The Story of Florence

The monument of the elder Filippo Strozzi, in the same chapel, is a fine piece of work by Benedetto da Maiano, with a lovely tondo of the Madonna and Child attended by Angels. And we should also notice Giovanni della Robbia's fountain in the sacristy, before passing into the cloisters.

Here in the cloisters we pass back again into more purely mediæval thought. Passing some early frescoes of the life of the Madonna–the dream of Joachim, his meeting St. Anne, the Birth and Presentation of the Blessed Virgin–which Ruskin believed to be by Giotto himself–we enter to the left the delicious Green Cloisters; a pleasant lounging place in summer. In the lunettes along the walls are frescoed scenes from Genesis in terra verde, of which the most notable are by Paolo Uccello–the Flood and the Sacrifice of Noah. Uccello's interests were scientific rather than artistic. These frescoes are amazingly clever exercises in the new art of perspective, the dolce cosa as he called it when his wife complained of his absorption; but are more curious than beautiful, and hardly inspire us with more than mild admiration at the painter's cleverness in poising the figure–which, we regret to say, he intends for the Almighty–so ingeniously in mid air.

But out of these cloisters, on the right, opens the so-called Spanish Chapel–the Cappella degli Spagnuoli–one of the rarest buildings in Italy for the student of mediæval doctrine. Here, as in the Strozzi Chapel, we are in the grasp of the same mighty spirit that inspired the Divina Commedia and the De Monarchia, although the actual execution falls far below the design. The chapel–designed by Fra Jacopo Talenti in 1320–was formerly the chapter-house of the convent; it seems to have acquired the title of Spanish Chapel in the days of Duke Cosimo I., when Spaniards swarmed in Florence and were wont to hold solemn festival here on St. James' day. The frescoes that cover its ceiling and walls were executed about the middle of the fourteenth century–according to Vasari by Simone Martini and Taddeo Gaddi, though this seems highly doubtful. Their general design is possibly due to Fra Jacopo Passavanti. They set forth the Dominican ideal, the Church and the world as the Friars Preachers conceived of them, even as Giotto's famous allegories at Assisi show us the same through Franciscan glasses. While Orcagna painted the world beyond the grave in honour of the Angelical Doctor, these artists set forth the present world as it should be under his direction and that of his brothers, the "hounds of the Lord," domini canes, who defended the orto cattolico.

The vaulted roof is divided into four segments; and the picture in each segment corresponds to a great fresco on the wall below. On the wall opposite, as we enter, is represented the supreme event of the world's history, from which all the rest starts and upon which the whole hinges, the Passion of Christ, leading up to the Resurrection on the roof above it. On the segment of the roof over the door is the Ascension, and on the wall below was shown (now much damaged) how the Dominicans received and carried out Christ's last injunction to His disciples. In the left segment of the roof is the Descent of the Holy Spirit; and beneath it, on the wall, the result of this outpouring upon the world of intellect is shown in the triumph of Philosophy in the person of Aquinas, its supreme mediæval exponent. In the right segment is the Ship of Peter; and, on the wall below, is seen how Peter becomes a fisher of men, the triumph of his Church under the guidance of the Dominicans. These two great allegorical frescoes–the triumph of St. Thomas and the civil briga of the Church–are thus a more complete working out of the scheme set forth more simply by Orcagna in his altar piece in the Strozzi Chapel above–the functions delegated by Christ to Peter and St. Thomas–the power of the Keys and the doctrine of the Summa Theologica.

In the centre of the philosophical allegory, St. Thomas Aquinas is seated on a Gothic throne, with an open book in his hands bearing the text from the Book of Wisdom with which the Church begins her lesson in his honour: Optavi, et datus est mihi sensus. Invocavi, et venit in me spiritus sapientiae; et praeposui illam regnis et sedibus.51 Over his head hover seven Angels, invested with the emblems of the three theological and four cardinal virtues; around him are seated the Apostles and Prophets, in support of his doctrine; beneath his feet heresiarchs are humbled–Sabellius and Arius, to wit–and even Averrhoes, who "made the great comment," seems subdued. Below, in fourteen little shrines, are allegorical figures of the fourteen sciences which meet and are given ultimate form in his work, and at the feet of each maiden sits some great exponent of the science. From right to left, the seven liberal arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium lead up to the Science of Numbers, represented on earth by Pythagoras; from left to right, the earthly and celestial sciences lead up to Dogmatic Theology, represented by Augustine.52

