The Story of Florence Part 6

These last years of the Republic are very glorious in the history of Florentine art. In 1498, just before the French entered Milan, Leonardo da Vinci had finished his Last Supper for Ludovico Sforza; in the same year, Michelangelo commenced his Pieta in Rome which is now in St Peter's; in 1499, Baccio della Porta began a fresco of the Last Judgment in Santa Maria Nuova, a fresco which, when he entered the Dominican order at San Marco and became henceforth known as Fra Bartolommeo, was finished by his friend, Mariotto Albertinelli. These three works, though in very different degrees, represent the opening of the Cinquecento in painting and sculpture. While Soderini ruled, both Leonardo and Michelangelo were working in Florence, for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, and Michelangelo's gigantic David--the Republic preparing to meet its foes--was finished in 1504. This was the epoch in which Leonardo was studying those strange women of the Renaissance, whose mysterious smiles and wonderful hair still live for us in his drawings; and it was now that he painted here in Florence his Monna Lisa, "the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea." At the close of 1504 the young Raphael came to Florence (as Perugino had done before him), and his art henceforth shows how profoundly he felt the Florentine influence. We know how he sketched the newly finished David, studied Masaccio's frescoes, copied bits of Leonardo's cartoon, was impressed by Bartolommeo's Last Judgment.

Although it was especially Leonardo that he took for a model, Raphael found his most congenial friend and adviser in the artist friar of San Marco; and there is a pleasant tradition that he was himself influential in persuading Fra Bartolommeo to resume the brush.

Leonardo soon went off to serve King Francis I. in France; Pope Julius summoned both Michelangelo and Raphael to Rome. These men were the masters of the world in painting and sculpture, and cannot really be confined to one school. Purely Florentine painting in the Cinquecento now culminated in the work of Fra Bartolommeo (1475-1517) and Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531), who had both been the pupils of Piero di Cosimo, although they felt other and greater influences later. After Angelico, Fra Bartolommeo is the most purely religious of all the Florentine masters; and, with the solitary exception of Andrea del Sarto, he is their only really great colourist. Two pictures of his at Lucca--one in the Cathedral, the other now in the Palazzo Pubblico--are among the greatest works of the Renaissance. In the latter especially, "Our Lady of Mercy," he shows himself the heir in painting of the traditions of Savonarola. Many of Bartolommeo's altar-pieces have grown very black, and have lost much of their effect by being removed from the churches for which they were painted; but enough is left in Florence to show his greatness. With him was a.s.sociated that gay Bohemian and wild liver, Mariotto Albertinelli (1474-1515), who deserted painting to become an innkeeper, and who frequently worked in partners.h.i.+p with the friar. Andrea del Sarto, the tailor's son who loved not wisely but too well, is the last of a n.o.ble line of heroic craftsmen. Although his work lacks all inspiration, he is one of the greatest of colourists. "Andrea del Sarto," writes Mr Berenson, "approached, perhaps, as closely to a Giorgione or a t.i.tian as could a Florentine, ill at ease in the neighbourhood of Leonardo and Michelangelo." He entirely belongs to these closing days of the Republic; his earliest frescoes were painted during Soderini's gonfalonierate; his latest just before the great siege.

In the Carnival of 1511 a wonderfully grim pageant was shown to the Florentines, and it was ominous of coming events. It was known as the _Carro della Morte_, and had been designed with much secrecy by Piero di Cosimo. Drawn by buffaloes, a gigantic black chariot, all painted over with dead men's bones and white crosses, slowly pa.s.sed through the streets. Upon the top of it, there stood a large figure of Death with a scythe in her hand; all round her, on the chariot, were closed coffins. When at intervals the Triumph paused, harsh and hoa.r.s.e trumpet-blasts sounded; the coffins opened, and horrible figures, attired like skeletons, half issued forth. "We are dead," they sang, "as you see. So shall we see you dead. Once we were even as you are, soon shall you be as we." Before and after the chariot, rode a great band of what seemed to be mounted deaths, on the sorriest steeds that could be found. Each bore a great black banner with skull and cross-bones upon it, and each ghastly cavalier was attended by four skeletons with black torches. Ten black standards followed the Triumph; and, as it slowly moved on, the whole procession chanted the _Miserere_. Vasari tells us that this spectacle, which filled the city with terror and wonder, was supposed to signify the return of the Medici to Florence, which was to be "as it were, a resurrection from death to life."

