It was in 1256 that the Humiliati founded here in Borgo Ognissanti the Church of S. Caterina, and carved their arms, a woolpack fastened with ropes, over the door. Originally founded by certain Lombard exiles in Northern Germany, the Humiliati were at first at any rate a lay brotherhood, which had learned in exile the craft of weaving wool. Such wool as was to be had in Tuscany, a land of olives and vines, almost without pasture, was poor enough, and it seems to have been only after the advent of the Humiliati that the great Florentine industry began to assert itself, foreign wools being brought in a raw state to the city and sold, dressed and woven into cloth, in all the cities of Europe and the East. This brotherhood, however, in 1140 formed itself into a Religious Order under a Bull of Innocent III, and though from that time the brethren seem no longer to have worked at their craft themselves, they directed the work of laymen whom they enrolled and employed, busying themselves for the most part with new inventions and the management of what soon became an immense business. Their fame was spread all over Italy, for, as Villari tells us, [111] "wherever a house of their Order was established, the wool-weaving craft immediately made advance," so that in 1239 the Commune of Florence invited them to establish a house near the city, as they did in S. Donato a Torri, which was given them by the Signoria. By 1250 we read that the Guild Masters were already grumbling at their distance from the city, so that they removed to S. Lucia sul Prato, under promise of exemption from all taxes; and in 1256 they founded a church and convent in Borgo Ognissanti. The Church of S. Lucia sul Prato still stands, but the Humiliati were robbed of it in 1547 by Cosimo I, who, strangely enough, had taken the old convent of S. Donato a Torri from the friars who had acquired it, in order to build a fortification, and now wished to give them the Church of S. Lucia sul Prato. It is said that the friars began to build their convent, but four years later abandoned the work, removing to S. Jacopo on the other side Arno. However this may be, the Franciscans certainly succeeded the Humiliati in their convent in Borgo Ognissanti about this time, and in 1627 they rebuilt S. Caterina, renaming it S. Salvadore. To-day there is but little worth seeing in this seventeenth-century church,—a St. Augustine by Botticelli, a St. Jerome and two large frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandajo,—but in the old refectory of the convent, which has now become a barracks, is Domenico Ghirlandajo's fresco of the Last Supper.
Passing from Ognissanti down the Borgo to Piazza Ponte alla Carraja, you come to the great palace built by Michelozzo for the Ricasoli family: it is now the Hotel New York. Thence you turn into Via di Parione behind the palace, where at No. 7 you pass the Palazzo Corsini, coming at last into Via Tornabuoni, where at the corner is the Church of S. Trinità facing the Piazza.
This beautiful and very ancient church stands on the site of an oratory of S. Maria dello Spasimo, destroyed, as it is said, in the tenth century. It was built by the monks of Vallombrosa, and was therefore in the hands of Benedictines. Here, in the Cappella Sassetti, Domenico Ghirlandajo has painted the Life of S. Francis; but it is not with his commonplace treatment, often irrelevant enough, of a subject which Giotto had already used with genius, that we are concerned, but perhaps with the fresco above the altar, and certainly with the marvellous portraits of Sassetti and Nera Cosi his wife, on either side. Here in this portrait for once Ghirlandajo seems to have escaped from the limitations of his cleverness, and to have really expressed himself so that his talent becomes something more than talent, is full of life and charm, and only just fails to convince us of his genius.
Many another delightful or surprising thing may be found in the old church, which has more than once suffered from restoration. In a chapel in the right aisle Lorenzo Monaco has painted the Annunciation, while, close by, you may see a beautiful altar by Benedetto da Rovezzano. Over the high altar is the crucifix which bowed to S. Giovanni Gualberto, who forbore to slay his brother's murderer; but the chief treasure of the church is the tomb in the left transept of Benozzo Federighi, Bishop of Fiesole, by Luca della Robbia. It was in the year 1450 that Luca finished his most perfect work in marble—begun and finished, as it is said, within the year—the tomb of Bishop Federighi. And here, as one might almost expect, remembering his happy expressive art in many a terra-cotta up and down in Italy, he has thought of death almost with cheerfulness, not as oblivion, but as just sleep after labour. Amid a profusion of natural things—fruits, garlands, grapes—the old man lies half turned towards us, at rest at last. Behind him Luca has carved a Pietà, and beneath two angels unfold the name of the dead man. The tomb was removed hither from S. Francesco di Paolo.
Passing now under the Column of the Trinità across the Piazza between the two palaces, Bartolini Salimbeni and Buondelmonte on the left, and Palazzo Spini on the right, you come into Borgo Santi Apostoli, where, facing the Piazzetta del Limbo, is the little church de' Santi Apostoli, which, if we may believe the inscription on the façade, was founded by Charlemagne and consecrated by Turpin before Roland and Oliver. However that may be, it is, with the exception of the Baptistery, the oldest church on this side Arno, and already existed outside the first walls of the city. Within, the church is beautiful, and indeed Brunellesco is reported by Vasari to have taken it as a model for S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito. In the sacristy lies the stone which Mad Pazzi brought from Jerusalem, and from which the Easter fire is still struck in the Duomo; while in the chapel to the left of the high altar is a beautiful Tabernacle by the della Robbia, and a monument to Otto Altoviti by Benedetto da Rovezzano. The Altoviti are buried here, and their palace, which Benedetto built for them, is just without to the south.