On the opposite wall is the Church militant and triumphant. Before Santa Maria del Fiore, here symbolising the Church militant, sit the two ideal guides of man, according to the dual scheme of Dante's De Monarchia– the Pope and the Emperor. On either side are seated in a descending line the great dignitaries of the Church and the Empire; Cardinal and Abbot, King and Baron; while all around are gathered the clergy and the laity, religious of every order, judges and nobles, merchants and scholars, with a few ladies kneeling on the right, one of whom is said to be Petrarch's Laura. Many of these figures are apparently portraits, but the attempts at identification–such as that of the Pope with Benedict XI., the Emperor with Henry VII.–are entirely untrustworthy. The Bishop, however, standing at the head of the clergy, is apparently Agnolo Acciaiuoli, Bishop of Florence; and the French cavalier, in short tunic and hood, standing opposite to him at the head of the laity (formerly called Cimabue), is said–very questionably–to be the Duke of Athens. At the feet of the successors of Peter and Cæsar are gathered the sheep and lambs of Christ's fold, watched over by the black and white hounds that symbolise the Dominicans. On the right, Dominic urges on his watchdogs against the heretical wolves who are carrying off the lambs of the flock; Peter Martyr hammers the unbelievers with the weapon of argument alone; Aquinas convinces them with the light of his philosophic doctrine. But beyond is Acrasia's Bower of Bliss, a mediaeval rendering of what Spenser hereafter so divinely sung in the second book of the Faerie Queene. Figures of vice sit enthroned; while seven damsels, Acrasia's handmaidens, dance before them; and youth sports in the shade of the forbidden myrtles. Then come repentance and the confessional; a Dominican friar (not one of the great Saints, but any humble priest of the order) absolves the penitents; St Dominic appears again, and shows them the way to Paradise; and then, becoming as little children, they are crowned by the Angels, and St. Peter lets them through the gate to join the Church Triumphant. Above in the Empyrean is the Throne of the Lord, with the Lamb and the four mystical Beasts, and the Madonna herself standing up at the head of the Angelic Hierarchies.

In the great cloisters beyond, the Ciompi made their headquarters in 1378, under their Eight of Santa Maria Novella; and, at the request of their leaders, the prior of the convent sent some of his preachers to furnish them with spiritual consolation and advice.

Passing through the Piazza–where marble obelisks resting on tortoises mark the goals of the chariot races held here under Cosimo I. and his successors, on the Eve of St. John–and down the Via della Scala, we come to the former Spezeria of the convent, still a flourishing manufactory of perfumes, liqueurs and the like, though no longer in the hands of the friars. In what was once its chapel, are frescoes by Spinello Aretino and his pupils, painted at the end of the Trecento, and representing the Passion of Christ. They are inferior to Spinello's work at Siena and on San Miniato, but the Christ bearing the Cross has much majesty, and, in the scene of the washing of the feet, the nervous action of Judas as he starts up is finely conceived.

The famous Orti Oricellari, the gardens of the Rucellai, lie further down the Via della Scala. Here in the early days of the Cinquecento the most brilliant literary circles of Florentine society met; and there was a sort of revival of the old Platonic Academy, which had died out with Marsilio Ficino. Machiavelli wrote for these gatherings his discourses on Livy and his Art of War. Although their meetings were mainly frequented by Mediceans, some of the younger members were ardent Republicans; and it was here that a conspiracy was hatched against the life of the Cardinal Giulio dei Medici, for which Jacopo da Diacceto and one of the Alamanni died upon the scaffold. In later days these Orti belonged to Bianca Cappello. At the corner of the adjoining palace is a little Madonna by Luca della Robbia; and further on, in a lunette on the right of the former church of San Jacopo in Ripoli, there is a group of Madonna and Child with St. James and St. Dominic, probably by Andrea della Robbia. In the Via di Palazzuolo, the little church of San Francesco dei Vanchetoni contains two small marble busts of children, exceedingly delicately modelled, supposed to represent the Gesù Bambino and the boy Baptist; they are ascribed to Donatello, but recent writers attribute them to Desiderio or Rossellino.