And, sure enough, in the following year the Spaniards under Raimondo da Cardona fell upon Tuscany, and, after the horrible sack and ma.s.sacre of Prato, reinstated the Cardinal Giovanni dei Medici and Giuliano in Florence--their elder brother, Piero, had been drowned in the Garigliano eight years before. Piero Soderini went into exile, the Greater Council was abolished, and, while the city was held by their foreign troops, the Medici renewed the old pretence of summoning a parliament to grant a bala to reform the State. At the beginning of 1513 two young disciples of Savonarola, Pietro Paolo Boscoli and Agostino Capponi, resolved to imitate Brutus and Ca.s.sius, and to liberate Florence by the death of the Cardinal and his brother. Their plot was discovered, and they died on the scaffold. "Get this Brutus out of my head for me," said Boscoli to Luca della Robbia, kinsman of the great sculptor, "that I may meet my last end like a Christian"; and, to the Dominican friar who confessed him, he said, "Father, the philosophers have taught me how to bear death manfully; do you help me to bear it out of love for Christ." In this same year the Cardinal Giovanni was elected Pope, and entered upon his splendid and scandalous pontificate as Leo X. "Let us enjoy the Papacy," was his maxim, "since G.o.d has given it to us."

Although Machiavelli was ready to serve the Medici, he had been deprived of his posts at the restoration, imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of being concerned in Boscoli's conspiracy, and now, released in the amnesty granted by the newly elected Pope, was living in poverty and enforced retirement at his villa near San Casciano. It was now that he wrote his great books, the _Principe_ and the _Discorsi sopra la prima deca di t.i.to Livio_. Florence was ruled by the Pope's nephew, the younger Lorenzo, son of Piero by Alfonsina Orsini. The government was practically what it had been under the Magnificent, save that this new Lorenzo, who had married a French princess, discarded the republican appearances which his grandfather had maintained, and surrounded himself with courtiers and soldiers.

For him and for Giuliano, the Pope cherished designs of carving out large princedoms in Italy; and Machiavelli, in dedicating his _Principe_ first to Giuliano, who died in 1516, and then to Lorenzo, probably dreamed that some such prince as he described might drive out the foreigner and unify the nation. In his n.o.bler moments Leo X., too, seems to have aspired to establish the independence of Italy. When Lorenzo died in 1519, leaving one daughter, who was afterwards to be the notorious Queen of France, there was no direct legitimate male descendant of Cosimo the elder left; and the Cardinal Giulio, son of the elder Giuliano, governed Florence with considerable mildness, and even seemed disposed to favour a genuine republican government, until a plot against his life hardened his heart. It was to him that Machiavelli, who was now to some extent received back into favour, afterwards dedicated his _Istorie Fiorentine_. In 1523 the Cardinal Giulio, in spite of his illegitimate birth, became Pope Clement VII., that most hapless of Pontiffs, whose reign was so surpa.s.singly disastrous to Italy. In Florence the Medici were now represented by two young b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, Ippolito and Alessandro, the reputed children of the younger Giuliano and the younger Lorenzo respectively; while the Cardinal Pa.s.serini misruled the State in the name of the Pope. But more of the true Medicean spirit had pa.s.sed into the person of a woman, Clarice, the daughter of Piero (and therefore the sister of the Duke Lorenzo), who was married to the younger Filippo Strozzi, and could ill bear to see her house end in these two base-born lads. And elsewhere in Italy Giovanni delle Bande Nere (as he was afterwards called, from the mourning of his soldiers for his death) was winning renown as a captain; he was the son of that Giovanni dei Medici with whom Piero had quarrelled, by Caterina Sforza, the Lady of Forl, and had married Maria Salviati, a grand-daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent. But the Pope would rather have lost Florence than that it should fall into the hands of the younger line.

