In the tiny Gem Room at the end of the corridor are wonders of the lapidary"s art--and here is the famous intaglio portrait of Savonarola--but they want better treatment. The vases and other ornaments should have the light all round them, as in the Galerie d"Apollon at the Louvre. These are packed together in wall cases and are hard to see.
Pa.s.sing through the end corridor, where the beautiful Matrona reclines so placidly on her couch against the light, and where we have such pleasant views of the Ponte Vecchio, the Trinita bridge, the Arno, and the Apennines, so fresh and real and soothing after so much paint, we come to the rooms containing the famous collection of self-painted portraits, which, moved hither from Rome, has been acc.u.mulating in the Uffizi for many years and is still growing, to be invited to contribute to it being one of the highest honours a painter can receive. The portraits occupy eight rooms and a pa.s.sage. Though the collection is historically and biographically valuable, it contains for every interesting portrait three or four dull ones, and thus becomes something of a weariness. Among the best are Lucas Cranach, Anton More, Van Dyck, Rembrandt (three), Rubens, Seybold, Jordaens, Reynolds, and Romney, all of which remind us of Michelangelo"s dry comment, "Every painter draws himself well". Among the most interesting to us, wandering in Florence, are the two Andreas, one youthful and the other grown fatter than one likes and very different from the melancholy romantic figure in the Pitti; Verrocchio, by Lorenzo di Credi; Carlo Dolci, surprising by its good sense and humour; Raphael, angelic, wistful, and weak; Tintoretto, old and powerful; and Jacopo Ba.s.sano, old and simple. Among the moderns, Corot"s portrait of himself is one of the most memorable, but Fantin Latour, Flandrin, Leon Bonnat, and Lenbach are all strong and modest; which one cannot say of our own Leighton. Among the later English heads Orchardson"s is notable, but Mr. Sargent"s is disappointing.
We now come to one of the most remarkable rooms in the gallery, where every picture is a gem; but since all are northern pictures, imported, I give no reproductions. This is the Sala di Van der Goes, so called from the great work here, the triptych, painted in 1474 to 1477 by Hugo van der Goes, who died in 1482, and was born at Ghent or Leyden about 1405. This painter, of whose genius there can be no question, is supposed to have been a pupil of the Van Eycks. Not much is known of him save that he painted at Bruges and Ghent and in 1476 entered a convent at Brussels where he was allowed to dine with distinguished strangers who came to see him and where he drank so much wine that his natural excitability turned to insanity. He seems, however, to have recovered, and if ever a picture showed few signs of a deranged or inflamed mind it is this, which was painted for the agent of the Medici bank at Bruges, Tommaso Portinari, who presented it to the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova in his native city of Florence, which had been founded by his ancestor Folco, the father of Dante"s Beatrice. The left panel shows Tommaso praying with his two sons Antonio and Pigallo, the right his wife Maria Portinari and their adorably quaint little daughter with her charming head-dress and costume. The flowers in the centre panel are among the most beautiful things in any Florentine picture: not wild and wayward like Luca Signorelli"s, but most exquisitely done: irises, red lilies, columbines and dark red clove pinks--all unexpected and all very unlikely to be in such a wintry landscape at all. On the ground are violets. The whole work is grave, austere, cool, and as different as can be from the Tuscan spirit; yet it is said to have had a deep influence on the painters of the time and must have drawn throngs to the Hospital to see it.
The other Flemish and German pictures in the room are all remarkable and all warmer in tone. No. 906, an unknown work, is perhaps the finest: a Crucifixion, which might have borrowed its richness from the Carpaccio, we saw in the Venetian room. There is a fine Adoration of the Magi, by Gerard David (1460-1523); an unknown portrait of Pierantonio Baroncelli and his wife, with a lovely landscape; a jewel of paint by Hans Memling (1425-1492)--No. 703--the Madonna Enthroned; a masterpiece of drawing by Durer, "Calvary"; an austere and poignant Transportation of Christ to the Sepulchre, by Roger van der Weyden (1400-1464); and several very beautiful portraits by Memling, notably Nos. 769 and 780 with their lovely evening light. Memling, indeed, I never liked better than here. Other fine pictures are a Spanish prince by Lucas van Leyden; an old Dutch scholar by an artist unknown, No. 784; and a young husband and wife by Joost van Cleef the Elder, and a Breughel the Elder, like an old Crome--a beauty--No. 928. The room is interesting both for itself and also as showing how the Flemish brushes were working at the time that so many of the great Italians were engaged on similar themes.