This Borgo SS. Apostoli and the Via Lambertesca which continues it are indeed streets of old palaces and towers. Here the Buondelmonti lived, and the Torre de' Girolami, where S. Zanobi is said to have dwelt, still stands, while Via Lambertesca is full of remembrance of the lesser guilds. Borgo SS. Apostoli passes into Via Lambertesca at the corner of Por S. Maria, where of old the great gate of St. Mary stood in the first walls, and the Amidei had their towers. It must have been just here the Statue of Mars was set, under the shadow of which Buondelmonte was murdered so brutally; and thus, as Bandello tells us, following Villani, began the Guelph and Ghibelline factions in Florence.
Just out of Via Lambertesca, on the left, is the little Church of S. Stefano and S. Cecilia—S. Cecilia only since the end of the eighteenth century, when that church was destroyed in Piazza Signoria; but S. Stefano, ad portam ferram, since the thirteenth century at any rate. This church seems to have been confused by many with the little Santo Stefano, still, I think, a parish church, though now incorporated with the abbey buildings, of the Badia. You pass out of Via Lambertesca by Via de' Lanzi, coming thus into Piazza Signoria; then, passing Palazzo Uguccione, you take Via Condotta to the right, and thus come into Via del Proconsolo at the Abbey gate.
Here in this quiet Benedictine house one seems really to be back in an older world, to have left the noise and confusion of to-day far behind, and in order and in quiet to have found again the beautiful things that are from of old. The Badia, dedicated to S. Maria Assunta, was founded in 978 by Countess Willa, the mother of Ugo of Tuscany, [112] and was rebuilt in 1285 by Arnolfo di Cambio. The present building is, however, almost entirely a work of the seventeenth century, though the beautiful tower was built in 1328. Here still, however, in spite of rebuilding, you may see the tomb of the Great Marquis by Mino da Fiesole. "It was erected," says Mr. Carmichael, "at the expense of the monks, not of the Signoria.... Ugo died in 1006, on the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, December 21, and every year on that date a solemn requiem for the repose of his soul is celebrated in the Abbey Church. His helmet and breast-plate are always laid upon the catafalque. In times past—down to 1859, I think—a young Florentine used on this occasion to deliver a panegyric on the Great Prince. I have heard ... that the mass is no longer celebrated. That is not so; but since the city has ceased to care about it, it takes place quietly at seven in the morning, instead of with some pomp at eleven. Then again, it is said that the monks have allowed the panegyric to drop. That too is not the case; it was not they but the Florentines who were pledged to this pious office, and it is the laity alone who have allowed it to fall into desuetude."
Even here we cannot, however, escape destruction and forgetfulness. The monastery has been turned into communal schools and police courts; the abbot has become a parish priest, and his abbey has been taken from him; there are but four monks left. But in the steadfast, unforgetful eyes of that Church which has already outlived a thousand dynasties, and beside whom every Government in the world is but a thing of yesterday, the Abbot of S. Maria is abbot still, and no parish priest at all. It is not, however, such things as this that will astonish the English or American stranger, whose pathetic faith in "progress" is the one touching thing about him. He has come here not to think of deprived Benedictines, or to stand by the tomb of Ugo, of whom he never heard, but to see the masterpiece of Filippino Lippi, the Madonna and St. Bernard, with which a thousand photographs have already made him familiar. Painted in 1480, when Filippino was still, as we may suppose, under the influence of Botticelli, it was given by Piero del Pugliese to a church outside Porta Romana, and was removed here in 1529 during the siege.
Passing down Via della Vigna Vecchia, you come at last to the little Church of S. Simone, which the monks of the Badia built about 1202, in their vineyards then, and just within the second walls. At the beginning of the fourteenth century it became a parish church, but was only taken from them at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Within, there is an early picture of Madonna, which comes from the Church of S. Piero Maggiore, now destroyed. You may reach the Piazza di S. Piero (for it still bears that name) if you turn into Via di Mercatino. Here the bishops of Florence were of old welcomed to the city and installed in the See. Thither came all the clergy of the diocese to take part in a strange and beautiful ceremony. Attached to the church was a Benedictine convent, whose abbess seems to have represented the diocese of Florence. There in S. Piero the Archbishop came to wed her, and thus became the guardian of the city. The church is destroyed now, and, as we have seen, all the monks and nuns have departed; the Government has stolen their dowries and thrust them into the streets. Well might the child, passing S. Felice, cry before this came to pass, O bella Libertà! But S. Piero was memorable for other reasons too beside this mystic marriage. There lay Luca della Robbia, Lorenzo di Credi, Mariotto Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo: where is their dust to-day? As we look at their work in the galleries and churches, who cares what has happened to them, or whether such graves as theirs are rifled or no? Yet not one of them but has done more for Italy than Vittorio Emmanuele; not one of them, O Italia Nuova, but is to-day filling your pockets with gold, while he is nothing in the Pantheon; yet their graves are rifled and forgotten, and him you have placed on the Capitol.
