The Story of Florence

The church of Santa Trinità was originally built in the Gothic style by Niccolò Pisano, shortly after 1250, in the days of the Primo Popolo and contemporaneously with the Palazzo del Podestà. It was largely altered by Buontalenti in the last part of the sixteenth century, and has been recently completely restored. It is a fine example of Italian Gothic. In the interior, are a Mary Magdalene by Desiderio da Settignano and a marble altar by Benedetto da Rovezzano; and also, in one of the chapels of the right aisle, an Annunciation by Don Lorenzo, one of his best works, with some frescoes, partly obliterated and much "restored," by the same good Camaldolese monk.

But the great attraction of this church is the Sassetti Chapel next to the sacristy, which contains a splendid series of frescoes painted in 1485 by Domenico Ghirlandaio. The altar piece is only a copy of the original, now in the Accademia. The frescoes represent scenes from the life of St. Francis, and should be compared with Giotto's simpler handling of the same theme in the Bardi Chapel at Santa Croce. We have the Saint renouncing the world, the confirmation of his rule by Honorius, his preaching to the Soldan, his reception of the Stigmata, his death and funeral (in which the life-like spectacled bishop aroused Vasari's enthusiastic admiration), and the raising to life of a child of the Sassetti family by an apparition of St. Francis in the Piazza outside the church. The last is especially interesting as giving us a picture of the Piazza in its former state, such as it might have been in the Mayday faction fight, with the Spini Palace, the older bridge, and the houses of the Frescobaldi beyond the river. Each fresco is full of interesting portraits; among the spectators in the consistory is Lorenzo the Magnificent; Ghirlandaio himself appears in the death scene; and, perhaps, most interesting of all, if Vasari's identification can be trusted, are the three who stand on the right near the church in the scene of the resuscitation of the child. These three are said to be Maso degli Albizzi, the founder of the party of the Ottimati, those nobili popolani who held the State before they were eclipsed by the Medici; Agnolo Acciaiuoli, who was ruined by adhering to Luca Pitti against Piero dei Medici; and that noblest of all the Medicean victims, Palla Strozzi (see chapter iii.). It should, however, be remembered that Maso degli Albizzi had died nearly seventy years before, and that not even Palla Strozzi can be regarded as a contemporary portrait. The sacristy of this church was founded by the Strozzi, and one of the house, Onofrio, lies buried within it. Extremely fine, too, are the portraits of Francesco Sassetti himself and his wife, kneeling below near the altar, also by Ghirlandaio, who likewise painted the sibyls on the ceiling and the fresco representing the sibyl prophesying of the Incarnation to Augustus, over the entrance to the chapel. The sepulchral monuments of Francesco and his wife are by Giuliano da San Gallo.

The famous Crucifix of San Miniato, which bowed its head to San Giovanni Gualberto when he spared the murderer of his brother, was transferred to Santa Trinità in 1671 with great pomp and ceremony, and is still preserved here.

In June 1301 a council was held in the church by the leaders of the Neri, nominally to bring about a concord with the rival faction, in reality to entrap the Cerchi and pave the way for their expulsion by foreign aid. Among the Bianchi present was the chronicler, Dino Compagni; "desirous of unity and peace among citizens," and, before the council broke up, he made a strong appeal to the more factious members. "Signors," he said, "why would you confound and undo so good a city? Against whom would you fight? Against your own brothers? What victory shall ye have? Nought else but lamentation." The Neri answered that the object of their council was merely to stop scandal and establish peace; but it soon became known that there was a conspiracy between them and the Conte Simone da Battifolle of the Casentino, who was sending his son with a strong force towards Florence. Simone dei Bardi (who had been the husband of Beatrice Portinari) appears to have been the connecting link of the conspiracy, which the prompt action of the Signoria checked for the present. The evil day, however, was postponed, not averted.

