The Story of Florence

Mr Armstrong in his Lorenzo de' Medici.

27

Botticelli's brother and an ardent Piagnone, whose chronicle has been recently discovered and published by Villari and Casanova. The Franciscans were possibly sincere in the business, and mere tools in the hands of the Compagnacci; they are not likely to have been privy to the plot.

28

The following notes make no pretence at furnishing a catalogue, but are simply intended to indicate the more important Italian pictures, especially the principal masterpieces of, or connected with the Florentine school.

29

See the Genealogical Table in Appendix. The elder Pier Francesco was dead many years before this picture was painted. It was for his other son, Lorenzo, that Sandro Botticelli drew his illustrations of the Divina Commedia.

30

Modern Painters, vol. ii.

31

The eight Arti Minori not represented are the vintners (St. Martin), the inn-keepers (St. Julian), the cheesemongers (St. Bartholomew), the leather-dressers (St. Augustine), the saddlemakers (the Blessed Trinity), the joiners (the Annunciation), tin and coppersmiths (St. Zenobius), and the bakers (St. Lawrence).

32

There are three extant documents concerning pictures of the Madonna for the Captains of Saint Michael; two refer to a painting ordered from Bernardo Daddi, in 1346 and 1347; the third to one by Orcagna, 1352. See Signor P. Franceschini's monograph on Or San Michele, to which I am much indebted in this chapter.

33

These were the burghers and lawyers of the black faction, the Podestà's allies and friends. This was in the spring of 1303.

34

Such, at least, seems the more obvious interpretation; but there is a certain sensuality and cruelty about the victor's expression, which, together with the fact that the vanquished undoubtedly has something of Michelangelo's own features, lead us to suspect that the master's sympathies were with the lost cause.

35

Quoted in Mr Armstrong's Lorenzo de' Medici.

36

See Guido Carocci, Firenze Scomparsa, here and generally.

37

The earliest of these mosaics are those in the tribune, executed originally by a certain Fra Jacopo in the year 1225; those in the dome are in part ascribed to Dante's contemporary, Andrea Tafi.

38

Should it e'er come to pass that the sacred poem to whichboth heaven and earth so have set hand, that it hathmade me lean through many a year,should overcome the cruelty which doth bar me forth fromthe fair sheepfold wherein I used to sleep, a lamb, foe tothe wolves which war upon it;with changed voice now, and with changed fleece shall Ireturn, a poet, and at the font of my baptism shall Iassume the chaplet;because into the Faith which maketh souls known of God,'twas there I entered.– Par. xxv. 1-11, Wicksteed's translation.

39

By these "second gates" are of course meant Ghiberti's second gates: in reality the "third gates" of the Baptistery.

40

"There is only one point from which the size of the Cathedral of Florence is felt; and that is from the corner of the Via de' Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle, where it happens that the dome is seen rising instantly above the apse and transepts" (Seven Lamps).

41

Modern Painters, vol. ii. "Of Imagination Penetrative."

42

The Duomo has fairer memories of the Pazzi, than this deed of blood and treachery. Their ancestor at the Crusades had carried the sacred fire from Jerusalem to Florence, and still, on Easter Eve, an artificial dove sent from the high altar lights the car of fireworks in the Piazza–the Carro dei Pazzi–in front of the church, in honour of their name.

43

It should be observed that Lorenzo was not specially called the "Magnificent" by his contemporaries. All the more prominent members of the Medicean family were styled Magnifico in the same way.

44

"Grateful to me is sleep, and more the being stone; while ruin and shame last, not to see, not to feel, is great good fortune to me. Therefore wake me not; ah, speak low!"

45

Given in Addington Symonds' Life of Michelangelo.

46

"Before thee, goddess, flee the winds, the clouds of heaven; before thee and thy advent; for thee earth manifold in works puts forth sweet-smelling flowers; for thee the levels of the sea do laugh and heaven propitiated shines with outspread light" (Munro's Lucretius).

47

See Andrea del Sarto, by H. Guinness in the Great Masters series, and G. F. Rustici in Vasari.

48

Opposite the bridge, at the beginning of the Via dei Benci, is the palace of the old Alberti family; the remains of their loggia stand further up the street, at the corner of the Borgo Santa Croce. In all these streets, between the Lungarno della Borsa and the Borgo dei Greci, there are many old houses and palaces; in the Piazza dei Peruzzi the houses, formerly of that family and partly built in the fourteenth century, follow the lines of the Roman amphitheatre–the Parlascio of the early Middle Ages. The Palazzo dei Giudici–in the piazza of that name–was originally built in the thirteenth century, though reconstructed at a later epoch.

49

See Addington Symonds' Michelangelo. The horse in question was the equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza.

50

"The one was all seraphic in his ardour, the other by hiswisdom was on earth a splendour of cherubic light."Of one will I discourse, because of both the two hespeaketh who doth either praise, which so he will;for to one end their works."– Wicksteed's translation, Paradiso xi.

51

"I desired, and understanding was given me. I prayed, and the spirit of Wisdom came upon me; and I preferred her before kingdoms and thrones."

52

The identification of each science and its representative is rather doubtful, especially in the celestial series. From altar to centre, Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic are represented by Aelius Donatus, Cicero and Aristotle (or Zeno); Music, Astronomy, Geometry, Arithmetic by Tubal Cain, Zoroaster (or Ptolemy), Euclid and Pythagoras. From window to centre, Civil Law is represented by Justinian, Canon Law by Innocent III., Philosophy apparently by Boethius; the next four seem to be Contemplative, Moral, Mystical and Dogmatic Theology, and their representatives Jerome, John of Damascus, Basil and Augustine–but, with the exception of St. Augustine, the identification is quite arbitrary. Possibly if the Logician is Zeno, the Philosopher is not Boethius but Aristotle; the figure above, representing Philosophy, holds a mirror which seems to symbolise the divine creation of the cosmic Universe.

53

In Richter's Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo rather too sweepingly ignores the fact that there were a few excellent masters between the two.

54

The ledger and the stave (il quaderno e la doga): "In 1299 Messer Niccola Acciaiuoli and Messer Baldo d' Aguglione abstracted from the public records a leaf containing the evidence of a disreputable transaction, in which they, together with the Podestà, had been engaged. At about the same time Messer Durante de' Chiaramontesi, being officer of the customs for salt, took away a stave (doga) from the standard measure, thus making it smaller."–A. J. Butler.

55

"Perfected life and high desert enheaveneth a lady more aloft," she said, "by whose rule down in your world there are who clothe and veil themselves,

That they, even till death, may wake and sleep with that Spouse who accepteth every vow that love hath made conform with his good pleasure.

From the world, to follow her, I fled while yet a girl, and in her habit I enclosed myself, and promised the way of her company.

Thereafter men more used to ill than good tore me away from the sweet cloister; and God doth know what my life then became."

– Paradiso iii. Wicksteed's translation.

56

The lover of Florentine history cannot readily tear himself away from the Casentino. The Albergo Amorosi at Bibbiena, almost at the foot of La Verna, makes delightful headquarters. There is an excellent Guida illustrata del Casentino by C. Beni. For the Conti Guidi, Witte's essay should be consulted; it is translated in Witte's Essays on Dante by C. M. Lawrence and P. H. Wicksteed. La Verna will be fully dealt with in the Assisi volume of this series, so I do not describe it here.