The Story of Florence

Scuola Veneta

Crossing the short southern corridor, with some noteworthy ancient sculptury, we pass down the long western corridor. Out of this open first the two rooms devoted to the Venetian school. In the first, to seek the best only, are Titian's portraits of Francesco Maria della Rovere, third Duke of Urbino, and Eleonora Gonzaga, his duchess (605 and 599), painted in 1537. A triptych by Mantegna (1111)–the Adoration of the Kings, between the Circumcision and the Ascension–is one of the earlier works of the great Paduan master; the face of the Divine Child in the Circumcision is marvellously painted. The Madonna by the Lake by Giovanni Bellini (631), also called the Allegory of the Tree of Life, is an exceedingly beautiful picture, one of Bellini's later works. Titian's Flora (626), an early work of the master, charming in its way, has been damaged and rather overpraised. In the second room, are three works by Giorgione; the Judgment of Solomon and the Ordeal of Moses (630 and 621), with their fantastic costumes and poetically conceived landscapes, are very youthful works indeed; the portrait of a Knight of Malta (622) is more mature, and one of the noblest of Venetian portraits. Florence thus possesses more authentic works of this wonderful, almost mythical, Venetian than does Venice herself. Here, too, is usually–except when it is in request elsewhere for the copyist–Titian's Madonna and Child with the boy John Baptist, and the old Antony Abbot, leaning on his staff and watching the flower play (633)–the most beautiful of Titian's early Giorgionesque Madonnas.

Sala di Lorenzo Monaco

The following passage leads to the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco, the room which bears the name of the austere monk of Camaldoli, and, hallowed by the presence of Fra Angelico's Madonna, seems at times almost to re-echo still with the music of the Angel choir; but to which the modern worshipper turns to adore the Venus of the Renaissance rising from the Sea. For here is Sandro Botticelli's famous Birth of Venus (39), the most typical picture of the Quattrocento, painted for Lorenzo dei Medici and in part inspired by certain lines of Angelo Poliziano. But let all description be left to the golden words of Walter Pater in his Renaissance:–

"At first, perhaps, you are attracted only by a quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you have read of Florence in the fifteenth century; afterwards you may think that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and that the colour is cadaverous or at least cold. And yet, the more you come to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is no mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon them by which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you will like this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that quaint design of Botticelli's a more direct inlet into the Greek temper than the works of the Greeks themselves, even of the finest period. Of the Greeks as they really were, of their difference from ourselves, of the aspects of their outward life, we know far more than Botticelli, or his most learned contemporaries; but for us long familiarity has taken off the edge of the lesson, and we are hardly conscious of what we owe to the Hellenic spirit. But in pictures like this of Botticelli's you have a record of the first impression made by it on minds turned back towards it, in almost painful aspiration, from a world in which it had been ignored so long; and in the passion, the energy, the industry of realisation, with which Botticelli carries out his intention, is the exact measure of the legitimate influence over the human mind of the imaginative system of which this is the central myth. The light is indeed cold–mere sunless dawn; but a later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you can see the better for that quietness in the morning air each long promontory, as it slopes down to the water's edge. Men go forth to their labours until the evening; but she is awake before them, and you might think that the sorrow in her face was at the thought of the whole long day of love yet to come. An emblematical figure of the wind blows hard across the grey water, moving forward the dainty-lipped shell on which she sails, the sea 'showing his teeth' as it moves in thin lines of foam, and sucking in, one by one, the falling roses, each severe in outline, plucked off short at the stalk, but embrowned a little, as Botticelli's flowers always are. Botticelli meant all that imagery to be altogether pleasurable; and it was partly an incompleteness of resources, inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and chilled it; but his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what is unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess of pleasure, as the depositary of a great power over the lives of men."