Following the Via di Parione we reach the back of the Palazzo Corsini–a large seventeenth century palace whose front is on the Lungarno. Here is a large picture gallery, in which a good many of the pictures are erroneously ascribed, but which contains a few more important works. The two gems of the collection are Botticelli's portrait of a Goldsmith (210), formerly ascribed to one of the Pollaiuoli; and Luca Signorelli's tondo (157), of Madonna and Child with St. Jerome and St. Bernard. A Madonna and Child with Angels and the Baptist (162) by Filippino Lippi, or ascribed to him, is a charming and poetical picture; but is not admitted by Mr Berenson into his list of genuine works by this painter. The supposed cartoon for Raphael's Julius II. is of very doubtful authenticity. The picture of the martyrdom of Savonarola (292) is interesting and valuable as affording a view of the Piazza at that epoch, but cannot be regarded as an accurate historical representation of the event. That seventeenth century reincarnation of Lorenzo di Credi, Carlo Dolci, is represented here by several pictures which are above his usual level; for instance, Poetry (179) is a really beautiful thing of its kind. Among the other pictures is a little Apollo and Daphne (241), probably an early work of Andrea del Sarto. The Raffaellino di Carlo who painted the Madonna and Saints (200), is not to be confused with Filippino's pupil, Raffaellino del Garbo.

In the Via Tornabuoni, the continuation of the Piazza Santa Trinità, stands the finest of all Florentine palaces of the Renaissance, the Palazzo Strozzi. It was begun in 1489 for the elder Filippo Strozzi, with the advice and encouragement of Lorenzo the Magnificent, by Benedetto da Maiano, and continued by Simone del Pollaiuolo (called "Cronaca" from his yarning propensities), to whom the cornice and court are due. It was finished for the younger Filippo Strozzi, the husband of Clarice dei Medici, shortly before his fall, in the days of Duke Alessandro. The works in iron on the exterior–lanterns, torch-holders and the like, especially a wonderful fanale at the corner–are by Niccolò Grosso (called "Caparra" from his habit of demanding payment in advance), and the finest things of their kind imaginable. Filippo Strozzi played a curiously inconstant part in the history of the closing days of the Republic. After having been the most intimate associate of his brother-in-law, the younger Lorenzo, he was instrumental first in the expulsion of Ippolito and Alessandro, then in the establishment of Alessandro's tyranny; and finally, finding himself cast by the irony of fate for the part of the last Republican hero, he took the field against Duke Cosimo, only to find a miserable end in a dungeon. One of his daughters, Luisa Capponi, was believed to have been poisoned by order of Alessandro; his son, Piero, became the bravest Italian captain of the sixteenth century and carried on a heroic contest with Cosimo's mercenary troops.

Down the Via della Vigna Nuova is another of these Renaissance palaces, built for a similar noble family associated with the Medici,–the Palazzo Rucellai. Bernardo Rucellai–who was not originally of noble origin, but whose family had acquired what in Florence was the real title to nobility, vast wealth in commerce–married Nannina, the younger sister of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and had this palace begun for him in 1460 by Bernardo Rossellino from the design of Leo Battista Alberti,–to whom also the Rucellai loggia opposite is due. More of Alberti's work for the Rucellai may be seen at the back of the palace, in the Via della Spada, where in the former church of San Pancrazio (which gave its name to a sesto in old Florence) is the chapel which he built for Bernardo Rucellai in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

The Via delle Belle Donne–most poetically named of Florentine streets–leads hence into the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella. On the way, where five roads meet, is the Croce al Trebbio, with symbols of the four Evangelists below the Crucifix. It marks the site of one of St Peter Martyr's fiercest triumphs over the Paterini, one of those "marvellous works" for which Savonarola, in his last address to his friars, complains that the Florentines had been so ungrateful towards his Order. But the story of the Dominicans of Santa Maria Novella is not one of persecution, but of peace-making. They played at times as noble a part in mediæval Florence as their brethren of San Marco were to do in the early Renaissance; and later, during the great siege, they took up the work of Fra Girolamo, and inspired the people to their last heroic defence of the Republic.

Opposite Santa Maria Novella is the Loggia di San Paolo, designed by Brunelleschi, and erected in 1451, shortly after his death. The coloured terracotta reliefs, by Andrea della Robbia, include two fine portraits of governors of the hospital (not of the Della Robbia themselves, as frequently stated). The relief in a lunette over the door on the right, representing the meeting of St Francis and St Dominic, is one of Andrea's best works:–

"L'un fu tutto serafico in ardore,l'altro per sapienza in terra fuedi cherubica luce uno splendore.Dell'un dirò, però che d'ambeduesi dice l'un pregiando, qual ch'uom prende,perchè ad un fine fur l'opere sue."50

