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FLORENCE AND NORTHERN TUSCANY WITH GENOA
BY EDWARD HUTTON
* * * * *
O rosa delle rose, O rosa bella,
Per te non dormo ne notte ne giorno,
E sempre penso alla tua faccia bella,
Alle grazie che hai, faccio ritorno.
Faccio ritorno alle grazie che hai:
Ch'io ti lasci, amor mio, non creder mai.
WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY WILLIAM PARKINSON AND SIXTEEN
OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND EDITION
LONDON, 1907, 1908
* * * * *
TO MY FRIEND WILLIAM HEYWOOD
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
FREDERIC UVEDALE: A ROMANCE
STUDIES IN THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS
ITALY AND THE ITALIANS
THE CITIES OF UMBRIA
THE CITIES OF SPAIN
SIGISMONDO MALATESTA
COUNTRY WALKS ROUND FLORENCE. (_In the Press_).
ROME. (_In preparation_)
* * * * *
[Illustration: FROM THE UFFIZI]
* * * * *
CONTENTS
I. GENOA
II. ON THE WAY
III. PORTO VENERE
IV. SARZANA AND LUNA
V. CARRARA, MASSA DUCALE, PIETRA-SANTA, VIAREGGIO
VI. PISA
VII. LIVORNO
VIII. TO SAN MINIATO AL TEDESCO
IX. EMPOLI, MONTELUPO, LASTRA, SIGNA
X. FLORENCE
XI. PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA AND PALAZZO VECCHIO
XII. THE BAPTISTERY--THE DUOMO--THE CAMPANILE--THE OPERA DEL DUOMO
XIII. OR SAN MICHELE
XIV. PALAZZO RICCARDI, AND THE RISE OF THE MEDICI
XV. SAN MARCO AND SAVONAROLA
XVI. SANTA MARIA NOVELLA
XVII. SANTA CROCE
XVIII. SAN LORENZO
XIX. CHURCHES NORTH OF ARNO
XX. OLTR'ARNO
XXI. THE BARGELLO
XXII. THE ACCADEMIA
XXIII. THE UFFIZI
XXIV. THE PITTI GALLERY
XXV. FIESOLE AND SETTIGNANO
XXVI. VALLOMBROSA AND THE CASENTINO
XXVII. PRATO
XXVIII. PISTOJA
XXIX. LUCCA
XXX. OVER THE GARFAGNANA
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
VIEW FROM THE UFFIZI
ON THE ROAD
BADIA A SETTIMO
PONTE VECCHIO
LOGGIA DE' LANZI
PIAZZA DEL DUOMO
OR SAN MICHELE
THE FLOWER MARKET, FLORENCE
CHIOSTRO DI S. MARCO
S. MARIA NOVELLA
OGNISSANTI
VIA GUICCIARDINI
PONTE VECCHIO
THE BOBOLI GARDENS
COSTA DI S. GIORGIO
OUTSIDE THE GATE
IN MONOTONE
PORTO VENERE
PISA
WAX MODEL FOR THE PERSEUS IN THE BARGELLO, BENVENUTO CELLINI
THE MADONNA DELLA CINTOLA, BY NANNI DI BANCO, DUOMO, FLORENCE
SINGING BOYS FROM THE CANTORIA OF LUCA DELLA ROBBIA, OPERA DEL DUOMO,
FLORENCE
THE CRUCIFIXION, BY FRA ANGELICO, S. MARCO, FLORENCE
ST. JOHN THE DIVINE, BY DONATELLO, DUOMO, FLORENCE
THE LADY WITH THE NOSEGAY (VANNA TORNABUONI), IN THE BARGELLO, BY ANDREA
VERROCCHIO
"LA NOTTE," FROM TOMB OF GIULIANO DE' MEDICI, BY MICHELANGELO
THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS, BY DOMENICO GHIRLANDAJO, ACCADEMIA
THE THREE GRACES, FROM THE PRIMAVERA, BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI, ACCADEMIA
THE BIRTH OF VENUS, BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI, UFFIZI GALLERY
THE ANNUNCIATION, BY ANDREA VERROCCHIO, UFFIZI GALLERY
PIETA, BY FRA BARTOLOMMEO, PITTI GALLERY
THE TOMB OF ILARIA DEL CARETTO, BY JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA, DUOMO, LUCCA
THE TOMB OF THE MARTYR S. ROMANO IN S. ROMANO, LUCCA, BY MATTEO CIVITALI
[Illustration: A MAP OF THE CITIES OF NORTHERN TUSCANY]
* * * * *
I. GENOA
I
The traveller who on his way to Italy passes along the Riviera di
Ponente, through Marseilles, Nice, and Mentone to Ventimiglia, or
crossing the Alps touches Italian soil, though scarcely Italy indeed, at
Turin, on coming to Genoa finds himself really at last in the South, the
true South, of which Genoa la Superba is the gate, her narrow streets,
the various life of her port, her picturesque colour and dirt, her
immense palaces of precious marbles, her oranges and pomegranates and
lemons, her armsful of children, and above all the sun, which lends an
eternal gladness to all these characteristic or delightful things,
telling him at once that the North is far behind, that even Cisalpine
Gaul is crossed and done with, and that here at last by the waves of
that old and great sea is the true Italy, that beloved and ancient land
to which we owe almost everything that is precious and valuable in our
lives, and in which still, if we be young, we may find all our dreams.
What to us are the weary miles of Eastern France if we come by road, the
dreadful tunnels full of despair and filth if we come by rail, now that
we have at last returned to her, or best of all, perhaps, found her for
the first time in the spring at twenty-one or so, like a fair woman
forlorn upon the mountains, the Ariadne of our race who placed in our
hand the golden thread that led us out of the cavern of the savage to
the sunlight and to her. But though, indeed, I think all this may be
clearer to those who come to her in their first youth by the long white
roads with a song on their lips and a dream in their hearts--for the
song is drowned by the iron wheels that doubtless have their own music,
and the dream is apt to escape in the horror of the night imprisoned
with your fellows; still, as we are so quick to assure ourselves, there
are other ways of coming to Italy than on foot: in a motor-car, for
instance, our own modern way, ah! so much better than the train, and
truly almost as good as walking. For there is the start in the early
morning, the sweet fresh air of the fields and the hills, the long halt
at midday at the old inn, or best of all by the roadside, the afternoon
full of serenity, that gradually passes into excitement and eager
expectancy as you approach some unknown town; and every night you sleep
in a new place, and every morning the joy of the wanderer is yours. You
never "find yourself" in any city, having won to it through many
adventures, nor ever are you too far away from the place you lay at on
the night before. And so, as you pass on and on and on, till the road
which at first had entranced you, wearies you, terrifies you,
relentlessly opening before you in a monstrous white vista, and you who
began by thinking little of distance find, as I have done, that only the
roads are endless, even for you too the endless way must stop when it
comes to the sea; and there you have won at last to Italy, at Genoa.
If you come by Ventimiglia, starting early, all the afternoon that white
vision will rise before you like some heavenly city, very pure and full
of light, beckoning you even from a long way off across innumerable and
lovely bays, splendid upon the sea. While if you come from Turin, it is
only at sunset you will see her, suddenly in a cleft of the mountains,
the sun just gilding the Pharos before night comes over the sea,
opening like some great flower full of coolness and fragrance.
It was by sea that John Evelyn came to Genoa after many adventures; and
though we must be content to forego much of the surprise and romance of
an advent such as that, yet for us too there remain many wonderful
things which we may share with him. The waking at dawn, for instance,
for the first time in the South, with the noise in our ears of the bells
of the mules carrying merchandise to and from the ships in the _Porto_;
the sudden delight that we had not felt or realised, weary as we were on
the night before, at finding ourselves really at last in the way of such
things, the shouting of the muleteers, the songs of the sailors getting
their ships in gear for the seas, the blaze of sunlight, the pleasant
heat, the sense of everlasting summer. These things, and so much more
than these, abide for ever; the splendour of that ancient sea, the
gesture of the everlasting mountains, the calmness, joy, and serenity of
the soft sky.
Something like this is what I always feel on coming to that proud city
of palaces, a sort of assurance, a spirit of delight. And in spite of
all Tennyson may have thought to say, for me it is not the North but the
South that is bright "and true and tender." For in the North the sky is
seldom seen and is full of clouds, while here it stretches up to God.
And then, the South has been true to all her ancient faiths and works,
to the Catholic religion, for instance, and to agriculture, the old
labour of the corn and the wine and the oil, while we are gone after
Luther and what he leads to, and, forsaking the fields, have taken to
minding machines.
And so, in some dim way I cannot explain, to come to Italy is like
coming home, as though after a long journey one were to come suddenly
upon one's mistress at a corner of the lane in a shady place.
It is perhaps with some such joy in the heart as this that the fortunate
traveller will come to Genoa the Proud, by the sea, lying on the bosom
of the mountains, whiter than the foam of her waves, the beautiful gate
of Italy.
II
The history of Genoa, its proud and adventurous story, is almost wholly
a tale of the sea, full of mystery, cruelty, and beauty, a legend of sea
power, a romance of ships. It is a narrative in which sailors, half
merchants, half pirates, adventurers every one, put out from the city
and return laden with all sorts of spoil,--gold from Africa, slaves from
Tunis or Morocco, the booty of the Crusades; with here the vessel of the
Holy Grail bought at a great price, there the stolen dust of a great
Saint.
This spirit of adventure, which established the power of Genoa in the
East, which crushed Pisa and almost overcame Venice, was held in check
and controlled by the spirit of gain, the dream of the merchant, so that
Columbus, the very genius of adventure almost without an after-thought,
though a Genoese, was not encouraged, was indeed laughed at; and Genoa,
splendid in adventure but working only for gain, unable on this account
to establish any permanent colony, losing gradually all her possessions,
threw to the Spaniard the dominion of the New World, just because she
was not worthy of it. Men have called her Genoa the Proud, and indeed
who, looking on her from the sea or the sea-shore, will ever question
her title?--but the truth is, that she was not proud enough. She trusted
in riches; for her, glory was of no account if gold were not added to
it. If she entered the first Crusade as a Christian, it was really her
one disinterested action; and all the world acknowledged her valour and
her contrivance which won Jerusalem. But in the second Crusade, as in
the next, she no longer thought of glory or of the Tomb of Jesus, she
was intent on money; and since in that stony place but little booty
could be hoped for, she set herself to spoil the Christian, to provide
him at a price with ships, with provender, with the means of realising
his dream, a dream at which she could afford to laugh, secure as she was
in the possession of this world's goods. Then, when in the thirteenth
century those vast multitudes of soldiers, monks, dreamers, beggars,
and adventurers came to her, the port for Palestine, clamouring for
transports, she was sceptical and even scornful of them, but willing to
give them what they demanded, not for the love of God but for a price.
Even that beautiful and mysterious army of children which came to her
from France and Germany in 1212 seeking Jesus, she could hold in
contempt till, weary at last of feeding them, she found the galleys they
demanded, and in the loneliness of the sea betrayed them and sold them
for gold as slaves to the Arabs, so that of the seven thousand boys and
girls led by a lad of thirteen who came at the bidding of a voice to
Genoa, not one ever returned, nor do we hear anything further concerning
them but the rumour of their fate.
Thus Genoa appears to us of old and now, too, as a city of merchants.
She crushed Pisa lest Pisa should become richer than herself; she went
out against the Moors for Castile because of a whisper of the booty; she
sought to overthrow Venice because she competed with her trade in the
East; and to-day if she could she would fill up the harbour of Savona
with stones, as she did in the sixteenth century, because Savona takes
part of her trade from her. What Philip of Spain did for God's sake,
what Visconti did for power, what Cesare Borgia did for glory, Genoa has
done for gold. She is a merchant adventurer. Her true work was the Bank
of St. George. One of the most glorious and splendid cities of Italy,
she is, almost alone in that home of humanism, without a school of art
or a poet or even a philosopher. Her heroes are the great admirals, and
adventurers--Spinola, Doria, Grimaldi, Fieschi, men whose names linger
in many a ruined castle along the coast who of old met piracy with
piracy. Even to-day a Grimaldi spoils Europe at Monaco, as his ancestors
did of old.
One saint certainly of her own stock she may claim, St. Catherine
Adorni, born in 1447. But the Renaissance passed her by, giving her, it
is true, by the hands of an alien, the streets of splendid palaces we
know, but neither churches nor pictures; such paintings as she possesses
being the sixteenth century work of foreigners, Rubens, Vandyck,
Ribera, Sanchez Coello, and maybe Velasquez.
Yet barren though she is in art, at least Genoa has ever been fulfilled
with life. If her aim was riches she attained it, and produced much that
was worth having by the way. Without the appeal of Florence or Siena or
Venice or Rome, she is to-day, when they are passed away into dreams or
have become little more than museums, what she has ever been, a city of
business, the greatest port in the Mediterranean, a city full of various
life,--here a touch of the East, there a whisper of the West, a busy,
brutal, picturesque city, beauty growing up as it does in London,
suddenly for a moment out of the life of the place, not made or
contrived as in Paris or Florence, but naturally, a living thing, shy
and evanescent. Here poverty and riches jostle one another side by side
as they do in life, and are antagonistic and hate one another. Yet
Genoa, alone of all the cities of Italy proper is living to-day, living
the life of to-day, and with all her glorious past she is as much a city
of the twentieth century as of any other period of history. For, while
others have gone after dreams and attained them and passed away, she has
clung to life, and the god of this world was ever hers. She has made to
herself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, and they have remained
faithful to her. Her ports grow and multiply, her trade increases, still
she heaps up riches, and if she cannot tell who shall gather them, at
least she is true to herself and is not dependent on the stranger or the
tourist. The artist, it is said, is something of a daughter of joy, and
in thinking of Florence or Venice, which live on the pleasure of the
stranger, we may find the truth of a saying so obvious. Well, Genoa was
never an artist. She was a leader, a merchant, with fleets, with
argosies, with far-flung companies of adventure. Through her gates
passed the silks and porcelains of the East, the gold of Africa, the
slaves and fair women, the booty and loot of life, the trade of the
world. This is her secret. She is living among the dead, who may or may
not awaken.
If you are surprised in her streets by the greatness of old things, it
is only to find yourself face to face with the new. People, tourists do
not linger in her ways--they pass on to Pisa. Genoa has too little to
show them, and too much. She is not a museum, she is a city, a city of
life and death and the business of the world. You will never love her as
you will love Pisa or Siena or Rome or Florence, or almost any other
city of Italy. We do not love the living as we love the dead. They press
upon us and contend with us, and are beautiful and again ugly and
mediocre and heroic, all between two heart beats; but the dead ask only
our love. Genoa has never asked it, and never will. She is one of us,
her future is hidden from her, and into her mystery none has dared to
look. She is like a symphony of modern music, full of immense gradual
crescendos, gradual diminuendos, unknown to the old masters. Only Rome,
and that but seldom, breathes with her life. But through the music of
her life, so modern, so full of a sort of whining and despair in which
no great resolution or heroic notes ever come, there winds an old-world
melody, softly, softly, full of the sun, full of the sea, that is always
the same, mysterious, ambiguous, full of promises, at her feet.
III
The gate of Italy, I said in speaking of her, and indeed it is one of
the derivations of her name Genoa,--Janua the gate, founded, as the
fourteenth-century inscription in the Duomo asserts, by Janus, a Trojan
prince skilled in astrology, who, while seeking a healthy and safe place
for his dwelling, sailed by chance into this bay, where was a little
city founded by Janus, King of Italy, a great-grandson of Noah, and
finding the place such as he wished, he gave it his name and his power.
Now, whether the great-grandson of Noah was truly the original founder
of the city, or Janus the Trojan, or another, it is certainly older than
the Christian religion, so that some have thought that Janus, that old
god who once presided at the beginning of all noble things, was the
divine originator of this city also. And remembering the sun that
continually makes Genoa to seem all of precious stone, of moonstone or
alabaster, it seems indeed likely enough, for Janus was worshipped of
old as the sun, he opened the year too, and the first month bears his
name; and while on earth he was the guardian deity of gates, in heaven
he was porter, and his sign was a ship; therefore he may well have taken
to himself the city of ships, the gateway of Italy, Genoa.
And through that gate what beautiful, terrible, and mysterious things
have passed into oblivion; Saints who have perhaps seen the very face of
Jesus; legions strong in the everlasting name of Caesar, that have lost
themselves in the fastnesses of the North; sailors mad with the song of
the sirens. On her quays burned the futile enthusiasm of the Middle Age,
that coveted the Holy City and was overwhelmed in the desert. Through
her streets surged Crusade after Crusade, companies of adventure, lonely
hermits drunken with silence, immense armies of dreamers, the chivalry
of Europe, a host of little children. On her ramparts Columbus dreamed,
and in her seas he fought with the Tunisian galleys before he set sail
westward for El Dorado. And here Andrea Doria beat the Turks and
blockaded his own city and set her free; and S. Catherine Adorni, weary
of the ways of the world, watched the galleons come out of the west, and
prayed to God, and saw the wind over the sea. O beautiful and mysterious
armies, O little children from afar, and thou whose adventurous name
married our world, what cities have you taken, what new love have you
found, what seas have your ships furrowed; whither have you fled away
when Genoa was so fair?
