Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa Part 14

XVII. FLORENCE

S. CROCE

The Piazza di S. Croce, in which stands the great Franciscan church of Florence, is still almost as it was in the sixteenth century when the Palazzo del Borgo on the southern side was painted in fres...o...b.. the facile brush of Pa.s.signano; but whatever charm so old and storied a place might have had for us, for here Giuliano de' Medici fought in a tournament under the eyes of La Bella Simonetta, and here, too, the Giuoco del Calcio was played, it is altogether spoiled and ruined, not only by the dishonouring statue of Dante, which for some unexplained reason has here found a resting-place, but by the crude and staring facade of the church itself, a pretentious work of modern Italy, which lends to what was of old the gayest Piazza in the city, the very aspect of a cemetery.

Not long before the end of the thirteenth century, a little shrine of St. Anthony stood where now we may see the great Church of S. Croce, in the midst of the marshes, as it is said, that waste land which in the Middle Age seems to have surrounded every city in Italy. It belonged, as did the land round about, to a certain family called Altafronte, who appear to have presented it to the friars of the neighbouring convent of Franciscans just outside Porta S. Gallo. St. Francis being dead, and the strictness of his rule relaxed, the first stone of the great Church of S. Croce was laid on Holy Cross Day, 1297. Arnolfo, the architect of the Duomo, was the first builder here, till later Giotto was appointed. The church itself is in the form of a tau cross, the eastern end on both sides of the choir consisting of twelve chapels scarcely less deep than the choir and tiny apse, itself a chapel of St. Anthony. The wide and s.p.a.cious nave, with two aisles, could doubtless hold half the city, as perhaps it did when Fra Francesco of Montepulciano preached here in the early years of the sixteenth century just after the death of Savonarola.

And indeed the very real beauty of the church consists in just that splendour of s.p.a.ce and light which so few seem to have cared for, but which seems to me certainly in Italy the most precious thing in the world. And then S. Croce is really the Pantheon, as it were, of the city; the golden twilight of S. Maria Novella even would seem too gloomy for the resting-place of heroes. Already before the sixteenth century it had been here that Florence had set up the banners of those she delighted to honour. And though Cosimo I destroyed them when he let Vasari so unfortunately have his way with the church, some remembrance of the glory that of old hung about her seems to have lingered, for here Michelangelo was buried, under a heavy monument by Vasari, and close by Vittorio Alfieri lies in a tomb carved by Canova at the request of the d.u.c.h.ess of Albany. Not far away you come upon the grave of Niccol Machiavelli, the statesman, and beside it the monument erected to his memory in the eighteenth century. And then here too you find the beautiful tomb of Leonardo Bruni, one of the first great scholars of the modern world, and secretary to the Republic, who died in 1443. It is the masterpiece of Bernardo Rossellino (1409-1464), achieved at the end of the early Renaissance, and forming the very style of such things for those sculptors who came after him. It is true that the lunette of Madonna is a little feeble and without life, though some have given it falsely to Verrocchio, and the two angioloni bearing the arms have little force; but the tomb itself is a thing done once and for all, and the figure of the dead poet is certainly the masterpiece of a man who was perhaps the first sculptor in marble of his time. If we compare it for a moment with the lovely Annunciation of Donatello (1386-1466) on the other side of the gateway, where for once that strong and fearless artist seems to have contented himself with beauty, we shall understand better the achievement of Rossellino; and though it were difficult to imagine a more lovely thing than that Annunciation set there by the Cavalcanti, with the winged wreath of Victory beneath it to commemorate their part in the victory of Florence over Pisa in 1406, as a piece of architecture Rossellino's work is as much better than this earlier design of Donatello's as in every other respect his work falls below it.

Covered with all sorts of lovely ornament, the frame supports an elaborate and splendid cornice on which six children stand, three grouped on either side, playing with garlands. And within the frame, as though seen through some magic doorway, Madonna, about to leave her prayers, has been stopped by the message of the angel, who has not yet fallen on his knees. It is as though one had come upon the very scene itself suddenly at sunset on some summer day.

