The Story of Florence

CHAPTER IX.

The Palazzo Riccardi–San Lorenzo

San Marco

THE Via dei Martelli leads from the Baptistery into the Via Cavour, formerly the historical Via Larga. Here stands the great Palace of the Medici, now called the Palazzo Riccardi from the name of the family to whom the Grand Duke Ferdinand II. sold it in the seventeenth century.

The palace was begun by Michelozzo for Cosimo the Elder shortly before his exile, and completed after his return, when it became in reality the seat of government of the city, although the Signoria still kept up the pretence of a republic in the Palazzo Vecchio. Here Lorenzo the Magnificent was born on January 1st, 1449, and here the most brilliant and cultured society of artists and scholars that the world had seen gathered round him and his family.43 Here, too, after the expulsion of Lorenzo's mad son, Piero, in 1494, Charles VIII. of France was splendidly lodged; here Piero Capponi tore the dishonourable treaty and saved the Republic, and here Fra Girolamo a few days later admonished the fickle king. On the return of the Medici, the Cardinal Giovanni, the younger Lorenzo, and the Cardinal Giulio successively governed the city here; until in 1527 the people drove out the young pretenders, Alessandro and Ippolito, with their guardian, the Cardinal Passerini. It was on this latter occasion that Piero's daughter, Madonna Clarice, the wife of the younger Filippo Strozzi, was carried hither in her litter, and literally slanged these boys and the Cardinal out of Florence. She is reported, with more vehemence than delicacy, to have told her young kinsmen that the house of Lorenzo dei Medici was not a stable for mules. During the siege, the people wished to entirely destroy the palace and rename the place the Piazza dei Muli.

After the restoration Alessandro carried on his abominable career here, until, on January 5th, 1537, the dagger of another Lorenzo freed the world from an infamous monster. Some months before, Benvenuto Cellini came to the palace, as he tells us in his autobiography, to show the Duke the wax models for his medals which he was making. Alessandro was lying on his bed, indisposed, and with him was only this Lorenzino or Lorenzaccio, quel pazzo malinconico filosafo di Lorenzino, as Benvenuto calls him elsewhere. "The Duke," writes Benvenuto, "several times signed to him that he too should urge me to stop; upon which Lorenzino never said anything else, but: 'Benvenuto, you would do best for yourself to stay.' To which I said that I wanted by all means to return to Rome. He said nothing more, and kept continually staring at the Duke with a most evil eye. Having finished the medal and shut it up in its case, I said to the Duke: 'My Lord, be content, for I will make you a much more beautiful medal than I made for Pope Clement; for reason wills that I should do better, since that was the first that ever I made; and Messer Lorenzo here will give me some splendid subject for a reverse, like the learned person and magnificent genius that he is.' To these words the said Lorenzo promptly answered: 'I was thinking of nothing else, save how to give thee a reverse that should be worthy of his Excellency.' The Duke grinned, and, looking at Lorenzo, said: 'Lorenzo, you shall give him the reverse, and he shall make it here, and shall not go away.' Lorenzo replied hastily, saying: 'I will do it as quickly as I possibly can, and I hope to do a thing that will astonish the world.' The Duke, who sometimes thought him a madman and sometimes a coward, turned over in his bed, and laughed at the words which he had said to him. I went away without other ceremonies of leave-taking, and left them alone together."

On the fatal night Lorenzino lured the Duke into his own rooms, in what was afterwards called the Strada del Traditore, which was incorporated into the palace by the Riccardi. Alessandro, tired out with the excesses of the day, threw himself upon a bed; Lorenzino went out of the room, ostensibly to fetch his kinswoman, Caterina Ginori, whose beauty had been the bait; and he returned with the bravo Scoroncocolo, with whose assistance he assassinated him. Those who saw Sarah Bernhardt in the part of "Lorenzaccio," will not easily forget her rendering of this scene. Lorenzino published an Apologia, in which he enumerates Alessandro's crimes, declares that he was no true offspring of the Medici, and that his own single motive was the liberation of Florence from tyranny. He fled first to Constantinople, and then to Venice, where he was murdered in 1547 by the agents of Alessandro's successor, Cosimo I., who transferred the ducal residence from the present palace first to the Palazzo Vecchio, and then across the river to the Pitti Palace.