After the cool, self-contained, scientific work of these northerners it is a change to enter the Sala di Rubens and find that luxuriant giant--their compatriot, but how different!--once more. In the Uffizi, Rubens seems more foreign, far, than any one, so fleshly pagan is he. In Antwerp Cathedral his "Descent from the Cross," although its bravura is, as always with him, more noticeable than its piety, might be called a religious picture, but I doubt if even that would seem so here. At any rate his Uffizi works are all secular, while his "Holy Family" in the Pitti is merely domestic and robust. His Florentine masterpieces are the two Henri IV pictures in this room, "Henri IV at Ivry," magnificent if not war, and "Henri"s entry into Paris after Ivry," with its confusing muddle of naked warriors and spears. Only Rubens could have painted these spirited, impossible, glorious things, which for all their greatness send one"s thoughts back longingly to the portrait of his wife, in the Tribuna, while No. 216--the Baccha.n.a.le--is so coa.r.s.e as almost to send one"s feet there too.
Looking round the room, after Rubens has been dismissed, it is too evident that the best of the Uffizi collection is behind us. There are interesting portraits here, but biographically rather than artistically. Here are one or two fine Sustermans" (1597-1681), that imported painter whom we shall find in such rare form at the Pitti. Here, for example, is Ferdinand II, who did so much for the Uffizi and so little for Galileo; and his cousin and wife Vittoria della Rovere, daughter of Claudia de" Medici (whose portrait, No. 763, is on the easel), and Federigo della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. This silly, plump lady had been married at the age of fourteen, and she brought her husband a little money and many pictures from Urbino, notably those delightful portraits of an earlier Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino by Piero della Francesca, and also the two t.i.tian "Venuses"
in the Tribuna. Ferdinand II and his Grand d.u.c.h.ess were on bad terms for most of their lives, and she behaved foolishly, and brought up her son Cosimo III foolishly, and altogether was a misfortune to Florence. Sustermans the painter she held in the highest esteem, and in return he painted her not only as herself but in various unlikely characters, among them a Vestal Virgin and even the Madonna.
Here also is No. 196, Van Dyck"s portrait of Margherita of Lorraine, whose daughter became Cosimo III"s wife--a mischievous, weak face but magnificently painted; and No. 1536, a vividly-painted elderly widow by Jordaens (1593-1678); and on each side of the outrageous Rubens a distinguished Dutch gentleman and lady by the placid, refined Mierevelt.
The two priceless rooms devoted to Iscrizioni come next, but we will finish the pictures first and therefore pa.s.s on to the Sala di Baroccio. Federigo Baroccio (1528-1612) is one of the later painters for whom I, at any rate, cannot feel any enthusiasm. His position in the Uffizi is due rather to the circ.u.mstance that he was a protege of the Cardinal della Rovere at Rome, whose collection came here, than to his genius. This room again is of interest rather historically than artistically. Here, for example, are some good Medici portraits by Bronzino, among them the famous Eleanora of Toledo, wife of Cosimo I, in a rich brocade (in which she was buried), with the little staring Ferdinand I beside her. Eleanora, as we saw in chapter V. was the first mistress of the Pitti palace, and the lady who so disliked Cellini and got him into such trouble through his lying tongue. Bronzino"s little Maria de" Medici--No. 1164--is more pleasing, for the other picture has a sinister air. This child, the first-born of Cosimo I and Eleanora, died when only sixteen. Baroccio has a fine portrait--Francesco Maria II, last Duke of Urbino, and the grandfather of the Vittoria della Rovere whom we saw in the Sala di Rubens. Here also is a portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent by Vasari, but it is of small value since Vasari was not born till after Lorenzo"s death. The Galileo by Sustermans--No. 163--on the contrary would be from life; and after the Tribuna portrait of Rubens" first wife it is interesting to find here his pleasant portrait of Helen Fourment, his second. To my eyes two of the most attractive pictures in the room are the Young Sculptor--No. 1266--by Bronzino, and the version of Leonardo"s S. Anne at the Louvre by Andrea Salaino of Milan (1483?-1520?). I like also the hints of tenderness of Bernardino Luini which break through the hardness of the Aurelio Luini picture--No. 204. For the rest there are some sickly Guido Renis and Carlo Dolcis and a sentimental Guercino.