But the Florentine Republic was to have a more glorious sunset. In 1527, while the imperial troops sacked Rome, the Florentines for the third time expelled the Medici and re-established the Republic, with first Niccol Capponi and then Francesco Carducci as Gonfaloniere. In this sunset Machiavelli died; Andrea del Sarto painted the last great Florentine fresco; Michelangelo returned to serve the State in her hour of need. The voices of the Piagnoni were heard again from San Marco, and Niccol Capponi in the Greater Council carried a resolution electing Jesus Christ king of Florence. But the plague fell upon the city; and her liberty was the price of the reconciliation of Pope and Emperor. From October 1529 until August 1530, their united forces--first under the Prince of Orange and then under Ferrante Gonzaga--beleaguered Florence. Francesco Ferrucci, the last hope of the Republic, was defeated and slain by the imperialists near San Marcello; and then, betrayed by her own infamous general Malatesta Baglioni, the city capitulated on the understanding that, although the form of the government was to be regulated and established by the Emperor, her liberty was preserved. The sun had indeed set of the most n.o.ble Republic in all history.

Alessandro dei Medici, the reputed son of Lorenzo by a mulatto woman, was now made hereditary ruler of Florence by the Emperor, whose illegitimate daughter he married, and by the Pope. For a time, the Duke behaved with some decency; but after the death of Clement in 1534, he showed himself in his true light as a most abominable tyrant, and would even have murdered Michelangelo, who had been working upon the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo. "It was certainly by G.o.d's aid,"

writes Condivi, "that he happened to be away from Florence when Clement died." Alessandro appears to have poisoned his kinsman, the Cardinal Ippolito, the other illegitimate remnant of the elder Medicean line, in whom he dreaded a possible rival. a.s.sociated with him in his worst excesses was a legitimate scion of the younger branch of the house, Lorenzino--the _Lorenzaccio_ of Alfred de Musset's drama--who was the grandson of the Lorenzo di Pier Francesco mentioned in the previous chapter.[26] On January 5th, 1537, this young man--a reckless libertine, half scholar and half madman--stabbed the Duke Alessandro to death with the aid of a bravo, and fled, only to find a dishonourable grave some ten years later in Venice.

[26] See the Genealogical Table of the Medici.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DAWN BY MICHELANGELO]

Florence now fell into the hands of the ablest and most ruthless of all her rulers, Cosimo I. (the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere), who united Medicean craft with the brutality of the Sforzas, conquered Siena, and became the first Grand Duke of Tuscany. At the opening of his reign the Florentine exiles, headed by the Strozzi and by Baccio Valori, attempted to recover the State, but were defeated by Cosimo's mercenaries. Their leaders were relentlessly put to death; and Filippo Strozzi, after prolonged torture, was either murdered in prison or committed suicide. A word will be said presently, in chapter ix., on Cosimo's descendants, the Medicean Grand Dukes who reigned in Tuscany for two hundred years.

The older generation of artists had pa.s.sed away with the Republic.

After the siege Michelangelo alone remained, compelled to labour upon the Medicean tombs in San Lorenzo, which have become a monument, less to the tyrants for whom he reared them, than to the _saeva indignatio_ of the great master himself at the downfall of his country. A madrigal of his, written either in the days of Alessandro or at the beginning of Cosimo's reign, expresses what was in his heart. Symonds renders it:--

"Lady, for joy of lovers numberless Thou wast created fair as angels are; Sure G.o.d hath fallen asleep in heaven afar, When one man calls the bliss of many his."

But the last days and last works of Michelangelo belong to the story of Rome rather than to that of Florence. Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo (1494-1557), who had been Andrea del Sarto's scholar, and whose earlier works had been painted before the downfall of the Republic, connects the earlier with the later Cinquecento; but of his work, as of that of his pupil Angelo Bronzino (1502-1572), the portraits alone have any significance for us now. Giorgio Vasari (1512-1574), although painter and architect--the Uffizi and part of the Palazzo Vecchio are his work--is chiefly famous for his delightful series of biographies of the artists themselves. Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), that most piquant of personalities, and the Fleming Giambologna or Giovanni da Bologna (1524-1608), the master of the flying Mercury, are the last noteworthy sculptors of the Florentine school. When Michelangelo--_Michel, piu che mortale, Angel divino_, as Ariosto calls him--pa.s.sed away on February 18th, 1564, the Renaissance was over as far as Art was concerned. And not in Art only. The dome of St Peter's, that was slowly rising before Michelangelo's dying eyes, was a visible sign of the new spirit that was moving within the Church itself, the spirit that reformed the Church and purified the Papacy, and which brought about the renovation of which Savonarola had prophesied.