If the tomb of Leonardo Bruni is the masterpiece of Bernardo Rossellino, the tomb of Carlo Marsuppini, the humanist, Bruni's successor as secretary to the Republic, placed in the north aisle exactly opposite, is no less the masterpiece of another of Donatello's friends, Desiderio da Settignano (1428-1464). Standing as they were to do, face to face across the church, no doubt Desiderio was instructed to follow as closely as might be the general design of Rossellino. On a rich bed Marsuppini lies, a figure full of sweetness and strength, while under is the carved tomb, supported by the feet of lions, and borne by a winged sh.e.l.l. On either side two children bear his arms, figures so nave and lovely that, as it seems to me, Luca della Robbia in his happiest moment might have thought of them almost in despair. Above, under a splendid canopy of flowers and fruit, in a tondo, severe and simple, is Madonna with Our Lord, and on either side an angel bows half-smiling, half-weeping, while without stand two youths of tender age, slender and full of grace, but strong enough to bear the great garland of fruits with lovely and splendid gestures of confidence and expectancy. Before the tomb in the pavement is a plaque of marble also from the hand of Desiderio, and here Gregorio Marsuppini, Carlo's father, lies: other similar works of his you may find here and there in the church.

Scattered through the two aisles and the nave are many modern monuments and tablets to famous Italians, Dante who lies at Ravenna, Galileo, Alberti, Mazzini, Rossini, and the rest; they have but little interest.

It is not only in the aisles, however, that we find the work of the Florentine sculptors. Galileo Galilei, an ancestor of the great astronomer, is buried in the nave at the west end, under a carved tombstone enthusiastically praised by Ruskin. And then on the first pillar on the right we find the work of Bernardo Rossellino's youngest brother Antonio (1427-1478), who, under the influence of Desiderio da Settignano, has carved there a relief of Madonna and Child, surrounded by a garland of cherubim lovely and fair. Antonio Rossellino's work is scattered all over Tuscany, in Prato, in Empoli, in Pistoja, and we shall find it even in such far-away places as Naples and Forli. His masterpiece, however, the beautiful tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal, is in the Church of S. Miniato al Monte, of which I shall speak later.

It was another and younger pupil of Desiderio's, Benedetto da Maiano (1442-1497), who made the beautiful pulpit to the order of that Pietro Mellini, whose bust, also from his hand, is now in the Bargello. It is the most beautiful pulpit in all Italy, splendid alike in its decoration and its construction. It seems doubtful whether the pulpit itself is not earlier than the five reliefs of the life of St. Francis which surround it--The Confirmation of the Order by the Pope, the Test by Fire before the Sultan, the Stigmata, the Death of St. Francis, and the Persecution of the Order. These were carved in 1474, and for the life and charm which they possess are perhaps Benedetto's finest work. In the beautiful niches below he has set some delightful statuettes, representing Faith, Hope, Charity, Fort.i.tude, and Justice.

Pa.s.sing now into the south transept, we come to the great chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, with its spoiled frescoes of the stories of St. John Baptist, St. John the Divine, St. Nicholas and St. Anthony; while here, too, is the tomb of the d.u.c.h.ess of Albany, who was the wife of the Young Pretender, and who loved Alfieri the poet, whose monument, as we have seen, she caused Canova to make.

The south transept ends in the Baroncelli Chapel, which "between the close of December 1332 and the first days of August 1338," Taddeo Gaddi painted in fresco.[104] Giotto died in 1337, and Taddeo, who had served under him, seems to have been content to carry on his practice without bringing any originality of his own to the work. What Taddeo could a.s.similate of Giotto's manner he most patiently reproduced, so that his work, never anything but a sort of imitation, threatens to overwhelm in its own mediocrity much of the achievement of his master. The beautiful and sincere work of Giotto in him degenerates into a mannerism, a mannerism that the people of his own day seem to have appreciated quite as much as the living work of Giotto himself. Taddeo, trained by his master in the Giottesque manner, became its most patient champion, and practising an art that was in his hands little better than a craft, he finds himself understood, and when Giotto is not available very naturally takes his place. Here in S. Croce, a church in which Giotto himself had worked, we find Taddeo's work everywhere: over the door of the Sacristy he painted Christ and the Doctors; in the Cappella di S.

Andrea, the stories of St. Peter and St. Andrew; in the Bellaci chapel, too, and above all in this the chapel of the Baroncelli family. But when Giotto, being long dead, other and newer painters arose, Taddeo's work, out of fas.h.i.+on at last, suffered the oblivion of whitewash, sharing this fate with some of the best work in Italy: so that there is to-day but little left of it in S. Croce save these frescoes, where he has painted, not without a certain vigour and almost a gift for composition, the story of the Blessed Virgin.