* * * * *
It was about the year 50 when St. Nazarus and St. Celsus, fleeing from
the terror of Nero, landed not far away to the east at Albaro, bringing
with them the new religion. A lane leading down to the sea still bears
the name of one of them, and, strangely as we may think, a ruined church
marks the spot crowning the rock above the place, where a Temple of
Venus once stood. Yet perhaps the earliest remnant of old Genoa is to be
found in the Church of S. Sisto in the Via di Pre, standing as it does
on the very stones of a church raised to the Pope and martyr of that
name in 260. In the journey which Pope Sixtus made to Genoa he is said
to have been accompanied by St. Laurence, and it is probable that a
church was built not much later to him also on the site of the Duomo.
However this may be, Genoa appears to have been passionately Christian,
for the first authority we hear of is that of the Bishops, to whom she
seems to have submitted herself enthusiastically, installing them in the
old castello in that the most ancient part of the city around Piazza
Sarzano and S. Maria di Castello. This castello, destroyed in the
quarrels of Guelph and Ghibelline, as some have thought, may be found in
the hall-mark of the silver vessels made here under the Republic. Very
few are the remnants that have come down to us from the time of the
Bishops. An inscription, however, on a house in Via S. Luca close to S.
Siro remains, telling how in the year 580 S. Siro destroyed the serpent
Basilisk. In the church itself a seventeenth-century fresco commemorates
this monstrous deed.
Of the Lombard dominion something more is left to us; the story at least
of the passing of the dust of St. Augustine. It seems that at the
beginning of the sixth century these sacred ashes had been brought from
Africa to Cagliari to save them from the Vandals. For more than two
hundred years they remained at Cagliari, when, the Saracens taking the
place, Luitprand, the Lombard king, remembering S. Ambrogio and Milan,
ransomed them for a great price and had them brought in 725 to Genoa,
where they were shown to the people for many days. Luitprand himself
came to Genoa to meet them and placed them in a silver urn, discovered
at Pavia in 1695, and carried them in state across the Apennines. Some
of the beautiful Lombard towers, such as S. Stefano and S. Agostino,
where the ashes are said to have been exposed, remind us perhaps more
nearly of the Lombard dominion. Then came Charlemagne and his knights
and the great quarrel. But though Genoa now belonged to the Holy Roman
Empire, she was not strong enough to defend herself from the raids of
the Saracens, who in the earlier part of the tenth century burnt the
city and led half the population into captivity.
Perhaps it is to Otho that Genoa owes her first impulse towards
greatness: he gave her a sort of freedom at any rate. And immediately
after his day the Genoese began to make way against the Saracens on the
seas. You may see a relic of some passing victory in the carved Turk's
head on a house at the corner of Via di Pre and Vico dei Macellai. Nor
was this all, for about this time Genoa seized Corsica, that fatal
island which not only never gave her peace, but bred the immortal
soldier who was finally to crush her and to end her life as a free
power.
There follow the Crusades. These splendid follies have much to do with
the wealth and greatness of Genoa. It was from her port that Godfrey de
Bouillon set sail in the _Pomella_ as a pilgrim in 1095. He appears to
have been insulted at the very gate of Jerusalem, or, as some say, at
the door of the Holy Sepulchre. At any rate he returned to Europe, where
Urban II, urged by Peter the Hermit, was already half inclined to
proclaim the First Crusade. Godfrey's story seems to have decided him;
and, indeed, so moving was his tale, that the crowd who heard him cried
out urging the Pope to act, _Dieu le veult_, the famous and fatal cry
that was to lead uncounted thousands to death, and almost to widow
Europe. In Genoa the war was preached furiously and with success by the
Bishops of Gratz and Arles in S. Siro. An army of enthusiasts, monks,
beggars, soldiers, adventurers, and thieves, moved partly by the love of
Christ, partly by love of gain, gathered in Genoa. With them was
Godfrey. They sailed in 1097: they besieged Antioch and took it. Content
it might seem with this success, or fearful in that stony place of
venturing too far from the sea, the Genoese returned, not empty. For on
the way back, storm-bound perhaps in Myra, they sacked a Greek
monastery there, carrying off for their city the dust of St. John
Baptist, which to-day is still in their keeping.
Was it the hope of loot that caused Genoa in 1099 to send even a larger
company to Judaea under the great Guglielmo Embriaco, whose tower to-day
is all that is left of what must once have been a city of towers? Who
knows? He landed with his Genoese at Joppa, burnt his ships as Caesar
did, though doubtless he thought not of it, and marching on Jerusalem
found the Christians still unsuccessful and the Tomb of Christ, as now,
ringed by pagan spears. But the Genoese were not to be denied. If the
valour of Europe was of no avail, the contrivance of the sea, the
cunning of Genoa must bring down Saladin. So they set to work and made a
tower of scaffolding with ropes, with timbers, with spars saved from
their ships. When this was ready, slowly, not without difficulty, surely
not without joy, they hauled and heaved and drove it over the burning
dust, the immense wilderness of stones and refuse that surrounded
Jerusalem. Then they swarmed up with songs, with shouting, and leapt on
to the walls, and over the ramparts into the Holy City, covered with
blood, filled with the fury of battle, wounded, dying, mad with hatred,
to the Tomb of Jesus, the empty sepulchre of God.
Then eight days after came that strange election, when we offered the
throne of Palestine to Godfrey of Bouillon; but he refused to wear a
crown of gold where his Saviour had worn one of thorns, so we proclaimed
him Defender of the Holy Sepulchre.
But the Genoese under Embriaco as before returned home, again not
without spoil. And their captain for his portion claimed the _Catino_,
the famous vessel, fashioned as was thought of a single emerald, truly,
as was believed, the vessel of the Holy Grail, the cup of the Last
Supper, the basin of the Precious Blood. To-day, if you are fortunate,
as you look at it in the Treasury of S. Lorenzo, they tell you it is
only green glass, and was broken by the French who carried it to Paris.
But, indeed, what crime would be too great in order to possess oneself
of such a thing? It was an emerald once, and into it the Prince of Life
had dipped His fingers; Nicodemus had held it in his trembling hands to
catch the very life of God; who knows what saint or angry angel in the
heathen days of Napoleon, foreseeing the future, snatched it away into
heaven, giving us in exchange what we deserved. Surely it was an emerald
once? Is it possible that a Genoese gave up all his spoil for a green
glass, a cracked pipkin, a heathen wash pot, empty, valueless, a
fraud?--I'll not believe it.
Embriaco, however, returned once more to Palestine with his men,
fighting under Godfrey at Cesarea; and again he came home in triumph,
his galleys low with spoil. And indeed, though we hear no more of
Embriaco, by the end of the first Crusade, Genoa had won possessions in
the East,--streets in Jaffa, streets in Jerusalem, whole quarters in
Antioch, Cesarea, Tyre, and Acre, not to speak of an inscription in the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, "Prepotens Genuensium Presidium," which
Godfrey had carved there, while the Pope gave them their cross of St.
George as arms, which, as some say, we got from them.
Strangely as we may think, in the second Crusade, and even in the third,
so disastrous for the Christian arms, Genoa bore no part; no part, that
is, in the fighting, though in the matter of commissariat and shipping
she was not slow to come forward and make a fortune. And indeed, she had
enough to do at home; for Pisa, no less slow to join the Crusades,
became her enemy, jealous of her growing power and of her possession of
Corsica, so that in 1120 war broke out between them, which scarcely
ceased till Pisa was finally beaten on the sea, and the chains of Porto
Pisano were hanging on the Palazzo di S. Giorgio.
Soon, however, Genoa was engaged in a more profitable business, an
affair after her own heart, in which valour was not its own reward,--I
mean, in the expedition in 1147 against the Moors in Spain. Certainly
the Pope, Eugenius III it was, urged them to it, but so they had been
urged to fight against Saladin without arousing enthusiasm. Yet in this
new cause all Genoa was at fever heat. Wherefore? Well, Granada was a
great and wealthy city, whereas Jerusalem was a ruined village. So they
sent thirty thousand men with sixty galleys and one hundred and sixty
transports to Almeria, which after some hard fighting, for your Moor was
never a coward, they took, with a huge booty. In the next year they took
Tortosa, and returned home laden with spoil, silver lamps for the shrine
of St. John Baptist, for instance, and women and slaves.
Still, Genoa had no peace, for we find her making a stout and successful
defence shortly after against Frederic I, the whole city, men, women,
and children, on his approach from Lombardy, building a great wall about
the city in fifty-three days, of which feat Porta S. Andrea remains the
monument. Then followed that pestilence of Guelph and Ghibelline; out of
which rose the names of the great families, robbers, oppressors,
tyrants,--Avvocato, Spinola, Doria, the Ghibellines, with the Guelphs,
Castelli, Fieschi, Grimaldi. Nor was Genoa free of them till the great
Admiral Andrea Doria crushed them for ever. Yet peace of a sort there
was, now and again, in 1189 for instance, when Saladin won back
Jerusalem, and the Guelph nobles volunteered in a body to serve against
him, leaving Genoa to the Ghibellines, who established the foreign
Podesta for the first time to rule the city. But this gave them no
peace, for still the nobles fought together, and if one family became
too powerful, confusion became worse confounded, for Guelph and
Ghibelline joined together to bring it low. Thus in the thirteenth
century you find Ghibelline Doria linked with the Guelph Grimaldi and
Fieschi to break Ghibelline Spinola. The aspect of the city at that time
was certainly very different from the city of to-day, which is mainly of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries where it is not quite modern.
Then each family had its tower, from which it fought or out of which it
issued, making the streets a shambles as it followed the enemy home or
sought him out. The ordinary citizen must have had an anxious time of
it with these bands of idle cut-throats at large. But by the close of
the twelfth century the towers, at any rate, had been destroyed by order
of the Consuls, the only one left being that which we see to-day, Torre
degli Embriachi, left as a monument to a cunning valour. The thirteenth
century saw the domination of the Spinola family, or rather of one
branch of it, the Luccoli Spinola, which as opposed to the old S. Luca
branch seems to have lived nearer the country and the woods, and was
apparently most disastrous for the internal peace of the city; and
indeed, until the Luccoli were beaten and exiled, as happened in the
beginning of the fourteenth century, there could be no peace; truly the
only peace Genoa knew in those days was that of a foreign war, when the
great lords went out against Pisa or Venice.
The Venetian war, unlike that against Pisa, ended disastrously. Its
origin was a question of trade in the East, where the Comneni had given
certain rights to Genoa which on their fall the Venetians refused to
respect. The quarrel came to a head in that cause of so many quarrels,
the island of Crete, for the Marquis of Monferrat had sold it to the
Venetians while he offered it to the Genoese, he himself having received
it as spoil in the fourth Crusade. In this quarrel with Venice, Genoa
certainly at first had the best of it. In 1261, or thereabout, she
founded two colonies at Pera and Caffa, on the Bosphorus and in the
Euxine, thus adding to her empire, which was rather a matter of business
than of dominion. This is illustrated very effectually by the history of
the Bank of St. George, which from this time till its dissolution at the
end of the eighteenth century was, as it were, the heart of Genoa. It
was Guglielmo Boccanegra, the grandfather of a more famous son, who
built the palace which, as we now see it on the quay, is so sad and
ruinous a monument to the independent greatness of the city. And since
its stones were, as it is said, brought from Constantinople, where
Michael Paleologus had given the Genoese the Venetian fortress of
Pancratone, it is really a monument of the hatred of Genoa for Venice
that we see there, the principal door being adorned with three lions'
heads, part of the spoil of that Venetian fortress. This palace, on the
death of Boccanegra, Captain of the People, was used by the city as an
office for the registration of the _compere_ or public loans, which
dated from 1147 and the Moorish expedition. From the time of the
foundation of the Bank the shares were, like our consols, to be bought
and sold and were guaranteed by the city herself, though it was not till
1407 that the loans were consolidated and the Palazzo delle Compere, as
it was called, became the Banco di S. Giorgio. Indeed, though its real
power may be doubted, it administered, in name at any rate, the colonies
of Genoa after the fall of Constantinople.
Of the building itself I speak elsewhere; it is rather to its place in
the story of Genoa that I have wished here to draw attention.
And it was now, indeed, that Genoa reached, perhaps, the zenith of her
power. For in 1284 comes the great victory of Meloria, which laid Pisa
low. Enraged partly at the success of Genoa in the East, partly at her
growing power and general wealth, Pisa, with that extraordinary flaming
and ruthless energy so characteristic of her, determined to dispose of
Genoa once and for all. Nor were the Genoese unwilling to meet her.
Indeed, they urged her to it. The two fleets, bearing some sixty
thousand men, that of Pisa commanded by a Venetian, Andrea Morosini,
that of Genoa by Oberto Doria, met at Meloria, not far from Bocca
d'Arno, when the Pisans were utterly defeated, partly owing to the
treachery of the immortal Count Ugolino, who sailed away without
striking a blow.[1] Yet in spite of her defeat Pisa carried on the war
for four years, when she sued for peace, which, however, she could not
keep, so that in 1290 we find Corrado Doria sailing into the Porto
Pisano, breaking the chain which guarded it, and carrying it back to
Genoa, where part of it hung as a trophy till our own time on the facade
of the Palazzo di S. Giorgio.
Nor were the Genoese content, for soon after this victory we find them,
led by Lamba Doria, utterly beating the Venetians at Curzola, in the
Adriatic, where they took a famous prisoner, Messer Marco Polo, just
returned from Asia. They brought him back to Genoa, where he remained in
prison for nearly two years, and wrote his masterpiece. Whether it was
the influence of so illustrious a captive, or merely the natural
expression of their own splendid and adventurous spirit, about this time
the Doria fitted out two galleys to explore the western seas, and to try
to reach India by way of the sunset. Tedisio Doria and the brothers
Vivaldi with some Franciscans set out on this adventure, and never
returned.
With the fourteenth century Genoa for a time threw off the yoke of her
great nobles, Spinola, Doria, Grimaldi, Fieschi. The wave of revolt that
passed over Europe at this time certainly left Genoa freer than she had
ever been. The people had claimed to name their own "Abbate," in
opposition to the Captain of the People. They chose by acclamation
Simone Boccanegra, who, however, seeing that he was to have no power,
refused the office. "If he will not be Abbate," cried a voice in the
crowd, "let him be Doge"; and seeing the enthusiasm of the people, this
great man allowed himself to be borne to S. Siro, where he was crowned
first Doge of Genoa for life. The nobles seem to have been afraid to
interfere, so great was the eagerness of the people. And it was about
this time that the Grimaldi, driven out of Genoa, seized Monaco, which
by the sufferance of Europe they hold to-day. It is true, that for a
time in 1344 the nobles gathered an army and returned to Genoa,
Boccanegra resigning and exiling himself in Pisa; but twelve years later
he was back again, ruling with temperance and wisdom that great city,
which was now queen of the Mediterranean sea.
To follow the fortunes of the Republic one would need to write a book.
It must be sufficient to say here that by the middle of the century war
broke out with Venice, and was at first disastrous for Genoa. Then once
more a Doria, Pagano it was, led her to victory at Sapienza, off the
coast of Greece, where thirty-one Genoese galleys fought thirty-six of
Venice and took them captive. But the nobles were never quiet, always
they plotted the death of the Doge Giovanni da Morta, or Boccanegra. It
was with the latter they were successful in 1363, when they poisoned him
at a banquet in honour of the King of Cyprus--for they had possessed
themselves of a city in that island. Thus the nobles came back into
Genoa, Adorni, Fregosi, Guarchi, Montaldi, this time; lesser men, but
not less disastrous for the liberty of Genoa than the older families. So
they fought among themselves for mastery, till the Adorni, fearing to be
beaten, sold the city to Charles VI of France, who made them his
representative and gave them the government. And all this time the war
with Venice continued. At first it promised success,--at Pola, for
instance, where Luciano Doria was victorious, but at last beaten at
Chioggia, and not knowing where to turn to make terms, the supremacy of
the seas passed from Genoa to Venice, peace coming at last in 1381.
Then the Genoese turned their attention to the affairs of their city. In
the first year of the fifteenth century they rose to throw off the
French yoke. But France was not so easily disposed of. She sent Marshal
Boucicault to rule in Genoa; and he built the Castelletto, which was
destroyed only a few years ago in our father's time. In 1409, however,
Boucicault thought to gain Milan, for Gian Galeazzo Visconti was dead.
In his absence the Genoese rose and threw out the French, preferring
their own tyrants. These, Adorni, Montaldi, Fregosi, fought together
till Tommaso Fregosi, fearing that the others might prove too strong for
him, sold the city to Filippo Maria Visconti, tyrant of Milan. So the
Visconti came to rule in Genoa.
This period, full of the confusion of the petty wars of Italy, while
Sforza was plotting for his dukedom and Malatesta was building his Rocca
in Rimini; while the Pope was a fugitive, and the kingdom of Naples in a
state of anarchy, is famous, so far as Genoa is concerned, for her
victory at sea over King Alfonso of Aragon, pretender against Rene of
Anjou to the throne of Naples. The Visconti sided with the House of
Anjou, and Genoa, in their power for the moment, fought with them; so
that Biagio Assereto, in command of the Genoese fleet, not only defeated
the Aragonese, but took Alfonso prisoner, together with the King of
Navarre and many nobles. That victory, strangely enough, made an end of
the rule of the Visconti in Genoa. For, seeing his policy led that way,
Filippo Maria Visconti ordered the Genoese to send their illustrious
prisoners to Milan, where he made much of them, fearing now rather the
French than the Spaniards, since the Genoese had disposed of the latter
and so made the French all-powerful. This spoliation, however, enraged
the Genoese, who joined the league of Florence and Venice, deserting
Milan. At the word of Francesco Spinola they rose, in 1436, killed the
Milanese governor outside the Church of S. Siro, and once more declared
a Republic. To little purpose, as it proved, for the feuds betwixt the
great families continued, so that by 1458 we find Pietro Fregosi,
fearing the growing power of the Adorni, and hard pressed by King
Alfonso, who never forgave an injury, handing over Genoa to Charles VIII
of France.