CHAPTER V

_The Palazzo Vecchio--The Piazza della Signoria--The Uffizi_

"Ecco il Palagio de' Signori si bello che chi cerca.s.se tutto l'universo, non credo ch'e trova.s.se par di quello."

--_Antonio Pucci._

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PALAZZO VECCHIO]

At the eastern corner of the Piazza della Signoria--that great square over which almost all the history of Florence may be said to have pa.s.sed--rises the Palazzo Vecchio, with its great projecting parapets and its soaring tower: the old Palace of the Signoria, originally the Palace of the Priors, and therefore of the People. It is often stated that the square battlements of the Palace itself represent the Guelfs, while the forked battlements of the tower are in some mysterious way connected with the Ghibellines, who can hardly be said to have still existed as a real party in the city when they were built; there is, it appears, absolutely no historical foundation for this legend. The Palace was commenced by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1298, when, in consequence of the hostility between the magnates and the people, it was thought that the Priors were not sufficiently secure in the Palace of the Cerchi; and it may be taken to represent the whole course of Florentine history, from this government of the Secondo Popolo, through Savonarola's Republic and the Medicean despotism, down to the unification of Italy. Its design and essentials, however, are Arnolfo's and the people's, though many later architects, besides Vasari, have had their share in the completion of the present building. Arnolfo founded the great tower of the Priors upon an older tower of a family of magnates, the Foraboschi, and it was also known as the Torre della Vacca. When, in those fierce democratic days, its great bell rang to summon a Parliament in the Piazza, or to call the companies of the city to arms, it was popularly said that "the cow"

was lowing. The upper part of the tower belongs to the fifteenth century. Stupendous though the Palazzo is, it would have been of vaster proportions but for the prohibition given to Arnolfo to raise the house of the Republic where the dwellings of the Uberti had once stood--_ribelli di Firenze e Ghibellini_. Not even the heroism of Farinata could make this stern people less "fierce against my kindred in all its laws," as that great Ghibelline puts it to Dante in the _Inferno_.

The present steps and platform in front of the Palace are only the remnants of the famous Ringhiera constructed here in the fourteenth century, and removed in 1812. On it the Signoria used to meet to address the crowd in the Piazza, or to enter upon their term of office. Here, at one time, the Gonfaloniere received the Standard of the People, and here, at a somewhat later date, the batons of command were given to the condottieri who led the mercenaries in the pay of the Republic. Here the famous meeting took place at which the Duke of Athens was acclaimed _Signore a vita_ by the mob; and here, a few months later, his Burgundian followers thrust out the most unpopular of his agents to be torn to pieces by the besiegers. Here the Papal Commissioners and the Eight sat on the day of Savonarola's martyrdom, as told in the last chapter.

The inscription over the door, with the monogram of Christ, was placed here by the Gonfaloniere Niccol Capponi in February 1528, in the last temporary restoration of the Republic; it originally announced that Jesus Christ had been chosen King of the Florentine People, but was modified by Cosimo I. The huge marble group of Hercules and Cacus on the right, by Baccio Bandinelli, is an atrocity; in Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography there is a rare story of how he and Baccio wrangled about it in the Duke's presence, on which occasion Bandinelli was stung into making a foul--but probably true--accusation against Cellini, which might have had serious consequences. The Marzocco on the left, the emblematical lion of Florence, is a copy from Donatello.

The court is the work of Michelozzo, commenced in 1434, on the return of the elder Cosimo from exile. The stucco ornamentations and grotesques were executed in 1565, on the occasion of the marriage of Francesco dei Medici, son of Cosimo I., with Giovanna of Austria; the faded frescoes are partly intended to symbolise the ducal exploits, partly views of Austrian cities in compliment to the bride. The bronze boy with a dolphin, on the fountain in the centre of the court, was made by Andrea Verrocchio for Lorenzo the Magnificent; it is an exquisite little work, full of life and motion--"the little boy who for ever half runs and half flits across the courtyard of the Palace, while the dolphin ceaselessly struggles in the arms, whose pressure sends the water spurting from the nostrils."[27]

[27] Mr Armstrong in his _Lorenzo de' Medici_.