In this same room are five other masterpieces of early Tuscan painting. Don Lorenzo's Coronation of the Madonna (1309), though signed and dated 1413, may be regarded as the last great altar-piece of the school of Giotto and his followers. It has been terribly repainted. The presence in the most prominent position of St. Benedict and St. Romuald in their white robes shows that it was painted for a convent of Camaldolese monks. The predella, representing the Adoration of the Magi and scenes from the life of St. Benedict, includes a very sweet little picture of the last interview of the saint with his sister Scholastica, when, in answer to her prayers, God sent such a storm that her brother, although unwilling to break his monastic rule, was forced to spend the night with her. "I asked you a favour," she told him, "and you refused it me; I asked it of Almighty God, and He has granted it to me." In Browning's poem, Don Lorenzo is one of the models specially recommended to Lippo Lippi by his superiors:–

The Madonna and Child with St. Francis and St. John Baptist, St. Zenobius and St. Lucy (1305), is one of the very few authentic works by Domenico Veneziano, one of the great innovators in the painting of the fifteenth century.

Sandro Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi (1286), painted for Santa Maria Novella, is enthusiastically praised by Vasari. It is not a very characteristic work of the painter's, but contains admirable portraits of the Medici and their court. The first king, kneeling up alone before the Divine Child, is Cosimo the Elder himself, according to Vasari, "the most faithful and animated likeness of all now known to exist of him"; the other two kings are his two sons, Piero il Gottoso in the centre, Giovanni di Cosimo on the right. The black-haired youth with folded hands, standing behind Giovanni, is Giuliano, who fell in the Pazzi conspiracy. On the extreme left, standing with his hands resting upon the hilt of his sword, is Lorenzo the Magnificent, who avenged Giuliano's death; behind Lorenzo, apparently clinging to him as though in anticipation or recollection of the conspiracy, is Angelo Poliziano. The rather sullen-looking personage, with a certain dash of sensuality about him, on our extreme right, gazing out of the picture, is Sandro himself. This picture, which was probably painted slightly before or shortly after the murder of Giuliano, has been called "the Apotheosis of the Medici"; it should be contrasted with the very different Nativity, now in the National Gallery, which Sandro painted many years later, in 1500, and which is full of the mystical aspirations of the disciples of Savonarola.

The Madonna and Child with Angels, two Archangels standing guard and two Bishops kneeling in adoration (1297), is a rich and attractive work by Domenico Ghirlandaio. Fra Angelico's Tabernacle (17), Madonna and Child with the Baptist and St. Mark, and the famous series of much-copied Angels, was painted for the Guild of Flax-merchants, whose patron was St. Mark. The admirable Predella (1294) represents St. Mark reporting St. Peter's sermons, and St. Mark's martyrdom, together with the Adoration of the Magi.

Passing down the corridor, we come to the entrance to the passage which leads across the Ponte Vecchio to the Pitti Palace. There are some fine Italian engravings on the way down. The halls of the Inscriptions and Cameos contain ancient statues as well, including the so-called dying Alexander, and some of those so over-praised by Shelley. Among the pictures in the Sala del Baroccio, is a very genial lady with a volume of Petrarch's sonnets, by Andrea del Sarto (188). Here, too, are some excellent portraits by Bronzino; a lady with a missal (198); a rather pathetic picture of Eleonora of Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I., with Don Garzia–the boy with whom Cellini used to romp (172); Bartolommeo Panciatichi (159); Lucrezia Panciatichi (154), a peculiarly sympathetic rendering of an attractive personality. Sustermans' Galileo (163) is also worth notice. The Duchess Eleonora died almost simultaneously with her sons, Giovanni and Garzia, in 1562, and there arose in consequence a legend that Garzia had murdered Giovanni, and had, in his turn, been killed by his own father, and that Eleonora had either also been murdered by the Duke or died of grief. Like many similar stories of the Medicean princes, this appears to be entirely fictitious.

The Hall of Niobe contains the famous series of statues representing the destruction of Niobe and her children at the hands of Apollo and Artemis. They are Roman or Græco-Roman copies of a group assigned by tradition to the fourth century b. c., and which was brought from Asia Minor to Rome in the year 35 b. c. The finest of these statues is that of Niobe's son, the young man who is raising his cloak upon his arm as a shield; he was originally protecting a sister, who, already pierced by the fatal arrow, leaned against his knee as she died.

In a room further on there is an interesting series of miniature portraits of the Medici, from Giovanni di Averardo to the family of Duke Cosimo. Six of the later ones are by Bronzino.