But the most popular works--on Sundays--are the two Gerard Honthorsts, and not without reason, for they are dramatic and bold and vivid, and there is a Baby in each that goes straight to the maternal heart. No. 157 is perhaps the more satisfying, but I have more reason to remember the larger one--the Adoration of the Shepherds--for I watched a copyist produce a most remarkable replica of it in something under a week, on the same scale. He was a short, swarthy man with a neck like a bull"s, and he carried the task off with astonishing brio, never drawing a line, finishing each part as he came to it, and talking to a friend or an official the whole time. Somehow one felt him to be precisely the type of copyist that Gherardo della Notte ought to have. This painter was born at Utrecht in 1590 but went early to Italy, and settling in Rome devoted himself to mastering the methods of Amerighi, better known as Caravaggio (1569-1609), who specialized in strong contrasts of light and shade. After learning all he could in Rome, Honthorst returned to Holland and made much money and fame, for his hand was swift and sure. Charles I engaged him to decorate Whitehall. He died in 1656. These two Honthorsts are, as I say, the most popular of the pictures on Sunday, when the Uffizi is free; but their supremacy is challenged by the five inlaid tables, one of which, chiefly in lapis lazuli, must be the bluest thing on earth.
Pa.s.sing for the present the Sala di Niobe, we come to the Sala di Giovanni di San Giovanni, which is given to a second-rate painter who was born in 1599 and died in 1636. His best work is a fresco at the Badia of Fiesole. Here he has some theatrical things, including one picture which sends English ladies out blushing. Here also are some Lelys, including "Nelly Gwynn". Next are two rooms, one leading from the other, given to German and Flemish pictures and to miniatures, both of which are interesting. In the first are more Durers, and that alone would make it a desirable resort. Here is a "Virgin and Child"--No. 851--very naive and homely, and the beautiful portrait of his father--No. 766---a symphony of brown and green. Less attractive works from the same hand are the "Apostle Philip"--No. 777--and "S. Giacomo Maggiore," an old man very coa.r.s.ely painted by comparison with the artist"s father. Here also is a very beautiful portrait of Richard Southwell, by Holbein, with the peac.o.c.k-green background that we know so well and always rejoice to see; a typical candle-light Schalcken, No. 800; several golden Poelenburghs; an anonymous portrait of Virgilius von Hytta of Zuicham, No. 784; a clever smiling lady by Sustermans, No. 709; the Signora Puliciani and her husband, No. 699; a rather crudely coloured Rubens--"Venus and Adonis"--No. 812; the same artist"s "Three Graces," in monochrome, very naked; and some quaint portraits by Lucas Cranach.
But no doubt to many persons the most enchaining picture here is the Medusa"s head, which used to be called a Leonardo and quite satisfied Ruskin of its genuineness, but is now attributed to the Flemish school. The head, at any rate, would seem to be very similar to that of which Vasari speaks, painted by Leonardo for a peasant, but retained by his father. Time has dealt hardly with the paint, and one has to study minutely before Medusa"s horrors are visible. Whether Leonardo"s or not, it is not uninteresting to read how the picture affected Sh.e.l.ley when he saw it here in 1819:--
... Its Horror and its Beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seem to lie Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine, Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, The agonies of anguish and of death.