Close by, without the chapel, is a very beautiful monument the school of Niccol Pisano; pa.s.sing this and entering the great door of the Sacristy, we come into a corridor and thence into the Sacristy itself, which Vasari covered with whitewash. Built in the fourteenth century, it is divided into two parts by a grating of exquisitely wrought iron of the same period. Behind this grating is the Rinuccini chapel, painted in fres...o...b.. a pupil of Taddeo Gaddi, Giovanni da Milano, in whose work we may discern, in spite of the rigid convention of his master, something sincere, a lightness and grace and even perhaps a certain reliance on Nature, which the authority of Giotto had spoiled for Taddeo himself. It is the stories of the Blessed Virgin and of St. Mary Magdalen that he has set himself to tell, with an infinite detail that a little confuses his really fine and sincere work. Repainted though they be, something of their original beauty may still be found there, their simplicity and homely realism.

At the end of the corridor is the chapel which Cosimo de' Medici, Pater Patriae caused Michelozzo to build for his delight. Over the altar is one of the loveliest works of the della Robbia school, a Madonna and Child, between St. Anthony of Padua, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. John Baptist, St. Laurence, St. Louis of Toulouse, and St. Francis; while on the wall is a later work of the same school, after a work by Verrocchio, where Madonna holds her Son in her arms; and opposite is another work by a Tuscan sculptor, a Tabernacle, by Mino da Fiesole (1431-1484), who certainly has loved the gracious marbles of Desiderio da Settignano. The picture of the Coronation of the Virgin beside this Tabernacle, once the altar-piece of the Baroncelli Chapel, a genuine work of Giotto's, as it is thought, is tender in feeling and magnificent in arrangement and composition. Full of a grave earnestness and full of ardent life,--mark the eagerness of those clouds of Saints,--it is worthy of the painter of the tribune of the Lower Church at a.s.sisi.

Returning now to the church itself, we begin our examination of those twelve chapels, which with the choir form the eastern end of S. Croce.

The first three chapels have little interest, but the two nearest the choir, Cappella Peruzzi and Cappella Bardi, were both painted in fres...o...b.. Giotto, his work there being among the best of his paintings.

The Peruzzi Chapel was built by the powerful family that name, who had already done much for S. Croce, when about 1307 they employed Giotto to decorate these walls with frescoes of the story of St. John Baptist and St. John the Divine. In 1714, the new Vasari tells us,[105] and, indeed, we may read as much on the floor of the chapel itself, Bartolommeo di Simone Peruzzi caused the place to be restored, and it was then, as we may suppose, that the work of Giotto was covered with whitewash. It was in 1841 that the Dance of Herodias was discovered, and the whitewash not very carefully, perhaps, removed, and by 1863 the rest of the frescoes here were brought to light. In their original brightness they formed probably "the finest series of frescoes which Giotto ever produced"; but the hand of the restorer has spoiled them utterly, so that only the shadow of their former beauty remains, amid much that is hard or unpleasing.

On the left we see the story of St. John Baptist; above, the Angel announces to Zacharias the birth of a son; and, with I know not what mastery of his art, Giotto tells us of it with a simplicity and perfection beyond praise. If we consider the work merely as a composition, it is difficult to imagine anything more lovely; and then how beautiful and full of life is the angel who has entered so softly into the Holy of Holies, not altogether without dismay to the high priest, who, busy swinging his censer before the altar, has suddenly looked up and seen a vision. Below, we see the Birth of St. John Baptist, where Elizabeth is a little troubled, it may be, about her dumb husband, to whom the child has been brought. An old man with an eager and n.o.ble gesture seems to argue with Zacharias, holding the child the while by the shoulder, and Zacharias writes the name on his knee. Below this again is the Dance of Herodias, the first of these frescoes to be uncovered and ruined in the process. But even yet, in the perfect grouping of the figures, the splendour of the viol player, the frightened gaze of the servants, we may still see the very hand of Giotto.