At the end of the corridor, by Baccio Bandinelli's copy of the Laocoön, are three rooms containing the drawings and sketches of the Old Masters. It would take a book as long as the present to deal adequately with them. Many of the Florentine painters, who were always better draughtsmen than they were colourists, are seen to much greater advantage in their drawings than in their finished pictures. Besides a most rich collection of the early men and their successors, from Angelico to Bartolommeo, there are here several of Raphael's cartoons for Madonnas and two for his St. George and the Dragon; many of the most famous and characteristic drawings of Leonardo da Vinci (and it is from his drawings alone that we can now get any real notion of this "Magician of the Renaissance"); and some important specimens of Michelangelo. Here, too, is Andrea Mantegna's terrible Judith, conceived in the spirit of some Roman heroine, which once belonged to Vasari and was highly valued by him. It is dated 1491, and should be compared with Botticelli's rendering of the same theme.

CHAPTER VI

Or San Michele and the Sesto di San Piero

AT the end of the bustling noisy Via Calzaioli, the Street of the Stocking-makers, rises the Oratory of Our Lady, known as San Michele in Orto, "St. Michael in the Garden." Around its outer walls, enshrined in little temples of their own, stand great statues of saints in marble and bronze by the hands of the greatest sculptors of Florence–the canonised patrons of the Arts or Guilds, keeping guard over the thronging crowds that pass below. This is the grand monument of the wealth and taste, devotion and charity, of the commercial democracy of the Middle Ages.

The ancient church of San Michele in Orto was demolished by order of the Commune in the thirteenth century, to make way for a piazza for the grain and corn market, in the centre of which Arnolfo di Cambio built a loggia in 1280. Upon one of the pilasters of this loggia there was painted a picture of the Madonna, held in highest reverence by the frequenters of the market; a special company or sodality of laymen was formed, the Laudesi of Our Lady of Or San Michele, who met here every evening to sing laudi in her honour, and who were distinguished even in mediæval Florence, where charity was always on a heroic scale, by their munificence towards the poor. "On July 3rd, 1292," so Giovanni Villani writes, "great and manifest miracles began to be shown forth in the city of Florence by a figure of Holy Mary which was painted on a pilaster of the loggia of San Michele in Orto, where the grain was sold; the sick were healed, the deformed made straight, and the possessed visibly delivered in great numbers. But the preaching friars, and the friars minor likewise, through envy or some other cause, would put no faith in it, whereby they fell into much infamy with the Florentines. And so greatly grew the fame of these miracles and merits of Our Lady that folk flocked hither in pilgrimage from all parts of Tuscany at her feasts, bringing divers waxen images for the wonders worked, wherewith a great part of the loggia in front of and around the said figure was filled." In spite of ecclesiastical scepticism, this popular devotion ever increased; the company of the Laudesi, amongst whom, says Villani, was a good part of the best folk in Florence, had their hands always full of offerings and legacies, which they faithfully distributed to the poor.

The wonderful tidings roused even Guido Cavalcanti from his melancholy musings among the tombs. As a sceptical philosopher, he had little faith in miracles, but an esprit fort of the period could not allow himself to be on the same side as the friars. A delightful via media presented itself; the features of the Madonna in the picture bore a certain resemblance to his lady, and everything was at once made clear. So he took up his pen, and wrote a very beautiful sonnet to his friend, Guido Orlandi. It begins: "A figure of my Lady is adored, Guido, in San Michele in Orto, which, with her fair semblance, pure and tender, is the great refuge and harbour of sinners." And after describing (with evident devotional feeling, in spite of the obvious suggestion that it is the likeness of his lady that gives the picture its miraculous powers) the devotion of the people and the wonders worked on souls and bodies alike, he concludes: "Her fame goeth through far off lands: but the friars minor say it is idolatry, for envy that she is not their neighbour." But Orlandi professed himself much shocked at his friend's levity. "If thou hadst said, my friend, of Mary," so runs the double sonnet of his answer, "Loving and full of grace, thou art a red rose planted in the garden; thou wouldst have written fittingly. For she is the Truth and the Way, she was the mansion of our Lord, and is the port of our salvation." And he bids the greater Guido imitate the publican; cast the beam out of his own eye and let the mote alone in those of the friars: "The friars minor know the divine Latin scripture, and the good preachers are the defenders of the faith; their preaching is our medicine."

