The Story of Florence Part 16

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE BOBOLI GARDENS]

CHAPTER XII

_Across the Arno_

"Come a man destra, per salire al monte, dove siede la Chiesa che soggioga la ben guidata sopra Rubaconte, si rompe del montar l'ardita foga.

per le scalee che si fero ad etade ch'era sicuro il quaderno e la doga."

--_Dante._

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

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

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

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

On the left of the Ponte Vecchio the Via dei Bardi, where the n.o.bles and retainers of that fierce old house made their last stand against the People after the Frescobaldi had been forced to surrender, has been much spoilt of recent years, though a few fine palaces remain, and some towers, especially two, of the Mannelli and Ridolfi, at the beginning of the street. In the Via dei Bardi, the fine Capponi Palace was built for Niccol da Uzzano at the beginning of the Quattrocento.

The church of Santa Lucia has a Della Robbia relief over the entrance, and a picture of the school of Fra Filippo in the interior. The street ends in the Piazza dei Mozzi, opposite the Ponte alle Grazie or Ponte Rubaconte, where stands the Torrigiani Palace, built by Baccio d'Agnolo in the sixteenth century.

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

The magnificent Palazzo Pitti was commenced shortly after 1440 by Brunelleschi and Michelozzo, for Luca Pitti, that vain and incompetent old n.o.ble who hoped to eclipse the Medici during the closing days of the elder Cosimo. Messer Luca grew so confident, Machiavelli tells us, that "he began two buildings, one in Florence and the other at Ruciano, a place about a mile from the city; both were in right royal style, but that in the city was altogether greater than any other that had ever been built by a private citizen until that day. And to complete them he shrank from no measures, however extraordinary; for not only did citizens and private persons contribute and aid him with things necessary for the building, but communes and corporations lent him help. Besides this, all who were under ban, and whosoever had committed murder or theft or anything else for which he feared public punishment, provided that he were a person useful for the work, found secure refuge within these buildings." After the triumph of Piero dei Medici in 1466, Luca Pitti was pardoned, but ruined. "Straightway,"

writes Machiavelli, "he learned what difference there is between success and failure, between dishonour and honour. A great solitude reigned in his houses, which before had been frequented by vast throngs of citizens. In the street his friends and relations feared not merely to accompany him, but even to salute him, since from some of them the honours had been taken, from others their property, and all alike were menaced. The superb edifices which he had commenced were abandoned by the builders; the benefits which had been heaped upon him in the past were changed into injuries, honours into insults.

Many of those who had freely given him something of great value, now demanded it back from him as having been merely lent, and those others, who had been wont to praise him to the skies, now blamed him for an ungrateful and violent man. Wherefore too late did he repent that he had not trusted Niccol Soderini, and sought rather to die with honour with arms in hand, than live on in dishonour among his victorious enemies."

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

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

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

"Both in Florence and in Rome The elder race so make themselves at home That scarce we give a glance to ceilingfuls Of such like as Francesco."

So Robert Browning writes of one of Pietro's pupils. The Quattrocento is, with a few noteworthy exceptions, scarcely represented; but no collection is richer in the works of the great Italians of the Cinquecento at the culmination of the Renaissance. We can here, as in the Uffizi, merely indicate the more important pictures in each room.

At the top of the staircase is a marble fountain ascribed to Donatello. The names of the rooms are usually derived from the subjects painted on the ceilings; we take the six princ.i.p.al saloons first.

In the _Sala dell' Iliade_.

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

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

The famous Concert (185), representing a pa.s.sionate-faced monk of the Augustinian order at the harpsichord, while an older and more prosaic ecclesiastic stands behind him with a viol, and a youthful worldling half carelessly listens, was formerly taken as the standard of Giorgione's work; it is now usually regarded as an early t.i.tian.

Although much damaged and repainted, it remains one of the most beautiful of Venetian painted lyrics.

Andrea del Sarto's two a.s.sumptions, one (225) painted before 1526 for a church at Cortona, the other (191) left unfinished in 1531, show the artist ineffectually striving after the sublime, and helplessly pulled down to earth by the draperies of the Apostles round the tomb. Of smaller works should be noticed: an early t.i.tian, the Saviour (228); two portraits by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (224, 207), of which the latter, a goldsmith, has been ascribed to Leonardo; a lady known as _La Gravida_ (229), probably by Raphael early in his Florentine period; Daniele Barbaro by Paolo Veronese (216); t.i.tian's Philip II. of Spain (200); a male portrait by Andrea del Sarto (184), said, with little plausibility, to represent himself; a Holy Family (235) by Rubens.

In the _Sala di Saturno_.

Here are some of the choicest pictures in the collection, including a whole series of Raphael's. Raphael's Madonna del Gran Duca (178)--so called from its modern purchaser, Ferdinand III.--was painted in 1504 or 1505, either before leaving Urbino or shortly after his arrival in Florence; it is the sweetest and most purely devotional of all his Madonnas. Morelli points out that it is strongly reminiscent of Raphael's first master, Timoteo Viti. The portraits of Angelo Doni and Maddalena Doni (61 and 59) also belong to the beginning of Raphael's Florentine epoch, about 1505 or 1506, and show how much he felt the influence of Leonardo; Angelo Doni, it will be remembered, was the parsimonious merchant for whom Michelangelo painted the Madonna of the Tribuna. The Madonna del Baldacchino (165) was commenced by Raphael in 1508, the last picture of his Florentine period, ordered by the Dei for Santo Spirito; it shows the influence of Fra Bartolommeo in its composition, and was left unfinished when Pope Julius summoned the painter to Rome; in its present state, there is hardly anything of Raphael's about it. The beautiful Madonna della Seggiola (151) is a work of Raphael's Roman period, painted in 1513 or 1514. The Vision of Ezekiel (174) is slightly later, painted in 1517 or thereabout, and shows that Raphael had felt the influence of Michelangelo; one of the smallest and most sublime of all his pictures; the landscape is less conventional than we often see in his later works. Neither of the two portraits ascribed to Raphael in this room (171, 158) can any longer be accepted as a genuine work of the master.