But it is in the frescoes on the right wall that Giotto is seen at his highest: it is the story of St. John the Divine; above he dreams on Patmos, below he raises Drusiana at the Gate of Ephesus, and is himself received into heaven. Damaged though they be, there is nothing in all Italian art more fundamental, more simple, or more living than these frescoes. It is true that the Dream of St. John is almost ruined, and what we see to-day is very far from being what Giotto painted, but in the Raising of Drusiana and in the Ascension of St. John we find a grandeur and force that are absent from painting till Giotto's time, and for very many years after his death. The restorer has done his best to obliterate all trace of Giotto's achievement, especially in the fresco of Drusiana, but in spite of him we may see here Giotto's very work, the essence of it at any rate, its intention and the variety of his powers of expressing himself.

The chapel nearest the choir was built by Ridolfo de' Bardi, it is said, sometime after 1310,[106] and it was for him that Giotto painted there the story of St. Francis; while on the ceiling he has painted the three Franciscan virtues, Poverty, Chast.i.ty, and Obedience, and in the fourth s.p.a.ce has set St. Francis in Glory, as he had done in a different manner at a.s.sisi.

After the enthusiastic pages of Ruskin,[107] to describe these frescoes, beautiful still, in spite of their universal restoration, would be superfluous. It will be enough to refer the reader to his pages, and to add the subjects of the series. Above, on the left wall, St. Francis renounces his father, while below he appears to the brethren at Arles, and under this we see his death. On the left above, Pope Honorius gives him his Rule, and below, he challenges the pagan priests to the test of the fire before the Sultan, and appears to Gregory IX, who had thought to deny that he received the Stigmata. Beside the window Giotto has painted four great Franciscans, St. Louis of Toulouse, St. Clare, St.

Louis of France, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary. All these frescoes in the Bardi Chapel are much more damaged by restoration than those in Cappella Peruzzi.

In the choir, behind the high altar, Agnolo Gaddi, one of the two sons of Taddeo, has painted, with a charm and brightness of colour that hide the poor design, the story of the Holy Cross. It was at the request of Jacopo degli Alberti that Agnolo painted these eight frescoes, where the angel gives a branch of the Tree of Life from Eden to Seth, whom Adam, feeling his death at hand, had sent on this errand. Seth returns, however, only to find Adam dead, and the branch is planted on his grave.

Then in the course of ages that branch grows to a tree, is hewn down, and, as the Queen of Sheba pa.s.ses on her way to King Solomon, the carpenters are striving to cut this wood for the Temple, but they reject it and throw it into the Pool of Bethesda. And this rejected tree was at length hewn into the Cross of Our Lord. Then comes Queen Helena to seek that blessed wood, and finding the three crosses, and in ignorance which was that of Our Lord, commands that the dead body of a youth which is borne by shall be touched with them all, one after another. So they find the True Cross, for at its touch the dead rises from his bier. Then they bear the cross before the Queen: till presently it is lost to Chosroes, King of Persia, who took Jerusalem "in the year of Our Lord six hundred and fifteen," and bare away with him that part of the Holy Cross which St. Helena had left there. So he made a tower of gold and of silver, crusted with precious stones, and set the Cross of Our Lord before him, and commanded that he should be called G.o.d. Then Heraclius, the Emperor, went out against him by the river of Danube, and they fought the one with the other upon the bridge, and agreed together that the victor should be prince of the whole Empire: and G.o.d gave the victory to Heraclius, who bore the Cross into Jerusalem. So Agnolo Gaddi has painted the story in the choir of S. Croce.

In the chapels on the north side of the choir there is but little of interest. And then one is a little weary of frescoes. If we return to the south aisle and pa.s.s through the door between the Annunciation of Donatello and the tomb of Leonardo Bruni, we shall come into the beautiful cloisters of Arnolfo, where there will be suns.h.i.+ne and the soft sky. Here, too, is the beautiful Cappellone that Brunelles...o...b..ilt for the Pazzi family, whose arms decorate the porch. Under a strange and beautiful dome, which, as Burckhardt reminds us, Giuliano da Sangallo imitated in Madonna delle Carceri at Prato, Brunellesco has built a chapel in the form almost of a Greek cross. And without, before it, he has set, under a vaulted roof, a portico borne by columns, interrupted by a round arch. It is the earliest example, perhaps, of the new Renaissance architecture. Very fair and surprising it is with its frieze of angels' heads by Donatello, helped perhaps by Desiderio da Settignano. Within, too, you come upon Donatello's work again, in the Four Evangelists in the spandrels, and below them the Twelve Apostles.