On the first floor is the _Sala del Consiglio Grande_, frequently called the _Salone dei Cinquecento_. It was mainly constructed in 1495 by Simone del Pollaiuolo, called Cronaca from his capacity of telling endless stories about Fra Girolamo. Here the Greater Council met, which the Friar declared was the work of G.o.d and not of man. And here it was that, in a famous sermon preached before the Signoria and chief citizens on August 20th, 1496, he cried: "I want no hats, no mitres great or small; nought would I have save what Thou hast given to Thy saints--death; a red hat, a hat of blood--this do I desire." It was supposed that the Pope had offered to make him a cardinal. In this same hall on the evening of May 22nd, 1498, the evening before their death, Savonarola was allowed an hour's interview with his two companions; it was the first time that they had met since their arrest, and in the meanwhile Savonarola had been told that the others had recanted, and Domenico and Silvestro had been shown what purported to be their master's confession, seeming, in part at least, to abjure the cause for which Fra Domenico was yearning to shed his blood. A few years later, in 1503, the Gonfaloniere Piero Soderini intrusted the decoration of these walls to Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; and it was then that this hall, so consecrated to liberty, became _la scuola del mondo_, the school of all the world in art; and Raphael himself was among the most ardent of its scholars. Leonardo drew his famous scene of the Battle of the Standard, and appears to have actually commenced painting on the wall. Michelangelo sketched the cartoon of a group of soldiers bathing in the Arno, suddenly surprised by the sound of the trumpet calling them to arms; but he did not proceed any further. These cartoons played the same part in the art of the Cinquecento as Masaccio's Carmine frescoes in that of the preceding century; it is the universal testimony of contemporaries that they were the supremely perfect works of the Renaissance. Vasari gives a full description of each--but no traces of the original works now remain. One episode from Leonardo's cartoon is preserved in an engraving by Edelinck after a copy, which is hardly likely to have been a faithful one, by Rubens; and there is an earlier engraving as well. A few figures are to be seen in a drawing at Venice, doubtfully ascribed to Raphael. Drawings and engravings of Michelangelo's soldiers have made a portion of his composition familiar--enough at least to make the world realise something of the extent of its loss.

On the restoration of the Medici in 1512, the hall was used as a barracks for their foreign soldiers; and Vasari accuses Baccio Bandinelli of having seized the opportunity to destroy Michelangelo's cartoon--which hardly seems probable. The frescoes which now cover the walls are by Vasari and his school, the statues of the Medici partly by Bandinelli, whilst that of Fra Girolamo is modern. It was in this hall that the first Parliament of United Italy met, during the short period when Florence was the capital. The adjoining rooms, called after various ill.u.s.trious members of the Medicean family, are adorned with pompous uninspiring frescoes of their exploits by Vasari; in the Salotto di Papa Clemente there is a representation of the siege of Florence by the papal and imperial armies, which gives a fine idea of the magnitude of the third walls of the city, Arnolfo's walls, though even then the towers had been in part shortened.

On the second floor, the hall prettily known as the Sala dei Gigli contains some frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio, executed about 1482.

They represent St Zen.o.bius in his majesty, enthroned between Eugenius and Crescentius, with Roman heroes as it were in attendance upon this great patron of the Florentines. In a lunette, painted in imitation of bas-relief, there is a peculiarly beautiful Madonna and Child with Angels, also by Domenico Ghirlandaio. This room is sometimes called the Sala del Orologio, from a wonderful old clock that once stood here. The following room, into which a door with marble framework by Benedetto da Maiano leads, is the audience chamber of the Signoria; it was originally to have been decorated by Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Perugino, and Filippino Lippi--but the present frescoes are by Salviati in the middle of the sixteenth century. Here, on the fateful day of the _Cimento_ or Ordeal, the two Franciscans, Francesco da Puglia and Giuliano Rondinelli, consulted with the Priors and then pa.s.sed into the Chapel to await the event. Beyond is the Priors'

Chapel, dedicated to St Bernard and decorated with frescoes in imitation of mosaic by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (Domenico's son). Here on the morning of his martyrdom Savonarola said Ma.s.s, and, before actually communicating, took the Host in his hands and uttered his famous prayer:--