In the Borgo Ognissanti, where the Swiss of Charles VIII. in 1494, forcing their way into the city from the Porta al Prato, were driven back by the inhabitants, are the church of Ognissanti and the Franciscan convent of San Salvadore. The church and convent originally belonged to the Frati Umiliati, who settled here in 1251, were largely influential in promoting the Florentine wool trade, and exceedingly democratic in their sympathies. Their convent was a great place for political meetings in the days of Giano della Bella, who used to walk in their garden taking counsel with his friends. After the siege they were expelled from Florence, and the church and convent made over to the Franciscans of the Osservanza, who are said to have brought hither the habit which St. Francis wore when he received the Stigmata. The present church was built in the second half of the sixteenth century, but contains some excellent pictures and frescoes belonging to the older edifice. Over the second altar to the right is a frescoed Pietà, one of the earliest works of Domenico Ghirlandaio, with above it the Madonna taking the Vespucci family under her protection–among them Amerigo, who was to give his name to the new continent of America. Further on, over a confessional, is Sandro Botticelli's St. Augustine, the only fresco of his still remaining in Florence; opposite to it, over a confessional on the left, is St. Jerome by Domenico Ghirlandaio; both apparently painted in 1480. In the left transept is a Crucifix ascribed to Giotto; Vasari tells us that it was the original of the numerous works of this kind which Puccio Capanna and others of his pupils multiplied through Italy. In the sacristy is a much restored fresco of the Crucifixion, belonging to the Trecento. Sandro Botticelli was buried in this church in 1510, and, two years later, Amerigo Vespucci in 1512. In the former Refectory of the convent is a fresco of the Last Supper, painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio in 1480, and very much finer than his similar work in San Marco. In the lunette over the portal of the church is represented the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, by Giovanni della Robbia.

The Borgo Ognissanti leads hence westward into the Via del Prato, and through the Porta al Prato, one of the four gates of the third wall of the city, begun by Arnolfo in 1284; now merely a mutilated torso of Arnolfo's stately structure, left stranded in the prosaic wilderness of the modern Viale. The fresco in the lunette is by Michele di Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. Down towards the Arno a single tower remains from the old walls, mutilated, solitary and degraded so as to look a mere modern bit of masonry.

Beyond are the Cascine Gardens, stretching for some two miles between the Arno and the Mugnone, delicious to linger in, and a sacred place to all lovers of English poetry. For here, towards the close of 1819, "in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains," Shelley wrote the divinest of all English lyrics: the Ode to the West Wind.

"Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:What if my leaves are falling like its own!The tumult of thy mighty harmoniesWill take from both a deep, autumnal tone,Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!Drive my dead thoughts over the universeLike withered leaves to quicken a new birth!And, by the incantation of this verse,Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearthAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!Be through my lips to unawakened earthThe trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

CHAPTER XII

Across the Arno

"Come a man destra, per salire al monte,dove siede la Chiesa che soggiogala ben guidata sopra Rubaconte,si rompe del montar l'ardita foga.per le scalee che si fero ad etadech'era sicuro il quaderno e la doga."– Dante.

ACROSS the river, partly lying along its bank and partly climbing up St. George's hill to the south, lies what was the Sesto d'Oltrarno in the days when old Florence was divided into sextaries, and became the Quartiere di Santo Spirito when the city was reorganised in quarters after the expulsion of the Duke of Athens. It was not originally a part of the city itself. At the time of building the second walls in the twelfth century (see chapter i.), there were merely three borghi or suburbs beyond the Arno, inhabited by the poorest classes, each of the three beginning at the head of the Ponte Vecchio; the Borgo Pidiglioso to the east, towards the present Via dei Bardi and Santa Lucia, where the road went on to Rome by way of Figline and Arezzo; the Borgo di Santa Felicità, to the south, ending in a gate at the present Piazza San Felice, where the road to Siena commenced; and the Borgo San Jacopo to the west, with a gate in the present Piazza Frescobaldi, on the way to Pisa. A few rich and noble families began to settle here towards the beginning of the thirteenth century. When the dissensions between Guelfs and Ghibellines came to a head in 1215, the Nerli and Rossi were Guelfs, the Gangalandi, Ubbriachi and Mannelli, Ghibellines; and these were then the only nobles of the Oltrarno, although Villani tells us that "the Frescobaldi and the Bardi and the Mozzi were already beginning to become powerful." The Primo Popolo commenced to wall it in, in 1250, with the stones from dismantled feudal towers; and it was finally included in the third circle of the walls at the beginning of the fourteenth century–a point to which we shall return.

