusalem (252), on every line of whose face seems written: "Lord, why can I not follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake." The Deposition from the Cross (246), contemplated by St. Dominic, the Beata Villana and St. Catherine of Alexandria, appears to be an earlier work of Angelico's. Here, also, are three great Madonnas painted by the Friar as altar pieces for convent churches; the Madonna and Child surrounded by Angels and saints, while Cosmas and Damian, the patrons of the Medici, kneel at her feet (281), was executed in 1438 for the high altar of San Marco, and, though now terribly injured, was originally one of his best pictures; the Madonna and Child, with two Angels and six saints, Peter Martyr, Cosmas and Damian, Francis, Antony of Padua, and Louis of Toulouse (265), was painted for the convent of the Osservanza near Mugello,–hence the group of Franciscans on the left; the third (227), in which Cosmas and Damian stand with St. Dominic on the right of the Madonna, and St. Francis with Lawrence and John the Divine on her left, is an inferior work from his hand.

Also in this room are four delicious little panels by Lippo Lippi (264 and 263), representing the Annunciation divided into two compartments, St. Antony Abbot and the Baptist; two Monks of the Vallombrosa, by Perugino (241, 242), almost worthy of Raphael; and two charming scenes of mediaeval university life, the School of Albertus Magnus (231) and the School of St. Thomas Aquinas (247). These two latter appear to be by some pupil of Fra Angelico, and may possibly be very early works of Benozzo Gozzoli. In the first, Albert is lecturing to an audience, partly lay and partly clerical, amongst whom is St. Thomas, then a youthful novice but already distinguished by the halo and the sun upon his breast; in the second, Thomas himself is now holding the professorial chair, surrounded by pupils listening or taking notes, while Dominicans throng the cloisters behind. On his right sits the King of France; below his seat the discomforted Averrhoes humbly places himself on the lowest step, between the heretics–William of St. Amour and Sabellius.

From the left of the David's tribune, we turn into three rooms containing masterpieces of the Quattrocento (with a few later works), and appropriately named after Botticelli and Perugino.

In the Sala prima del Botticelli is Sandro's famous Primavera, the Allegory of Spring or the Kingdom of Venus (80). Inspired in part by Poliziano's stanze in honour of Giuliano dei Medici and his Bella Simonetta, Botticelli nevertheless has given to his strange–not altogether decipherable–allegory, a vague mysterious poetry far beyond anything that Messer Angelo could have suggested to him. Through this weirdly coloured garden of the Queen of Love, in "the light that never was on sea or land," blind Cupid darts upon his little wings, shooting, apparently at random, a flame-tipped arrow which will surely pierce the heart of the central maiden of those three, who, in their thin clinging white raiment, personify the Graces. The eyes of Simonetta–for it is clearly she–rest for a moment in the dance upon the stalwart Hermes, an idealised Giuliano, who has turned away carelessly from the scene. Flora, "pranked and pied for birth," advances from our right, scattering flowers rapidly as she approaches; while behind her a wanton Zephyr, borne on his strong wings, breaks through the wood to clasp Fertility, from whose mouth the flowers are starting. Venus herself, the mistress of nature, for whom and by whom all these things are done, stands somewhat sadly apart in the centre of the picture; this is only one more of the numberless springs that have passed over her since she first rose from the sea, and she is somewhat weary of it all:–

"Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeliAdventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellusSummittit flores, tibi rident aequora pontiPlacatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum."46

This was one of the pictures painted for Lorenzo the Magnificent. Botticelli's other picture in this room, the large Coronation of the Madonna (73) with its predella (74), was commissioned by the Arte di Por Sta. Maria, the Guild of Silk-merchants, for an altar in San Marco; the ring of festive Angels, encircling their King and Queen, is in one of the master's most characteristic moods. On either side of the Primavera are two early works by Lippo Lippi; Madonna adoring the Divine Child in a rocky landscape, with the little St. John and an old hermit (79), and the Nativity (82), with Angels and shepherds, Jerome, Magdalene and Hilarion. Other important pictures in this room are Andrea del Sarto's Four Saints (76), one of his latest works painted for the monks of Vallombrosa in 1528; Andrea Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (71), in which the two Angels were possibly painted by Verrocchio's great pupil, Leonardo, in his youth; Masaccio's Madonna and Child watched over by St. Anne (70), an early and damaged work, the only authentic easel picture of his in Florence. The three small predella pictures (72), the Nativity, the martyrdom of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, St. Anthony of Padua finding a stone in the place of the dead miser's heart, by Francesco Pesellino, 1422-1457, the pupil of Lippo Lippi, are fine examples of a painter who normally only worked on this small scale and whose works are very rare indeed. Francesco Granacci, who painted the Assumption (68), is chiefly interesting as having been Michelangelo's friend and fellow pupil under Ghirlandaio.