In 1212, three years before the murder of Buondelmonte, the first band of Franciscans had come to Florence, sent thither by St Francis himself from Assisi. A few years later, at the invitation of a Florentine merchant Diodato, who had built a chapel and house as an act of restitution, St Dominic, from Bologna, sent the Blessed John of Salerno with twelve friars to occupy this mission at Ripoli, about three miles beyond where now stands the Gate of S. Niccolò. Thence they extended their apostolic labours into the city, and when St Dominic came, at the end of 1219, they had already made progress. Finally they moved into the city–first to San Pancrazio, and at length settled at Santa Maria tra le Vigne, a little church then outside the walls, where B. Giovanni was installed by the Pope's legate and the bishop in 1221. Before the church, in the present piazza, St Peter Martyr, the "hammer of the heretics," fought the Paterini with both spiritual and material arms. At last, the growth of the order requiring larger room, on St Luke's day, 1278, Cardinal Latino de' Frangipani laid here the first stone of Santa Maria Novella.

Where once the little church of Our Lady among the Vines stood outside the second circuit of the city's walls, rises now the finest Italian Gothic church in Florence. Less than a year after it had been commenced, the same Dominican cardinal who had laid the first stone summoned a mass meeting in the Piazza, and succeeded in patching up a temporary peace between Guelfs and Ghibellines, and among the Guelf magnates themselves, 1279. This Cardinal Latino left a memory revered in Florence, and Fra Angelico, in the picture now in our National Gallery, placed him among the glorified saints attending upon the resurrection of Our Lord. Some twenty years later, in November 1301, a parliament was held within the still unfinished church, at which another Papal peacemaker, the infamous Charles of Valois, in the presence of the Priors of the Republic, the Podestà and the Captain, the bishop and chief citizens, received the balìa to guard Florence and pacify the Guelfs, and swore on the faith of the son of a king to preserve the city in peace and prosperity. We have seen how he kept his word. Santa Maria Novella, in 1304, was the centre of the sincere and devoted attempts made by Boniface's successor, the sainted Benedict XI., to heal the wounds of Florence; attempts in which, throughout Italy, the Dominicans were his "angels of peace," as he called his missioners. When the Republic finally fell into the hands of Cosimo dei Medici in 1434, the exiled Pope Eugenius IV. was staying in the adjoining monastery; it was here that he made his unsuccessful attempt to mediate, and heard the bitter farewell words of Rinaldo degli Albizzi: "I blame myself most of all, because I believed that you, who had been hunted out of your own country, could keep me in mine."

The church itself, striped tiger-like in black and white marble, was constructed from the designs of three Dominican friars, Fra Ristoro da Campi, Fra Sisto, and Fra Giovanni da Campi. Fra Giovanni was a scholar or imitator of Arnolfo di Cambio, and the two former were the architects who restored the Ponte alla Carraia and the Ponte Santa Trinità after their destruction in 1269. The façade (with the exception of the lower part, which belongs to the fourteenth century) was designed by Leo Battista Alberti, whose friends the Rucellai were the chief benefactors of this church; the lovely but completely restored pointed arcades on the right, with niches for tombs and armorial bearings, were designed by Brunelleschi. On the left, though in part reduced to vile usage, there is a bit comparatively less altered. The interior was completed soon after the middle of the fourteenth century, when Fra Jacopo Passavanti–the author of that model of pure Tuscan prose, Lo Specchio della vera Penitenza– was Prior of the convent. The campanile is said to have been designed by another Dominican, Fra Jacopo Talenti, the probable architect of the so-called Spanish Chapel in the cloisters on the left of the church, of which more presently.

During the great siege of Florence the mantle of Savonarola seemed to have fallen upon the heroic Prior of Santa Maria Novella, Fra Benedetto da Foiano. When the news of the alliance between Pope and Emperor came to Florence, while all Bologna was in festa for the coronation of the Emperor, Varchi tells us that Fra Benedetto delivered a great sermon in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, which was thrown open to all who would come to hear; in which sermon he proved from passages in the Old and New Testaments that Florence would be delivered from all dangers, and then enjoy perpetual perfect felicity in the liberty she so desired. With such grace and eloquence did he speak, that the vast audience was moved to tears and to joy by turns. At the end, "with ineffable gestures and words," he gave to the Gonfaloniere, Raffaello Girolami, a standard upon one side of which was a Christ victorious over the hostile soldiery, and upon the other the red Cross of the Florentine Commune, saying: Cum hoc et in hoc vinces. After the capitulation Malatesta Baglioni seized the friar and sent him to Rome, where he was slowly starved to death in the dungeon of Sant' Angelo.