Andrea del Sarto and Fra Bartolommeo are likewise represented by masterpieces. The Friar's Risen Christ with Four Evangelists (159), beneath whom two beautiful _putti_ hold the orb of the world, was painted in 1516, the year before the painter's death; it is one of the n.o.blest and most divine representations of the Saviour in the whole history of art. Andrea's so-called _Disputa_ (172), in which a group of Saints is discussing the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, painted in 1518, is as superbly coloured as any of the greatest Venetian triumphs; the Magdalene is again the painter's own wife. Perugino's Deposition from the Cross (164), painted in 1495, shows the great Umbrian also at his best.

Among the minor pictures in this room may be noted a pretty little trifle of the school of Raphael, so often copied, Apollo and the Muses (167), questionably ascribed to Giulio Romano; and a Nymph pursued by a Satyr (147), supposed by Morelli to be by Giorgione, now a.s.signed to Dosso Dossi of Ferrara.

In the _Sala di Giove_.

The treasure of this room is the _Velata_ (245), Raphael's own portrait of the woman that he loved, to whom he wrote his sonnets, and whom he afterwards idealised as the Madonna di San Sisto; her personality remains a mystery. t.i.tian's _Bella_ (18), a rather stolid rejuvenation of Eleonora Gonzaga, is chiefly valuable for its magnificent representation of a wonderful Venetian costume. Here are three works of Andrea del Sarto--the Annunciation (124), the Madonna in Glory, with four Saints (123), and St John the Baptist (272); the first is one of his most beautiful paintings. The picture supposed to represent Andrea and his wife (118) is not by the master himself.

Bartolommeo's St Mark (125) was painted by him in 1514, to show that he could do large figures, whereas he had been told that he had a _maniera minuta_; it is not altogether successful. His Deposition from the Cross (64) is one of his latest and most earnest religious works.

The Three Fates (113) by Rosso Fiorentino is an undeniably powerful and impressive picture; it was formerly ascribed to Michelangelo. The Three Ages (110), ascribed to Lorenzo Lotto here, was by Morelli attributed to Giorgione, and is now a.s.signed by highly competent critics to a certain Morto da Feltre, of whom little is known save that he is said to have been Giorgione's successful rival for the favours of a ripe Venetian beauty; the picture itself, though injured by restoration, belongs to the same category as the Concert. "In such favourite incidents of Giorgione's school," writes Walter Pater, "music or music-like intervals in our existence, life itself is conceived as a sort of listening--listening to music, to the reading of Bandello's novels, to the sound of water, to time as it flies."

In the _Sala di Marte_.

The most important pictures of this room are: t.i.tian's portrait of a young man with a glove (92); the Holy Family, called of the _Impannata_ or "covered window" (94), a work of Raphael's Roman period, painted by his scholars, perhaps by Giulio Romano; Cristofano Allori's Judith (96), a splendid and justly celebrated picture, showing what exceedingly fine works could be produced by Florentines even in the decadence (Allori died in 1621); Andrea del Sarto's scenes from the history of Joseph (87, 88), panels for ca.s.soni or bridal chests, painted for the marriage of Frances...o...b..rgherini and Margherita Acciaiuoli; a Rubens, the so-called Four Philosophers (85), representing himself with his brother, and the scholars Lipsius and Grotius; Andrea del Sarto's Holy Family (81), one of his last works, painted in 1529 for Ottaviano dei Medici and said to have been finished during the siege; Van Dyck's Cardinal Giulio Bentivoglio (82). It is uncertain whether this Julius II. (79) or that in the Tribuna of the Uffizi is Raphael's original, but the present picture appears to be the favourite; both are magnificent portraits of this terrible old warrior pontiff, who, for all his fierceness, was the n.o.blest and most enlightened patron that Raphael and Michelangelo had.

It was probably at his bidding that Raphael painted Savonarola among the Church's doctors and theologians in the Vatican.

In the _Sala di Apollo_ and _Sala di Venere_.

Here, first of all, is Raphael's celebrated portrait of Pope Julius'

unworthy successor, Leo X. (40), the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent; on the left--that is, the Pope's right hand--is the Cardinal Giulio dei Medici, afterwards Pope Clement VII.; behind the chair is the Cardinal Luigi dei Rossi, the descendant of a daughter of Piero il Gottoso. One of Raphael's most consummate works.

Andrea del Sarto's Pieta (58) was painted in 1523 or 1524 for a convent of nuns in the Mugello, whither Andrea had taken his wife and household while the plague raged in Florence; it is one of his finest works. t.i.tian's Magdalene (67) has been called by Ruskin a "disgusting" picture; as a pseudo-religious work, it would be hard to find anything more offensive; but it has undeniably great technical qualities. His Pietro Aretino (54), on the other hand, is a n.o.ble portrait of an infamous blackguard. Noteworthy are also Andrea del Sarto's portrait (66), apparently one of his many representations of himself, and Murillo's Mother and Child (63).

In the _Sala di Venere_, are a superb landscape by Rubens (14), sometimes called the Hay Harvest and sometimes the Return of the Contadini; also a fine female portrait, wrongly ascribed to Leonardo (140); the Triumph of David by Matteo Rosselli (13). It should be observed that the gems of the collection are frequently s.h.i.+fted from room to room for the benefit of the copyist.

The _Sala dell' Educazione di Giove_ and following rooms.