The little room leading from this one should be neglected by no one interested in Medicean history, for most of the family is here, in miniature, by Bronzino"s hand. Here also are miniatures by other great painters, such as Pourbus, Guido Reni, Ba.s.sano, Clouet, Holbein. Look particularly at No. 3382, a woman with brown hair, in purple--a most fascinating little picture. The Ignota in No. 3348 might easily be Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I of England. The other exhibits are copies in miniature of famous pictures, notable among them a Raphael--No. 3386--and a Breughel--No. 3445--while No. 3341, the robing of a monk, is worth attention.
We come now to the last pictures of the collection--in three little rooms at the end, near the bronze sleeping Cupid. Those in the first room were being rearranged when I was last here; the others contain Dutch works notable for a few masterpieces. There are too many Poelenburghs, but the taste shown as a whole is good. Perhaps to the English enthusiast for painting the fine landscape by Hercules Seghers will, in view of the recent agitation over Lord Lansdowne"s Rembrandt, "The Mill,"--ascribed in some quarters to Seghers--be the most interesting picture of all. It is a sombre, powerful scene of rugged coast which any artist would have been proud to sign; but it in no way recalls "The Mill"s" serene strength. Among the best of its companions are a very good Terburg, a very good Metsu, and an extremely beautiful Ruysdael.
And so we are at the end of the pictures--but only to return again and again--and are not unwilling to fall into the trap of the official who sits here, and allow him to unlock the door behind the Laoc.o.o.n group and enjoy what he recommends as a "bella vista" from the open s.p.a.ce, which turns out to be the roof of the Loggia de" Lanzi. From this high point one may see much of Florence and its mountains, while, on looking down, over the coping, one finds the busy Piazza della Signoria below, with all its cabs and wayfarers.
Returning to the gallery, we come quickly on the right to the first of the neglected statuary rooms, the beautiful Sala di Niobe, which contains some interesting Medicean and other tapestries, and the sixteen statues of Niobe and her children from the Temple of Apollo, which the Cardinal Ferdinand de" Medici acquired, and which were for many years at the Villa Medici at Rome. A suggested reconstruction of the group will be found by the door. I cannot pretend to a deep interest in the figures, but I like to be in the room. The famous Medicean vase is in the middle of it. Sculpture more ingratiating is close by, in the two rooms given to Iscrizioni: a collection of priceless antiques which are not only beautiful but peculiarly interesting in that they can be compared with the work of Donatello, Verrocchio, and other of the Renaissance sculptors. For in such a case comparisons are anything but odious and become fascinating. In the first room there is, for example, a Mercury, isolated on the left, in marble, who is a blood relation of Donatello"s bronze David in the Bargello; and certain reliefs of merry children, on the right, low down, as one approaches the second room, are cousins of the same sculptor"s cantoria romps. Not that Donatello ever reproduced the antique spirit as Michelangelo nearly did in his Bacchus, and Sansovino absolutely did in his Bacchus, both at the Bargello: Donatello was of his time, and the spirit of his time animates his creations, but he had studied the Greek art in Rome and profited by his lessons, and his evenly-balanced humane mind had a warm corner for pagan joyfulness. Among other statues in this first room is a Sacerdotessa, wearing a marble robe with long folds, whose hands can be seen through the drapery. Opposite the door are Bacchus and Ampelos, superbly pagan, while a sleeping Cupid is most lovely. Among the various fine heads is one of Cicero, of an Unknown--No. 377--and of Homer in bronze (called by the photographers Aristophanes). But each thing in turn is almost the best. The trouble is that the Uffizi is so vast, and the Renaissance seems to be so eminently the only proper study of mankind when one is here, that to attune oneself to the enjoyment of antique sculpture needs a special effort which not all are ready to make.