Walking in the cloisters, you find the great ancient refectory of the convent itself, which has here been turned into a museum, while another part of it is used as a barracks; and indeed the finest cloister of the Early Renaissance, one of the loveliest works of Brunellesco, has also been given up to the army of Italy. The museum contains much that, in its removal here or dilapidation, has lost nearly all its interest. The beautiful fresco of St. Eustace, said to be the work of Andrea Castagno, is yet full of delight, while here and there amid these old crucifixes, tabernacles, and frescoes, by pupils of Giotto long forgotten, something will charm you by its sincerity or nave beauty, so that you will forget, if only for a moment, the destruction that has befallen all around you; the convent that once housed S. Bernardino of Siena, now noisy with conscripts, the library housed in another convent, Dominican once, that like this has become a museum and public monument of vandalism and rapacity.

FOOTNOTES:

[104] Cf. Crowe and Gavalcaselle, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 124.

[105] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 77.

[106] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 81.

[107] _Mornings in Florence_, by John Ruskin.

XVIII. FLORENCE

S. LORENZO

Something of the eager, restless desire for beauty, for antique beauty, so characteristic of the fifteenth century--for the security and strength of just that, may be found in S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito, those two churches which we owe to the genius of Brunellesco, and in them we seem to find the negation, as it were, of the puritan spirit, of all that the Convent of S. Marco had come to mean: as though when, one day at dawn, the peasants ploughing in some little valley in the hills, had come upon the gleaming white body of the witch Venus, in burning the precious statue which had lain so long in the earth, they had not been able altogether to destroy the spirit, free at last, which in the cool twilight had escaped them to wander about the city. It is the spirit of Rome you come upon in S. Lorenzo, the old Rome of the Basilicas, that were but half Christian after all, and, still in ruin, seem to remember the G.o.ds.

A church has stood where S. Lorenzo stands certainly since pagan times, for at the beginning of the fourth century, one Giuliana, who had three daughters but no son, vowed a church to St. Laurence if he would grant her a son; and a son being born to her she founded S. Lorenzo, and called the child Laurence for praise. St. Ambrose is said to have come from Milan to consecrate the place, bringing with him certain relics, the bones of S. Agnola and S. Vitale, victims of the pagans which he had found in Bologna; while for sixty years, till 490, the body of S.

Zen.o.bio lay here. In those days, and until the last years of the eleventh century, S. Lorenzo stood without the walls, and when Cosimo came back to Florence, the old church, which had fallen into decay, was already being rebuilt, Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, with others, having given the work to Brunellesco. Filippo Brunellesco, however, had got no farther, it seems, than the Sagrestia Vecchia when he died, while Antonio Manetti, who succeeded him as architect, changed somewhat his design. The church was consecrated at last in 1461, some three years before the death of Cosimo, who lies before the high altar.

It is really as the resting-place of the Medici that we have come to consider S. Lorenzo, for here lie not only Giovanni di Bicci and Piccarda, the parents of Cosimo Pater Patriae, and Cosimo himself, but Piero and Giovanni his sons, while in the new sacristy lie Giuliano and Lorenzo il Magnifico his grandsons, and their namesakes Giuliano Duc de Nemours and Lorenzo Due d'Urbino; and in the Cappella dei Principi, built in 1604 by Matteo Nigetti, lie the Grand Dukes from Cosimo I to Cosimo III, the rulers of Florence and Tuscany from the sixteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth centuries.

The church itself is in the form of a Latin cross, consisting of nave and aisles and transepts, the nave being covered with a flat coffered ceiling, though the aisles are vaulted. Along the aisles are square chapels, scarcely more than recesses, and above the great doors is a chapel supported by pillars, a design of Michelangelo, who was to have built the facade for Leo X, but, after infinite thought and work in the marble mountains, the Pope bade him abandon it in 1519. For many years a single pillar, the only one that ever came to Florence of all those hewn for the church in Pietrasanta, lay forlorn in the Piazza.