Meantime, in 1453, Constantinople had fallen before Mahomet, and the
colony of Galata was thus lost to Genoa. And though in this sorry
business the Genoese seem to be less blameworthy than the rest of
Christendom--for they with but four galleys defeated the whole Turkish
fleet--Genoa suffered in the loss of Galata more than the rest, a fact
certainly not lost upon Venice and Naples, who refused to move against
the Turk, though the honour of Europe was pledged in that cause. But all
Italy was in a state of confusion. Sforza, that fox who had possessed
himself of the March of Ancona, and had never fought in any cause but
his own, on the death of Visconti had with almost incredible guile
seized Milan. He it was who helped the Genoese to throw out the French,
only to take Genoa for himself. A man of splendid force and confidence,
he ruled wisely, and alone of her rulers up to this time seems to have
been regretted when, in 1466, he died, and was succeeded in the Duchy
of Milan by his son Galeazzo. This man was a tyrant, and ruled like a
barbarian, till his assassination in 1476. There followed a brief space
of liberty in Genoa, liberty endangered every moment by the quarrels of
the nobles, who at last proposed to divide the city among them, and
would have thus destroyed their fatherland, had not Il Moro, Ludovico
Sforza of Milan, intervened and possessed himself of Genoa, which he
held till 1499, when Louis XII of France defeated him, Genoa placing
herself under his protection.
Meanwhile Columbus, that mystical dreamer who might have restored to
Genoa all and more than all she had lost in colonial dominion, was born
and grew up in those narrow streets, and played on the lofty ramparts
and learned the ways of ships. Genoa in her proud confusion heard him
not, so he passed to Salamanca and the Dominicans, and set sail from
Cadiz. Yet he never forgot Genoa, and indeed it is characteristic of
those great men who are without honour in their own country, that they
are ever mindful of her who has rejected them. The beautiful letter
written to the Bank of St. George in 1498 from Seville, as he was about
to set out on what proved to be his last voyage, is witness to this.
"Although my body," he writes, "is here, my heart is always with you.
God has been more bountiful to me than to any one since David's time.
The success of my enterprise is already clear, and would be still more
clear if the Government did not cover it with a veil. I sail again for
the Indies in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, and I return at once;
but as I know I am but mortal, I charge my son Don Diego to pay you
yearly and for ever the tenth part of all my revenue, in order to
lighten the toll on wine and corn. If this tenth part is large you are
welcome to it; if small, believe in my good wish. May the Most Holy
Trinity guard your noble persons and increase the lustre of your
distinguished office."
Such were the last words of Columbus to his native city. You may see his
birthplace, the very house in which he was born, on your left in the
Borgo dei Lanajoli, as you go down from the Porta S. Andrea.
It was in 1499 that Louis of France got possession of Genoa. He held the
city, cowed as it was, till 1507, when, goaded into rebellion by
insufferable wrongs, the people rose and threw out his Frenchmen with
their own nobles, choosing as their Doge Paolo da Novi, a dyer of silk,
one of themselves. Not for long, however, was Paolo to rule in Genoa,
for Louis retook the city, and Paolo, who had fled to Pisa, was captured
as he sailed for Rome, and put to death.
It was now that it came into the mind of Louis, who had learned nothing
from experience, to build another fort like to the Castelletto, to wit
the Briglia, to bridle the city. This he did, yet there lay the bridle
on which he was to be ridden back to France. For the Genoese never
forgave him his threat, which stood before them day by day, so that at
the first opportunity, Julius II, Pope and warrior, helping them, they
rose again, and again the French departed. And in 1515 Louis died, and
Francis I ruled in his stead. Then, the nobles of Genoa quarrelling as
ever among themselves, Fregoso agreed with the French king, who made him
governor of the city. The Adorni, angry at this, made overtures to the
Emperor, Charles V it was, who sent General Pescara and twenty thousand
men to take the city. There followed that most bloody sack, to the cry
of Spain and Adorni, which lives in history and in the hearts of the
Genoese to this day. This happened in 1522, and thereafter Antoniotto
Adorni became Doge as a reward for his treachery.
But already the deliverer was at hand, scarcely to be distinguished at
first from an enemy. Five years were the length of Adorni's rule, and
all that time the French attacked and strove for the city, and in their
ranks fought he who was the deliverer, Andrea Doria, Lord Admiral of
Genoa, the saviour of his country.
Then in 1527 the French got possession of Genoa. Now Filippino Doria,
nephew to the Admiral, had won a victory in the Gulf of Palermo over
the Spanish fleet. But Francis, that brilliant fool, thought nothing of
this service, though he claimed the prisoners for himself, for he liked
the ransom well. Then the Admiral, touched in his pride, threw over the
French cause and joined the Emperor. In 1528 a common action between the
fleet under Doria and the populace within the city once more threw out
the French, and Doria entered Genoa amid the acclamation of the
multitude, knight of the Golden Fleece and Prince of Melfi.
This extraordinary and heroic sailor, born at Oneglia in 1466 or 1468 of
one of the princely houses of Genoa, before 1503 had served under many
Italian lords. It was in 1513 that he first had the command of the fleet
of Genoa, while three years later he defeated the Turks at Pianosa. He
helped Francis into Genoa and he threw him out; while he lived he ruled
the city he had twice subdued, and his glory was hers. Yet truly it
might seem that all Doria did was but to transfer Genoa from the
Spaniard to the Frenchman and back again. In reality, he won her for
himself. He drove the French not only out of Genoa, but out of her
dominion. He filled up the port of Savona with stones, because she had
under French influence sought to rival Genoa. With him Genoa ruled the
sea, and with his death her greatness departed. And he was as liberal as
he was powerful. Charles V knew him, and let him alone. He himself as
Lord of Genoa gave her back her liberties, set up the Senate again,
opened the Golden Book, Il Libro d'Oro, and wrote in it the names of
those who should rule; then he set up a parliament, the Grand Council of
Four Hundred, and the old quarrels were forgotten, and there was peace.
But who could rule the Genoese, greedy as their sea, treacherous as
their winds, proud as their sun, deep as their sky, cruel as their
rocks! If the Admiral had brought the Adorni and the Fregosi low, there
yet remained the Fieschi, old as the Doria, Guelph too, while they had
been Ghibelline.
It is true that the old quarrels were done with, yet strangely enough it
was on the Pope's behalf that the Fieschi plotted against the Doria.
Now, Pope Paul III had been Doria's friend. In 1535 he had for a
remembrance of his love given the Admiral that great sword which still
hangs in S. Matteo. But now, when Andrea's brother, Abbate di San
Fruttuoso came to die, and it was known that he had left the Admiral
much property close to Naples, the Pope, swearing that the estates of an
ecclesiastic necessarily returned to the Church, claimed Andrea's
inheritance. But the Admiral thought differently. Ordering Giannettino,
his nephew, to take the fleet to Civitavecchia, he seized the Pope's
galleys and had them brought to Genoa. Now, when the Genoese saw this
strange capture convoyed into Genoa--so the tale goes--they were afraid,
and crowded round the old Admiral, demanding wherefore he made war on
the Church, and some shouted sacrilege and others profanation, while
others again besought him with tears what it meant. And he answered, so
that all might hear, that it meant that his galleys were stronger than
those of His Holiness.
Then the Pope, knowing his man, gave way, but forgot it not. So that he
called Gian Luigi Fieschi to him, the head of that family, a Guelph of a
Guelph stock, and put it into his mind to rise against the Admiral, and
to hold Genoa himself under the protection of Francis I. The blow fell
on 1st January 1547. Now, on the day before, the Admiral was unwell and
lay a bed, so that Fieschi waited on him in the most friendly way, and,
as it is said, kissed many times the two lads, grand-nephews of the
Admiral, who played about the room. Not many hours later, the Fieschi
were in the streets rousing the city. Giannettino, nephew to the
Admiral, hearing the tumult, ran to the Porta S. Tommaso to hold it and
enter the city, but that gate was already lost, and he himself soon
dead. Truly, all seemed lost when Fieschi, going to seize the galleys,
slipped from a plank into the water, and his armour drowned him. Then
the House of Doria rallied, and their cry rang through the city; little
by little they thrust back their enemies, they hemmed them in, they
trod them under foot; before dawn all that were left of the Fieschi were
flying to Montobbio, their castle in the mountains. Thus the Admiral
gave peace to Genoa, nor was he content with the exile or death of his
foes, for he destroyed also all their palaces, villas, and castles,
spoiling thus half the city, and making way for the palaces which have
named Genoa the City of Palaces, and which we know to-day. For thirteen
years longer Andrea Doria reigned in Genoa, dying at last in 1560. And
at his death all that might make Genoa so proud departed with him. In
1565 she lost Chios, the last of her possessions in the East, and before
long she lay once more in the hands of foreigners, not to regain her
liberty till in 1860 Italy rose up out of chaos and her sea bore the
Thousand of Garibaldi to Sicily, to Marsala, to free the Kingdom.
IV
As you stand under those strange arcades that run under the houses
facing the port, all that most ancient story of Genoa seems actual,
possible; it is as though in some extraordinarily vivid dream you had
gone back to less uniform days, when the beauty and the ugliness of the
world struggled for mastery, before the overwhelming victory of the
machine had enthroned ugliness and threatened the dominion of the soul
of man. In that shadowy place, where little shops like caverns open on
either side, with here a woman grinding coffee, there a shoe-maker at
his last, yonder a smith making copper pipkins, a sailor buying ropes,
an old woman cheapening apples, everything seems to have stood still
from century to century. There you will surely see the _mantilla_ worn
as in Spain, while the smell of ships, whose masts every now and then
you may see, a whole forest of them, in the harbour, the bells of the
mules, the splendour of the most ancient sun, remind you only of old
things, the long ways of the great sea, the roads and the deserts and
the mountains, the joy that cometh with the morning, so that there at
any rate Genoa is as she ever was, a city of noisy shadowy ways, cool
in the heat, full of life, movement, merchandise, and women.
And as it happens, this shadowy arcade, so close to the hotels (under
which, indeed, you must make your way to reach one of the oldest of
these hostelries, the Hotel de la Ville), is a place to which the
traveller returns again and again, weary of the garish modernity that
has spoiled so much of the city, far at least from the tram lines that
have made of so many Italian cities a pandemonium. It is from this
characteristic pathway between the little shops that one should set out
to explore Genoa.
Passing along this passage eastward, you soon come to the Bank of St.
George, that black Dogana, built with Venetian stones from
Constantinople, a monument of hatred and perhaps of love,--hatred of the
Venetians, of the Pisans too, for here till our own time hung the iron
chains of Porto Pisano that Corrado Doria took in 1290; and of love,
since it was to preserve Genoa and her dominion that the Banca was
founded. Over the door you may still see remnants of the device the
Guelph Fieschi Pope, Innocent VII, gave to his native city when he came
to see her, the griffin of Genoa strangling the imperial eagle and the
fox of Pisa; while under is the motto, _Griphus ut has agit, sic hostes
Genua frangit_.
It was Guglielmo Boccanegra who built the place, as the inscription
reminds you,--it was his palace. But only the facade landward remains
from his time, with the lions' heads, the great hall and the facade
seaward dating from 1571, eleven years after Doria's death. In the tower
is the old bell which used to summon the Grand Council; it is of
seventeenth-century work, and was presented to the Bank by the Republic
of Holland.[2]
Within, the palace is a ruin, only the Hall of Grand Council being in
any way worth a visit. Here you may see statues of the chief benefactors
of the city from the middle of the fourteenth century to the middle of
the seventeenth. And by a curious device worthy of this city of
merchants, each citizen got a statue according to his gifts. Those who
save 100,000 lire were carved sitting there, while those who gave but
half this were carved standing; less rich and less liberal benefactors
got a bust or a mere commemorative stone, each according to his
liberality, and this (strangely we may think), in a city so religious
that it is dedicated to Madonna, might seem to leave nothing for the
widow with her mite who gave more than they all.
One comes out of that dirty and ruined place, that was once so splendid,
with a regret that modern Italy, which is so eager to build grandiose
banks and every sort of public building, is yet so regardless of old
things that one might fancy her history only began in 1860. Mr. Le
Mesurier, in the interesting book already referred to, has suggested
that this old palace, so full of memories of Genoa's greatness, should
be used by the municipality as a museum for Genoese antiquities. I
should like to raise my voice with his in this cause so worthy of the
city we have loved. Is it still true of her, that though she is proud
she is not proud enough? Is it to be said of her who sped Garibaldi on
his first adventure, that all her old glory is forgotten, that she is
content with mere wealth, a thing after all that she is compelled to
share with the latest American encampment, in which competition she
cannot hope to excel? But she who holds in her hands the dust of St.
John Baptist, who has seen the cup of the Holy Grail, whose sons stormed
Jerusalem and wept beside the Tomb of Jesus, through whose streets the
bitter ashes of Augustine have passed, and in whose heart Columbus was
conceived, and a great Admiral and a great Saint, is worthy of
remembrance. Let her gather the beautiful or curious remnants of her
great days about her now in the day of small things, that out of past
splendour new glory may rise, for she also has ancestors, and, like the
sun, which shall rise to-morrow, has known splendour of old.
As you leave the Banca di S. Giorgio, if you continue on your way you
will come on to the great ramparts, where you may see the sea, and so
you will leave Genoa behind you; but if, returning a little on your way,
you turn into the Piazza Banchi, you will be really in the heart of the
old city, in front of the sixteenth-century Exchange, Loggia dei Banchi,
where Luca Pinelli was crucified for opposing a Fregoso Doge who wished
to sell Livorno to Florence. Passing thence into the street of the
jewellers, Strada degli Orefici, where every sort of silver filigree
work may be found, with coral and amber, you come to Madonna of the
Street Corner, a Virgin and Child, with S. Lo, the patron of all sorts
of smiths, a seventeenth-century work of Piola. These narrow shadowy
ways full of men and women and joyful with children are the delight of
Genoa. There is but little to see, you may think,--little enough but
just life. For Genoa is not a museum: she lives, and the laughter of her
children is the greatest of all the joyful poems of Italy, maybe the
only one that is immortal.
With this thought in your heart (as it is sure to be everywhere in
Italy) you return (as one continually does) to the Arcades, and turning
to the left you follow them till you come to Via S. Lorenzo, in which is
the Duomo all of white and black marble, a jewel with mystery in its
heart, hidden away among the houses of life.
It was built on the site of a church which commemorated the passing of
S. Lorenzo through Genoa. Much of the present church is work of the
twelfth century, such as the side doors and the walls, but the facade
was built early in the fourteenth century, while the tower and the choir
were not finished till 1617. The dome was made by Galeazzo Alessi, the
Perugian who built so much in Genoa, as we shall see later. Possibly the
bas-reliefs strewn on the north wall are work of the Roman period, but
they are not of much interest save to an archeologist.
Within, the church is dark, and this I think is a disappointment, nor is
it very rich or lovely. Some work of Matteo Civitali is still to be seen
in a side chapel on the left, but the only remarkable thing in the
church itself is the chapel of St. John Baptist, into which no woman
may enter, because of the dancing of Salome, daughter of Herodias. There
in a marble urn the ashes of the Messenger have lain for eight
centuries, not without worship, for here have knelt Pope Alexander III,
our own Richard Cordelion, Federigo Barbarossa, Henry IV after Canossa,
Innocent IV, fugitive before Federigo II, Henry VII of Germany, St.
Catherine of Siena, and often too, St. Catherine Adorni, Louis XII of
France, Don John of Austria after Lepanto, and maybe, who knows,
Velasquez of Spain, Vandyck from England, and behind them, all the
misery of Genoa through the centuries, an immense and pitiful company of
men and women crying in the silence to him who had cried in the
wilderness.
Other curious, strange, and wonderful things, too, S. Lorenzo holds for
us in her treasury: a piece of the True Cross set in a cruciform casket
of gold crusted with precious stones, stolen, as most relics have been,
this one from the Venetians in the fourth Crusade, when the Emperor
Baldwin, whom Venice had crowned, sent it as gift to Pope Innocent III
by a Venetian galley, which, caught in a storm, took shelter in Modone
in Hellas, where two Genoese galleys found her and, having looted her,
sent the relic to S. Lorenzo in Genoa magnanimously, as Giustiniani
says. Here also beside this wonder you may see the cup of the Holy
Grail, stolen by the French, who, forced to return it, sent this broken
green glass in place of the perfect emerald they carried away; or maybe,
who knows, it was but glass in the beginning. Yet, indeed, the Genoese
paid a great price for it, thinking it truly the emerald of the Precious
Blood, but they may have deceived themselves in the joy that followed
the winning of the Holy City: though that is not like Genoa. However
this may be, and with relics you are as like to be right as wrong
whatever your opinion, there is but little else worth seeing in S.
Lorenzo.