In the centre of the next room is the punctual Hermaphrodite without which no large Continental gallery is complete. But more worthy of attention is the torso of a faun on the left, on a revolving pedestal which (unlike those in the Bargello, as we shall discover) really does revolve and enables you to admire the perfect back. There is also a torso in basalt or porphyry which one should study from all points, and on the walls some wonderful portions of a frieze from the Ara Pacis, erected in Rome, B.C. 139, with wonderful figures of men, women, and children on it. Among the heads is a colossal Alexander, very fine indeed, a beautiful Antoninus, a benign and silly Roman lady in whose existence one can quite believe, and a melancholy Seneca. Look also at Nos. 330 and 332, on the wall: 330, a charming genius, carrying one of Jove"s thunderbolts; and 332, a boy who is sheer Luca della Robbia centuries before his birth.
I ought to add that, in addition to the various salons in the Uffizi, the long corridors are hung with pictures too, in chronological order, the earliest of all being to the right of the entrance door, and in the corridors there is also some admirable statuary. But the pictures here, although not the equals of those in the rooms, receive far too little attention, while the sculpture receives even less, whether the beutiful full-length athletes or the reliefs on the cisterns, several of which have riotous Dionysian processions. On the stairs, too, are some very beautiful works; while at the top, in the turnstile room, is the original of the boar which Tacca copied in bronze for the Mercato Nuovo, and just outside it are the Medici who were chiefly concerned with the formation of the collection. On the first landing, nearest the ground, is a very beautiful and youthful Bacchus. The ceilings of the Uffizi rooms and corridors also are painted, thoughtfully and dexterously, in the Pompeian manner; but there are limits to the receptive capacity of travellers" eyes, and I must plead guilty to consistently neglecting them.
CHAPTER XII
"Aerial Fiesole"
Andrea del Sarto--Fiesole sights--The Villa Palmieri and the "Decameron"--Botticini"s picture in the National Gallery--S. Francesco--The Roman amphitheatre--The Etruscan museum--A sculptor"s walk--The Badia di Fiesole--Brunelleschi again--Giovanni di San Giovanni.
After all these pictures, how about a little climbing? From so many windows in Florence, along so many streets, from so many loggias and towers, and perhaps, above all, from the Piazzale di Michelangelo, Fiesole is to be seen on her hill, with the beautiful campanile of her church in the dip between the two eminences, that very soon one comes to feel that this surely is the promised land. Florence lies so low, and the delectable mountain is so near and so alluring. But I am not sure that to dream of Fiesole as desirable, and to murmur its beautiful syllables, is not best.
Let me sit Here by the window with your hand in mine, And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole
--that was Andrea"s way and not an unwise one. For Fiesole at nearer view can easily disappoint. It is beautifully set on its hill and it has a fascinating past; but the journey thither on foot is very wearisome, by the electric tram vexatious and noisy, and in a horse-drawn carriage expensive and cruel; and when you are there you become once more a tourist without alleviation and are pestered by beggars, and by nice little girls who ought to know better, whose peculiar importunacy it is to thrust flowers into the hand or b.u.t.tonhole without any denial. What should have been a mountain retreat from the city has become a kind of Devil"s d.y.k.e. But if one is resolute, and, defying all, walks up to the little monastery of S. Francesco at the very top of the hill, one may rest almost undisturbed, with Florence in the valley below, and gardens and vineyards undulating beneath, and a monk or two ascending or descending the steps, and three or four picture-postcard hawkers gambling in a corner, and lizards on the wall. Here it is good to be in the late afternoon, when the light is mellowing; and if you want tea there is a little loggia a few yards down this narrow steep path where it may be found. How many beautiful villas in which one could be happy sunning oneself among the lizards lie between this point and Florence! Who, sitting here, can fail to think that?