Those chapels that flank the aisles have to-day but little interest for us, here and there a picture or a piece of sculpture, but nothing that will keep us for more than a moment from the chapels of the transept, the work of Desiderio da Settignano, of Verrocchio, and, above all, of Donatello. It is all unaware to the tomb of this the greatest sculptor, and in many ways the most typical artist, Florence ever produced, that we come, when, standing in front of the high altar, we read the inscription on that simple slab of stone which marks the tomb of Cosimo Vecchio; for Donatello lies in the same vault with his great patron. A modern monument in the Martelli Chapel, where the beautiful Annunciation by Lippo Lippi hangs under a crucifix by Cellini, in the left transept, commemorates him; but he needs no such reminder here, for about us is his beautiful and unforgetable work: not perhaps the two ambones, which he only began on his return from Padua when he was sixty-seven years old, and which were finished by his pupils Bertoldo and Bellano, but the work in the old sacristy built in 1421 by Brunellesco. How rough is the modelling in the ambone reliefs, as though really, as Bandinelli has said, the sight of the old sculptor was failing; and yet, in spite of age and the intervention of his pupils, how his genius a.s.serts itself in a certain rhythm and design in these tragic panels, where, under a frieze of dancing _putti_,--loves or angels I know not,--of bulls and horses, he has carved the Agony in the Garden, Christ before Pilate, and again before Caiaphas, the Crucifixion, the Deposition, in the southern ambone; while in the northern we find the Descent into Hades, where John Baptist welcomes our Lord, who draws forth Adam, and, as Dante records, Abel too, and Noah, Moses, Abraham, and David, Isaac and Jacob and his sons, not without Rachel, _E altri molti, e fecegli beati_, the Resurrection and the Ascension, the Maries at the Tomb, the Pentecost.

It is another and very different work you come upon in the Cantoria, which, lovely though it be, seems to be rather for a sermon than for singing, so cold it is, and yet full enough of his perfect feeling for construction, for architecture. It has a rhythm of its own, but it is the rhythm of prose, not of poetry.

The old sacristy, which is full of him--for indeed all the decorative work seems to be his--is one of the first buildings of the Renaissance, the beautiful work of Filippo Brunelleschi. Covered by a polygonal dome, the altar itself stands under another dome, low and small; and everywhere Donatello has added beauty to beauty, the two friends for once combining to produce a masterpiece, though not, as it is said, without certain differences between them. "Donatello undertook to decorate the sacristy of S. Lorenzo in stucco for Cosimo de' Medici,"

Vasari tells us. "In the angles of the ceiling he executed four medallions, the ornaments of which were partly painted in perspective, partly stories of the Evangelists[108] in ba.s.so-relievo. In the same place he made two doors of bronze in ba.s.so-relievo of most exquisite workmans.h.i.+p: on these doors he represented the apostles, martyrs, and confessors, and above these are two shallow niches, in one of which are S. Lorenzo and S. Stefano; in the other, S. Cosimo and S. Damiano." The sacristy, according to Vasari, was the first work proceeded with in the church. Cosimo took so much pleasure in it that he was almost always himself present, and such was his eagerness, that while Brunelles...o...b..ilt the sacristy, he made Donatello prepare the ornaments in stucco, "with the stone decorations of the small doors and the doors of bronze."

And it is in these bronze doors that, as it seems to me, you have Donato at his best, full of energy and life, yet never allowing himself for a moment to forget that he was a sculptor, that his material was bronze and had many and various beauties of its own, which it was his business to express. There are two doors, one on each side of the altar, and these doors are made in two parts, and each part is divided into five panels. With a loyalty and apprehension of the fitness of things really beyond praise, Donatello has here tried to do nothing that was outside the realm of sculpture. It was not for him to make the Gates of Paradise, but the gates of a sacristy in S. Lorenzo. His work is in direct descent from the work of the earliest Italian sculptors, a legitimate and very beautiful development of their work within the confines of an art which was certainly sufficient to itself. Consider, then, the naturalism of that figure who opens his book on his knees so suddenly and with such energy; or again, the exquisite reluctance of him who in the topmost panel turns away from the preaching of the apostle.

Certainly here you have work that is simple, sincere, full of life and energy, and is beautiful just because it is perfectly fitting and without affectation.[109] In one of the two small rooms which are on each side of the sacristy, having the altar between them, Brunelles...o...b.. Cosimo's orders made a well. Here, Vasari tells us later, Donato placed a marble lavatory, on which Andrea Verrocchio also worked; but the Lavabo we find there to-day seems very doubtfully Donatello's.