With the exception of the chapel, the interior of the Palazzo Riccardi is not very suggestive of the old Medicean glories of the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent. There is a fine court, surrounded with sarcophagi and statues, including some of the old tombs which stood round the Baptistery and among which Guido Cavalcanti used to linger, and some statues of Apostles from the second façade of the Duomo. Above the arcades are eight fine classical medallions by Donatello, copied and enlarged from antique gems. The rooms above have been entirely altered since the days when Capponi defied King Charles, and Madonna Clarice taunted Alessandro and Ippolito; the large gallery, which witnessed these scenes, is covered with frescoes by Luca Giordano, executed in the early part of the seventeenth century. The Chapel–still entirely reminiscent of the better Medici–was painted by Benozzo Gozzoli shortly before the death of Cosimo the Elder, with frescoes representing the Procession of the Magi, in a delightfully impossible landscape. The two older kings are the Patriarch Joseph of Constantinople, and John Paleologus, Emperor of the East, who had visited Florence twenty years before on the occasion of the Council (Benozzo, it must be observed, was painting them in 1459, after the fall of Constantinople); the third is Lorenzo dei Medici himself, as a boy. Behind follow the rest of the Medicean court, Cosimo himself and his son, Piero, content apparently to be led forward by this mere lad; and in their train is Benozzo Gozzoli himself, marked by the signature on his hat. The picture of the Nativity itself, round which Benozzo's lovely Angels–though very earthly compared with Angelico's–seem still to linger in attendance, is believed to have been one by Lippo Lippi, now at Berlin.

In the chapter Of the Superhuman Ideal, in the second volume of Modern Painters, Ruskin refers to these frescoes as the most beautiful instance of the supernatural landscapes of the early religious painters:–

"Behind the adoring angel groups, the landscape is governed by the most absolute symmetry; roses, and pomegranates, their leaves drawn to the last rib and vein, twine themselves in fair and perfect order about delicate trellises; broad stone pines and tall cypresses overshadow them, bright birds hover here and there in the serene sky, and groups of angels, hand joined with hand, and wing with wing, glide and float through the glades of the unentangled forest. But behind the human figures, behind the pomp and turbulence of the kingly procession descending from the distant hills, the spirit of the landscape is changed. Severer mountains rise in the distance, ruder prominences and less flowery vary the nearer ground, and gloomy shadows remain unbroken beneath the forest branches."

Among the manuscripts in the Biblioteca Riccardiana, which is entered from the Via Ginori at the back of the palace, is the most striking and plausible of all existing portraits of Dante. It is at the beginning of a codex of the Canzoni (numbered 1040), and appears to have been painted about 1436.

From the palace where the elder Medici lived, we turn to the church where they, and their successors of the younger line, lie in death. In the Piazza San Lorenzo there is an inane statue of the father of Cosimo I., Giovanni delle Bande Nere, by Baccio Bandinelli. Here, in June 1865, Robert Browning picked up at a stall the "square old yellow Book" with "the crumpled vellum covers," which gave him the story of The Ring and the Book:–

The unsightly bare front of San Lorenzo represents several fruitless and miserable years of Michelangelo's life. Pope Leo X. and the Cardinal Giulio dei Medici commissioned him to make a new façade, in 1516, and for some years he consumed his time labouring among the quarries of Carrara and Pietrasanta, getting the marble for it and for the statues with which it was to be adorned. In one of his letters he says: "I am perfectly disposed (a me basta l'animo) to make this work of the façade of San Lorenzo so that, both in architecture and in sculpture, it shall be the mirror of all Italy; but the Pope and the Cardinal must decide quickly, if they want me to do it or not"; and again, some time later: "What I have promised to do, I shall do by all means, and I shall make the most beautiful work that was ever made in Italy, if God helps me." But nothing came of it all; and in after years Michelangelo bitterly declared that Leo had only pretended that he wanted the façade finished, in order to prevent him working upon the tomb of Pope Julius.

"The ancient Ambrosian Basilica of St. Lawrence," founded according to tradition by a Florentine widow named Giuliana, and consecrated by St. Ambrose in the days of Zenobius, was entirely destroyed by fire early in the fifteenth century, during a solemn service ordered by the Signoria to invoke the protection of St. Ambrose for the Florentines in their war against Filippo Maria Visconti. Practically the only relic of this Basilica is the miraculous image of the Madonna in the right transept. The present church was erected from the designs of Filippo Brunelleschi, at the cost of the Medici (especially Giovanni di Averardo, who may be regarded as its chief founder) and seven other Florentine families. It is simple and harmonious in structure; the cupola, which is so visible in distant views of Florence, looking like a smaller edition of the Duomo, unlike the latter, rests directly upon the cross. This appears to be one of the modifications from what Brunelleschi had intended.