As you follow the Via S. Lorenzo upwards, you come presently on your
left to the Piazza Umberto Primo, in which is the Palazzo Ducale, the
ancient palace of the Doges, rebuilt finally in 1777; and at last,
still ascending, you find yourself in the great shapeless Piazza
Deferrari, with its statue to Garibaldi, while at the top of the Via S.
Lorenzo on your right is the Church of S. Ambrogio, built by
Pallavicini, with three pictures, a Guido Reni, the Assumption of the
Virgin, and two Rubens, the Circumcision and S. Ignatius healing a
madman. Not far away (for you turn into Piazza Deferrari and take the
second street to the left, Strada S. Matteo) is the great Doria Church
of S. Matteo, in black and white marble, a sort of mausoleum of the
Doria family. Now, the family of Doria, one of the most ancient in
Genoa, the Spinola clan alone being older, emerges really about 1100,
and takes its rise, we are told, from Arduin, a knight of Narbonne, who,
resting in Genoa on his way to Jerusalem, married Oria, a daughter of
the Genoese house of della Volta. However this may be, in 1125 a certain
Martino Doria founded the Church of S. Matteo, which has since remained
the burial-place and monument of his race. Martino Doria is said to have
become a monk, and to have died in the monastery of S. Fruttuoso at
Portofino, where, too, lie many of the Doria family; but certainly as
early as 1298 S. Matteo became the monument of the Doria greatness, for
Lamba Doria, the victor of Curzola, where he beat the Venetian fleet,
was laid here, as you may see from the inscription on the old
sarcophagus at the foot of the facade of the church to the right. The
facade itself is covered with inscriptions in honour of various members
of the family: first, to Lamba, with an account of the battle. It reads
as follows: "To the glory of God and the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the
year 1298, on Sunday 7 September, this angel was taken in Venetian
waters in the city of Curzola, and in that place was the battle of 76
Genoese galleys with 86 Venetian galleys, of which 84 were taken by the
noble Lord Lamba Doria, then Captain and Admiral of the Commune and of
the People of Genoa, with the men on them, of which he brought back to
Genoa alive as prisoners 7400, along with 18 galleys, and the other 66
he caused to be burnt in the said Venetian waters,--he died at Savona
in 1323."[3] It was in this engagement that Marco Polo was taken
prisoner and brought to Genoa.
The second inscription on this facade refers to the battle of Sapienza,
when in 1354 Pagano Doria beat the Venetians off the coast of Greece. It
reads as follows:[4] "In honour of God and the Blessed Mary. In the
fourth day of November 1354, the noble Lord Pagano Doria with 31 Genoese
galleys, at the Island of Sapienza, fought and took 36 Venetian galleys
and four ships, and led to Genoa 1400 men alive as captives with their
captain."
The third inscription deals again with a defeat of the Venetian fleet,
by Luciano Doria in 1379. It reads as follows:[5] "To the glory of God
and the Blessed Mary. In the year 1379, on the 5th day of May, in the
Gulf of the Venetians near Pola, there was a battle of 22 Genoese
galleys with 22 galleys of the Venetians, in which were 4075 men-at-arms
and many other men from Pola; of which galleys 16 were taken with all
that was in them by the noble Lord Luciano Doria, Captain General of the
Commune of Genoa, who in the said battle while fighting valiantly met
his death. The sixteen galleys of the Venetians were conducted into
Genoa with 2407 captive men."
The fourth inscription refers to the earlier victory of Oberto Doria
over the Pisans. It is as follows:[6] "In the name of the Holy Trinity,
in the year of Our Lord 1284, on the 6th day of August, the high and
mighty Lord Oberto Doria, at that time Captain and Admiral of the
Commune and of the Genoese people, triumphed in the Pisan waters over
the Pisans, taking from them 33 galleys with 7 sunk and all the rest put
to flight, and with many dead men left in the waters; and he returned to
Genoa with a great multitude of captives, so that 7272 were placed in
the prisons. There was taken Andrea Morosini of Venice, then Podesta
and Captain General in war of the Commune of Pisa, with the standard of
the Commune, captured by the galleys of Doria and brought to this church
with the seal of the Commune, and there was also taken Loto, the son of
Count Ugolino, and a great part of the Pisan nobility."
The fifth inscription refers to the victory of Filippino Doria, nephew
to the great Admiral over the Spanish galleys in the Gulf of Salerno,
which led Andrea, to the consternation of Genoa, to attack the Pope's
galleys at Civitavecchia.
Within, the church was altered in 1530 by Montorsoli, the Florentine who
was brought from Florence by the Admiral. And there above the high altar
hangs his sword, given him by Pope Paul III, his friend and enemy.
There, too, in the left aisle is the Doria chapel, with a picture of
Andrea and his wife kneeling before our Lord. In the crypt, which was
decorated in stucco by Montorsoli, you may see his tomb.
Questo e quel Doria, che fa dai Pirati
Sicuro il vostro mar per tutti i lati.
The beautiful cloister contains the statues of Andrea and Giovandrea,
broken by the people in 1797. Close by is the Doria Palace, given by the
Republic to Andrea when he refused the office of Doge. It is decorated
with the privileged black and white marble, and bears the inscription,
_Senat. Cons. Andreae de Oria Patriae Liberatori Munus Publicium_.
If you return from S. Matteo to the Piazza Deferrari and then follow the
Via Carlo Felice (and without some sort of guidance such as this you are
like to be lost in the maze of the city) on your way to the beautiful
Piazza Fontane Marose, you pass on your left the Palazzo Pallavicini,
empty now of all its treasures.
On your right as you enter this square of palaces is the Palazzo della
Casa, once the Palazzo Spinola, decorated with the black and white
marble, built in the early part of the fifteenth century, in the place
where the old tower of that great family once stood. It is the palace of
the oldest Genoese family, and the statues in the facade represent the
most famous members of the clan, as Oberto, the son of the founder of
this branch of the race, the Luccoli Spinola, Conrado, who ruled the
city in 1206, and Opizino, who married his daughter to Theodore
Paleologus, Emperor of Constantinople, and lived like a king and was
banished in 1309. The palace itself is said to have been built with the
remains of the Fieschi palace which the Senate destroyed in 1336. Beyond
it rise the Palazzo Negrone and the Palazzo Pallavicini, while opposite
the Negrone Palace the Via Nuova, now called Via Garibaldi (for the
Italians have a bad habit of renaming their old streets), opens, a vista
of palaces, where all the greatness and splendour of Genoa rise up
before you in houses of marble, and courtyards musical with fountains,
walls splendid with frescoes, and rooms full of pictures.
Before passing into this street of palaces, however, the traveller
should follow the difficult Salita di S. Caterina, which climbs between
Palazzo della Casa and Palazzo Negrone towards the Acqua Sola, that
lovely garden, passing on his way the old Palazzo Spinola, where many an
old and precious canvas still hangs on the walls, and the spoiled
frescoes of the beautiful portico are fading in the sun.
It is perhaps in the Via Garibaldi, Via Cairoli, and Via Balbi, avenues
of palaces narrow because of the summer sun, bordered on either side by
triumphant slums, that the real Genoa splendid and living may best be
surprised. Here, amid all the grave and yet homely magnificence of the
princes of the State, life, with a brilliance and a misery all its own,
ebbs and flows, and is not to be denied. Between two palaces of marble,
silent, and full maybe of the masterpieces of dead painters, you may
catch sight of the city of the people, a "truogolo" perhaps with a great
fountain in the midst, where the girls and women are washing clothes,
and the children, whole companies of them, play about the doorways,
while above, the houses, and indeed the court itself, are bright with
coloured cloths and linen drying in the wind and the sun. It is a city
like London that you discover, living fiercely and with all its might,
but without the brutality of our more terrible life, where as here
wealth rises up in the midst of poverty, only here wealth is noble and
without the blatancy and self-satisfaction you find in our squares, and
poverty has not lost all its joyfulness, its air of simplicity and
romance, as it has with us.
It is these palaces, so noble and, as one might think, so deserted, that
Galeazzo Alessi built in the sixteenth century for the nobles of Genoa.
And it is his work, whole streets of it, that has named the city the
City of Palaces, as we say, and has given her something of that proud
look which clings to her in her title, La Superba. Yet not altogether
from the magnificence of her old streets has this name come to her, but
in part from the character of her people, and in great measure, too,
from her brave position there between the mountains and the sea, a city
of precious stone in an amphitheatre of noble hills. Nothing that Genoa
could build, steal, or win could even be so splendid as that birthright
of hers, her place among the mountains on the shores of the great sea.
As one enters Via Garibaldi from Piazza Marose down the vistaed street
where a precious strip of the blue sky seems more lovely for the shadowy
way, the first house on the right is Palazzo Cambiaso, built by Alessi,
while on the left, No. 2, is Palazzo Gambaro, which belonged to the
Cambiaso family. No. 3 on the right is Palazzo Parodi, another of
Alessi's works, built in 1567 for Franco Lercaro; No. 4 is Palazzo
Carega; No. 5, Palazzo Spinola, again by Alessi; while Palazzo Giorgio
Doria, No. 6, was also built by him. Here, beside frescoes by the
Genoese Luca Cambiaso, you may find a Vandyck, a portrait of a lady and
a Sussanah by Veronese. In the Palazzo Adorno too, No. 10, the work of
Alessi, you may find several fine pictures, among them three trionfi in
the manner of Botticelli, and a Rubens; while in Palazzo Serra, No. 12,
but you may not enter, there is a fine hall. The Palazzo Municipale,
built by Rocco Lurago at the end of the sixteenth century, has five
frescoes of the life of the Doge Grimaldi, and Paganini's violin, a
Guarnerius, on which Senor Sarasate played not long ago.
It is, however, in Palazzo Rosso, No. 18, possibly a work of Alessi's,
that you may see what these Genoese palaces really are, for the Marchesa
Maria Brignole-Sale, to whom it belonged, presented it to the city in
1874. It is into a vestibule, desolate enough certainly, that you pass
out of the life of the street, and, ascending the great bare staircase,
come at last on the third storey into the picture gallery. There is
after all, but little to see; for, splendid though some of the pictures
may once have been, they are now for the most part ruined. There
remains, however, a Moretto, the portrait of a Physician, and the
portrait of the Marchese Antonio Giulio Brignole-Sale on horseback, the
beautiful work of Vandyck. Looking at this picture and its fellow, the
portrait of the Marchesa, it is with sorrow we remember the fate that
has befallen so many of Vandyck's masterpieces painted in this city. For
either they have been carried away, like the magnificent group of the
Lommellini family to Edinburgh, the Marchesa Brignole with her child to
England, or they have been repainted and spoiled.
It was in 1621, on the 3rd October, that Vandyck, mounted on "the best
horse in Rubens' stables," set out from Antwerp for Italy. After staying
a short while in Brussels, he journeyed without further delay across
France to Genoa. With him came Rubens' friend, Cavaliere Giambattista
Nani. He reached Genoa on 20th November, where his friends of the de
Wael family greeted him.
The city of Genoa, herself without a school of painting, had welcomed
Rubens not long before very gladly, nor had Vandyck any cause to
complain of her ingratitude. He appears to have set himself to paint in
the style of Rubens, choosing similar subjects, at any rate, and thus to
have won for himself, with such work as the Young Bacchantes, now in
Lord Belper's collection, or the Drunken Silenus, now in Brussels, a
reputation but little inferior to his master's. Certainly at this time
his work is very Flemish in character, and apparently it was not till
he had been to Venice, Mantua, and Rome that the influence of Italy and
the Italian masters may be really found in his work. A disciple of
Titian almost from his youth, it is the work of that master which
gradually emancipates him from Flemish barbarism, from a too serious
occupation with detail, the over-emphasis of northern work, the mere
boisterousness, without any real distinction, that too often spoils
Rubens for us, and yet is so easily excused and forgotten in the mere
joy of life everywhere to be found in it. Well, with this shy and
refined mind Italy is able to accomplish her mission; she humanises him,
gives him the Latin sensibility and clarity of mind, the Latin
refinement too, so that we are ready to forget he was Rubens'
country-man, and think of him often enough as an Englishman, endowed as
he was with much of the delicate and lovely genius of so many of our
artists, full of a passionate yet shy strength, that some may think is
the result of continual communion with Latin things, with Italy and
Italian work, Italian verse, Italian painting, on the part of a race not
Latin, but without the immobility, the want of versatility, common to
the Germans, which has robbed them of any great painter since the early
Renaissance, and in politics has left them to be the last people of
Europe to win emancipation.
Much of this enlightening effect that Italy has upon the northerner may
be found in the work of Vandyck on his return to Genoa, really a new
thing in the world, as new as the poetry of Spenser had been, at any
rate, and with much of his gravity and sweet melancholy or pensiveness,
in those magnificent portraits of the Genoese nobility which time and
fools have so sadly misused. And as though to confirm us in this thought
of him, we may see, as it were, the story of his development during this
journey to the south in the sketch-book in the possession of the Duke of
Devonshire. Here, amid any number of sketches, thoughts as it were that
Titian has suggested, or Giorgione evoked, we see the very dawn of all
that we have come to consider as especially his own. We may understand
how the pride and boisterous magnificence of Rubens came to seem a
little insistent a little stupid too, beside Leonardo's Virgin and Child
with St. Anne now in the Louvre, which he notes in Milan, or that Last
Supper which is now but a shadow on the wall of S. Maria delle Grazie.
And above all, we may see how the true splendour of Titian exposes the
ostentation of Rubens, as the sun will make even the greatest fire look
dingy and boastful. Gradually Vandyck, shy and of a quiet, serene
spirit, becomes aware of this, and, led by the immeasurable glory of the
Venetians, slowly escapes from that "Flemish manner" to be master of
himself; so that, after he has painted in the manner of Titian at
Palermo, he returns to Genoa to begin that wonderful series of
masterpieces we all know, in which he has immortalised the tragedy of a
king, the sorrowful beauty, frail and lovely as a violet, of Henrietta
Maria, and the fate of the Princes of England. And though many of the
pictures he painted in Genoa are dispersed, and many spoiled, some few
remain to tell us of his passing. One, a Christ and the Pharisees, is in
the Palazzo Bianco, not far from Palazzo Rosso, on the opposite side of
the Via Garibaldi. But here there is a fine Rubens too; a Gerard David,
very like the altar-piece at Rouen; a good Ruysdael, with some
characteristic Spanish pictures by Zurbaran, Ribera, and Murillo; and
while the Italian pictures are negligible, though some paintings and
drawings of the Genoese school may interest us in passing, it is
characteristic of Genoa that our interest in this collection should be
with the foreign work there.
As you leave Via Garibaldi and pass down Via Cairoli, on your left you
pass Via S. Siro. Turning down this little way, you come almost
immediately to the Church of S. Siro. The present building dates from
the seventeenth century, but the old church, then called Dei Dodici
Apostoli, was the Cathedral of Genoa. It was close by that the blessed
Sirus "drew out the dreadful serpent named Basilisk in the year 550."
What this serpent may really have been no one knows, but Carlone has
painted the scene in fresco in S. Siro.
Returning to Via Cairoli, at the bottom, in Piazza Zecca on your left,
is one of the Balbi palaces; while in Piazza Annunziata, a little
farther on, you come to the beautiful Church of Santissima Annunziata
del Vastato, built by Della Porta in 1587.
Crossing this Piazza, you enter perhaps the most splendid street in
Genoa, Via Balbi, which climbs up at last to the Piazza Acquaverde, the
Statue of Columbus, and the Railway. The first palace on your right is
Palazzo Durazzo-Pallavicini, with a fine picture gallery. Here you may
see two fine Rubens, a portrait of Philip IV of Spain, and a Silenus
with Bacchantes, a great picture of James I of England with his family,
painted by some "imitator" of Vandyck, though who it was in Genoa that
knew both Vandyck and England is not yet clear; a Ribera, a Reni, a
Tintoretto, a Domenichino, and above all else Vandyck's Boy in White
Satin, in the midst of these ruined pictures which certainly once would
have given us joy. The Boy in White Satin is perhaps the loveliest
picture Vandyck left behind him; though it is but partly his after all,
the fruit, the parrot, and the monkey being the work of Snyders.
On the other side of the Via Balbi, almost opposite the Palazzo
Durazzo-Pallavicini, is the Palazzo Balbi, which possesses the loveliest
cortile in Genoa, with an orange garden, and in the Great Hall a fine
gallery of pictures. Here is the Vandyck portrait of Philip II of Spain,
which Velasquez not only used as a model, or at least remembered when he
painted his equestrian Olivarez in the Prado, but which he changed, for
originally it was a portrait of Francesco Maria Balbi, till, as is said,
Velasquez came and painted there the face of Philip II. Certainly
Velasquez may have sketched the picture and used it later, but it seems
unlikely that he would have painted the face of Philip II, whom he had
never seen, though the Genoese at that time might well have asked him to
do so.[7]
As you continue on your way up Via Balbi, you have on your right the
Palazzo dell' Universita, with its magnificent staircase built in 1623
by Bartolommeo Bianco. Some statues by Giovanni da Bologna make it worth
a visit, while of old the tomb of Simone Boccanegra, the great Doge,
made such a visit pious and necessary.
Opposite the University is the Palazzo Reale, which once belonged to the
Durazzo family. A crucifixion by Vandyck is perhaps not too spoiled to
be still called his work.