In walking to Fiesole one follows the high walls of the Villa Palmieri, which is now very private American property, but is famous for ever as the first refuge of Boccaccio"s seven young women and three young men when they fled from plague-stricken Florence in 1348 and told tales for ten halcyon days. It is now generally agreed that if Boccaccio had any particular house in his mind it was this. It used to be thought that the Villa Poggio Gherardo, Mrs. Ross"s beautiful home on the way to Settignano, was the first refuge, and the Villa Palmieri the second, but the latest researches have it that the Palmieri was the first and the Podere della Fonte, or Villa di Boccaccio, as it is called, near Camerata, a little village below S. Domenico, the other. The Villa Palmieri has another and somewhat different historical a.s.sociation, for it was there that Queen Victoria resided for a while in 1888. But the most interesting thing of all about it is the circ.u.mstance that it was the home of Matteo Palmieri, the poet, and Botticelli"s friend and fellow-speculator on the riddle of life. Palmieri was the author of a remarkable poem called "La Citta della Vita" (The City of Life) which developed a scheme of theology that had many attractions to Botticelli"s curious mind. The poem was banned by Rome, although not until after its author"s death. In our National Gallery is a picture which used to be considered Botticelli"s--No. 1126, "The a.s.sumption of the Virgin"--especially as it is mentioned with some particularity by Vasari, together with the circ.u.mstance that the poet and painter devised it in collaboration, in which the poem is translated into pigment. As to the theology, I say nothing, nor as to its new ascription to Botticini; but the picture has a greater interest for us in that it contains a view of Florence with its wall of towers around it in about 1475. The exact spot where the painter sat has been identified by Miss Stokes in "Six Months in the Apennines". On the left immediately below the painter"s vantage-ground is the Mugnone, with a bridge over it. On the bank in front is the Villa Palmieri, and on the picture"s extreme left is the Badia of Fiesole.
On leaving S. Domenico, if still bent on walking, one should keep straight on and not follow the tram lines to the right. This is the old and terribly steep road which Lorenzo the Magnificent and his friends Politian and Pico della Mirandola had to travel whenever they visited the Medici villa, just under Fiesole, with its drive lined with cypresses. Here must have been great talk and much conviviality. It is now called the Villa McCalmont.
Once at Fiesole, by whatever means you reach it, do not neglect to climb the monastery steps to the very top. It is a day of climbing, and a hundred or more steps either way mean nothing now. For here is a gentle little church with swift, silent monks in it, and a few flowers in bowls, and a religious picture by that strange Piero di Cosimo whose heart was with the G.o.ds in exile; and the view of Monte Ceceri, on the other side of Fiesole, seen through the cypresses here, which could not be better in disposition had Benozzo Gozzoli himself arranged them, is very striking and memorable.
Fiesole"s darling son is Mino the sculptor--the "Raphael of the chisel"--whose radiant Madonnas and children and delicate tombs may be seen here and there all over Florence. The piazza is named after him; he is celebrated on a marble slab outside the museum, where all the famous names of the vicinity may be read too; and in the church is one of his most charming groups and finest heads. They are in a little chapel on the right of the choir. The head is that of Bishop Salutati, humorous, wise, and benign, and the group represents the adoration of a merry little Christ by a merry little S. John and others. As for the church itself, it is severe and cool, with such stone columns in it as must last for ever.
But the main interest of Fiesole to most people is not the cypress-covered hill of S. Francesco; not the view from the summit; not the straw mementoes; not the Mino relief in the church; but the Roman arena. The excavators have made of this a very complete place. One can stand at the top of the steps and reconstruct it all--the audience, the performance, the performers. A very little time spent on building would be needed to restore the amphitheatre to its original form. Beyond it are baths, and in a hollow the remains of a temple with the altar where it ever was; and then one walks a little farther and is on the ancient Etruscan wall, built when Fiesole was an Etruscan fortified hill city. So do the centuries fall away here! But everywhere, among the ancient Roman stones so ma.s.sive and exact, and the Etruscan stones, are the wild flowers which Luca Signorelli painted in that picture in the Uffizi which I love so much.
After the amphitheatre one visits the Museum--with the same ticket--a little building filled with trophies of the spade. There is nothing very wonderful--nothing to compare with the treasures of the Archaeological Museum in Florence--but it is well worth a visit.