One of the most terrible faction fights in Florentine history raged round the loggia and oratory on June 10th, 1304. The Cavalcanti and their allies were heroically holding their own, here and in Mercato Vecchio, against the overwhelming forces of the Neri headed by the Della Tosa, Sinibaldo Donati and Boccaccio Adimari, when Neri Abati fired the houses round Or San Michele; the wax images in Our Lady's oratory flared up, the loggia was burned to the ground, and all the houses along Calimara and Mercato Nuovo and beyond down to the Ponte Vecchio were utterly destroyed. The young nobles of the Neri faction galloped about with flaming torches to assail the houses of their foes; the Podestà with his troops came into Mercato Nuovo, stared at the blaze, but did nothing but block the way. In this part of the town was all the richest merchandise of Florence, and the loss was enormous. The Cavalcanti, against whom the iniquitous plot was specially aimed, were absolutely ruined, and left the city without further resistance.

The pilaster with Madonna's picture had survived the fire, and the Laudesi still met round it to sing her praises. But in 1336 the Signoria proposed to erect a grand new building on the site of the old loggia, which should serve at once for corn exchange and provide a fitting oratory for this new and growing cult of the Madonna di Orsanmichele. The present edifice, half palace and half church, was commenced in 1337, and finished at the opening of the fifteenth century. The actual building was in the hands of the Commune, who delegated their powers to the Arte di Por Sta. Maria or Arte della Seta. The Parte Guelfa and the Greater Guilds were to see to the external decoration of the pilasters, upon each of which tabernacles were made to receive the images of the Saints before which each of the Arts should come in state, to make offerings on the feasts of their proper patrons; while the shrine itself, and the internal decorations of the loggia (as it was still called), were left in the charge and care of the Laudesi themselves, the Compagnia of Orsanmichele, which was thoroughly organised under its special captains. It is uncertain whom the Arte della Seta employed as architect; Vasari says that Taddeo Gaddi gave the design, others say Orcagna (who worked for the Laudesi inside), and more recently Francesco Talenti has been suggested. Benci di Cione and Simone di Francesco Talenti, who also worked at the same epoch upon the Duomo, were among the architects employed later. The closing in of the arcades, for the better protection of the tabernacle, took away the last remnants of its original appearance as an open loggia; and, shortly before, the corn market itself was removed to the present Piazza del Grano, and thus the "Palatium" became the present church. The extremely beautifully sculptured windows are the work of Simone di Francesco Talenti.

There are fourteen of these little temples or niches, partly belonging to the Greater and partly to the Lesser Arts. It will be seen that, while the seven Greater Arts have each their niche, only six out of the fourteen Minor Arts are represented. Over the niches are tondi with the insignia of each Art. The statues were set up at different epochs, and are not always those that originally stood here–altered in one case from significant political motives, in others from the desire of the guilds to have something more thoroughly up to date–the rejected images being made over to the authorities of the Duomo for their unfinished façade, or sent into exile among the friars of Santa Croce. In 1404 the Signoria decreed that, within ten years from that date, the Arts who had secured their pilasters should have their statues in position, on pain of losing the right. But this does not seem to have been rigidly enforced.