It is to another Benedictine convent you come down Via Pietrapiana, past Borgo Allegri, whence the Florentines say they bore Cimabue's Madonna in triumph to S. Maria Novella. It is a pity, truly, that it is not his picture that is in the Rucellai Chapel to-day, and that the name of the Borgo does not come from that rejoicing, but from the Allegri family, who here had their towers. Yet here Cimabue lived, and Ghiberti and Antonio Rossellino. Who knows what beauty has here passed by?
The Benedictine Church and Convent at end of Via Pietrapiana is dedicated to S. Ambrogio. It was the first convent of nuns built in Florence, and dates certainly from the eleventh century. Like the rest, it has been suppressed, and indeed destroyed. To-day it is nothing, having suffered restoration, beside the other violations. Within, Verrocchio was buried, and in the Cappella del Miracolo, where in the thirteenth century a priest found the chalice stained with Christ's blood, is the beautiful altar by Mino da Fiesole. The church is full of old frescoes by Cosimo Rosselli, Raffaellino del Garbo, and such, and is worth a visit, if only for the work of Mino and the S. Sebastian of Leonardo del Tasso.
It is to another desecrated Benedictine convent you come when, passing through Via dei Pilastrati and turning into Via Farina, you come at last in Via della Colonna to S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi. This too is now a barracks and a school. It was not, however, the nuns who commissioned Perugino to paint for them his masterpiece, the Crucifixion, in the refectory, but some Cistercian monks who had acquired the convent in the thirteenth century. Perugino was painting there in 1496. More than a hundred years later, Pope Urban VIII, who had some nieces in the Carmelite Convent on the other side Arno, persuaded the monks to exchange their home for the Carmine. S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, who was born Lucrezia, had died in 1607, and later been canonised, so that when the nuns moved here they renamed the place after her. The body of S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, however, no longer lies in this desecrated convent, for the little nuns have carried it away to their new home in Piazza Savonarola. There in that place, always so full of children, certain Florentine ladies have nobly built a little church and quiet house, where those who but for them might have been in the street may still innocently pray to God.
There, in 1496, as I have said, Perugino finished the fresco of the Crucifixion that he had begun some years before in the chapter-house of the old S. Maria Maddalena. In almost perfect preservation still, this fresco on the wall of that quiet and empty room is perhaps the most perfect expression of the art of Perugino—those dreams of the country and of certain ideal people he has seen there; Jesus and His disciples, Madonna and Mary Magdalen, sweet, smiling, and tearful ghosts passing in the sunshine, less real than the hills, all perhaps that the world was able to bear by way of remembrance of those it had worshipped once, but was beginning to forget. And here at last, in this fresco, the landscape has really become of more importance than the people, who breathe there so languidly. The Crucifixion has found something of the expressiveness, the unction of a Christian hymn, something of the quiet beauty of the Mass that was composed to remind us of it; already it has passed away from reality, is indeed merely a memory in which the artist has seen something less and something more than the truth.
Divided into three compartments, we see through the beautiful round arches of some magic casement, as it were, the valleys and hills of Italy, the delicate trees, the rivers and the sky of a country that is holy, which man has taken particularly to himself. And then, as though summoned back from forgetfulness by the humanism of that landscape where the toil and endeavour of mankind is so visible in the little city far away, the cultured garden of the world, a dream of the Crucifixion comes to us, a vision of all that man has suffered for man, summed up, as it were, naturally enough by that supreme sacrifice of love; and we see not an agonised Christ or the brutality of the priests and the soldiers, but Jesus, who loved us, hanging on the Cross, with Mary Magdalen kneeling at his feet, and on the one side Madonna and St. Bernard, and on the other St. John and St. Benedict. And though, in a sort of symbolism, Perugino has placed above the Cross the sun and the moon eclipsed, the whole world is full of the serene and perfect light of late afternoon, and presently we know that vision of the Crucifixion will fade away, and there will be left to us only that which we really know, and have heard and seen, the valleys and the hills, the earth from which we are sprung.
There are but six figures in the whole picture, and it is just this spaciousness, perhaps, earth and sky counting for so much, that makes this work so delightful. For it is not from the figures at all that we receive the profoundly religious impression that this picture makes upon all who look unhurriedly upon it; but from the earth and sky, where in the infinite clear space God dwells, no longer hanging upon a Cross tortured by men who have unthinkably made so terrible a mistake, but joyful in His heaven, moving in every living thing He has made; visible only in the invisible wind that passes over the streams suddenly at evening, or subtly makes musical the trees at dawn, walking as of old in His garden, where one day maybe we shall meet Him face to face.
Turning down Via di Pinti to the left, and then to the right along Via Alfani, we pass another desecrated monastery in S. Maria degli Angioli, once a famous house of the monks of Camaldoli. This monastery has suffered many violations, and is scarcely worth a visit, perhaps, unless it be to see the fresco of Andrea del Castagno in the cloister, and to remind ourselves that here, in the fifteenth century, Don Ambrogio Traversari used to lecture in the humanities, a cynical remembrance enough to-day.