On leaving the Museum on the last occasion that I was there--in April--I walked to Settignano. The road for a while is between houses, for Fiesole stretches a long way farther than one suspects, very high, looking over the valley of the Mugnone; and then after a period between pine trees and grape-hyacinths one turns to the right and begins to descend. Until Poggio del Castello, a n.o.ble villa, on an isolated eminence, the descent is very gradual, with views of Florence round the shoulder of Monte Ceceri; but afterwards the road winds, to ease the fall, and the wayfarer turns off into the woods and tumbles down the hill by a dry water-course, amid crags and stones, to the beginnings of civilization again, at the Via di Desiderio da Settignano, a sculptor who stands to his native town in precisely the same relation as Mino to his.
Settignano is a mere village, with villas all about it, and the thing to remember there is not only that Desiderio was born there but that Michelangelo"s foster-mother was the wife of a local stone-cutter--stone-cutting at that time being the staple industry. On the way back to Florence in the tram, one pa.s.ses on the right a gateway surmounted by statues of the poets, the Villa Poggio Gherardo, of which I have spoken earlier in the chapter. There is no villa with a n.o.bler mien than this.
That is one walk from Fiesole. Another is even more a sculptors" way: for it would include Maiano too, where Benedetto was born. The road is by way of the tram lines to that acute angle just below Fiesole when they turn back to S. Domenico, and so straight on down the hill.
But if one is returning to Florence direct after leaving Fiesole it is well to walk down the precipitous paths to S. Domenico, and before again taking the tram visit the Badia overlooking the valley of the Mugnone. This is done by turning to the right just opposite the church of S. Domenico, which has little interest structurally but is famous as being the chapel of the monastery where Fra Angelico was once a monk. The Badia (Abbey) di Fiesole, as it now is, was built on the site of an older monastery, by Cosimo Pater. Here Marsilio Ficino"s Platonic Academy used to meet, in the loggia and in the little temple which one gains from the cloisters, and here Pico della Mirandola composed his curious gloss on Genesis.
The dilapidated marble facade of the church and its rugged stone-work are exceedingly ancient--dating in fact from the eleventh century; the new building is by Brunelleschi and to my mind is one of his most beautiful works, its lovely proportions and cool, unfretted white s.p.a.ces communicating even more pleasure than the Pazzi chapel itself. The decoration has been kept simple and severe, and the colour is just the grey pietra serena of Fiesole, of which the lovely arches are made, all most exquisitely chiselled, and the pure white of the walls and ceilings. This church was a favourite with the Medici, and the youthful Giovanni, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, received his cardinal"s hat here in 1492, at the age of sixteen. He afterwards became Pope Leo X. How many of the boys, now in the school--for the monastery has become a Jesuit school--will, one wonders, rise to similar eminence.
In the beautiful cloisters we have the same colour scheme as in the church, and here again Brunelleschi"s miraculous genius for proportion is to be found. Here and there are foliations and other exquisite tracery by pupils of Desiderio da Settignano. The refectory has a high-spirited fres...o...b.. that artist whose room in the Uffizi is so carefully avoided by discreet chaperons--Giovanni di San Giovanni--representing Christ eating at a table, his ministrants being a crowd of little roguish angels and cherubim, one of whom (on the right) is in despair at having broken a plate. In the entrance lobby is a lavabo by Mino da Fiesole, with two little boys of the whitest and softest marble on it, which is worth study.
And now we will return to the heart of Florence once more.
CHAPTER XIII
The Badia and Dante
Filippino Lippi--Buffalmacco--Mino da Fiesole--The Dante quarter--Dante and Beatrice--Monna Tessa--Gemma Donati--Dante in exile--Dante memorials in Florence--The Torre della Castagna--The Borgo degli Albizzi and the old palaces--S. Ambrogio--Mino"s tabernacle--Wayside masterpieces--S. Egidio.