So at last you will come to the Piazza Acquaverde and the Statue of
Columbus, which is altogether dwarfed by the Railway Station. Not far
away to the left, behind this last, you will find the great Palazzo
Doria. It is almost nothing now, but in John Evelyn's day, when
accompanied by that "most courteous marchand called Tornson," he went to
see "the rarities," it was still full of its old splendour. "One of the
greatest palaces here for circuit," he writes, "is that of the Prince
d'Orias, which reaches from the sea to the summit of the mountaines. The
house is most magnificently built without, nor less gloriously furnished
within, having whole tables and bedsteads of massy silver, many of them
sett with achates, onyxes, cornelians, lazulis, pearls, turquizes, and
other precious stones. The pictures and statues are innumerable. To this
palace belong three gardens, the first whereof is beautified with a
terrace supported by pillars of marble; there is a fountaine of eagles,
and one of Neptune, with other sea-gods, all of the purest white marble:
they stand in a most ample basine of the same stone. At the side of this
garden is such an aviary as S^r. Fra. Bacon describes in his _Sermones
Fidelium_ or Essays, wherein grow trees of more than two foote diameter,
besides cypresse, myrtils, lentiscs, and other rare shrubs, which serve
to nestle and pearch all sorts of birds, who have an ayre and place
enough under their ayrie canopy, supported with huge iron worke
stupendious for its fabrick and the charge. The other two gardens are
full of orange trees, citrons, and pomegranates; fountaines, grotts, and
statues; one of the latter is a colossal Jupiter, under which is a
sepulchre of a beloved dog, for the care of which one of this family
receiv'd of the K. of Spayne 500 crownes a yeare during the life of the
faithful animal. The reservoir of water here is a most admirable piece
of art; and so is the grotto over against it."
Close by Palazzo Doria is the Church of S. Giovanni di Pre, with its
English tomb and Lombard tower, and memories of the two Urban popes
Urban V and Urban VI, the first of whom stayed here on his way back to
Rome from the Babylonian captivity, while the other murdered eight of
his Cardinals close by, and threw their bodies into the sea. This is the
quarter of booty, the booty of the Crusaders, and it is in such a place
and in the older part of the town near Piazza Sarzano and in the narrow
ways behind the Exchange that, as I think, Genoa seems most herself, the
port of the Mediterranean, the gate of Italy. Yet what I prefer in Genoa
are her triumphant slums, then the palaces and villas with their
bigness, so impressive for us who came from the North, which seem to be
a remnant of Roman greatness, a vision as it were of solidity and
grandeur. Something of this, it is true, haunts almost every Italian
city; only nowhere but in Genoa can you see so many palaces together,
whole streets of them, huge, overwhelming, and yet beautiful houses,
that often seem deserted, as though they belonged to a greater and more
splendid age than ours.
It is altogether another aspect of these splendid buildings that you see
from the ramparts towards Nervi, from the height of the Via Corsica or
from the hills. From there, with the whole strength and glory of the sea
before you, these palaces, which in the midst of the city are so
indestructible and immortal, seem flowerlike, full of delicate hues,
fragile and almost as though about to fade; you think of hyacinths, of
the blossom of the magnolia, of the fleeting lilac, and the lily that
towers in the moonlight to fall at dawn. Returning to the city in the
twilight with all this passing and fragile glory in your eyes, it is
again another emotion that you receive when, on entering the city, you
find yourself caught in the immense crowd of working people flocking
homewards or to Piazza Deferrari, to the cafes, through the narrow
streets, amid swarms of children, laughing, running, gesticulating or
fighting with one another. From the roofs where they seem to live, from
the high narrow windows, the warren of houses that would be hovels in
the North, but here in the sun are picturesque, women look down lazily
and cry out, with a shrillness peculiar to Genoa, to their friends in
the street. It is a bath of multitude that you are compelled to take,
full of a sort of pungent, invigorating, tonic strength, life crowding
upon you and thrusting itself under your notice without ceremony or
announcement. If on the 2nd November you chance to be in Genoa, you will
find the same insatiable multitude eagerly flocking to the cemetery,
that strange and impossible museum of modern sculpture, where the dead
are multiplied by an endless apparition of crude marble shapes, the
visions of the vulgar hacked out in dazzling, stainless white stone.
What would we not give for such a "document" from the thirteenth century
as this cemetery has come to be of our own time. It is the crude
representation of modern Italian life that you see, realistic, unique,
and precious, but for the most part base and horrible beyond words. All
the disastrous, sensual, covetous meanness, the mere baseness of the
modern world, is expressed there with a naivete that is, by some
miraculous transfiguration, humorous with all the grim humour of that
thief death, who has gathered these poor souls with the rest because
someone loved them and they were of no account. The husk of the
immortality of the poet and the hero has been thrust upon the mean and
disgusting clay of the stockbroker; the grocer, horribly wrapped in
everlasting marble, has put on ignominy for evermore; while the
plebeian, bewildered by the tyranny of life, crouches over his dead
wife, for ever afraid lest death tap him too on the shoulder. How the
wind whistles among these immortal jests, where the pure stone of the
Carrara hills has been fashioned to the ugliness of the middle classes.
This is the supreme monument not of Genoa only, but of our time. In that
grotesque marble we see our likeness. For there is gathered in
indestructible stone all the fear, ostentation, and vulgar pride of our
brothers. Ah, poor souls! that for a little minute have come into the
world, and are eager not altogether to be forgotten; they too, like the
ancients, have desired immortality, and, seeing the hills, have sought
to establish their mediocrity among them. Therefore, with an obscene and
vulgar gesture, they have set up their own image as well as they could,
and, in a frenzied prayer to an unknown God, seem to ask, now that
everything has fallen away and we can no longer believe in the body,
that they may not be too disgusted with their own clay. Thus in frenzy,
fear, and vanity they have carved the likeness of that which was once
among the gods.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cf. P. Villari: Primi due Secoli della Storia di Firenze (2^o
Edizione), vol. i. p. 246.
[2] See Le Mesurier, _Genoa: Five Lectures_, Genoa, A. Donath, 1889, a
useful and informing book, to which I am indebted for more than one
curious fact.
[3] See Le Mesurier, _op. cit._ p. 82. Le Mesurier thinks that "this
angel" refers to "the central figure in a bas-relief" above the
inscription and below the right-hand window of the church.
[4] See Le Mesurier, _op. cit._ p. 98.
[5] See Le Mesurier, _op. cit._ p. 107.
[6] See Le Mesurier, _op. cit._ p. 78.
[7] See Justi, _Velasquez and his Times_ (English translation), 1880,
page 315, and Le Mesurier, _op. cit._, page 163.
II. ON THE WAY
It was already summer when, one morning, soon after sunrise, I set out
from Genoa for Tuscany. The road to Spezia along the Riviera di Levante,
among the orange groves and the olives, between the mountains and the
sea, is one of the most beautiful in Europe. Forgotten, or for the most
part unused, by the traveller who is the slave of the railway, it has
not the reputation of its only rivals, the Corniche road from Nice to
Mentone, the lovely highway from Castellamare to Sorrento, or the road
between Vietri and Amalfi, where the strange fantastic peaks lead you at
last to the solitary and beautiful desert of Paestum, where Greece seems
to await you entrenched in silence among the wild-flowers. And there,
too, on the road to Tuscany, after the pleasant weariness of the way,
which is so much longer than those others, some fragment of antiquity is
to be the reward of your journey, though nothing so fine as the deserted
holiness of Paestum, only the dust of the white temple of Aphrodite
crowning the western horn of Spezia, where it rises splendid out of the
sea in the sun of Porto Venere.
This forgotten way among the olive gardens on the lower slopes of the
mountains over the sea, seems to me more joyful than any other road in
the world. It leads to Italy. Within the gate where all the world is a
garden, the way climbs among the olives and oranges, fresh with the
fragrance of the sea, the perfume of the blossoms, to the land of
heart's desire, where Pisa lies in the plain under the sorrowful gesture
of mountains like a beautiful mutilated statue, where Arno, parted from
Tiber, is lost in the sea, dowered with the glory of Florence, the
tribute of the hills, the spoil of many streams, the golden kiss of the
sun; while Tuscany, splendid with light and joy, stands neither for God
nor for His enemies, but for man, to whom she has given everything
really without an afterthought, the songs that shall not be forgotten;
the pictures full of youth; and above all Beauty, that on a night in
spring came to her from Greece as it is said among the vineyards, before
the vines had budded. For even as Love came to us from heaven, and was
born in a stable among the careful oxen, where a few poor shepherds
found a Mother with her Child, so Beauty was born in a vineyard in the
earliest dawn, when some young men came upon the hard white precious
body of a goddess, and drew her from the earth, and began to worship
her. Then in their hearts Beauty stirred, as Love did in the hearts of
the shepherds and the kings. Nor was that vision, so full of wisdom (a
vision of birth or resurrection, was it?) less fruitful than that other
so full of Love, when Mary, coming in the twilight of dawn, saw the
angel and heard his voice, and after weeping in the garden, heard Love
Himself call her by name. Well, if the resurrection of God was revealed
in Palestine, it was here among the Tuscan hills that man rose from the
dead and first saw the beauty of the flowers and the mystery of the
hills. Here, too, is holy land if you but knew it, full of old forgotten
gods, out-fashioned deities beside whose shrines, though they be hushed,
you may still hear the prayers of worshippers, the tears of desire, the
laughter of the beloved. For the old gods are not dead. Though they be
forgotten and the voice of Jesus full of sorrowful promises has beguiled
the world, still every morning is Aphrodite new born in the spume of the
sea, and in many an isle forsaken you may catch the notes of Apollo's
lyre, while Dionysus, in the mysterious heat of midday when the
husbandman is sleeping, still steals among the grapes, and Demeter even
yet in the sunset seeks Persephone among the sheaves of corn. If Jesus
wanders in the ways of the city to comfort those who have forgotten the
sun, in the woods the gods are still upon their holy thrones, and their
love constraineth us. Immortal and beloved, how should they pass away,
for, beside their secret places, of old we have hushed our voices, and
children have played with them no less than with Jesus of Nazareth. The
gods pass, only their gifts remain, the sun and the hills and the sea,
but in us they are immortal, not one have we suffered to creep away into
oblivion.
Thus I, thinking of the way, came to Nervi. Now the way from Genoa out
of the Pisan gate to Nervi is none of the pleasantest, being suburb all
the way; but those eight _chilometri_ over and done with, there is
nothing but delight between you and Spezia. Nervi itself, that
surprising place where beauty is all gathered into a nosegay of sea and
seashore, will not keep you long, for the sun is high, and the road is
calling, and the heat to come; moreover, the beautiful headland of
Portofino seems to shut out all Italy from your sight. Once there, you
tell yourself, what may not be seen, the Carrara hills, Spezia perhaps,
even Pisa maybe, miles and miles away, where Arno winds through the
marshes behind the Pineta to the sea. Now, whether or not in your heart
of hearts you hope for Pisa, a white peak of Carrara you certainly hope
to see, and that ... why, that is Tuscany. So you set out, leaving Genoa
and her suburb at last behind you, and, climbing among olive groves,
orange gardens, and flaming oleanders, with here a magnolia heavy with
blossom, there a pomegranate mysterious with fruit and flowers, after
another five miles you come to Recco, a modest, sleepy village, where it
is good to eat and rest. In the afternoon you may very pleasantly take
boat for Camogli, that ancient seafaring place, full of the debris of
the sea, old masts and ropes, here a rusty anchor, there a golden net,
with sailors lying asleep on the parapet of the harbour, and the whole
place full of the soft sea wind, languorous and yet virile withal, the
shady narrow ways, the low archways, the crooked steps pleasant with the
song of the sea, the rhythm of the waters.
In the cool of the afternoon you leave Camogli and climb by the byways
to Ruta, whence you may see all the Gulf of Genoa, with the proud city
herself in the lap of the mountains, and there, yes, far away, you may
see the stainless peaks of Tuscany, whiter than snow, shining in the
quiet afternoon; and nearer, but still far away, the crest of the horn
of Spezia, with the ruined church of Porto Venere--a church or a temple,
is it?--on the headland beside the island of Palmaria. Beside you are
the sea and the hills, two everlasting things, with here an old villa,
beautiful with many autumns, in a grove of cypress, ilex, and myrtle,
those three holy trees that mark death, mystery, and love; while far
down on the seashore where the foam is whitest, stands a little ruined
chapel in which the gulls cry all day long. But your heart turns ever
toward Italy yonder--towards the hills of marble. Will one ever reach
them, those far-away pure peaks immaculate in silence, like a thought of
God in the loneliness of the mountains? Far away below you lies Rapallo
in the crook of the bay among the oleanders and vines. It is there you
must sleep, far away still from those visionary peaks, which yet will in
some strange way give you a sense of security, as though a legion of
bright angels, ghosts in the pale night (for they fade away in the
twilight), invisible to other men, were on guard to keep you from all
harm. Somehow it is always into a dreamless sleep one falls in Rapallo,
that beautiful and guarded place behind Portofino, where the sea is like
a lake, so still it is, and all the flowers of the world seem to have
run for shelter. It is as though one had seen the Holy City, and though
it was still far off, it was enough, one was content.
[Illustration: ON THE ROAD]
Rapallo itself, as you find on your first morning, is beautiful, chiefly
by reason of its sea-girt tower. The old castle is a prison, and the
town itself, full of modern hotels, is yet brisk with trade in oil and
lace; but it is not these things that will hold you there, but that
sea-tower and the joy of the woods and gardens. And then there are some
surprising things not far away. Portofino, for instance, with its great
pine and the ilex woods, its terraced walk and the sea, not the lake of
Rapallo, but the sea itself, full of strength and wisdom. Then there
is San Fruttuoso, with its convent among the palm trees by the seashore,
whither the Doria are still brought by sea for burial. Here they lie,
generation on generation, of the race which loved the sea; almost
coffined in the deep, for the waves break upon the floor of the crypt
that holds them. They could not lie more fitly than on the shore of this
sea they won and held for Genoa. San Fruttuoso is difficult to reach
save by sea. In the summer the path from Portofino is pleasant enough,
but at any other time it is almost impassable. And indeed the voyage by
boat from Rapallo to Portofino, and thence to San Fruttuoso, should be
chosen, for the beauty of the coast, which, as I think, can nowhere be
seen so well and so easily as here. Then, in returning to Portofino, the
road along the coast should be followed through Cervara, where Guido,
the friend of Petrarch and founder of the convent, lies buried, where
Francis I, prisoner of Charles V, was wind-bound, to S. Margherita, the
sister-town of Rapallo, and thence through S. Michele di Pagana, where
you may see a spoiled Vandyck, to Rapallo. Who may speak of all the
splendid valleys and gardens that lie along this shore, for they are
gardens within a garden, and where all the world is so fair it is not of
any private pleasaunce that one thinks, but of the hills and the
wild-flowers and the sea, the garden of God.
And if the road, so far, from Genoa beggars description, so that I have
thought to leave it almost without a word, what can I hope to say of the
way from Rapallo to Chiavari? Starting early, perhaps in the company of
a peasant who is returning to his farm among the olives, you climb, in
the genial heat, among the lower slopes between the great hills and the
sea, along terraces of olives, through a whole long day of sunshine,
with the song of the cicale ever in your ears, the mysterious
long-drawn-out melody of the _rispetti_ of the peasant girls reaching
you ever. And then from the stillness among the olives, where the shade
is delicate and fragile, of silver and gold, and the streams creep
softly down to the sea, the evening will come as you pass along the
winding ways of Chiavari, for in the golden weather one is minded to go
softly. So in the twilight pursuing your way you follow the beautiful
road to Sestri-Levante, where again you are within sound of the sea that
breaks on the one side on a rocky and lofty shore, and on the other
creeps softly into a flat beach, the town itself rising on the
promontory between these two bays. There, under the headland among the
woods, you may find a chapel of black and white marble, surely the haunt
of Stella Maris, who has usurped the place of Aphrodite.
Many days might be spent among the woods of Sestri, but the road calls
from the mountains, and it is ever of Tuscany that you think as you set
out at last, leaving the sea behind you for the hills, climbing into the
Passo di Bracco, that, as it seems, alone divides you from the land you
seek. It is a far journey from Sestri to Spezia, but with a good horse,
in spite of the hill, you may cover it in a single long day from sunrise
to sunset. The climb begins almost at once, and continues really for
some eighteen miles, till Baracchino and the Osteria Baracca are
reached, in a desolate region of mountains that stretch away for ever,
billow on billow. Then you descend only to mount again through the
woods, till evening finds you at La Foce, the last height before Spezia;
and suddenly at a turning of the way the sunset flames before you,
staining all the sea with colour, and there lies Tuscany, those fragile,
stainless peaks of Carrara faintly glowing in the evening sun purple and
blue and gold, with here a flush as of dawn, there the heart of the
sunset. And all before you lies the sea, with Spezia and the great ships
in its arms; while yonder, like a jewel on the cusp of a horn, Porto
Venere shines; and farther still, Lerici in the shadow of the hills
washed by the sea, stained by the blood of the sunset, its great castle
seeming like some splendid ship in the midst of the waters. From the
bleak height of La Foce, whence all the woods seem to have run down to
the shore, slowly one by one the lights of the city appear like great
golden night flowers; soon they are answered from the bay, where the
ships lie solemnly, sleepily at anchor, and at last the great light of
the Pharos throws its warning over sea and seashore; and gathering in
the distance on the far horizon, the night splendid with blue and gold,
overwhelms the world, bringing coolness and as it were a sort of
reconciliation. So it is quite dark when, weary, at last you find
yourself in Spezia at the foot of the Tuscan hills.