The two pulpits with their bronze reliefs, right and left, are the last works of Donatello; they were executed in part and finished by his pupil, Bertoldo. The marble singing gallery in the left aisle (near a fresco of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, by Bronzino) is also the joint work of Donatello and Bertoldo. In the right transept is a marble tabernacle by Donatello's great pupil, Desiderio da Settignano. Beneath a porphyry slab in front of the choir, Cosimo the Elder, the Pater Patriae, lies; Donatello is buried in the same vault as his great patron and friend. In the Martelli Chapel, on the left, is an exceedingly beautiful Annunciation by Fra Filippo Lippi, a fine example of his colouring (in which he is decidedly the best of all the early Florentines); Gabriel is attended by two minor Angels, squires waiting upon this great Prince of the Archangelic order, who are full of that peculiar mixture of boyish high spirits and religious sentiment which gives a special charm of its own to all that Lippo does.

The Sagrestia Vecchia, founded by Giovanni di Averardo, was erected by Brunelleschi and decorated by Donatello for Cosimo the Elder. In the centre is the marble sarcophagus, adorned with putti and festoons, containing the remains of Giovanni and his wife Piccarda, Cosimo's father and mother, by Donatello. The bronze doors (hardly among his best works), the marble balustrade before the altar, the stucco medallions of the Evangelists, the reliefs of patron saints of the Medici and the frieze of Angels' heads are all Donatello's; also an exceedingly beautiful terracotta bust of St. Lawrence, which is one of his most attractive creations. In the niche on the left of the entrance is the simple but very beautiful tomb of the two sons of Cosimo, Piero and Giovanni–who are united also in Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi as the two kings–and it serves also as a monument to Cosimo himself; it was made by Andrea Verrocchio for Lorenzo and Giuliano, Piero's sons. The remains of Lorenzo and Giuliano rested together in this sacristy until they were translated in the sixteenth century. In spite of a misleading modern inscription, they were apparently not buried in their father's grave, and the actual site of their former tomb is unknown. They now lie together in the Sagrestia Nuova. The simplicity of these funereal monuments and the pietàs which united the members of the family so closely, in death and in life alike, are very characteristic of these earlier Medicean rulers of Florence.

The cloisters of San Lorenzo, haunted by needy and destitute cats, were also designed by Brunelleschi. To the right, after passing Francesco da San Gallo's statue of Paolo Giovio, the historian, who died in 1559, is the entrance to the famous Biblioteca Laurenziana. The nucleus of this library was the collection of codices formed by Niccolò Niccoli, which were afterwards purchased by Cosimo the Elder, and still more largely increased by Lorenzo the Magnificent; after the expulsion of Piero the younger, they were bought by the Friars of San Marco, and then from them by the Cardinal Giovanni, who transferred them to the Medicean villa at Rome. In accordance with Pope Leo's wish, Clement VII. (then the Cardinal Giulio) brought them back to Florence, and, when Pope, commissioned Michelangelo to design the building that was to house them. The portico, vestibule and staircase were designed by him, and, in judging of their effect, it must be remembered that Michelangelo professed that architecture was not his business, and also that the vestibule and staircase were intended to have been adorned with bronzes and statues. It was commenced in 1524, before the siege. Of the numberless precious manuscripts which this collection contains, we will mention only two classical and one mediæval; the famous Pandects of Justinian which the Pisans took from Amalfi, and the Medicean Virgil of the fourth or fifth century; and Boccaccio's autograph manuscript of Dante's Eclogues and Epistles. This latter codex, shown under the glass at the entrance to the Rotunda, is the only manuscript in existence which contains Dante's Epistles to the Italian Cardinals and to a Florentine Friend. In the first, he defines his attitude towards the Church, and declares that he is not touching the Ark, but merely turning to the kicking oxen who are dragging it out of the right path; in the second, he proudly proclaims his innocence, rejects the amnesty, and refuses to return to Florence under dishonourable conditions. Although undoubtedly in Boccaccio's handwriting, it has been much disputed of late years as to whether these two letters are really by Dante. There is not a single autograph manuscript, nor a single scrap of Dante's handwriting extant at the present day.