If we take the second street to the right, Via de' Servi, we shall come at once into the beautiful Piazza della Santissima Annunziata. Before us is the desecrated convent of the Servites, now turned into a school, and the Church of SS. Annunziata itself, now the most fashionable church in Florence. On the left and right are the beautiful arcades of Brunellesco, decorated by the della Robbia; the building on the left is now used for private houses, that on the right is the Ospedale degli Innocenti. The equestrian statue was made by Giovanni da Bologna, and represents Ferdinando I.
The Order of Servites, whose church and convent are before us, was originally founded by seven Florentines of the Laudesi, that Compagnia di S. Michele in Orto which built Madonna a shrine by the art of Orcagna in Or S. Michele, as we have seen. "I Servi di Maria" they were called, and, determined to quit a worldly life, they retired to a little house where now S. Croce stands; and later, finding that too near the city, went over the hills of Fiesole beyond Pratolino, founding a hermitage on Monte Senario. And I, who have heard their bells from afar at sunset, why should I be sorry that they are no longer in the city. Well, on Monte Senario, be sure, they lived hardly enough on the charity of Florence, so that at last they built a little rest-house just without the city, where SS. Annunziata stands to-day. But in those days Florence was full of splendour and life; it had no fear of the Orders, and even loved them, giving alms. Presently the Servi di Maria were able to build not a rest-house only, but a church and a convent, and then they who served Madonna were not forgotten by her, for did she not give them miraculously a picture of her Annunciation, so beautiful and full of grace that all the city flocked to see it? Thus it used to be. To-day, as I have said, SS. Annunziata is the fashionable church of Florence. The ladies go in to hear Mass; the gentlemen lounge in the cloister and await them. It is not quite our way in England, but then the sun is not so kind to us. It is true that on any spring morning you may see the cloister filled with laughing lilies to be laid at Madonna's feet; but who knows if she be not fled away with her Servi to Monte Senario? Certainly those bells were passing glad and very sweet, and they were ringing, too, the Angelus.
However that may be, a committee, we are told, of which Queen Margherita is patron here, "renders a programme of sacred music, chiefly Masses from the ancient masters, admirably executed." It is comforting to our English notions to know that "The subscribers have the right to a private seat in the choir, and the best society of Florence is to be met there."
And then, here are frescoes by Cosimo Rosselli, Andrea del Sarto, under glass too, a Nativity of Christ by Alessio Baldovinetti, not under glass, which seems unfair; and what if they be the finest work of Andrea, since you cannot see them. Within, the church is spoiled and very ugly. On the left is the shrine of Madonna, carved by Michelozzo, to the order of Piero de' Medici, decorated with all the spoils of the Grand Dukes. Ah no, be sure Madonna is fled away!
Passing out of the north transept, you come into the cloisters. Here is, I think, Andrea's best work, the Madonna del Sacco, and the tomb of a French knight slain at Campaldino.
Passing out of the SS. Annunziata into S. Maria degli Innocenti, we come to a beautiful picture by Domenico Ghirlandajo in the great altarpiece, the Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1488. Though scarcely so lovely as the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Accademia, perhaps spoiled a little by over cleaning and restoration, it is one of the most simple and serene pictures in Florence. The predella to this picture is in the Ospedale; it represents the Marriage of the Virgin, the Presentation in the Temple, the Baptism and Entombment of Our Lord. There, too, is a replica of the Madonna of Lippo Lippi in the Uffizi.
The Ospedale degli Innocenti was founded in 1421 by the Republic, urged thereto by that Leonardo Bruni who is buried in S. Croce in the tomb by Rossellino. It appears to have been already open in 1450, and was apparently under the government of the Guild of Silk, for their arms are just by the door. It is said to have been the first of its kind in Europe; originally meant for the reception of illegitimate children—Leonardo da Vinci, for instance—it is to-day ready to receive any poor little soul who has come unwanted into the world; it cares for more than a thousand of such every year.
Passing out of Piazza degli SS. Annunziata through Via di Sapienza into Piazza di S. Marco, we pass the desecrated convent of the Dominicans, where Savonarola, Fra Antonino, and Fra Angelico lived, now a museum on the right; and passing to the right into Via Cavour, come at No. 69 to the Chiostro dello Scalzo. This is a cloister belonging to the Brotherhood of St. John, which was suppressed in the eighteenth century. The Brotherhood of St. John seems to have come about in this way. When Frate Elias, who succeeded S. Francesco as Minister of the Franciscan Order, began to rule after his own fashion, the Order was divided into two parts, consisting of those who followed the Rule and those who did not. The first were called Observants, the second Conventuals. The Osservanti, or Observants, remained poor, and observed all the fasts; perhaps their greatest, certainly their most widely known Vicar-General was S. Bernardino of Siena. In France the Osservanti were known as the Recollects, and the reform there having been introduced by John de la Puebla, a Spaniard, about 1484, these brethren were known as the Brotherhood of John, or Discalced Friars. In Italy they were called Riformati. All this confusion is now at an end, for Leo XIII, in the Constitution "Felicitate quadam," in 1897 joined all the Observants into one family, giving them again the most ancient and beautiful of their names, the Friars Minor.
Here, where these little poor men begged or prayed, Andrea del Sarto was appointed to paint in grisaille scenes from the life of John the Baptist. They have been much injured by damp, and in fact are not altogether Andrea's work.