Spezia is a modern city which has obliterated the more ancient
fortresses, whose ruins still guard the two promontories of her gulf.
The chief naval station in Italy, she has crowned all the heights and
islands with forts, and in many a little creek hidden away, you
continually come upon warships, naval schools, hospitals, and such,
while in her streets the sailors and soldiers mingle together, giving
the town a curiously modern character, for indeed there is little else
to call your attention. The beautiful bay which lies between Porto
Venere and Lerici behind the line of islands, that are really
fortifications, is, in spite of every violation, a spectacle of
extraordinary beauty, and in the old days--not so long ago, after
all--when the woods came down to the sea, and Spezia was a tiny village,
less even than Lerici is to-day, it must have been one of the loveliest
and quietest places in the world. Shut out from Italy by the range of
hills that runs in a semicircle from horn to horn of her bay, in those
days there were just sun and woods and sea, with a few half pagan
peasants and fishermen to break the immense silence. And, as it seems to
me, by reason of some magic which still haunts this mysterious seashore,
it is ever that world half pagan that you seek, leaving Spezia very
gladly every morning for San Terenzo and Lerici for Porto Venere and the
enchanted coast.
Leaving Spezia very early in the morning, there is nothing more
delightful than the voyage across the land-locked bay, past the
beautiful headlands and secret coves, to San Terenzo and Lerici. If you
leave the steamer at San Terenzo, you may walk along a sort of seawall,
built out of the cliff and boulders of the shore, round more than one
little promontory, to Lerici, whose castle seems to guard the Tuscan
sea. Walking thus along the shore, you pass the Villa Magni, Shelley's
house, standing, not as it used to do, up out of the sea, for the road
has been built really in the waves; but in many ways the same still, for
instance with the broad balcony on the first storey, which pleased
Shelley so much; and though a second storey has been added since, and
even the name of the house changed, a piece of vandalism common enough
in Italy to-day, where, since they do not even spare their own
traditions and ancient landmarks, it would be folly to expect them to
preserve ours, still you may visit the rooms in which he lived with
Mary, and where he told Claire of the death of Allegra.
The house stands facing the sea in the deepest part of the bay, nearer
to San Terenzo than to Lerici. Both Trelawney and Williams had been
searching all the spring for a summer villa for the Shelleys, who, a
little weary perhaps of Byron's world, had determined to leave Pisa and
to spend the summer on the Gulf of Spezia. Byron was about to establish
himself just beyond Livorno, on the slopes of Montenero, in a huge and
rambling old villa with eighteenth century frescoes on the walls, and a
tangled park and garden running down to the dusty Livorno highway. The
place to-day is a little dilapidated, and its statues broken, but in the
summer months it becomes the paradise of a school of girls, a fact which
I think might have pleased Byron.
However, the Shelleys were thinking of no such faded splendour as Villa
Dupoy for their summer retreat. "Shelley had no pride or vanity to
provide for," says Trelawney, "yet we had the greatest difficulty in
finding any house in which the humblest civilised family could exist.
"On the shores of this superb bay, only surpassed in its natural beauty
and capability by that of Naples, so effectually had tyranny paralysed
the energies and enterprise of man, that the only indication of human
habitation was a few most miserable fishing villages scattered along the
margin of the bay. Near its centre, between the villages of San Terenzo
and Lerici, we came upon a lonely and abandoned building called the
Villa Magni, though it looked more like a boat or bathing house than a
place to live in. It consisted of a terrace or ground-floor unpaved, and
used for storing boat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey
over it, divided into a hall or saloon and four small rooms which had
once been white-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we
thought the Shelleys might put up with for the summer. The only good
thing about it was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it. So we
sought the owner and made arrangements, dependent on Shelley's approval,
for taking it for six months."
Shelley at once decided to accept the offer of this house, though it was
unfurnished. Mary and Claire presently set out for Spezia, Shelley
remaining in Pisa to manage the removal of the furniture. He reached
Lerici on 28th April, writing, immediately on his arrival, to Mary in
Spezia.
_April 28, 1822_.
"DEAREST MARY,--I am this moment arrived at Lerici, where I am
necessarily detained waiting the furniture, which left Pisa last night
at midnight; and as the sea has been calm and the wind fair, may expect
them every moment.... Now to business--Is the Magni House taken? if not
pray occupy yourself instantly in finishing the affair, even if you are
obliged to go to Sarzana, and send a messenger to me to tell me of your
success. I, of course, cannot leave Lerici, to which place the boats
(for we were obliged to take two) are directed. But _you_ can come over
in the same boat that brings this letter, and return in the evening.
"I ought to say that I do not think there is accommodation for you all
at this inn; and that even if there were, you would be better off at
Spezia; but if the Magni House is taken, then there is no possible
reason why you should not take a row over in the boat that will bring
this, but don't keep the men long. I am anxious to hear from you on
every account.--Ever yours, S."
Shelley's fears as to the accommodation of Lerici were by no means
without foundation. Within the last two years a decent inn has been open
there in the summer, but before that the primitive and not very clean
hostelry in which, as I suppose, Shelley lodged, was all that awaited
the traveller.[8] It was not for long, however, that Shelley was left in
doubt about the house. Villa Magni became his, and, after much trouble
with the furniture, for the officials put the customs duty at L300
sterling, they were allowed to bring it ashore, the harbour-master
agreeing to consider Villa Magni "as a sort of depot, until further
leave came from the Genoese Government."
It was here that, very soon after they had taken possession of the
house, Claire learned from Shelley's lips of the death of her child, and
on 21st May set out for Florence. A few evenings later, Shelley, walking
with Williams on the terrace, and observing the effect of the moonshine
on the water, grasped Williams, as he says, "violently by the arm and
stared steadfastly on the white surf that broke upon the beach at our
feet. Observing him sensibly affected, I demanded of him if he were in
pain; but he only answered by saying, 'There it is again--there!' He
recovered after some time, and declared that he saw, as plainly as he
then saw me, a naked child (Allegra) rise from the sea and clap its
hands as in joy, smiling at him." Was this a premonition of his own
death, a hint, as it were, that in such a place one like Shelley might
well hope for from the gods? Certainly that shore was pagan enough.
Sometimes on moonlight nights, in the hot weather, the half savage
natives of San Terenzo would dance among the waves, singing in chorus;
while Mrs. Shelley tells us that the beauty of the woods made her "weep
and shudder." So strong and vehement was her dread that she preferred to
go out in the boat which she feared, rather than to walk among the paths
and alleys of the trees hung with vines, or in the mysterious silence of
the olives.
Thus began that happy last summer of Shelley's life. Day by day, he,
with Trelawney and Williams, watched for that fatal plaything, the
little boat _Ariel_, which Trelawney had drawn in her actual dimensions
for him on the sands of Arno, while he, with a map of the Mediterranean
spread before him, sitting in this imaginary ship, had already made
wonderful voyages. And one day as he paced the terrace with Williams,
they saw her round the headland of Porto Venere. Twenty-eight feet long
by eight she was: built in Genoa from an English model that Williams,
who had been a sailor, had brought with him. Without a deck,
schooner-rigged, it took, says Trelawney, "two tons of iron ballast to
bring her down to her bearings, and then she was very crank in a breeze,
though not deficient in beam." Truly Shelley was no seaman. "You will do
no good with Shelley," Trelawney told Williams, "until you heave his
books and papers overboard, shear the wisps of hair that hang over his
eyes, and plunge his arms up to the elbows in a tar bucket." But he
said, "I can read and steer at the same time." Read and steer! But
indeed it was on this very bay, and almost certainly in the _Ariel_,
that he wrote those perfect lines: "She left me at the silent time."
It was here too, in Lerici, that Shelley wrote "The Triumph of Life,"
that splendid fragment in _terza rima_, which is like a pageant suddenly
broken by the advent of Death: that ends with the immortal question--
"Then, what is life? I cried,"
which was for ever to remain unanswered, for he had gone, as he said,
"to solve the great mystery." Well, the story is an old one, I shall not
tell it again; only here in the bay of Lerici, with his words in my
ears, his house before me, and the very terrace where he worked, the
ghost of that sorrowful and splendid spirit seems to wander even yet.
What was it that haunted this shore, full of foreboding, prophesying
death?
It was to meet Leigh Hunt that Shelley set out on 1st July with Williams
in the _Ariel_ for Leghorn. For weeks the sky had been cloudless, full
of the mysterious light, which is, as it seems to me, the most beautiful
and the most splendid thing in the world. In all the churches and by the
roadsides they were praying for rain. Shelley had been in Pisa with Hunt
showing him that most lovely of all cathedrals, and, listening to the
organ there, he had been led to agree that a truly divine religion might
even yet be established if Love were really made the principle of it
instead of Faith. On the afternoon following that serene day at Pisa, he
set sail for Lerici from Leghorn with Williams and the boy Charles
Vivian. Trelawney was on the _Bolivar_, Byron's yacht, at the time, and
saw them start. His Genoese mate, watching too, turned to him and said,
"They should have sailed this morning at three or four instead of now;
they are standing too much inshore; the current will set them there."
Trelawney answered, "They will soon have the land-breeze." "Maybe,"
continued the mate, "she will soon have too much breeze; that gaff
topsail is foolish in a boat with no deck and no sailor on board." Then,
pointing to the south-west,--"Look at those black lines and the dirty
rags hanging on them out of the sky--they are a warning; look at the
smoke on the water; the devil is brewing mischief." Then the mist which
had hung all day in the offing swallowed the _Ariel_ for ever.
It was not until many days after this, Trelawney tells us, "that my
worst fears were confirmed. Two bodies were found on the shore--one near
Viareggio, which I went and examined. The face and hands and parts of
the body not protected by the dress were fleshless. The tall, slight
figure, the jacket, the volume of Aeschylus in one pocket, and Keats'
poems[9] in the other, doubled back, as if the reader, in the act of
reading, had hastily thrust it away, were all too familiar to me to
leave a doubt in my mind that this mutilated corpse was any other than
Shelley's."
A certain light has been thrown on the manner in which Shelley and his
friend met their death in a letter which Mr. Eyre wrote to the _Times_
in 1875.[10] Trelawney had always believed that the Livorno sailors knew
more than they cared to tell of that tragedy. For one thing, he had seen
an English oar in one of their boats just after the storm; for another
the laws were such in Tuscany, that had a fishing-boat gone to the
rescue of the _Ariel_ and brought off the poet and his companions, she
would with her crew have been sent into quarantine for fear of cholera.
It is not, however, to the Duchy of Tuscany that Shelley owes his death,
but to the cupidity of the Tuscan sailors, one of them having confessed
to the crime of running down the boat, seeing her in danger, in the hope
of finding gold on "the milord Inglese." There seems but little reason
for doubting this story, which Vincent Eyre communicated to the _Times_
in 1875: Trelawney eagerly accepts it, and though Dr. Garnett and
Professor Dowden politely forbear to accuse the Italians, such crimes
appear to have been sufficiently common in those days to confirm us,
however reluctantly, in this explanation. Thus died perhaps the greatest
lyric poet that even England had ever borne, an exile, and yet not an
exile, for he died in Italy, the fatherland of us all. Ah! "'tis Death
is dead, not he," for in the west wind you may hear his song, and in the
tender night his rare mysterious music; when the skylark sings it is as
it were his melody, and in the clouds you may find something of the
refreshment of his spirit.
"Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."
FOOTNOTES:
[8] For the identity of this inn see Leigh Hunt, _Autobiography_.
Constable, 1903, vol. ii. p. 123.
[9] The Keats was doubled open at the "Lamia."
[10] _Trelawney Records_. Pickering, 1878, pp. 197-200, accepts this
story, as clearing up what for fifty years had been a mystery to him.
III. PORTO VENERE
It is perhaps a more joyful day that may be spent at Porto Venere, the
little harbour on the northern shores of the gulf. Starting early you
come, still before the sea is altogether subject to the sun, to a little
bay of blue clear still water flanked by gardens of vines, of agaves and
olives. Here, in silence save for the lapping of the water, the early
song of the cicale, the far-away notes of a reed blown by a boy in the
shadow by the sea, you land, and, following the path by the hillside,
come suddenly on the little port with its few fishing-boats and litter
of ropes and nets, above which rises the little town, house piled on
house, from the ruined church rising high, sheer out of the sea to the
church of marble that crowns the hill. Before you stands the gate of
Porto Venere, a little Eastern in its dilapidation, its colour of faded
gold, its tower, and broken battlement. Passing under the ancient arch
past a shrine of Madonna, you enter the long shadowy street, where red
and green vegetables and fruits, purple grapes, and honey-coloured
_nespoli_ and yellow oranges are piled in the cool doorways, and the old
women sit knitting behind their stalls. Climbing thus between the houses
under that vivid strip of soft blue sky, the dazzling rosy beauty of the
ruined ramparts suddenly bursts upon you, and beyond and above them the
golden ruined church, and farther still, the glistening shining
splendour of the sea and the sun that has suddenly blotted out the soft
sky. A flight of broken steps leads to a ruined wall, along which you
pass to the old church, or temple is it, you ask yourself, so fair it
looks, and without the humility of a Christian building. To your
right, across a tossing strip of blue water, full of green and gold,
rises the island of Palmaria, and beyond that two other smaller islands,
Tisso and Tissetto, while to your left lies the whole splendid coast
shouting with waves, laughing in the sunshine and the wind of early
morning, and all before you spreads the sea. As I stood leaning on the
ruined wall looking on all this miracle of joy, a little child, who had
hidden among the wind-blown cornflowers and golden broom on the slope of
the cliffs, slowly crept towards me with many hesitations and shy
peerings; then, no longer afraid, almost naked as he was, he ran to me
and took my hand.
[Illustration: PORTO VENERE.
_Alinari_]
"Will the Signore see the church?" said he, pulling me that way.
The Signore was willing. Thus it was, hand in hand with Eros, that I
mounted the broken steps of the tower of Venus, his mother.
How may I describe the wonder of that place? For at last, he before, I
following, though he still held my hand, we came out of the stairway on
to a platform on the top of the tower surrounded by a broken battlement.
It was as though I had suddenly entered the last hiding-place of
Aphrodite herself. On the floor sat an old and lame man sharpening a
scythe, and beside him a little child lay among the broken corn that was
strewn over the whole platform. Where the battlements had once frowned,
now stood sheaves of smiling corn, golden and nodding in the wind and
the sun. Suddenly the lad who had led me hither seized the flail and
began to beat the corn and stalks strewn over the floor, while the old
man, quavering a little, sang a long-drawn-out gay melody, and the
little girl beat her tiny hands in time to the work and the music. Then,
unheard, into this miracle came a young woman,--ah, was it not
Persephone,--slim as an osier in the shadow, walking like a bright
peacock straight above herself, climbing the steps, and her hands were
on her hips and on her black head was a sheaf of corn. Then she breathed
deep, gazed over the blue sea, and set her burden down with its fellows
on the parapet, smiling and beating her hands at the little girl.
Porto Venere rises out of the sea like Tintagel--but a classic sea, a
sea covered with broken blossoms. It was evening when I returned again
to the Temple of Venus The moon was like a sickle of silver, far away
the waves fawned along the shore as though to call the nymphs from the
woods; the sun was set; out of the east night was coming. In the great
caves, full of coolness and mystery, the Tritons seemed to be playing
with sea monsters, while from far away I thought I heard the lamentable
voice of Ariadne weeping for Theseus. Ah no, they are not dead, the
beautiful, fair gods. Here, in the temple of Aphrodite, on the threshold
of Italy, I will lift up my heart. Though the songs we made are dead and
the dances forgotten, though the statues are broken, the temples
destroyed, still in my heart there is a song and in my blood a murmur as
of dancing, and I will carve new statues and rebuild the temples every
day. For I have loved you, O Gods, in the forests and on the mountains
and by the seashore. I, too, am fashioned out of the red earth, and all
the sea is in my heart, and my lover is the wind. As the rivers sing of
the sea, so will I sing till I find you. As the mountains wait for the
sun, so will I wait in the night of the city.
For my joy, and my lord the sun, I give you thanks, that he is splendid
and strong and beautiful beyond beauty. For the sea and all mysterious
things I give you thanks, that I have understood and am reconciled with
them. For the earth when the sun is set, for the earth when the sun is
risen, for the valleys and the hills, for the flowers and the trees, I
give you thanks, that I am one with them always and out of them was I
made. For the wind of morning, for the wind of evening, for the tender
night, for the growing day, take, then, my thanks, O Gods, for the
cypress, for the ilex, for the olive on the road to Italy in the sunset
and the summer.
IV. SARZANA AND LUNA
It was very early in the morning when I came into Tuscany. Leaving
Spezia overnight, I had slept at Lerici, and, waking in the earliest
still dawn, I had set out over the hills, hoping to cross the Macra
before breakfast.
In this tremulous and joyful hour, full of the profound gravity of youth
hesitating on the threshold of life, the day rose out of the sea; so, a
lily opening in a garden while we sleep transfigures it with its joy.
As I climbed the winding hill among the olives, while still a cool
twilight hung about the streets of Lerici, the sun stood up over the
sea, awakening it to the whole long day of love to come. Far away in the
early light, over a sea mysterious of blue and silver and full of
ecstasy, the coast curved with infinite beauty into the golden crest of
Porto Venere. Spezia, like a broken flower, seemed deserted on the
seashore, and Lerici itself, far below me, waking at morning, watched
the sleeping ships, the deep breathing of the sea, the shy and yet proud
gesture of the day.