"Lord, I know that Thou art that very G.o.d, the Creator of the world and of human nature. I know that Thou art that perfect, indivisible and inseparable Trinity, distinct in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I know that Thou art that Eternal Word, who didst descend from Heaven to earth in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Thou didst ascend the wood of the Cross to shed Thy precious Blood for us, miserable sinners. I pray Thee, my Lord; I pray Thee, my Salvation; I pray Thee, my Consoler; that such precious Blood be not shed for me in vain, but may be for the remission of all my sins. For these I crave Thy pardon, from the day that I received the water of Holy Baptism even to this moment; and I confess to Thee, Lord, my guilt. And so I crave pardon of Thee for what offence I have done to this city and all this people, in things spiritual and temporal, as well as for all those things wherein of myself I am not conscious of having erred. And humbly do I crave pardon of all those persons who are here standing round. May they pray to G.o.d for me, and may He make me strong up to the last end, so that the enemy may have no power over me. Amen."

Beyond the Priors' chapel are the apartments of Duke Cosimo's Spanish wife, Eleonora of Toledo, with a little chapel decorated by Bronzino.

It was in these rooms that the d.u.c.h.ess stormed at poor Benvenuto Cellini, when he pa.s.sed through to speak with the Duke--as he tells us in his autobiography. Benvenuto had an awkward knack of suddenly appearing here whenever the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess were particularly busy; but their children were hugely delighted at seeing him, and little Don Garzia especially used to pull him by the cloak and "have the most pleasant sport with me that such a _bambino_ could have."

A room in the tower, discovered in 1814, is supposed to be the Alberghettino, in which the elder Cosimo was imprisoned in 1433, and in which Savonarola pa.s.sed his last days--save when he was brought down to the Bargello to be tortured. Here the Friar wrote his meditations upon the _In te, Domine, speravi_ and the _Miserere_--meditations which became famous throughout Christendom. The prayer, quoted above, is usually printed as a pendant to the _Miserere_.

On the left of the palace, the great fountain with Neptune and his riotous G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of the sea, by Bartolommeo Ammanati and his contemporaries, is a characteristic production of the later Cinquecento. No less characteristic, though in another way, is the equestrian statue in bronze of Cosimo I., as first Grand Duke of Tuscany, by Giovanni da Bologna; the tyrant sits on his steed, gloomily guarding the Palace and Piazza where he has finally extinguished the last sparks of republican liberty. It was finished in 1594, in the days of his son Ferdinand I., the third Grand Duke.

At the beginning of the Via Gondi, adjoining the custom-house and now incorporated in the Palazzo Vecchio, was the palace of the Captain, the residence of the Bargello and Executor of Justice. It was here that the Pazzi conspirators were hung out of the windows in 1478; here that Bernardo del Nero and his a.s.sociates were beheaded in 1497; and here, in the following year, the examination of Savonarola and his adherents was carried on. Near here, too, stood in old times the Serraglio, or den of the lions, which was also incorporated by Vasari into the Palace; the Via del Leone, in which Vasari's rather fine rustica facade stands, is named from them still.

The Piazza saw the Pisan captives forced ignominiously to kiss the Marzocco in 1364, and to build the so-called Tetto dei Pisani, which formerly stood on the west, opposite the Palace. In this Piazza, too, the people a.s.sembled in parliament at the sounding of the great bell.

In the fifteenth century, this simply meant that whatever party in the State desired to alter the government, in their own favour, occupied the openings of the Piazza with troops; and the noisy rabble that appeared on these occasions, to roar out their a.s.sent to whatever was proposed, had but little connection with the real People of Florence.