From the Piazza Madonna, at the back of San Lorenzo, we enter a chilly vestibule, the burial vault of less important members of the families of the Medicean Grand Dukes, and ascend to the Sagrestia Nuova, where the last male descendants of Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent lie. Although the idea of adding some such mausoleum to San Lorenzo appears to have originated with Leo X., this New Sacristy was built by Michelangelo for Clement VII., commenced while he was still the Cardinal Giulio and finished in 1524, before the Library was constructed. Its form was intended to correspond with that of Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy, and it was to contain four sepulchral monuments. Two of these, the only two that were actually constructed, were for the younger Lorenzo, titular Duke of Urbino (who died in 1519, the son of Piero and nephew of Pope Leo), and the younger Giuliano, Duke of Nemours (who died in 1516, the third son of the Magnificent and younger brother of Leo). It is not quite certain for whom the other two monuments were to have been, but it is most probable that they were for the fathers of the two Medicean Popes, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother the elder Giuliano, whose remains were translated hither by Duke Cosimo I. and rediscovered a few years ago. Michelangelo commenced the statues before the third expulsion of the Medici, worked on them in secret while he was fortifying Florence against Pope Clement before the siege, and returned to them, after the downfall of the Republic, as the condition of obtaining the Pope's pardon. He resumed work, full of bitterness at the treacherous overthrow of the Republic, tormented by the heirs of Pope Julius II., whose tomb he had been forced to abandon, suffering from insomnia and shattered health, threatened with death by the tyrant Alessandro. When he left Florence finally in 1534, just before the death of Clement, the statues had not even been put into their places.

Neither of the ducal statues is a portrait, but they appear to represent the active and contemplative lives, like the Leah and Rachel on the tomb of Pope Julius II. at Rome. On the right sits Giuliano, holding the baton of command as Gonfaloniere of the Church. His handsome sensual features to some extent recall those of the victorious youth in the allegory in the Bargello. He holds his baton somewhat loosely, as though he half realised the baseness of the historical part he was doomed to play, and had not got his heart in it. Opposite is Lorenzo, immersed in profound thought, "ghastly as a tyrant's dream." What visions are haunting him of the sack of Prato, of the atrocities of the barbarian hordes in the Eternal City, of the doom his house has brought upon Florence? Does he already smell the blood that his daughter will shed, fifty years later, on St. Bartholomew's day? Here he sits, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it:–

"It fascinates and is intolerable," as Rogers wrote of this statue. It is, probably, not due to Michelangelo that the niches in which the dukes sit are too narrow for them; but the result is to make the tyrants seem as helpless as their victims, in the fetters of destiny. Beneath them are four tremendous and terrible allegorical figures: "those four ineffable types," writes Ruskin, "not of darkness nor of day–not of morning nor evening, but of the departure and the resurrection, the twilight and the dawn of the souls of men." Beneath Lorenzo are Dawn and Twilight; Dawn awakes in agony, but her most horrible dreams are better than the reality which she must face; Twilight has worked all day in vain, and, like a helpless Titan, is sinking now into a slumber where is no repose. Beneath Giuliano are Day and Night: Day is captive and unable to rise, his mighty powers are uselessly wasted and he glares defiance; Night is buried in torturing dreams, but Michelangelo has forbidden us to wake her:–

It will be remembered that it was for these two young men, to whom Michelangelo has thus reared the noblest sepulchral monuments of the modern world, that Leo X. desired to build kingdoms and that Machiavelli wrote one of the masterpieces of Italian prose–the Principe. Giuliano was the most respectable of the elder Medicean line; in Castiglione's Cortigiano he is an attractive figure, the chivalrous champion of women. It is not easy to get a definite idea of the character of Lorenzo, who, as we saw in chapter iv., was virtually tyrant of Florence during his uncle's pontificate. The Venetian ambassador once wrote of him that he was fitted for great deeds, and only a little inferior to Cæsar Borgia–which was intended for very high praise; but there was nothing in him to deserve either Michelangelo's monument or Machiavelli's dedication. He usurped the Duchy of Urbino, and spent his last days in fooling with a jester. His reputed son, the foul Duke Alessandro, lies buried with him here in the same coffin.

Opposite the altar is the Madonna and Child, by Michelangelo. The Madonna is one of the noblest and most beautiful of all the master's works, but the Child, whom Florence had once chosen for her King, has turned His face away from the city. A few years later, and Cosimo I. will alter the inscription which Niccolò Capponi had set up on the Palazzo Vecchio. The patron saints of the Medici on either side, Sts. Cosmas and Damian, are by Michelangelo's pupils and assistants, Fra Giovanni Angiolo da Montorsoli and Raffaello da Montelupo. Beneath these statues lie Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother, the elder Giuliano. Their bodies were removed hither from the Old Sacristy in 1559, and the question as to their place of burial was finally set at rest, in October 1895, by the discovery of their bodies. It is probable that Michelangelo had originally intended the Madonna for the tomb of his first patron, Lorenzo.