Returning down Via Cavour, if we turn into Via Ventisette Aprile we come to two more desecrated convents,—that of S. Caterina, now the Commando Militare, and facing it, S. Appolonia, now a magazine for military stores.
Here, in the refectory of the latter convent, where Michelangelo is said to have had a niece, and for this cause to have built the nuns a door, is the fresco of the Last Supper by Andrea del Castagno; while on the walls are some portraits, brought here from the Bargello, of Farinata degli Uberti, Niccolò Acciaiuoli, and others.
In another suppressed convent, S. Onofrio in Via Faenza, not far away (turn to the left down Via di S. Reparata, and then to the right into Via Guelfa), is another Last Supper, supposed to be the work of a pupil of Perugino,—Morelli says Giannicolo Manni, who painted the miracle picture of Madonna in the Duomo of Perugia.
Another picture of the Last Supper—this by Andrea del Sarto—may be found in another desecrated monastery, founded in 1048 by the Vallombrosans, the second monastery of the congregation, S. Salvi, just without the Barriera towards Settignano. It was in front of this monastery that Corso Donati was killed in 1307. He was buried by the monks in the church, and four years later his body was borne away to Florence by his family. This monastery is now turned into houses, and the refectory with the Andrea del Sarto is become a national monument. Like many another desecrated church, convent, or religious house, the Government, as at S. Marco, Chiostro dello Scalzo, and S. Onofrio, charges you twenty-five centesimi to see their stolen goods.
FOOTNOTES:
[111] Villari, History of Florence, London, 1905: p. 318.
[112] The best account of this abbey I ever read in English is contained in a book full of similar good things, good English, and good pictures, called The Old Road through France to Florence, written by H.W. Nevinson and Montgomery Carmichael, and illustrated by Hallam Murray (Murray, London, 1904).
The Sesto Oltr'arno, the Quartiere di S. Spirito as it was called later, was never really part of the city proper, but rather a suburb surrounded, as Florence itself was, by wall and river. The home for the most part of the poor, though by no means without the towers and palaces of the nobles, it seems always to have lent itself readily enough to the hatching of any plot against the Government of the day. Here in 1343 the nobles made their last stand, here the signal was given for the Ciompi rising, and here Luca Pitti built his palace to outdo the Medici. If you cross Arno by the beautiful bridge of S. Trinità, the first street to your left will be Borgo S. Jacopo, the first palace that of the Frescobaldi, whom the Duke of Athens brought into Florence after their exile. This palace, as well as the Church of S. Jacopo close by, where Giano della Bella's death was plotted, were given in 1529 to the Franciscans of S. Salvatore, whose convent had suffered in the siege. S. Jacopo, which still retains a fine romanesque arcade, was originally a foundation of the eleventh century. It seems to have been entirely rebuilt for the friars and the palace turned into a convent in 1580, and again to have suffered restoration in 1790. Close by is a group of old towers, still picturesque and splendid. Turning thence back into Via Maggio, and passing along Via S. Spirito and Via S. Frediano, you come at last on the left into Piazza del Carmine, before the great church of that name. The church of the Carmine and the monastery now suppressed of the Carmelites across Arno were originally built in 1268, with the help of the great families whose homes were in this part of the city,—the Soderini, the Nerli, the Serragli; it remained unfinished for more than two centuries, and in 1771 it was unhappily almost wholly destroyed by fire, only the sacristy and the Brancacci Chapel escaping. Famous now because there Fra Lippo Lippi lived, and there Masolino and Masaccio painted, it is in itself one of the most meretricious and worthless buildings of the eighteenth century, full of every sort of flamboyant ornament and insincere, uncalled-for decoration; and yet, in spite of every vulgarity, how spacious it is, as though even in that evil hour the Latin genius could not wholly forget its delight in space and light. It is then really only the Brancacci Chapel in the south transept that has any interest for us, since there, better than anywhere else, we may see the work of two of the greatest masters of the first years of the Quattrocento.
Masolino, according to Mr. Berenson, was born in 1384, and died after 1423, while his pupil Masaccio was born in 1401, and died, one of the youngest of Florentine painters, in 1428. Here in the Brancacci Chapel it might seem difficult to decide what may be the work of Masolino and what of his pupil, and indeed Crowe and Cavalcaselle have denied that Masolino worked here at all. Later criticism, however, interested in work that marks a revolution in Tuscan painting, has made it plain that certain frescoes here are undoubtedly from his hand, and Mr. Berenson gives him certainly the Fall of Adam, the Raising of Tabitha, and the Miracle at the Golden Gate, above on the right, as well as the Preaching of St. Peter, above to the left on the altar wall. Masaccio's work is more numerous, consisting of the Expulsion from the Temple and the Payment of the Tribute, above on the right, part of the fresco below the last; St. Peter Baptizing, above to the left on the altar wall, as well as the two frescoes, St. Peter and St. John healing the Sick, and St. Peter and St. John giving Alms, below on either side of the altar. The rest of the frescoes, the St. Paul visiting St. Peter in Prison, below on the left, part of the fresco next to it, the Liberation of St Peter opposite, and the St. Peter and St. Paul before Nero, and the Crucifixion of St. Peter, below on the right, are the work of Filippino Lippi.