As we saw in chapter iii., it was in the Oltrarno that the nobles made their last stand against the People in 1343, when the Nerli held the Ponte alla Carraia, the Frescobaldi and Mannelli the Ponte di Santa Trinità, and the Rossi and Bardi defended the Ponte Vecchio and the Ponte Rubaconte, with the narrow streets between. In the following century it was the headquarters of the faction opposed to the Medici, the Party of the Mountain, as it was called, from the lofty position of Luca Pitti's great palace. A century more, and it became the seat of government under the Medicean Grand Dukes, and the whole was crowned by the fortress of the Belvedere which Buontalenti built in 1590 for Ferdinand I.

At the head of the Ponte Vecchio, to right and left, the Borgo San Jacopo and the Via dei Bardi still retain something of their old characteristics and mediæval appearance. In the former especially are some fine towers remaining of the Rossi, Nerli, Barbadori, and other families; particularly one which belonged to the Marsili, opposite the church of San Jacopo. A side street, the Via dei Giudei, once inhabited by Jews, is still very picturesque. The little church of San Jacopo, originally built in the eleventh century, but entirely reconstructed in more recent times, still possesses an old Romanesque portico. In this church some of the more bitter spirits among the nobles held a council in 1294, and unanimously decided to murder Giano della Bella. "The dogs of the people," said Messer Berto Frescobaldi, who was the spokesman, "have robbed us of honour and office, and we cannot enter the Palace. If we beat one of our own servants, we are undone. Wherefore, my lords, it is my rede that we should come forth from this servitude. Let us take up arms and assemble in the piazza; let us slay the plebeians, friends and foes alike, so that never again shall we or our children be subjected to them." His plan, however, seemed too dangerous to the other nobles. "If our design failed," said Messer Baldo della Tosa, "we should all be killed"; and it was decided to proceed by more prudent means, and to disorganise the People and undermine Giano's credit with them, before taking further action.

At the end of the Borgo San Jacopo, the Frescobaldi had their palaces in the piazza which still bears their name, at the head of the Ponte Santa Trinità. Here Charles of Valois took up his headquarters in November 1301, with the intention of keeping this portion of the city in case he lost his hold of the rest. Opposite the bridge the Capponi had their palace; the heroic Piero Capponi lived here; and then the Gonfaloniere Niccolò, who, accused of favouring the Medici, was deprived of his office, and died broken-hearted just before the siege.

On the left of the Ponte Vecchio the Via dei Bardi, where the nobles and retainers of that fierce old house made their last stand against the People after the Frescobaldi had been forced to surrender, has been much spoilt of recent years, though a few fine palaces remain, and some towers, especially two, of the Mannelli and Ridolfi, at the beginning of the street. In the Via dei Bardi, the fine Capponi Palace was built for Niccolò da Uzzano at the beginning of the Quattrocento. The church of Santa Lucia has a Della Robbia relief over the entrance, and a picture of the school of Fra Filippo in the interior. The street ends in the Piazza dei Mozzi, opposite the Ponte alle Grazie or Ponte Rubaconte, where stands the Torrigiani Palace, built by Baccio d'Agnolo in the sixteenth century.

From the Ponte Vecchio the Via Guicciardini leads to the Pitti Palace, and onwards to the Via Romana and great Porta Romana. In the Piazza Santa Felicità a column marks the site of one of St. Peter Martyr's triumphs over the Paterini; the loggia is by Vasari; the historian Guicciardini is buried in the church, which contains some second-rate pictures. Further on, on the right, is the house where Machiavelli died, a disappointed and misunderstood patriot, in 1527; on the left is Guicciardini's palace.

The magnificent Palazzo Pitti was commenced shortly after 1440 by Brunelleschi and Michelozzo, for Luca Pitti, that vain and incompetent old noble who hoped to eclipse the Medici during the closing days of the elder Cosimo. Messer Luca grew so confident, Machiavelli tells us, that "he began two buildings, one in Florence and the other at Ruciano, a place about a mile from the city; both were in right royal style, but that in the city was altogether greater than any other that had ever been built by a private citizen until that day. And to complete them he shrank from no measures, however extraordinary; for not only did citizens and private persons contribute and aid him with things necessary for the building, but communes and corporations lent him help. Besides this, all who were under ban, and whosoever had committed murder or theft or anything else for which he feared public punishment, provided that he were a person useful for the work, found secure refuge within these buildings." After the triumph of Piero dei Medici in 1466, Luca Pitti was pardoned, but ruined. "Straightway," writes Machiavelli, "he learned what difference there is between success and failure, between dishonour and honour. A great solitude reigned in his houses, which before had been frequented by vast throngs of citizens. In the street his friends and relations feared not merely to accompany him, but even to salute him, since from some of them the honours had been taken, from others their property, and all alike were menaced. The superb edifices which he had commenced were abandoned by the builders; the benefits which had been heaped upon him in the past were changed into injuries, honours into insults. Many of those who had freely given him something of great value, now demanded it back from him as having been merely lent, and those others, who had been wont to praise him to the skies, now blamed him for an ungrateful and violent man. Wherefore too late did he repent that he had not trusted Niccolò Soderini, and sought rather to die with honour with arms in hand, than live on in dishonour among his victorious enemies."