Beginning at the corner of the northern side, facing towards the Duomo, we have the minor Art of the Butchers represented by Donatello's St. Peter in marble, an early and not very excellent work of the master, about 1412 (in a tabernacle of the previous century); the tondo above containing their arms, a black goat on a gold field, is modern. Next comes the marble St. Philip, the patron saint of the minor Art of the Shoemakers, by Nanni di Banco, of 1408, a beautiful and characteristic work of this too often neglected sculptor. Then, also by Nanni di Banco, the Quattro incoronati, the "four crowned martyrs," who, being carvers by profession, were put to death under Diocletian for refusing to make idols, and are the patrons of the masters in stone and wood, a minor Art which included sculptors, architects, bricklayers, carpenters, and masons; the bas-relief under the shrine, also by Nanni, is a priceless masterpiece of realistic Florentine democratic art, and shows us the mediæval craftsmen at their work, the every-day life of the men who made Florence the dream of beauty which she became; above it are the arms of the Guild, in an ornate and beautiful medallion, by Luca della Robbia. The following shrine, that of the Art of makers of swords and armour, had originally Donatello's famous St. George in marble, of 1415, which is now in the Bargello; the present bronze (inappropriate for a minor Art, according to the precedent of the others) is a modern copy; the bas-relief below, of St. George slaying the dragon, is still Donato's. On the western wall, opposite the old tower of the Guild of Wool, comes first a bronze St. Matthew, made together with its tabernacle by Ghiberti and Michelozzo for the greater Guild of Money-changers and Bankers (Arte del Cambio), and finished in 1422. The Annunciation above is by Niccolò of Arezzo, at the close of the Trecento. The very beautiful bronze statue of St. Stephen, by Ghiberti, represents the great Guild of Wool, Arte della Lana; originally they had a marble St. Stephen, but, seeing what excellent statues had been made for the Cambio and the Calimala Guilds, they declared that since the Arte della Lana claimed to be always mistress of the other Arts, she must excel in this also; so sent their St. Stephen away to the Cathedral, and assigned the new work to Ghiberti (1425). Then comes the marble St. Eligius, by Nanni di Banco (1415), for the minor Art of the Maniscalchi, which included farriers, iron-smiths, knife-makers, and the like; the bas-relief below, also by Nanni, represents the Saint (San Lò he is more familiarly called, or St. Eloy in French) engaged in shoeing a demoniacal horse.

On the southern façade, we have St. Mark in marble for the minor Art of Linaioli and Rigattieri, flax merchants and hucksters, by Donatello, (about 1412).31 The Arte dei Vaiai e Pellicciai, furriers, although a greater Guild, seems to have been contented with the rather insignificant marble St. James, which follows, of uncertain authorship, and dating from the end of the Trecento; the bas-relief seems later. The next shrine, that of the Doctors and Apothecaries, the great Guild to which Dante belonged and which included painters and booksellers, is empty; the Madonna herself is their patroness, but their statue is now inside the church; the Madonna and Child in the medallion above are by Luca della Robbia. The next niche is that of the great Arte della Seta or Arte di Por Santa Maria, the Guild of the Silk-merchants, to which embroiderers, goldsmiths and silversmiths were attached; the bronze statue of their patron, St. John the Evangelist, is by Baccio da Montelupo (1515), and replaces an earlier marble now in the Bargello; the medallion above with their arms, a gate on a shield supported by two cherubs, is by Luca della Robbia.

Finally, on the façade in the Via Calzaioli, the first shrine is that of the Arte di Calimala or Arte dei Mercatanti, who carried on the great commerce in foreign cloth, the chief democratic guild of the latter half of the thirteenth century, but which, together with the Arte della Lana, began somewhat to decline towards the middle of the Quattrocento; their bronze St. John Baptist is Ghiberti's, but hardly one of his better works (1415). The large central tabernacle was originally assigned to the Parte Guelfa, the only organisation outside of the Guilds that was allowed to share in this work; for them, Donatello made a bronze statue of their patron, St. Louis of Toulouse, and either Donatello himself or Michelozzo prepared, in 1423, the beautiful niche for him which is still here. But, owing to the great unpopularity of the Parte Guelfa and their complete loss of authority under the new Medicean regime, this tabernacle was taken from them in 1459 and made over to the Università dei Mercanti or Magistrato della Mercanzia, a board of magistrates who presided over all the Guilds; the arms of this magistracy were set up in the present medallion by Luca della Robbia in 1462; Donatello's St. Louis was sent to the friars minor; and, some years later, Verrocchio cast the present masterly group of Christ and St. Thomas. Landucci, in his diary for 1483, tells us how it was set up, and that the bronze figure of the Saviour seemed to him the most beautiful that had ever been made. Last of all, the bronze statue of St. Luke was set up by Giovanni da Bologna in 1601, for the Judges and Notaries, who, like the silk-merchants, discarded an earlier marble. It must be observed that the substitution of the Commercial Tribunal for the tyrannical Parte Guelfa completes the purely democratic character of the whole monument.