Then as I crossed the ridge of the hill and began to follow the road
downward towards Tuscany between the still olives, where as yet the
world had not seen the sun, suddenly all that beautiful world, about to
be so splendid, was hidden from me, and instead I saw the delta of a
great river, the uplifted peaks of the marble mountains, and there was
Tuscany.
Past Arcola, that triumphal arch of the middle age, built on high like a
city on an aqueduct, I went into the plain; then far away in the
growing day I saw the ancient strongholds of the hills, the fortresses
of the Malaspina, the castles of the Lunigiana, the eyries of the eagles
of old time. There they lay before me on the hills like _le grandi
ombre_ of which Dante speaks, Castelnuovo di Magra, Fosdinovo of the
Malaspina, Niccola over the woods. Then at a turning of the way at the
foot of the hills I had traversed, under that long and lofty bridge that
has known so well the hasty footstep of the fugitive, flowed Magra.
... Macra, che, per cammin corto
Lo genovese parte dal Toscano.
Thus with Dante's verses in my mouth I came into Tuscany.
Now the way from Macra to Sarzana lies straight across that great delta
which hides behind the eastern horn of the Gulf of Spezia. At the Macra
bridge you meet the old road from Genoa to Pisa, and entering Tuscany
thus, Sarzana is the first Tuscan city you will see. Luna Nova the
Romans called the place, for it was built to replace the older city
close to the sea, the ruins of which you may still find beside the road
on the way southward, but of Roman days there is nothing left in the new
city.
It was a fortress of Castruccio Castracani, the birthplace of a great
Pope. Of Castruccio, that intolerant great man, I shall speak later, in
Lucca, for that was the rose in his shield. Here I wish only to remind
the reader who wanders among the ruins of his great castle, that
Castracani took Sarzana by force and held it against any; and perhaps to
recall the words of Machiavelli, where he tells us that the capture of
Sarzana was a feat of daring done to impress the Lucchesi with the
splendour of their liberated tyrant. For when the citizens had freed him
from the prison of Uguccione della Faggiuola, who had seized the
government of Lucca, Castruccio, finding himself accompanied by a great
number of his friends, which encouraged him, and by the whole body of
the people, which flattered his ambition, caused himself to be chosen
Captain-General of all their forces for a twelvemonth; and resolving to
perform some eminent action that might justify their choice, he
undertook the reduction of several places which had revolted following
the example of Uguccione. Having for this purpose entered into strict
alliance with the city of Pisa, she sent him supplies, and he marched
with them to besiege Sarzana; but the place being very strong, before he
could carry it, he was obliged to build a fortress as near it as he
could. This new fort in two months' time rendered him master of the
whole country, and is the same fort that at this day is called
Sarzanella, repaired since and much enlarged by the Florentines.
Supported by the credit of so glorious an exploit, he reduced Massa,
Carrara, and Lavenza very easily: he seized likewise upon the whole
country of Lunigiana ... so that, full of glory, he returned to Lucca,
where the people thronged to meet him, and received him with all
possible demonstrations of joy.
It is, however, rather as the home of Nicholas V, I think, that Sarzana
appeals to us to-day, than as the stronghold of Castruccio. The tyrant
held so many places, as we shall see, his prowess is everywhere, but
Tommaso Parentucelli is like to be forgotten, for his glory is not
written in sword-cuts or in any violated city, but in the forgotten
pages of the humanists, the beautiful life of Vespasiano da Bisticci.
And was not Nicholas V. the first of the Renaissance Popes, the
librarian of Cosimo de' Medici, the tutor of the sons of Rinaldo degli
Albizzi and of Palla Strozzi? Certainly his great glory was the care he
had of learning and the arts: he made Rome once more the capital of the
world, he began the Vatican, and the basilica of S. Pietro, yet he was
not content till he should have transformed the whole city into order
and beauty. In him the enthusiasm and impulse of the Renaissance are
simple and full of freshness. Finding Rome still the city of the
Emperors and their superstition, he made it the city of man. He was the
friend of Alberti, the Patron of all men of learning and poets. "Greece
has not fallen," said Filelfo, in remembering him, "but seems to have
migrated to Italy, which of old was called Magna Graecia." Yet Tommaso
Parentucelli[11] was sprung of poor parent and even though they may have
been _nobili_ as Manetti tells us, _De nobili Parentucellorum
progenie_,[12] that certainly was of but little assistance to him in his
youth.
"Maestro Tomaso da Serezano," says Vespasiano the serene bookseller of
Florence, with something of Walton's charm--"Maestro Tomaso da Serezano,
who was afterwards Pope Nicholas V, was born at Pisa of humble parents.
Later on account of discord in that city, his father was imprisoned, so
that he went to Sarzana, and there gave to his little son in his tender
years lessons in grammar, which, through the excellence of his
understanding, he quickly learned. His father died, however, when he who
was to come to such eminence was but nine years old, leaving two sons,
our Maestro Tomaso, and Maestro Filippo, who later was Cardinal of
Bologna. Now Maestro Tomaso fell sick at that time, and his mother,
seeing him thus ailing, being a widow and having all her great hope in
her sons, was in the greatest anxiety and sorrow, and prayed God
unweariedly to spare her little son. Thus intent in prayer, hoping that
he would not die, she fell asleep about dawn, when One called to her and
said: 'Andreola (for that was her name), doubt nothing that thy son
shall live.' And it seemed in her vision that she saw her son in a
bishop's robe, and One said to her that he would be Pope. Waking then
from this dream, immediately she went to her little son and found him
already better, and to all those in the house she told the vision she
had had. Now, when the child was well, because of the steadfast hope
which the vision had given her, she at once begged him to pursue his
studies; which he did, so that when he was sixteen he had a very good
knowledge of grammar and the Latin tongue, and began to work at logic,
in order later to come at philosophy and theology. Then he left Sarzana
and went to Bologna, so that he might the better pursue his studies in
every faculty. At Bologna he studied in logic and in philosophy with
great success. In a short time he became learned in all the seven
Liberal Arts. Staying at Bologna still he was eighteen, and Master of
Arts, lacking money, it was necessary for him to go to Sarzana to his
mother, who had remarried, in order to have money to furnish his
expenses. She was poor and her husband not very rich, and then Tomaso
was not his son, but a stepson: he could not obtain money from them.
Determined to follow his studies, he thought to go to Florence, the
mother of studies and every virtue at that time. So he went thither, and
found Messer Rinaldo degli Albizzi, a most exceptional man, who carried
him off to instruct his sons, giving him a good salary as a young man of
great virtue. At the end of a year Messer Rinaldo left Florence, and
Maestro Tomaso wishing to remain in the city, he arranged for him to
enter the service of Messer Palla di Nofri Strozzi; and from him he had
a very good salary. At the end of another year he had gained so much
from these two citizens that he had enough to return to Bologna to his
studies, though in Florence he had not lost his time, for he read in
every faculty."
Such were the early years of one of the most cultured and princely of
the Popes. Born in 1398, he was himself one of the sons of the early
Renaissance. Not altogether without pedantry, he yet by his learning, by
his patronage of scholars and artists (and indeed he was perhaps the
first Pope who preferred them to monks and friars), secured for the
Renaissance the allegiance of the Church. He died in a moment of
misfortune for Europe in 1455, just after the fall of Constantinople,
being succeeded on the throne of Christendom by Pius II, Pius Aeneas as
he called himself in a moment of enthusiasm, one of the most human of
all those men of the world who have become the vicegerent of Jesus.
Nicholas V was not a man of the world, he was a scholar, full of the
enthusiasm of his day. As a statesman, while he pacified Italy, he saw
Byzantium fall into the hands of the barbarians. He was a Pagan in whom
there was no guile. His enthusiasm was rather for Apollo and the Muses
than for Jesus and the Saints. With a simplicity touching and
delightful, he watched Sigismondo Malatesta build his temple at Rimini,
and was his friend and loved him well. Pius II, with all his love of
nature and the classics, though his own life was full of unfortunate
secrets and his pride and vanity truly Sienese, could not look on
unmoved while Malatesta built a temple to the old gods in the States of
the Church. But then Pius had not lived all the long years of his youth
at Luna Nova. Who can tell what half-forgotten deity may have found
Maestro Tomaso asleep in the woods, that magician Virgil in his
hands,--for on this coast the gods wander even yet,--and, creeping
behind him, finding him so fair, may have kissed him on the ears, as the
snakes kissed Cassandra when she lay asleep at noon in Troy of old.
Certainly their habitations, their old places may still be found. We are
not so far from Porto Venere, and then on the highway towards Massa, not
long after you have come out of the beautiful avenue of plane trees,
itself like some great temple, through which the road leaves Sarzana,
you come upon the little city of Luna, or the bright fragments of it,
among the sand of what must once have been the seashore, with here a
fold of the old amphitheatre, there the curve of the circus, while
scattered on the grass softer than sleep, you may find perhaps the
carved name of a goddess, the empty pedestal of a statue.
Lying there on a summer day in the everlasting quietness, unbroken even
by a wandering wind or the ripple of a stream, some inkling of that old
Roman life, always at its best in such country places as this, comes to
you, yes, from the time when Juno was yet a little maid among the mossy
fountains and the noise of the brooks. Tacitus in his _Agricola_, that
consoling book, tells us of those homes of a refined and severe
simplicity in Frejus and Como, but it is to Rutilius, with his strange
gift of impressionism, you must go for a glimpse of Luna. In his
perfect verses[13] we may see the place as he found it when, gliding
swiftly on the waves, perhaps on a day like this, he came to those walls
of glistening marble, which got their name from the planet that borrows
her light from the sun, her brother. The country itself furnished those
stones which shamed with their whiteness the laughing lilies, while
their polished surface with its veins threw forth shining rays. For this
is a land rich in marbles which defy, sure of their victory, the virgin
whiteness of the snow itself.
Well, there is but little left of that shining city, and yet, as I lay
dreaming in the grass-grown theatre, it seemed to be a festal day, and
there among the excited and noisy throng of holiday-makers, just for a
moment I caught sight of the aediles in their white tunics, and then,
far away, the terrified face of a little child, frightened at the
hideous masks of the actors. Then, the performance over, I followed home
some simple old centurion was it?--who, returned from the wars on the
far frontier, had given the city a shady walk and that shrine of
Neptune. We came at last to a country house of "pale red and yellow
marble," half farm, half villa, lying away from the white road at the
point where it begins to decline somewhat sharply to the marshland
below. It is close to the sea. Large enough for all requirements, and
not expensive to keep in repair, my host explains. At its entrance is a
modest but beautiful hall; then come the cloisters, which are rounded
into the likeness of the letter D, and these enclose a small and pretty
courtyard. These cloisters, I am told, are a fine refuge in a storm, for
they are protected by windows and deep over-hanging eaves. Facing the
cloisters is a cheerful inner court, then the dining-room towards the
seashore, fine enough for anyone, as my host asserts, and when the
south-west wind is blowing the room is just scattered by the spray of
the spent waves. On all sides are folding doors, or windows quite as
large as doors, so that from two sides and the front you command a
prospect of three seas as it were; while at the back, as he shows me,
one can see through the inner court to the woods or the distant hills.
Just then the young mistress of the place comes to greet me, bidden by
my host her father, and in a moment I see the nobility of this life,
full of pure and honourable things, together with a certain simplicity
and sweetness. Seeing my admiration, my host speaks of his daughter, of
her love for him, of her delight in his speeches,--for he is of
authority in the city,--of how on such occasions she will sit screened
from the audience by a curtain, drinking in what people say to his
credit. He smiles as he tells me this, adding she has a sharp wit, is
wonderfully economical, and loves him well; and indeed she is worthy of
him, and doubtless, as he says, of her grandfather. Then my proud old
centurion leads me down the alleys of his garden full of figs and
mulberries, with roses and a few violets, till in the perfect stillness
of this retreat we come to the seashore, and there lies the white city
of Luna glistening in the sun. As I take my leave, reluctantly, for, I
would stay longer, my hostess is so sweet, my host so charming, I catch
sight of the name of the villa cut into the rosy marble of the gates:
"Ad Vigilias Albas" I read, and then and then ... Why, what is this? I
must have fallen asleep in that old theatre among the debris and the
fine grass. Ad Vigilias Albas--"White Nights," nights not of quite blank
forgetfulness, certainly. But it is with the ancestors of Marius I seem
to have been talking in the old city of Luna, that in his day had
already passed away.[14]
It was sunset when I found myself at the door of the Inn in Sarzana.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Even the name is uncertain. In the Duomo here, in Cappella di S.
Tommaso, you may find his mother's grave, on which she is called
Andreola dei Calandrini. His uncle, however, is called J.P.
Parentucelli. In two Bulls of Felix V he is called Thomas de
Calandrinis; cf. Mansi, xxxi. 190.
[12] Muratori, _Rer. Ital. Scrip._, III. ii. 107.
[13] Sed deverticulo fuimus fortasse loquaces:
Carmine propositum jam repetamus iter.
Advehimur celeri candentia moenia lapsu:
Nominis est auctor sole corusca soror.
Indigenis superat ridentia lilia saxis,
Et levi radiat picta nitore silex.
Dives marmoribus tellus, quae luce coloris
Provocat intactas luxuriosa nives.
[14] You may see the place to-day--but it is of plaster now--as Pater
describes it.--_Marius the Epicurian_, vol. i. 20.
V. CARRARA, MASSA DUCALE, PIETRA-SANTA, VIAREGGIO
And truly it is into a city of marble that you come, when, following the
dusty road full of the ruts of the bullock-wagons, past Avenza, that
little city with a great castle of Castruccio Castracani, after climbing
into the gorge where the bullocks, a dozen of them it may be, yoked to a
single dray, take all the way, you enter the cold streets of Carrara,
that are always full of the sound of falling water. And strangely
enough, as one may think, in this far-away place, so close to the
mountains as to be littered by their debris, it is an impression of
business and of life that you receive beyond anything of the sort to be
found in Spezia. Not a beautiful city certainly, Carrara has a little
the aspect of an encampment, an encampment that has somehow become
permanent, where everything has been built in a hurry, as it were, of
the most precious and permanent material. So that, while the houses are
of marble, they seem to be with but few exceptions mere shanties without
beauty of any sort, that were built yesterday for shelter, and to-morrow
will be destroyed. It is true that the Church of S. Andrea is a building
of the thirteenth century, in the Gothic manner, with a fine facade and
sculptures of a certain merit, but it fails to impress itself on the
town, which is altogether alien from it, modern for the most part in the
vulgar way of our time, when ornament is a caprice of the rich and
merely ostentatious, the many living, without beauty or light, in
barracks or huts of a brutal and hideous uniformity.
It was a Sunday evening when I came to Carrara; all that world of
labouring men and women was in the streets; in the piazza a band played;
close to the hotel, in a tent set up for the occasion, a particularly
atrocious collection of brass instruments were being blown with might
and main to attract the populace to a marionette performance. The whole
world seemed dizzy with noise. After dinner I went out into the streets
among the people, but it was not any joy I found there, only a mere
brutal cessation from toil, in which amid noise and confusion, the
labourer sought to forget his labour. More and more as I went among them
it seemed to me that the mountains had brutalised those who won from
them their snowy treasure. In all Carrara and the valley of Torano I saw
no beautiful or distinguished faces,--the women were without sweetness,
the men a mere gang of workmen. Now, common as this is in any
manufacturing city of the North, it is very uncommon in Italy, where
humanity has not been injured and enslaved by machinery as it has with
us. You may generally find beauty, sweetness, or wisdom in the faces of
a Tuscan crowd in any place. Only here you will see the man who has
become just the fellow-labourer of the ox.
I understood this better when, about four o'clock on the next morning, I
went in the company of a lame youth into the quarries themselves. There
are some half-dozen of them, glens of marble that lead you into the
heart of the mountains, valleys without shade, full of a brutal
coldness, an intolerable heat, a dazzling light, a darkness that may be
felt. Torano, that little town you come upon at the very threshold of
the quarries, is like a town of the Middle Age, full of stones and
refuse and narrow ways that end in a blind nothingness, and low houses
without glass in the windows, and dogs and cats and animals of all
sorts, goats and chickens and pigs, among which the people live. Thus
busy with the frightful labour among the stones in the heart of the
mountains, where no green thing has ever grown or even a bird built her
nest, where in summer the sun looks down like some enormous moloch, and
in winter the frost and the cold scourge them to their labour in the
horrid ghostly twilight, the people work. The roads are mere tracks
among the blocks and hills of broken marble, yellow, black, and white
stones, that are hauled on enormous trolleys by a line of bullocks in
which you may often find a horse or a pony. Staggering along this way of
torture, sweating, groaning, rebelling, under the whips and curses and
kicks of the labourers, who either sit cursing on the wagon among the
marble, or, armed with great whips, slash and cut at the poor capering,
patient brutes, the oxen drag these immense wagons over the sharp
boulders and dazzling rocks, grinding them in pieces, cutting themselves
with sharp stones, pulling as though to break their hearts under the
tyranny of the stones, not less helpless and insensate than they. Here
and there you may see an armed sentry, as though in command of a gang of
convicts, here and there an official of some society for the protection
of animals, but he is quite useless. Whether he be armed to quell a
rebellion or to put the injured animals out of their pain, I know not.