Masolino da Panicale of Valdelsa was, according to Vasari, a pupil of Lorenzo Ghiberti, and had been in his younger days a very good goldsmith. He was the best among those who helped Ghiberti in the labours of the doors of S. Giovanni, but when about nineteen years of age he seems to have devoted himself to painting, forsaking the art of the goldsmith, and placing himself under Gherardo della Starnina, the first master of his day. He is said to have gone to Rome, and some works of his in S. Clemente would seem to prove this story; but finding his health suffer from the air of the Eternal City, he returned to Florence, and began to paint here in the Church of S. Maria del Carmine, the figure of S. Piero beside the "Chapel of the Crucifixion," which was destroyed in the fire of 1771. This S. Piero, Vasari tells us, was greatly commended by the painters of the time, and brought Masolino the commission for painting the Chapel of the Brancacci family in the same church. Among the rest mentioned by Vasari, he speaks of the Four Evangelists on the roof here, which have now been ruined by over-painting and restoration. A man of an admirable genius, his study and fatigues, Vasari tells us, so weakened him that he was always ailing, till he died at the age of thirty-seven. Yet in looking on his work to-day, beside that of Masaccio, one thinks less, I fancy, of his "study and fatigues," of his structure and technique, than of the admirable beauty of his work. Consider then those splendid young men in the Raising of Tabitha, who pass by almost unconcerned, though one has turned his head to see; the sheer loveliness of Eve and Adam, really for the first time born again here naked and unashamed; or the easy and beautiful gesture of the angel, who bids them begone out of the gate of Paradise. In Masaccio's work you will find a more splendid style, the real majesty of the creator, a strangely sure generalisation and expression; but in Masolino's work there still lingers something of the mere beauty of Gentile da Fabriano, the particular personal loveliness of things which you may know he has touched with a caress or seen always with joy.
Masaccio was born at Castello S. Giovanni, on the way to Arezzo. He was the son of a notary, Ser Giovanni di Simone Guidi, called della Scheggia, and his first labours in art, Vasari tells us, were begun at the time when Masolino was working at this chapel in the Carmine. He had evidently been much impressed by the work of Donato, and, indeed, something of the realism of sculpture has passed into his work, in the St. Peter Baptizing, for instance, where he who stands by the side of the pool, awaiting his turn, has much of the reality of a statue. And then with a magical sincerity Masaccio has understood the mere discomfort of such a delay in the cool air, and a shiver seems about to pass over that body, which is as real to us as any figure in the work of Michelangelo. Or again, in the fresco of the Tribute Money, how real and full of energy these people are,—the young man with his back to us, who has been interrupted; Jesus Himself, who has just interposed; Peter, who is protesting. How full of a real majesty is this composition, admirably composed, too, and original even in that. Here, it might seem, we have the end of merely decorative painting, the beginning of realism, of the effect of reality, and it is therefore with surprise we see so facile a master as Filippino Lippi set to finish work of such elemental and tremendous genius. How pretty his work seems beside these realities.
Coming out into the Piazza again, and turning to the left down Via S. Frediano, you come almost at once, on the right, to the Church of S. Frediano in Castello. You may enter it from Lung' Arno, but it would scarcely be worth a visit, for it is a late seventeenth-century building, save that in the convent may still be found the cell of S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi; for it was this convent that the Carmelite nuns exchanged with the Cistercians for the house in Via di Pinti, called to-day S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, where Perugino painted his beautiful fresco of the Crucifixion.
Just across the way is the Mercato di S. Frediano and the suppressed monastery of the Camaldolese, now a school; and by this way you come to Porta S. Frediano, by which Charles VIII of France entered Florence and Rinaldo degli Albizzi left it. The whole of this quarter is given up to the poor and to the Madonna of the street corner, for here her children dwell, the outcasts and refuse of civilisation who work that we may live. It is always with reluctance, in spite of the children that I come by this way, so that if possible I always return by Lung' Arno, past Torrino di S. Rosa and the barracks of S. Friano and the grain store of Cosimo III, past the houses of the Soderini to Ponte alla Carraia, which fell on Mayday 1304, sending so many to that other world they had come out to see, and so past the house of Piero Capponi, the hero of 1494 who kept the Medici at bay, and threatened Charles VIII in the council; then turning down Via Coverelli one comes to Santo Spirito.
It was the Augustinian Hermits who, coming to Florence about 1260, bought a vineyard close to where Via Maggio, an abbreviation of Via Maggiore, now is, from the Vellati family. Here they built a monastery and a church, and dedicated them to the Santo Spirito, so that when the city was divided into quartieri this Sestiere d'Oltrarno became Quartiere di S. Spirito. In 1397, as it is said, they determined to rebuild the place on a bigger scale, and to this end appointed Brunellesco their architect. The church was begun in 1433, and was burned down in 1471, during the Easter celebrations, which were particularly splendid in that year owing to the visit of Galeazzo Maria Sforza. It was rebuilt, however, in the next twenty years from the designs of Brunellesco, and is to-day the most beautiful fifteenth-century church in Florence, full of light and sweetness, very spacious, too, and with a certain fortunate colour about it that gives it an air of cheerfulness and serenity beyond anything of the kind to be found in the Duomo or S. Lorenzo. And then, the Florentines have been content to leave it alone,—at any rate, so far as the unfinished façade is concerned. It is in the form of a Latin cross, and suggests even yet in some happy way the very genius of the Latin people in its temperance and delight in the sun and the day. The convent, it is true, has been desecrated, and is now a barracks; most of the altars have been robbed of their treasures; but the church itself remains to us a very precious possession from that fifteenth century, which in Italy certainly was so fortunate, so perfect a dawn of a day that was a little disappointing, and at evening so disastrous.