In 1549 the unfinished palace was sold by Luca Pitti's descendants to Eleonora of Toledo, Duke Cosimo's wife, and it was finished by Ammanati during the latter half of the sixteenth century; the wings are a later addition. The whole building, with its huge dimensions and boldly rusticated masonry, is one of the most monumental and grandiose of European palaces. It was first the residence of the Medicean Grand Dukes, then of their Austrian successors, and is now one of the royal palaces of the King of Italy.

In one of the royal apartments there is a famous picture of Botticelli's, Pallas taming a Centaur, which probably refers to the return of Lorenzo the Magnificent to Florence after his diplomatic victory over the King of Naples and the League, in 1480. The beautiful and stately Medicean Pallas is wreathed all over with olive branches; her mantle is green, like that of Dante's Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise; her white dress is copiously besprinkled with Lorenzo's crest, the three rings. The Centaur himself is splendidly conceived and realised–a characteristic Botticellian modification of those terrible beings who hunt the damned souls of tyrants and robbers through the river of blood in Dante's Hell. Opposite the Pallas there is a small tondo, in which the Madonna and four Angels are adoring the divine Child in a garden of roses and wild strawberries. The latter was discovered in 1899 and ascribed to Botticelli, but appears to be only a school piece.

The great glory of the Pitti Palace is its picture gallery, a magnificent array of masterpieces, hung in sumptuously decorated rooms with allegorical ceiling-paintings in the overblown and superficial style of the artists of the decadence–Pietro da Cortona and others of his kind:–

"Both in Florence and in RomeThe elder race so make themselves at homeThat scarce we give a glance to ceilingfulsOf such like as Francesco."

So Robert Browning writes of one of Pietro's pupils. The Quattrocento is, with a few noteworthy exceptions, scarcely represented; but no collection is richer in the works of the great Italians of the Cinquecento at the culmination of the Renaissance. We can here, as in the Uffizi, merely indicate the more important pictures in each room. At the top of the staircase is a marble fountain ascribed to Donatello. The names of the rooms are usually derived from the subjects painted on the ceilings; we take the six principal saloons first.

In the Sala dell' Iliade

First, the three masterpieces of this room. Fra Bartolommeo's great altar-piece painted in 1512 for San Marco (208), representing Madonna and Child surrounded by Saints, with a group of Dominicans attending upon the mystic marriage of St. Catherine of Siena, is a splendid picture, but darkened and injured; the two putti, making melody at the foot of Madonna's throne, are quite Venetian in character.

Titian's Cardinal Ippolito dei Medici (201) is one of the master's grandest portraits; the Cardinal is represented in Hungarian military costume. Ippolito, like his reputed father the younger Giuliano, was one of the more respectable members of the elder branch of the Medici; he was brought up with Alessandro, but the two youths hated each other mortally from their boyhood. Young and handsome, cultured and lavishly generous, Ippolito was exceedingly popular and ambitious, and felt bitterly the injustice of Pope Clement in making Alessandro lord of Florence instead of him. Clement conferred an archbishopric and other things upon him, but could by no means keep him quiet. "Aspiring to temporal greatness," writes Varchi, "and having set his heart upon things of war rather than affairs of the Church, he hardly knew himself what he wanted, and was never content." The Pope, towards whom Ippolito openly showed his contempt, complained that he could not exert any control over so eccentric and headstrong a character, un cervello eteroclito e così balzano. After the Pope's death, the Cardinal intrigued with the Florentine exiles in order to supplant Alessandro, upon which the Duke had him poisoned in 1535, in the twenty-fifth year of his age. Titian painted him in 1533.