In the centre of the sacristy itself, Vasari tells us, Cosimo caused the tomb of his father Giovanni to be made beneath a broad slab of marble, supported by four columns; and in the same place he made a sepulchre for his family, wherein he separated the tombs of the men from those of the women. But again this work too seems, in spite of Vasari, to belong rather uncertainly to Donatello. It is very rare to find a detached tomb in Italy, and rarer still to find it under a table, where it is very difficult to see it properly, and the care and beauty that have been spent upon it might seem to be wasted. It is perhaps rather Buggiano's hand than Donato's we see even in so beautiful a thing as this, which Donatello may well have designed. The beautiful bust of S. Lorenzo over the doorway is, however, the authentic work of Donato himself. Full of eagerness, S. Lorenzo looks up as though to answer some request, and to grant it.

The splendid porphyry sarcophagus set in bronze before a bronze screen of great beauty, by Verocchio, is certainly one of the finest things here. Every leaf and curl of the foliage seem instinct with some splendid life, seem to tremble almost with the fierceness of their vitality. There lie Giovanni and Piero de' Medici, the uncle and father of Lorenzo il Magnifico. Close by you may see a relief of Cosimo Vecchio, their father.

The cloisters, where Lorenzo walked often enough, are beautiful, and then from them one pa.s.ses so easily into the Laurentian Library, founded by Cosimo Vecchio, and treasured and added to by Piero and Lorenzo il Magnifico, but scattered and partly destroyed by the vandalism and futile stupidity of Savonarola and his puritans in 1494. Savonarola, however, was a cleverer demagogue than our Oliver (it is well to remember that he was a Dominican), for he persuaded the Signoria to let him have such of the MSS. as he could find for the library of S. Marco.

The honour of such a person is perhaps not worth discussing, but we may remind ourselves what Cosimo had done for S. Marco, and how he had built the library there. In 1508 the friars turned these stolen goods into money, selling them back to Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who was soon to be Leo X, who carried them to Rome. Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, later Clement VII, presented Leo's collection to the Laurentian Library, which he had bidden Michelangelo to rebuild. This was interrupted by the unfortunate business of 1527, and it was not till Cosimo I came that the library was finished. Perhaps the most precious thing here is the Pandects of Justinian, taken by the Pisans from Amalfi in 1135, and seized by the Florentines when they took Pisa in 1406. Amalfi prized these above everything she possessed, Pisa was ready to defend them with her life, Florence spent hundreds of thousands of florins to possess herself of them--for in them was thought to lie the secret of the law of Rome. Who knows what Italy, under the heel of the barbarian, does not owe to these faded pages, and through Italy the world? They were, as it were, the symbol of Latin civilisation in the midst of German barbarism.

Here too is that most ancient Virgil which the French stole in 1804.