Of the works of art remaining in the nave, that spacious nave where one could wander all day long, only the copy of Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's will, I think, detain us for more than a moment. What is left to us of that far-away flower-like beauty of fifteenth-century painting and sculpture will be found in the great transept, that makes of the church a cross of light, a temple of the sun. Here, amid many works of that time given to Fra Lippo Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Donatello, and others, in the south transept there is a Madonna with the family of de' Nerli by Filippino Lippi, and in the Capponi Chapel a fine portrait of Neri Capponi, while in the next chapel Perugino's Vision of St. Bernard, now in Berlin, used to stand. Here, too, is a Statue of St. Sebastian, nearly always invisible, said to be from the hand of Donatello; in the choir is a Madonna enthroned by Lorenzo di Credi. The sacristy is beautiful, built by Giovanni da Sangallo, and the cloisters now spoiled are the work of Ammanati. And then, here Niccolò Niccoli is buried, that great book-collector and humanist; while the barbarians are represented, if only by the passing figure of Martin Luther, not then forsworn, who is said to have preached here on his way to Rome. It is strange to think that these beautiful pillars have heard his rough eloquence, an eloquence that was so soon to destroy the spirit that had conceived them.
Close by in Piazza S. Spirito is Palazzo Guadagni, built for Ranieri Dei at the end of the fifteenth century by Cronaca. It was not, however, till 1684 that the Guadagni family came into possession of it. Bernardo Guadagni, it will be remembered, was Gonfaloniere of Justice when Cosimo de' Medici was expelled the city in 1433. Passing this palace and turning to the right into Via Mazzetta, you pass at the corner the Church of S. Felice, which has been so often a refuge,—for at first the Sylvestrians had it, and held it till the fourteenth century, when it passed to the Camaldolese, from whom it passed again to a congregation of Dominican nuns and became a sort of refuge for women who had fled away from their husbands. Within, you may find a few old pictures, a Giottesque Crucifixion, and a Madonna and Saints, a fifteenth-century work. Then, turning into Via Romana, you come, past the gardens of S. Piero in Gattolino, to the Porta Romana, the great gate of the Via Romana, the way to Rome, and before you is the Hill of Gardens, and behind you is the garden of the Pitti Palace, Giardino di Boboli, and farther still, across Via Romana, the Giardino Torrigiani.
The Boboli Gardens, with their alley ways of ilex, their cypresses and broken statues, their forgotten fountains, are full of sadness—
But the gardens of the Viale are in spring, at any rate, full of the joy of roses, banks, hedges, cascades of roses, armsful of them, drowsy in the heat and heavy with sweetness.
And if it be not the very place of which Poliziano sang in the most beautiful verses he ever wrote, certainly to-day there is nothing more lovely in Florence in spring, and in autumn too, than this Hill of Gardens. In autumn too; for then the way that winds there about the hills is an alley of gold, strewn with the leaves of the plane-trees that the winds have scattered in countless riches under your feet; that whisper still in golden beauty over your head. There, as you walk in spring, while the city unfolds herself before you, a garden of roses in which a lily has towered, or in the autumn afternoons when she is caught in silver mist, a city of fragile and delicate beauty, that is soon lost in the twilight, you may see Florence as she remains in spite of every violation, Città dei Fiori, Firenze la Bella Bellissima, the sweet Princess of Italy. And, like the way of life, this road among the flowers ends in a graveyard, the graveyard of S. Miniato al Monte, under which nestles S. Salvatore, that little brown bird among the cypresses, over the grey olives.