The Sala del Perugino takes its name from three works of that master which it contains; the great Vallombrosa Assumption (57), signed and dated 1500, one of the painter's finest altar pieces, with a very characteristic St. Michael–the Archangel who was by tradition the genius of the Assumption, as Gabriel had been of the Annunciation; the Deposition from the Cross (56); and the Agony in the Garden (53). But the gem of the whole room is Lippo Lippi's Coronation of the Madonna (62), one of the masterpieces of the early Florentine school, which he commenced for the nuns of Sant' Ambrogio in 1441. The throngs of boys and girls, bearing lilies and playing at being Angels, are altogether delightful, and the two little orphans, that are being petted by the pretty Florentine lady on our right, are characteristic of Fra Filippo's never failing sympathy with child life. On the left two admirably characterised monks are patronised by St. Ambrose, and in the right corner the jolly Carmelite himself, under the wing of the Baptist, is welcomed by a little Angel with the scroll, Is perfecit opus. It will be observed that "poor brother Lippo" has dressed himself with greater care for his celestial visit, than he announced his intention of doing in Robert Browning's poem:–

"Well, all theseSecured at their devotion, up shall comeOut of a corner when you least expect,As one by a dark stair into a great light,Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!–Mazed, motionless and moon-struck–I'm the man!Back I shrink–what is this I see and hear?I, caught up with my monk's things by mistake,My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,I, in this presence, this pure company!Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thingForward, puts out a soft palm–'Not so fast!'Addresses the celestial presence, 'Nay–'He made you and devised you, after all,'Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw–'His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?'We come to brother Lippo for all that,'Iste perfecit opus!'"

Fra Filippo's Madonna and Child, with Sts. Cosmas and Damian, Francis and Antony, painted for the Medicean chapel in Santa Croce (55), is an earlier and less characteristic work. Over the door is St. Vincent preaching, by Fra Bartolommeo (58), originally painted to go over the entrance to the sacristy in San Marco–a striking representation of a Dominican preacher of repentance and renovation, conceived in the spirit of Savonarola, but terribly "restored." The Trinità (63) is one of Mariotto Albertinelli's best works, but sadly damaged. The two child Angels (61) by Andrea del Sarto, originally belonged to his picture of the Four Saints, in the last room; the Crucifixion, with the wonderful figure of the Magdalene at the foot of the Cross (65), ascribed to Luca Signorelli, does not appear to be from the master's own hand; Ghirlandaio's predella (67), with scenes from the lives of Sts. Dionysius, Clement, Dominic, and Thomas Aquinas, belongs to a great picture which we shall see presently.

The Sala seconda del Botticelli contains three pictures ascribed to the master, but only one is authentic–the Madonna and Child enthroned with six Saints, while Angels raise the curtain over her throne or hold up emblems of the Passion (85); it is inscribed with Dante's line–

"Vergine Madre, Figlia del tuo Figlio."

The familiar Three Archangels (84), though attributed to Sandro, is not even a work of his school. There is a charming little predella picture by Fra Filippo (86), representing a miracle of San Frediano, St. Michael announcing her death to the Blessed Virgin, and a friar contemplating the mystery of the Blessed Trinity–pierced by the "three arrows of the three stringed bow," to adopt Dante's phrase. The Deposition from the Cross (98), was commenced by Filippino Lippi for the Annunziata, and finished after his death in 1504 by Perugino, who added the group of Maries with the Magdalene and the figure on our right. The Vision of St. Bernard (97), by Fra Bartolommeo, is the first picture that the Friar undertook on resuming his brush, after Raphael's visit to Florence had stirred him up to new efforts; commenced in 1506, it was left unfinished, and has been injured by renovations. Here are two excellent paintings by Lorenzo di Credi (92 and 94), the former, the Adoration of the Shepherds, being his very best and most perfectly finished work. High up are two figures in niches by Filippino Lippi, the Baptist and the Magdalene (93 and 89), hardly pleasing. The Resurrection (90), by Raffaellino del Garbo, is the only authentic work in Florence of a pupil of Filippino's, who gave great promise which was never fulfilled.

At the end of the hall are three Sale dei Maestri Toscani, from the earliest Primitives down to the eighteenth century. Only a few need concern us much.