Opposite the Bargello is a church with a very beautiful doorway designed by Benedetto da Rovezzano. This church is known as the Badia, and its delicate spire is a joy in the landscape from every point of vantage. The Badia is very ancient, but the restorers have been busy and little of Arnolfo"s thirteenth-century work is left. It is chiefly famous now for its Filippino Lippi and two tombs by Mino da Fiesole, but historically it is interesting as being the burial-place of the chief Florentine families in the Middle Ages and as being the scene of Boccaccio"s lectures on Dante in 1373. The Filippino altar-piece, which represents S. Bernard"s Vision of the Virgin (a subject we shall see treated very beautifully by Fra Bartolommeo at the Accademia) is one of the most perfect and charming pictures by this artist: very grave and real and sweet, and the saint"s hands exquisitely painted. The figure praying in the right-hand corner is the patron, Piero di Francesco del Pugliese, who commissioned this picture for the church of La Campora, outside the Porta Romana, where it was honoured until 1529, when Clement VII"s troops advancing, it was brought here for safety and has here remained.
Close by--in the same chapel--is a little door which the sacristan will open, disclosing a portion of Arnolfo"s building with perishing frescoes which are attributed to Buffalmacco, an artist as to whose reality much scepticism prevails. They are not in themselves of much interest, although the sacristan"s eagerness should not be discouraged; but Buffalmacco being Boccaccio"s, Sacchetti"s, Vasari"s (and, later, Anatole France"s) amusing hero, it is pleasant to look at his work and think of his freakishness. Buffalmacco (if he ever existed) was one of the earlier painters, flourishing between 1311 and 1350, and was a pupil of Andrea Tafi. This simple man he plagued very divertingly, once frightening him clean out of his house by fixing little lighted candles to the backs of beetles and steering them into Tafi"s bedroom at night. Tafi was terrified, but on being told by Buffalmacco (who was a lazy rascal) that these devils were merely showing their objection to early rising, he became calm again, and agreed to lie in bed to a reasonable hour. Cupidity, however, conquering, he again ordered his pupil to be up betimes, when the beetles again re-appeared and continued to do so until the order was revoked.
The sculptor Mino da Fiesole, whom we shall shortly see again, at the Bargello, in portrait busts and Madonna reliefs, is at his best here, in the superb monument to Count Ugo, who founded, with his mother, the Benedictine Abbey of which the Badia is the relic. Here all Mino"s sweet thoughts, gaiety and charm are apparent, together with the perfection of radiant workmanship. The quiet dignity of the rec.u.mbent figure is no less masterly than the group above it. Note the impulsive urgency of the splendid Charity, with her two babies, and the quiet beauty of the Madonna and Child above all, while the proportions and delicate patterns of the tomb as a whole still remain to excite one"s pleasure and admiration. We shall see many tombs in Florence--few not beautiful--but none more joyously accomplished than this. The tomb of Carlo Marsuppini in S. Croce by Desiderio da Settignano, which awaits us, was undoubtedly the parent of the Ugo, Mino following his master very closely; but his charm was his own. According to Vasari, the Ugo tomb was considered to be Mino"s finest achievement, and he deliberately made the Madonna and Child as like the types of his beloved Desiderio as he could. It was finished in 1481, and Mino died in 1484, from a chill following over-exertion in moving heavy stones. Mino also has here a monument to Bernardo Giugni, a famous gonfalonier in the time of Cosimo de" Medici, marked by the same distinction, but not quite so memorable. The Ugo is his masterpiece.
The carved wooden ceiling, which is a very wonderful piece of work and of the deepest and most glorious hue, should not be forgotten; but nothing is easier than to overlook ceilings.
The cloisters are small, but they atone for that--if it is a fault--by having a loggia. From the loggia the top of the n.o.ble tower of the Palazzo Vecchio is seen to perfection. Upon the upper walls is a series of frescoes ill.u.s.trating the life of S. Benedict which must have been very gay and spirited once but are now faded.