The interior was thus not quite finished, when Boccaccio's seven maidens met here on a Wednesday morning in early spring in that terrible year of pestilence, 1348; yet we may readily picture to ourselves the scene described in the introduction to the Decameron; the empty church; the girls in their dark mourning garb, after hearing Mass, seated together in a side chapel and gradually passing from telling their beads to discussing more mundane matters; and then, no sooner do three members of the other sex appear upon the scenes than a sudden gleam of gladness lights up their faces, and even the plague itself is forgotten. One of them, indeed, blushed; "she became all crimson in the face through modesty," says Boccaccio, "because there was one of their number who was beloved by one of these youths;" but afterwards found no difficulty in rivalling the others in the impropriety of her talk.

Entering the western portal, we find ourselves in a nave of rather large proportions, somewhat dark but not without a glow from the stained glass windows–adapted above all for preaching. As in Santa Croce, it is cut across by a line of chapels, thus giving the whole a T shape, and what represents the apse is merely a deeper and taller recess behind the high altar. There is nothing much to interest us here in the nave or aisles, save, by the side of the central door, one of the very few extant works of Masaccio, a fresco representing the Blessed Trinity adored by the Madonna and St. John, with two kneeling donors–portraits of which no amount of restoration can altogether destroy the truth and grandeur. The Annunciation, on the opposite side of the door, is a mediocre fresco of the fourteenth century. The Crucifix above is one of several works of the kind ascribed to Giotto.

It will be best to take the chapels at the end of the nave and in the transepts in the order into which they fall, as illustrating the development of Florentine art.

On the right a flight of steps leads up into the Rucellai chapel where, half concealed in darkness, hangs the famous picture once supposed to mark the very birthday of Florentine painting. That Cimabue really painted a glorious Madonna for this church, which was worshipped by a king and hailed with acclamation by a rejoicing people, is to be most firmly and devoutly held. Unfortunately, it seems highly probable that this picture is not Cimabue's Madonna. It is decidedly Sienese in character, and, as there is documentary evidence that Duccio of Siena painted a Madonna for Santa Maria Novella, and as the attendant Angels are in all respects similar to those in Duccio's authenticated works, the picture is probably his. It deserves all veneration, nevertheless, for it is a noble picture in the truest sense of the word. In the same chapel is the monument of the Dominican nun, the Beata Villana, by Bernardo Rossellino.

Crossing the church to the chapel in the left transept, the Strozzi Chapel, we mount into the true atmosphere of the Middle Ages–into one of those pictured theatres which set before us in part what Dante gave in full in his Commedia. The whole chapel is dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas, the glory of the philosophy of the mediæval world and, above all, of the Dominican order, whose cardinal virtues are extolled in allegorical fashion on the ceiling; but the frescoes are drawn from the work of his greatest Florentine disciple, Dante Alighieri, in whose poem Thomas mainly lives for the non-Catholic world. It contains all Orcagna's extant work in painting. The altar piece, executed by Andrea Orcagna in 1357, is the grandest of its kind belonging to the Giottesque period. Its central motive, of the Saviour delivering the keys to St. Peter and the Summa to St. Thomas, the spiritual and philosophical regimens of the mediæval world, is very finely rendered; while the angelic choir is a foretaste of Angelico. Madonna presents St. Thomas; the Baptist, St. Peter; Michael and Catherine are in attendance upon the Queen of Heaven, Lawrence and Paul upon the Precursor. The predella represents St. Peter walking upon the waves, with on either side an episode in the life of St. Thomas and a miracle of St. Lawrence. The frescoes are best seen on a very bright morning, shortly before noon. The Last Judgment, by Andrea, shows the traditional representation of the Angels with trumpets and with the emblems of the Passion, wheeling round the Judge; and the dead rising to judgment, impelled irresistibly to right or left even before the sentence is pronounced. Above the one band, kneels the white-robed Madonna in intercession–type of the Divine Mercy as in Dante; over the others, at the head of the Apostles, is the Baptist who seems appealing for judgment–type of the Divine Justice. This placing Mary and St John opposite to each other, as in Dante's Rose of Paradise, is typical of Florentine art; Santa Maria del Fiore and San Giovanni are, as it were, inseparable. Among the blessed is Dante, gazing up in fixed adoration at the Madonna, as when following St Bernard's prayer at the close of his Vision; on the other side some of the faces of the lost are a miracle of expression. The Hell on the right wall, by Andrea's brother Leonardo, is more immediately taken from the Commedia. The Paradise on the left, or, rather, the Empyrean Heaven–with the faces suadi di carità, Angels and Saints absorbed in vision and love of God–is by Andrea himself, and is more directly pictorial than Dante's Paradiso could admit. Christ and the Madonna are enthroned side by side, whereas we do not actually see Him in human form in the Commedia,–perhaps in accordance with that reverence which impels the divine poet to make the name Cristo rhyme with nothing but itself. For sheer loveliness in detail, no other fourteenth century master produced anything to compare with this fresco; it may be said to mark the advent of a new element in Italian art.