Among the wildest scenes that this Piazza has witnessed were those during the rising of the Ciompi in 1378, when again and again the populace surged round the Palace with their banners and wild cries, until the terrified Signoria granted their demands. Here, too, took place Savonarola's famous burnings of the Vanities in Carnival time; large piles of these "l.u.s.tful things" were surmounted by allegorical figures of King Carnival, or of Lucifer and the seven deadly sins, and then solemnly fired; while the people sang the _Te Deum_, the bells rang, and the trumpets and drums of the Signoria pealed out their loudest. But sport of less serious kind went on here too--tournaments and shows of wild beasts and the like--things that the Florentines dearly loved, and in which their rulers found it politic to fool them to the top of their bent. For instance, on June 25th, 1514, there was a _caccia_ of a specially magnificent kind; a sort of glorified bull-fight, in which a fountain surrounded by green woods was constructed in the middle of the Piazza, and two lions, with bears and leopards, bulls, buffaloes, stags, horses, and the like were driven into the arena. Enormous prices were paid for seats; foreigners came from all countries, and four Roman cardinals were conspicuous, including Raphael's Bibbiena, disguised as Spanish gentlemen. Several people were killed by the beasts. It was always a sore point with the Florentines that their lions were such unsatisfactory brutes and never distinguished themselves on these occasions; they were no match for your Spanish bull, at a time when, in politics, the bull's master had yoked all Italy to his triumphal car.

The _Loggia dei Priori_, now called the _Loggia dei Lanzi_ after the German lancers of Duke Cosimo who were stationed here, was originally built for the Priors and other magistrates to exercise public functions, with all the display that mediaeval republics knew so well how to use. It is a kind of great open vaulted hall; a throne for a popular government, as M. Reymond calls it. Although frequently known as the Loggia of Orcagna, it was commenced in 1376 by Benci di Cione and Simone Talenti, and is intermediate in style between Gothic and Renaissance (in contrast to the pure Gothic of the Bigallo). The sculptures above, frequently ascribed to Agnolo Gaddi and representing the Virtues, are now a.s.signed to Giovanni d'Ambrogio and Jacopo di Piero, and were executed between 1380 and 1390. Among the numerous statues that now stand beneath its roof (and which include Giambologna's Rape of the Sabines) are two of the finest bronzes in Florence: Donatello's _Judith and Holofernes_, cast for Cosimo the elder, and originally in the Medicean Palace, but, on the expulsion of the younger Piero, set up on the Ringhiera with the threatening inscription: _exemplum Salutis Publicae_; and Benvenuto Cellini's _Perseus with the head of Medusa_, cast in 1553 for the Grand Duke Cosimo (then only Duke), and possibly intended as a kind of despotic counter-blast to the Judith. The pedestal (with the exception of the bas-relief in front, of which the original is in the Bargello) is also Cellini's. Cellini gives us a rare account of the exhibiting of this Perseus to the people, while the Duke himself lurked behind a window over the door of the palace to hear what was said. He a.s.sures us that the crowd gazed upon him--that is, the artist, not the statue--as something altogether miraculous for having accomplished such a work, and that two n.o.blemen from Sicily accosted him as he walked in the Piazza, with such ceremony as would have been too much even towards the Pope. He took a holiday in honour of the event, sang psalms and hymns the whole way out of Florence, and was absolutely convinced that the _ne plus ultra_ of art had been reached.

But it is of Savonarola, and not of Benvenuto Cellini, that the Loggia reminds us; for here was the scene of the _Cimento di Fuoco_, the ordeal of fire, on April 7th, 1498. An immense crowd of men filled the Piazza; women and children were excluded, but packed every inch of windows, roofs, balconies. The streets and entrances were strongly held by troops, while more were drawn up round the Palace under Giovacchino della Vecchia. The platform bearing the intended pyre--a most formidable death-trap, which was to be fired behind the champions as soon as they were well within it--ran out from the Ringhiera towards the centre of the Piazza. In spite of the strict proclamation to armed men not to enter, Doffo Spini appeared with three hundred Compagnacci, "all armed like Paladins," says Simone Filipepi,[28] "in favour of the friars of St Francis." They entered the Piazza with a tremendous uproar, and formed up under the Tetto dei Pisani, opposite the Palace. Simone says that there was a pre-arranged plot, in virtue of which they only waited for a sign from the Palace to cut the Dominicans and their adherents to pieces. The Loggia was divided into two parts, the half nearer the Palace a.s.signed to the Franciscans, the other, in which a temporary altar had been erected, to the Dominicans.

In front of the Loggia the sun flashed back from the armour of a picked band of soldiers, under Marcuccio Salviati, apparently intended as a counter demonstration to Doffo Spini and his young aristocrats.