Here is Petrarch's Horace and a Dante transcribed by Villani; and, best of all, the only ancient codex in the world of what remains to us of Aeschylus, of what is left of Sophocles. It is in such a place that we may best recognise the true greatness of the abused Medici. Tyrants they may have been, but when the mob was tyrant it satisfied itself with destroying what they with infinite labour had gathered together for the advancement of learning, the civilisation of the world. What, then, was that Savonarola whom all have conspired to praise, whose windy prophecies, whose blasphemous cursings men count as so precious? In truth in his fas.h.i.+on he was but a tyrant too--a tyrant, and a poor one, and therefore the more dangerous, the more disastrous. To the Medici we owe much of what is most beautiful in Florence--the loveliest work of Botticelli, of Brunellesco, of Donatello, of Lippo Lippi, of Michelangelo, and the rest, to say nothing of such a priceless collection of books and MSS. as this. Is, then, the work of Marsilio Ficino nothing, the labours of a thousand forgotten humanists? What do we owe to Savonarola? He burnt the pictures which to his sensual mind suggested its own obscenity; he stole the MSS., and no doubt would have destroyed them too, to write instead his own rhetorical and extraordinary denunciations of what he did not understand. Who can deny that when he proposed to give freedom to Florence he was dreaming of a new despotism, the despotism, if not of himself, of that Jesus whom he believed had inspired him, and on whom he turned in his rage? That he was brave we know, but so was Cataline; that he believed in himself we like to believe, and so did Arius of Alexandria; that he carried the people with him is certain, and so did they who crucified Jesus; but that he was a turbulent fellow, a puritan, a vandal, a boaster, a wind-bag, a discredited prophet, and a superst.i.tious failure, we also know, as he doubtless did at last, when the wild beast he had roused had him by the throat, and burnt him in the fire he had invoked. His political ideas were beneath contempt; they were insincere, as he proved, and they were merely an excuse for riot. He bade, or is said to have bidden, Lorenzo restore her liberty to Florence. When, then, had Florence possessed this liberty, of which all these English writers who sentimentalise over this unique and unfortunate Ferrarese traitor speak with so much feeling and awe? Florence had never possessed political liberty of any sort whatever; she was ruled by the great families, by the guilds, by an oligarchy, by a despot. She was never free till she lost herself in Italy in 1860. Socially she was freer under the Medici than she was before or has been since.[110] In the production of unique personalities a sort of social freedom is necessary, and Florence under the earlier Medici might seem to have produced more of such men than any other city or state in the history of the world, saving Athens in the time of the despot Pericles. The happiest period in the history of Athens was that in which he was master, even as the greatest and most fortunate years in the history of the Florentine state were those in which Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo ruled in Florence. And when at last Lorenzo died, the Pope saw very clearly that on that day had pa.s.sed away "the peace of Italy." It is to the grave of this great and unique man you come when leaving the cloisters of S. Lorenzo, and pa.s.sing round the church into Piazza Madonna, you enter the Cappella Medicea, and, ascending the stairs on the left, find again on the left the new sacristy, built in 1519 by Michelangelo. Lorenzo lies with his murdered brother Giuliano, who fell under the daggers of the Pazzi on that Easter morning in the Duomo, between the two splendid and terrible tombs of his successors, under an unfinished monument facing the altar; a beautiful Madonna and Child, an unfinished work by Michelangelo, and the two Medici Saints, S. Damian by Raffaello da Montelupo, and S. Cosmas by Montorsoli. It is not, however, this humble and almost nameless grave that draws us to-day to the Sagrestia Nuova, but the monument carved by Michelangelo for two lesser and later Medici: Giuliano, Duc de Nemours, who died in 1516, and Lorenzo, Duc d'Urbino, who died in 1519. When Lorenzo il Magnifico died at Careggi in April 1492, he left seven children: Giovanni, who became Leo X; Piero, who succeeded him and went into exile; Giuliano, who returned; Lucrezia, who married Giacomo Salviati, and was grandmother of Cosimo I; Contessina, who married Piero Ridolfi; Maddalena, who married Francesco Cibo; and Maria, whom Michelangelo is said to have loved. Lorenzo's successor, Piero, did not long retain the power his father had left him; he was vain and impetuous, and, trying to rule without the Signoria, placed Pisa and Livorno in the hands of Charles VIII of France, who was on his carnival way to Naples. Savonarola chased him out, and sacked the treasures of his house. He died in exile. It was his brother Giuliano who returned, Savonarola being executed in 1512. Giuliano was a better ruler than his brother, but he behaved like a despot till his brother Giovanni became Pope, when he resigned the government of Florence to his nephew Lorenzo, the son of Piero, and while he became Gonfaloniere of Rome and Archbishop, Lorenzo became Duke of Urbino and father of Catherine de'

Medici of France. It is this Giuliano and Lorenzo de Medici that Michelangelo has immortalised with an everlasting gesture of sorrow and contempt. On the right is the tomb of Giuliano, and over it he sits for ever as a general of the Church; on the left is Lorenzo's dust, coffered in imperishable marble, over which he sits plotting for ever. The statues that Michelangelo has carved there have been called Night and Day, Twilight and Dawn; but indeed these names, as I have said, are far too definite for them: they are just a gesture of despair, of despair of a world which has come to nothing. They are in no real sense of the word political, but rather an expression, half realised after all, of some immense sadness, some terrible regret, which has fallen upon the soul of one who had believed in righteousness and freedom, and had found himself deceived. It is not the house of Medici that there sees its own image of despair, but rather Florence, which had been content that such things should be. Some obscure and secret sorrow has for a moment overwhelmed the soul of the great poet in thinking of Florence, of the world, of the hearts of men, and as though trying to explain to himself his own melancholy and indignation, he has carved these statues, to which men have given the names of the most tremendous and the most sweet of natural things--Night and Day, Twilight and Dawn; and even as in the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo has thought only of Life,--of the Creation of Man, of the Judgment of the World, which is really the Resurrection,--so here he has thought only of Death, of the death of the body, of the soul, and of the wistful life of the disembodied spirit that wanders disconsolate, who knows where?--that sleeps uneasily, who knows how long?

FOOTNOTES:

[108] Not of the Evangelists, but of St. John: the medallions are the Four Evangelists.