The first room contains the works of the earlier masters, from a pseudo-Cimabue (102), to Luca Signorelli, whose Madonna and Child with Archangels and Doctors (164), painted for a church in Cortona, has suffered from restoration. There are four genuine, very tiny pictures by Botticelli (157, 158, 161, 162). The Adoration of the Kings (165), by Gentile da Fabriano, is one of the most delightful old pictures in Florence; Gentile da Fabriano, an Umbrian master who, through Jacopo Bellini, had a considerable influence upon the early Venetian school, settled in Florence in 1422, and finished this picture in the following year for Santa Trinità, near which he kept a much frequented bottega. Michelangelo said that Gentile had a hand similar to his name; and this picture, with its rich and varied poetry, is his masterpiece. The man wearing a turban, seen full face behind the third king, is the painter himself. Kugler remarks: "Fra Angelico and Gentile are like two brothers, both highly gifted by nature, both full of the most refined and amiable feelings; but the one became a monk, the other a knight." The smaller pictures surrounding it are almost equally charming in their way–especially, perhaps, the Flight into Egypt in the predella. The Deposition from the Cross (166), by Fra Angelico, also comes from Santa Trinità, for which it was finished in 1445; originally one of Angelico's masterpieces, it has been badly repainted; the saints in the frame are extremely beautiful, especially a most wonderful St. Michael at the top, on our left; the man standing on the ladder, wearing a black hood, is the architect, Michelozzo, who was the Friar's friend, and may be recognised in several of his paintings. The lunettes in the three Gothic arches above Angelico's picture, and which, perhaps, did not originally belong to it, are by the Camaldolese Don Lorenzo, by whom are also the Annunciation with four Saints (143), and the three predella scenes (144, 145, 146).

Of the earlier pictures, the Madonna and Child adored by Angels (103) is now believed to be the only authentic easel picture of Giotto's that remains to us–though this is, possibly, an excess of scepticism. Besides several works ascribed to Taddeo Gaddi and his son Agnolo, by the former of whom are probably the small panels from Santa Croce, formerly attributed to Giotto, we should notice the Pietà by Giovanni da Milano (131); the Presentation in the Temple by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (134), signed and dated 1342; and a large altarpiece ascribed to Pietro Cavallini (157). The so-called Marriage of Boccaccio Adimari with Lisa Ricasoli (147) is an odd picture of the social customs of old Florence.

In the second room are chiefly works by Fra Bartolommeo and Mariotto Albertinelli. By the Frate, are the series of heads of Christ and Saints (168), excepting the Baptist on the right; they are frescoes taken from San Marco, excepting the Christ on the left, inscribed "Orate pro pictore 1514," which is in oil on canvas. Also by him are the two frescoes of Madonna and Child (171, 173), and the splendid portrait of Savonarola in the character of St. Peter Martyr (172), the great religious persecutor of the Middle Ages, to whom Fra Girolamo had a special devotion. By Albertinelli, are the Madonna and Saints (167), and the Annunciation (169), signed and dated 1510. This room also contains several pictures by Fra Paolino da Pistoia and the Dominican nun, Plautilla Nelli, two pious but insipid artists, who inherited Fra Bartolommeo's drawings and tried to carry on his traditions. On a stand in the middle of the room, is Domenico Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Shepherds (195), from Santa Trinità, a splendid work with–as Vasari puts it–"certain heads of shepherds which are held a divine thing."

On the walls of the third room are later pictures of no importance or significance. But in the middle of the room is another masterpiece by Ghirlandaio (66); the Madonna and Child with two Angels, Thomas Aquinas and Dionysius standing on either side of the throne, Dominic and Clement kneeling. It is seldom, indeed, that this prosaic painter succeeded in creating such a thinker as this Thomas, such a mystic as this Dionysius; in the head of the latter we see indeed the image of the man who, according to the pleasant mediæval fable eternalised by Dante, "in the flesh below, saw deepest into the Angelic nature and its ministry."

In the Via Cavour, beyond San Marco, is the Chiostro dello Scalzo, a cloister belonging to a brotherhood dedicated to St. John, which was suppressed in the eighteenth century. Here are a series of frescoes painted in grisaille by Andrea del Sarto and his partner, Francia Bigio, representing scenes from the life of the Precursor, with allegorical figures of the Virtues. The Baptism of Christ is the earliest, and was painted by the two artists in collaboration, in 1509 or 1510. After some work for the Servites, which we shall see presently, Andrea returned to this cloister; and painted, from 1515 to 1517, the Justice, St. John preaching, St. John baptising the people, and his imprisonment. Some of the figures in these frescoes show the influence of Albert Dürer's engravings. Towards the end of 1518, Andrea went off to France to work for King Francis I.; and, while he was away, Francia Bigio painted St. John leaving his parents, and St. John's first meeting with Christ. On Andrea's return, he set to work here again and painted, at intervals from 1520 to 1526, Charity, Faith and Hope, the dance of the daughter of Herodias, the decollation of St. John, and the presentation of his head, the Angel appearing to Zacharias, the Visitation, and, last of all, the Birth of the Baptist. The Charity is Andrea's own wife, Lucrezia, who at this very time, if Vasari's story is true, was persuading him to break his promise to the French King and to squander the money which had been intrusted to him for the purchase of works of art.