The Franciscans were first on the field, and quietly took their station. Their two champions entered the Palace, and were seen no more during the proceedings. Then with exultant strains of the _Exsurgat Deus_, the Dominicans slowly made their way down the Corso degli Adimari and through the Piazza in procession, two and two. Their fierce psalm was caught up and re-echoed by their adherents as they pa.s.sed. Preceded by a Crucifix, about two hundred of these black and white "hounds of the Lord" entered the field of battle, followed by Fra Domenico in a rich cope, and then Savonarola in full vestments with the Blessed Sacrament, attended by deacon and sub-deacon. A band of devout republican laymen, with candles and red crosses, brought up the rear. Savonarola entered the Loggia, set the Sacrament on the altar, and solemnly knelt in adoration.

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

Then, while Fra Girolamo stood firm as a column, delay after delay commenced. The Dominican's cope might be enchanted, or his robe too for the matter of that, so Domenico was hurried into the Palace and his garments changed. The two Franciscan stalwarts remained in the Priors' chapel. In the meanwhile a storm pa.s.sed over the city. A rush of the Compagnacci and populace towards the Loggia was driven back by Salviati's guard. Domenico returned with changed garments, and stood among the Franciscans; stones hurtled about him; he would enter the fire with the Crucifix--this was objected to; then with the Sacrament--this was worse. Domenico was convinced that he would pa.s.s through the ordeal scathless, and that the Sacrament would not protect him if his cause were not just; but he was equally convinced that it was G.o.d's will that he should not enter the fire without it. Evening fell in the midst of the wrangling, and at last the Signoria ordered both parties to go home. Only the efforts of Salviati and his soldiery saved Savonarola and Domenico from being torn to pieces at the hands of the infuriated mob, who apparently concluded that they had been trifled with. "As the Father Fra Girolamo issued from the Loggia with the Most Holy Sacrament in his hands," says Simone Filipepi, who was present, "and Fra Domenico with his Crucifix, the signal was given from the Palace to Doffo Spini to carry out his design; but he, as it pleased G.o.d, would do nothing." The Franciscans of Santa Croce were promised an annual subsidy of sixty pieces of silver for their share in the day's work: "Here, take the price of the innocent blood you have betrayed," was their greeting when they came to demand it.

In after years, Doffo Spini was fond of gossiping with Botticelli and his brother, Simone Filipepi, and made no secret of his intention of killing Savonarola on this occasion. Yet, of all the Friar's persecutors, he was the only one that showed any signs of penitence for what he had done. "On the ninth day of April, 1503," writes Simone in his Chronicle, "as I, Simone di Mariano Filipepi, was leaving my house to go to vespers in San Marco, Doffo Spini, who was in the company of Bartolommeo di Lorenzo Carducci, saluted me. Bartolommeo turned to me, and said that Fra Girolamo and the Piagnoni had spoilt and undone the city; whereupon many words pa.s.sed between him and me, which I will not set down here. But Doffo interposed, and said that he had never had any dealings with Fra Girolamo, until the time when, as a member of the Eight, he had to examine him in prison; and that, if he had heard Fra Girolamo earlier and had been intimate with him, 'even as Simone here'--turning to me--'I would have been a more ardent partisan of his than even Simone, for nothing save good was ever seen in him even unto his death.'"

THE UFFIZI

Beyond the Palazzo Vecchio, between the Piazza and the Arno, stands the Palazzo degli Uffizi, which Giorgio Vasari reared in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, for Cosimo I. It contains the Archives, the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale (which includes the Palatine and Magliabecchian Libraries, and, like all similar inst.i.tutions in Italy, is generously thrown open to all comers without reserve), and, above all, the great picture gallery commenced by the Grand Dukes, usually simply known as the Uffizi and now officially the Galleria Reale degli Uffizi, which, together with its continuation in the Pitti Palace across the river, is undoubtedly the finest collection of pictures in the world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING THROUGH VASARI'S LOGGIA, UFFIZI]

Leaving the double lines of ill.u.s.trious Florentines, men great in the arts of war and peace, in their marble niches watching over the pigeons who throng the Portico, we ascend to the picture gallery by the second door to the left.[29]

[29] The following notes make no pretence at furnis.h.i.+ng a catalogue, but are simply intended to indicate the more important Italian pictures, especially the princ.i.p.al masterpieces of, or connected with the Florentine school.