Thence we pass into the early Renaissance with Brunelleschi and Ghiberti, with Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi. In the chapel to the left of the choir hangs Filippo Brunelleschi's famous wooden Crucifix, carved in friendly rivalry with Donatello. The rival piece, Donatello's share in this sculptured tenzone, has been seen in Santa Croce.

In the choir are frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio, and a fine brass by Lorenzo Ghiberti. These frescoes were begun in 1486, immediately after the completion of the Santa Trinità series, and finished in 1490; and, though devoid of the highest artistic qualities, are eminently characteristic of their epoch. Though representing scenes from the life of the Madonna and the Baptist, this is entirely subordinated to the portrait groups of noble Florentines and their ladies, introduced as usually utterly uninterested spectators of the sacred events. As religious pictures they are naught; but as representations of contemporary Florentine life, most valuable. Hardly elsewhere shall you see so fine a series of portraits of the men and women of the early Renaissance; but they have other things to think of than the Gospel history. Look at the scene of the Angel appearing to Zacharias. The actual event is hardly noticed; hidden in the throng of citizens, too busily living the life of the Renaissance to attend to such trifles; besides, it would not improve their style to read St. Luke. In the Visitation, the Nativity of the Baptist, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, a fashionable beauty of the period sweeps in with her attendants–and it is hardly uncharitable to suppose that, if not herself, at least her painter thought more of her fine clothes than of her devotional aspect. The portraits of the donors, Giovanni Tornabuoni and his wife, are on the window wall. In the scene of the expulsion of Joachim from the Temple, a group of painters stands together (towards the window); the old cleanly-shaven man in a red hat is Alessio Baldovinetti, Ghirlandaio's master; next to him, with a lot of dark hair, dressed in a red mantle and blue vest, is Domenico Ghirlandaio himself; his pupil and brother-in-law, Sebastiano Mainardi, and his brother, David Ghirlandaio, are with him–the latter being the figure with shoulder turned and hat on head. In the apparition to Zacharias, among the numerous portraits, a group of four half figures discussing at the foot of the history is of special interest; three of them are said to represent Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landini, and Angelo Poliziano (in the middle, slightly raising his hand); the fourth, turned to speak to Landini, is said by Vasari to be a famous teacher of Greek, Demetrius, but now supposed to be Gentile Becchi, a learned bishop of Arezzo. The stained glass was designed by Filippino Lippi. Under the high altar rests the body of the Blessed John of Salerno, the "Apostle of Florence," who brought the first band of Dominicans to the city.

Less admired, but in some respects more admirable, are the frescoes by Filippino Lippi in the chapel on the right of the choir, almost his last works, painted about 1502, and very much injured by restoration. The window is also from his design. The frescoes represent scenes from the lives of St. John and St. Philip, and are remarkable for their lavish display of Roman antiquities, in which they challenge comparison with Andrea Mantegna. The scene of St. Philip exorcising the dragon is especially fine. Observe how the characteristic intensity of the school of Botticelli is shown in the way in which the very statues take part in the action. Mars flourishes his broken spear, his wolves and kites cower to him for protection from the emissaries of the new faith, whose triumph is further symbolised in the two figures above of ancient deities conquered by Angels. An analogous instance will be found in Botticelli's famous Calumny in the Uffizi. In this statue of Mars is seen the last rendering of the old Florentine tradition of their primo padrone. Thus, perhaps, did the new pagans of the Renaissance lovingly idealise "that mutilated stone which guards the bridge."