The Via della Sapienza leads from San Marco into the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata. In one of the houses on the left, now incorporated into the Reale Istituto di Studi Superiori, Andrea del Sarto and Francia Bigio lodged with other painters, before Andrea's marriage; and here, usually under the presidency of the sculptor Rustici, the "Compagnia del Paiuolo," an artists' club of twelve members, met for feasting and disport.47

This Piazza was a great place for processions in old Florence. Here stand the church of the Santissima Annunziata and the convent of the Servites, while the Piazza itself is flanked to right and left by arcades originally designed by Brunelleschi. The equestrian statue of the Grand Duke Ferdinand I. was cast by Giovanni da Bologna out of metal from captured Turkish guns. The arcade on the right, as we face the church, with its charming medallions of babies in swaddling clothes by Andrea della Robbia, is a part of the Spedale degli Innocenti or Hospital for Foundlings, which was commenced from Brunelleschi's designs in 1421, during the Gonfalonierate of Giovanni dei Medici; the work, which was eloquently supported in the Council of the People by Leonardo Bruni, was raised by the Silk-merchants Guild, the Arte di Por Santa Maria. On its steps the Compagnacci murdered their first victim in the attack on San Marco. There is a picturesque court, designed by Brunelleschi, with an Annunciation by Andrea della Robbia over the door of the chapel, and a small picture gallery, which contains nothing of much importance, save a Holy Family with Saints by Piero di Cosimo. In the chapel, or church of Santa Maria degli Innocenti, there is a masterpiece by Domenico Ghirlandaio, painted in 1488, an Adoration of the Magi (the fourth head on the left is the painter himself), in which the Massacre of the Innocents is seen in the background, and two of these glorified infant martyrs, under the protection of the two St. Johns, are kneeling most sweetly in front of the Madonna and her Child, for whom they have died, joining in the adoration of the kings and the gloria of the angelic choir.

The church of the Santissima Annunziata was founded in the thirteenth century, but has been completely altered and modernised since at different epochs. In summer mornings lilies and other flowers lie in heaps in its portico and beneath Ghirlandaio's mosaic of the Annunciation, to be offered at Madonna's shrine within. The entrance court was built in the fifteenth century, at the expense of the elder Piero dei Medici. The fresco to the left of the entrance, the Nativity of Christ, is by Alessio Baldovinetti. Within the glass, to the left, are six frescoes representing the life and miracles of the great Servite, Filippo Benizzi; that of his receiving the habit of the order is by Cosimo Rosselli (1476); the remaining five are early works by Andrea del Sarto, painted in 1509 and 1510, for which he received a mere trifle; in the midst of them is an indifferent seventeenth century bust of their painter. The frescoes on the right, representing the life of the Madonna, of whom this order claims to be the special servants, are slightly later. The approach of the Magi and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the latter dated 1514, are among the finest works of Andrea del Sarto; in the former he has introduced himself and the sculptor Sansovino, and among the ladies in the latter is his wife. Fifty years afterwards the painter Jacopo da Empoli was copying this picture, when a very old lady, who was going into the church to hear mass, stopped to look at his work, and then, pointing to the portrait of Lucrezia, told him that it was herself. The Sposalizio, by Francia Bigio, painted in 1513, was damaged by the painter himself in a fit of passion at the meddling of the monks. The Visitation, by Jacopo da Pontormo, painted in 1516, shows what admirable work this artist could do in his youth, before he fell into his mannered imitations of Michelangelo; the Assumption, painted slightly later by another of Andrea's pupils, Rosso Fiorentino, is less excellent.

Inside the church itself, on the left, is the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Annunciation, one of the most highly revered shrines in Tuscany; it was constructed from the designs of Michelozzo at the cost of the elder Piero dei Medici to enclose the miraculous picture of the Annunciation, and lavishly decorated and adorned by the Medicean Grand Dukes. After the Pazzi conspiracy, Piero's son Lorenzo had a waxen image of himself suspended here in thanksgiving for his escape. Over the altar there is usually a beautiful little head of the Saviour, by Andrea del Sarto. The little oratory beyond, with the Madonna's mystical emblems on its walls, was constructed in the seventeenth century.

In the second chapel from the shrine is a fresco by Andrea del Castagno, which was discovered in the summer of 1899 under a copy of Michelangelo's Last Judgment. It represents St. Jerome and two women saints adoring the Blessed Trinity, and is characteristic of the modo terribile in which this painter conceived his subjects; the heads of the Jerome and the older saint to our right are particularly powerful. For the rest, the interior of this church is more gorgeous than tasteful; and the other works which it contains, including the two Peruginos, and some tolerable monuments, are third rate. The rotunda of the choir was designed by Leo Battista Alberti and erected at the cost of the Marquis of Mantua, whose descendant, San Luigi Gonzaga, had a special devotion to the miraculous picture.