The story of S. Miniato makes one of the more quiet chapters of Villani. "Our city of Florence," [113] he tells you, returning from I know not what delightful digression, "was ruled long time under the government and lordship of the Emperors of Rome, and oft-times the Emperors came to sojourn in Florence, when they were journeying into Lombardy and into Germany and into France to conquer provinces. And we find that Decius the Emperor, in the first year of his reign, which was in the year of Christ 270, was in Florence, the treasure-house and chancelry of the empire, sojourning there for his pleasure; and the said Decius cruelly persecuted the Christians wheresoever he could hear of them or find them out, and he heard tell how the blessed S. Miniato was living as a hermit, near to Florence, with his disciples and companions, in a wood which was called Arisbotto di Firenze, behind the place where now stands his church, above the city of Florence. This blessed Miniato was first-born son to the King of Armenia, and having left his kingdom for the faith of Christ, to do penance and to be far away from his kingdom, he went over-seas to gain pardon at Rome, and then betook himself to the said wood, which was in those days wild and solitary, forasmuch as the city of Florence did not extend, and was not settled beyond Arno but was all on this side,—save only there was one bridge across Arno, not, however, where the bridges now are. And it is said by many that it was the ancient bridge of the Fiesolans which led from Girone to Candegghi, and this was the ancient and direct road and way from Rome to Fiesole and to go into Lombardy and across the mountains. The said Emperor Decius caused the said blessed Miniato to be taken, as his story narrates. Great gifts and rewards were offered him, as to a king's son, to the end he should deny Christ; and he, constant and firm in the faith, would have none of his gifts, but endured divers martyrdoms. In the end the said Decius caused him to be beheaded, where now stands the Church of S. Candida alla Croce at Gorgo; and many faithful followers of Christ received martyrdom in this place. And when the head of the blessed Miniato had been cut off, by a miracle of Christ, with his hands he set it again upon his trunk, and on his feet passed over Arno, and went up the hill where now stands his church, where at that time there was a little oratory in the name of the blessed Peter the Apostle, where many bodies of holy martyrs were buried. And when S. Miniato was come to that place, he gave up his soul to Christ, and his body was there secretly buried by the Christians; the which place, by reason of the merits of the blessed S. Miniato, was devoutly venerated by the Florentines after they were become Christians, and a little church was built there in his honour. But the great and noble church of marble which is there now in our times, we find to have been built later by the zeal of the venerable Father Alibrando, Bishop and citizen of Florence in the year of Christ 1013, begun on the 26th day of April, by the commandment and authority of the Catholic and holy Emperor, Henry II of Bavaria, and of his wife, the holy Empress Gunegonda, which was reigning in those times; and they presented and endowed the said church with many rich possessions in Florence and in the country, for the good of their souls, and caused the said church to be repaired and rebuilt of marble, as it is now. And they caused the body of the blessed Miniato to be translated to the altar, which is beneath the vaulting of the said church, with much reverence and solemnity, by the said bishop and the clergy of Florence, with all the people, both men and women of the city of Florence; but afterwards the said church was completed by the commonwealth of Florence, and the stone steps were made which lead down by the hill; and the consuls of the Art of the Calimala were put in charge of the said work of S. Miniato, and were to protect it."
Thus far Villani: to-day S. Miniato, the church, and the great palace built in 1234 by Andrea Mozzi, Bishop of Florence, come to us with memories, not of S. Miniato alone, that somewhat shadowy martyr of so long ago, but of S. Giovanni Gualberto also, of the Benedictines too, and of the Olivetans, of the siege of 1529, when Michelangelo fortified the place in defence of Florence, saving the tower from destruction, as it is said, by swathing it in mattresses; of Cosimo I, who from here held the city in leash. It is the most beautiful of the Tuscan-Romanesque churches left to us in Florence; built in 1013 in the form of a basilica, with a great nave and two aisles, the choir being raised high above the rest of the church on twenty-eight beautiful red ancient pillars, over a crypt where, under the altar, S. Miniato sleeps through the centuries. The fading frescoes of the aisles, the splendour and quiet of this great and beautiful church that has guarded Florence almost from the beginning, that has seen Buondelmonte die at the foot of the Statue of Mars, that has heard the voice of Dante and watched the flight of Corso Donati, have a peculiar fascination, almost ghostly in their strangeness, beyond anything else to be found in the city. And if for the most part the church is so ancient as to rival the Baptistery itself, the Renaissance has left there more than one beautiful thing. For between the two flights of steps that lead out of the nave into the choir, Michelozzo built in 1448, for Piero de' Medici a chapel to hold the crucifix, now in S. Trinità, which bowed to S. Giovanni Gualberto when he forgave his brother's murderer, [114] and in the left aisle is the chapel, built in 1461 by Antonio Rossellino, where the young Cardinal Jacopo of Portugal lies in one of the loveliest of all Tuscan tombs, and there Luca della Robbia has placed some of his most charming terracottas, and Alessio Baldovinetti has painted in fresco. In all Tuscany there is nothing more lovely than that tomb carved in 1467 by Antonio Rossellino for the body of the young Cardinal, but twenty-six years old when he died, "having lived in the flesh as though he were freed from it, an Angel rather than a man." Over the beautiful sarcophagus, on a bed beside which two boy angels wait, the young Cardinal sleeps, his delicate hands folded at rest at last. Above, two angels kneel, about to give him the crown of glory which fadeth not away, and Madonna, borne from heaven by the children, comes with her Son to welcome him home. There, in the most characteristic work of the fifteenth century, you find man still thinking about death, not as a trance out of which we shall awaken to some terrible remembrance, but as sleep, a sweet and fragile slumber, that has something of the drooping of the flowers about it, in a certain touching beauty and regret that is never bitter, but, like the ending of a song or the close of a fair day of spring, that rightly, though not without sadness, passes into silence, into night, in which shine only the eternal stars.
It is strange that of all the difficult hills of Italy, it is the steep way hither from Porto S. Niccola, of old, in truth Via Crucis, that comes into Dante's mind when, in the Twelfth Purgatorio, he sees the ascent to the second cornice, where is purged the sin of envy. Something of the immense sadness of that terrible hill seems to linger to-day about the Monti alle Croci: it is truly a hill of the dead, over which hovers, pointing the way, some angel