In any case, he is a sign of the state of life in these valleys of
marble. Out of this insensate hell come the impossible statues that grin
about our cities. Here, cut by the most hideous machinery with a noise
like the shrieking of iron on iron, the mantelpieces and washstands of
every jerry-built house and obscene emporium of machine-made furniture
are sawn out of the rock. There is no joy in this labour, and the
savage, harsh yell of the machines drowns any song that of old might
have lightened the toil. Blasted out of the mountains by slaves, some
13,000 of them, dragged by tortured and groaning animals, the marble
that might have built a Parthenon is sold to the manufacturer to
decorate the houses of the middle classes, the studios of the
incompetent, the streets of our trumpery cities. Do you wonder why
Carrara has never produced a sculptor? The answer is here in the
quarries that, having dehumanised man, have themselves become obscene.
The frightful leprous glare of crude whiteness that shines in every
cemetery in Europe marks only the dead; the material has in some
strange way lost its beauty, and with the loss of beauty in the material
the art of sculpture has been lost. These thousands of slaves who are
hewing away the mountains are ludicrous and ridiculous in their
brutality and absurdity. They have sacrificed their humanity for no end.
The quarries are worked for money, not for art. The stone is cut not
that Rodin may make a splendid statue, but that some company may earn a
dividend. As you climb higher and higher, past quarry after quarry, it
is a sense of slavery and death that you feel. Everywhere there is
struggle, rebellion, cruelty; everywhere you see men, bound by ropes,
slung over the dazzling face of the cliffs, hacking at the mountains
with huge iron pikes, or straining to crash down a boulder for the ox
wagons. As you get higher an anxious and disastrous silence surrounds
you, the violated spirit of the mountains that has yielded itself only
to the love of Michelangelo seems to be about to overwhelm you in some
frightful tragedy. In the shadowless cool light of early morning, these
pallid valleys, horrid with noise of struggle and terror, the snorting
of a horse, the bellow of a bullock in pain, seem like some fantastic
dream of a new Inferno; but when at last the enormous sun has risen over
the mountains, and flooded the glens with furious heat, it is as though
you walked in some delirium, a shining world full of white fire dancing
in agony around you. You stumble along, sometimes waiting till a wagon
and twelve oxen have been beaten and thrust past you on the ascent,
sometimes driven half mad by the booming of the dynamite, here threading
an icy tunnel, there on the edge of a precipice, almost fainting in the
heat, listening madly to the sound of water far below. Then, as you
return through the sinister town of Torano with its sickening sights and
smells, you come into the pandemonium of the workshops, where nothing
has a being but the shriek of the rusty saws drenched with water, driven
by machinery, cutting the marble into uniform slabs to line urinals or
pave a closet. At last, in a sort of despair, overwhelmed with heat and
noise, you reach your inn, and though it be midday in July, you seize
your small baggage and set out where the difficult road leads out of
this spoiled valley to the olives and the sea.
* * * * *
It was midday when, in spite of the sun, I set out up the long hill that
leads to La Foce and Massa from Carrara. It is a road that turns
continually on itself, climbing always, among the olive woods and
chestnuts, where the girls sing as they herd the goats, and the pleasant
murmur of the summer, the song of the cicale, the wind of the hills,
cleanse your heart of the horror of Carrara. Climbing thus at peace with
yourself for a long hour, you come suddenly to La Foce, a sort of ridge
or pass between the loftier hills, whence you may see the long-hidden
sea, and Montignoso, that old Lombard castle still fierce above the
olive woods, and Massa itself, Massa Ducale, a lofty precipitous city
crowned by an old fortress. Who may describe the beauty of the way under
the far-away peaks of marble, splendid in their rugged gesture, their
immortal perfection and indifference! And indeed, from La Foce all the
noise and cruelty of that life in the quarries at Carrara is forgotten.
As you begin to descend by the beautiful road that winds along the sides
of the hills, the burden of those immense quarries, echoing with cries
of distress inarticulate and pitiful, falls away from one. Here is Italy
herself, fair as a goddess, delicate as a woman, forlorn upon the
mountains. Everywhere in the quiet afternoon songs come to you from the
shady woods, from the hillsides and the streams. Something of the
simplicity and joy of a life we have only known in our hearts is
expressed in every fold of the mountains, olive clad and terraced with
walks and vines, where the husbandman labours till evening and the corn
is ripe or reaping, and the sound of the flute dances like a fountain in
the shade. And so, when at evening you enter the noble city of Massa,
among the women sitting at their doors sewing or knitting in the sunset,
while the children, whole crowds of them, play in the narrow streets,
their laughter echoing among the old houses as the sun dances in a
narrow valley, or you pass among the girls who walk together in a
nosegay, arm in arm, or the young men who lounge together in a crowd
against the houses watching them, there is joy in your heart, because
this is life, simple and frank and full of hope, without an afterthought
or a single hesitation of doubt or fear.
There is little to be seen at Massa that is not just the natural beauty
of the place, set like a flower among the woods, that climb up to the
marble peaks. Not without a certain interest you come upon the
Prefettura, which once was the summer castle of Elisa Baciocchi,
Napoleon's sister, who as a gift from him held Lucca, and was much
beloved, from 1805 to 1814. And joyful as the country is under that
impartial sun, before that wide and ancient sea, among her quiet woods
and broken shrines, it is not without a kind of hesitation and shame
almost that you learn that the great fortress which crowns the city is
now a prison in which are many half-witted unhappy folk, who in this
transitory life have left the common way. It is strange that in so many
lands the prison is so often in a place of the greatest beauty. At
Tarragona, far away over the sea looking towards Italy, the hospital of
those who have for one cause or another fallen by the way is set by the
sea-shore, almost at the feet of the waves, so that in a storm the
momentary foam from those restless, free waters must often be scattered
about the courtyard, where those who have injured us, and whom in our
wisdom we have deprived of the world, are permitted to walk. It is much
the same in Tangier, where the horrid gaol, always full of groans and
the torture of the bastinado, is in the dip of the Kasbah, where it
joins the European city with nothing really between it and the Atlantic.
In Massa these prisoners and captives can see the sea and the great
mountains, and must often hear the piping of those who wander freely in
the woods. Even in Italy, it seems, where the criminal is beginning to
be understood as a sick person, they have not yet contrived to banish
the older method of treatment: as who should say, you are ill and
fainting with anaemia, come let me bleed you.
It is at Massa that on your way south you come again into the highroad
from Genoa to Pisa, for while, having left it at Spezia, you found it
again at Sarzana, it was a by-road that led you to Carrara and again to
Massa Ducale. Now, though the way you seek be the highway of the
pilgrims, it is none the better as a road for that. For the wagons
bringing marble to the cities by the way have spoiled it altogether, so
that you find it ground with ruts six inches deep and smothered in dust;
therefore, if you come by carriage, and still more if you be _en
automobile_, it is necessary to go warily. On foot nothing matters but
the dust, and if you start early from Massa that will not annoy you, for
in the early morning, for some reason of the gods, the dust lies on the
highway undisturbed, while by ten o'clock the air is full of it. It is a
bad road then all the way to Pietrasanta, but most wonderful and lovely
nevertheless. For the most part the sea is hidden from you, for you are
in truth on the sea-shore, though far enough from the waves, a land of
fields and cucumbers coming between road and water. Swinging along in
the dawn, you soon pass that old castle of Montignoso, crumbling on its
high rock, built by the Lombard Agilulf to hold the road to Italy. Then
not without surprise you pass quite under an old Albergo which crosses
the way, where certainly of old the people of Massa took toll of the
Tuscans, and the Tuscans taxed all who came into their country. Then the
road winds through a gorge beside a river, and at last between delicious
woods of olives full of silver and golden shade most pleasant in the
heat, past Seravezza in the hills, you come to the little pink and white
town of Pietrasanta under the woods, at noon.
Pietrasanta is set at the foot of the Hills of Paradise, littered with
marble, planted with figs and oleanders, full of the sun. For hours you
may climb among the olives on the hills, terraced for vines, shimmering
in the heat; and resting there, watch the sleepy sea lost in a silver
mist, the mysterious blue hills, listening to the songs of the maidens
in the gardens. Thus watching the summer pass by, caught by her beauty,
lying on an old wall beautiful with lichen and the colours of many
autumns, suddenly you may be startled by the stealthy, unconcerned
approach of a great snake three feet long at least, winding along the
gully by the roadside. Half fascinated and altogether fearful, you watch
her pass by till she disappears bit by bit in an incredibly small
fissure in the vineyard wall, leaving you breathless. Or all day long
you will lie under the olives waiting for the coolness of evening,
listening to the sound of everlasting summer, the piping of a shepherd,
the little lovely song of a girl, the lament of the cicale. Then
returning to Pietrasanta, you will sit in the evening perhaps in the
Piazza there, quite surrounded by the old walls, with its mediaeval air,
its lovely Municipio and fine old Gothic churches. Here you may watch
all the city, the man and his wife and children, the young girls
laughing together, conscious of the shy admiration of the youth of the
place; and you will be struck by the beauty of these people, peasants
and workmen, their open, frank faces, their grace and strength, their
unconcerned delight in themselves, their air of distinction too, coming
to them from a long line of ancestors who have lived with the earth, the
mountains, and the sea.
Then in the early morning, perhaps, you will enter S. Martino and hear
the early Mass, where there are still so many worshippers, and then,
lingering after the service, you will admire the pulpit, carved really
by one of those youths whose frankness and grace surprised you in the
Piazza on the night before--Stagio Stagi, a native of this place, a fine
artist whose work continually meets you in Pietrasanta. Indeed, in the
choir of the church there are some candelabra by him, and an altar,
built, as it is said, out of two confessional boxes. In the Baptistery
close by are some bronzes, said to be the work of Donatello, and some
excellent sculptures by Stagio; while, as though to bear out the hidden
paganism, some dim memory of the old gods, that certainly haunts this
shrine, the font is an old Roman _tazza_, carved with Tritons and
Neptune among the waves; but over it now stands another supposed work of
Donatello, S. Giovanni Battista, reconciled, as we may hope, with those
whose worship he has usurped.
The facade of S. Martino is of the fourteenth century, as is that of S.
Agostino, its neighbour, where you may find another altar by Stagio.
Then it may be at evening you seek the sea-shore, that mysterious,
forlorn coast where the waves break almost with a caress. It was here,
or not far away, somewhere between this little wonderful city and
Viareggio, then certainly a mere village, that Shelley's body was
burned, as Trelawney records.[15] "The lovely and grand scenery that
surrounded us," he says, "so exactly harmonised with Shelley's genius,
that I could imagine his spirit soaring over us.... Not a human dwelling
was in sight.... I got a furnace made at Leghorn of iron bars and strong
sheet-iron supported on a stand, and laid in a stock of fuel and such
things as were said to be used by Shelley's much-loved Hellenes on their
funeral pyres.... At ten on the following morning, Captain S. and
myself, accompanied by several officers of the town, proceeded in our
boat down the small river which runs through Via Reggio (and forms its
harbour for coasting vessels) to the sea.[16] Keeping along the beach
towards Massa, we landed at about a mile from Via Reggio, at the foot of
the grave; the place was noted by three wand-like reeds stuck in the
sand in a parallel line from high to low-water mark. Doubting the
authenticity of such pyramids, we moved the sand in the line indicated,
but without success. I then got five or six men with spades to dig
transverse lines. In the meanwhile Lord Byron's carriage with Mr. Leigh
Hunt arrived, accompanied by a party of dragoons and the chief officers
of the town. In about an hour, and when almost in despair, I was
paralysed with the sharp and thrilling noise a spade made in coming in
direct contact with the skull. We now carefully removed the sand. This
grave was even nearer the sea than the other [Williams's], and although
not more than two feet deep, a quantity of the salt water oozed in.
"... We have built a much larger pile to-day, having previously been
deceived as to the immense quantity of wood necessary to consume a body
in the unconfined atmosphere." Mr. Shelley had been reading the poems of
"Lamia" and "Isabella" by Keats, as the volume was found turned back
open in his pocket; so sudden was the squall. The fragments being now
collected and placed in the furnace here fired, and the flames ascended
to the height of the lofty pines near us. We again gathered round, and
repeated, as far as we could remember, the ancient rites and ceremonies
used on similar occasions. Lord B. wished to have preserved the skull,
which was strikingly beautiful in its form. It was very small and very
thin, and fell to pieces on attempting to remove it.
"Notwithstanding the enormous fire, we had ample time e'er it was
consumed to contemplate the singular beauty and romantic wildness of the
scenery and objects around us. Via Reggio, the only seaport of the Duchy
of Lucca, built and encompassed by an almost boundless expanse of deep,
dark sand, is situated in the centre of a broad belt of firs, cedars,
pines, and evergreen oaks, which covers a considerable extent of
country, extending along the shore from Pisa to Massa. The bay of Spezia
was on our right, and Leghorn on our left, at almost equal distances,
with their headlands projecting far into the sea, and forming this whole
space of interval into a deep and dangerous gulf. A current setting in
strong, with a N.W. gale, a vessel embayed here was in a most perilous
situation; and consequently wrecks were numerous: the water is likewise
very shoal, and the breakers extend a long way from the shore. In the
centre of this bay my friends were wrecked, and their bodies tossed
about--Captain Williams seven, and Mr. Shelley nine days, e'er they were
found. Before us was a most extensive view of the Mediterranean, with
the isles of Gorgona, Caprera, Elba, and Corsica in sight. All around
us was a wilderness of barren soil with stunted trees, moulded into
grotesque and fantastic forms by the cutting S.W. gales. At short and
equal distances along the coast stood high, square, antique-looking
towers, with flagstaff's on the turrets, used to keep a look-out at sea
and enforce the quarantine laws. In the background was the long line of
the Italian Alps.
"... After the fire was kindled ... more wine was poured over Shelley's
dead body than he had consumed during his life. This, with the oil and
salt, made the yellow flames glisten and quiver.... The only portions
that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the jaw and the
skull; but what surprised us all was that the heart remained entire. In
snatching this relic from the fiery furnace my hand was severely burnt;
and had anyone seen me do the act I should have been put in quarantine."
Shelley's ashes were taken to Rome, and buried in the English cemetery
there, a place he loved, that is perhaps the most beautiful of the
beautiful graveyards of Italy.
Of Viareggio itself there is little to be said. It is a town by the
seaside, full in summer of holiday-making Tuscans from Florence and the
cities round about. A pretty place enough, it possesses an unique
market-place covered in by ancient twisted plane trees, where the old
women chaffer with the cooks and contadine. But nothing, as it seems to
me, and certainly not so modern a place as Viareggio, will keep you long
from Pisa. Even on the dusty way from Pietrasanta, at every turn of the
road one has half expected to see the leaning tower and the Duomo. And
it is really with an indescribable impatience you spend the night in
Viareggio. Starting at dawn, still without a glimpse of Pisa, you enter
the Pineta before the sun, that lovely, green, cool forest full of
silver shadows, with every here and there a little farm for the pine
cones, about which they are heaped in great banks. Coming out of this
wood on the dusty road in the golden heat, between fields of cucumbers,
you meet market carts and contadini returning from the city. Then you
cross the Serchio in the early light, still and mysterious as a river
out of Malory. And at last, suddenly, like a mirage, the towers of Pisa
rise before you, faint and beautiful as in a dream. As you turn to look
behind you at the world you are leaving, you find that the mountains,
those marvellous Apuan Alps with their fragile peaks, have been lost in
the distance and the sky; and so, with half a regret, full of expectancy
and excitement nevertheless, you quicken your pace, and even in the heat
set out quickly for the white city before you,--Pisa, once lord of the
sea, the first great city of Tuscany.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] I no longer believe it is possible to be certain of the place. At
any rate, all the guide-books, Baedeker, Murray, and Hare, are wrong,
though not so far out as that gentleman who, having assured us that
Boccaccio was a "little priest," and that Petrarch, Poliziano, Lorenzo,
and Pulci were of no account as poets, remarks that Shelley's body was
found at Lerici, and that he was burned close by.
[16] See Carmichael, _The Old Road_, etc., pp. 183-202.
VI. PISA
I
To enter Pisa by the Porta Nuova, coming at once into the Piazza del
Duomo, is as though at midday, on the highway, one had turned aside into
a secret meadow full of a strange silence and dazzling light, where have
been abandoned among the wild flowers the statues of the gods. For the
Piazza is just that--a meadow scattered with daisies, among which, as
though forgotten, stand unbroken a Cathedral, a Baptistery, a Tower, and
a Cemetery, all of marble, separate and yet one in the consummate beauty
of their grouping. And as though weary of the silence and the light, the
tower has leaned towards the flowers, which may fade and pass away. So
amid the desolation of the Acropolis must the statues of the Parthenon
have looked from the hills and the sea, with something of this abandoned
splendour, this dazzling solitude, this mysterious calm silence,
satisfied and serene.
Wherever you may be in Pisa, you cannot escape from the mysterious
influence of those marvellous ghosts that haunt the verge of the city,
that corner apart where the wind is white on the grass, and the shadows
steal slowly through the day. The life of the world is far away on the
other side of the city; here is only beauty and peace.
If you come into the Piazza, as most travellers do, from the Lung' Arno,
as you turn into the Via S. Maria or out of the Borgo into the beautiful
Piazza dei Cavalieri, gradually as you pass on your way life hesitates
and at last deserts you. In the Via S. Maria, for instance, that winds
like a stream from the Duomo towards Arno, at first all is gay with the
memory and noise of the river, the dance of the sun and the wind. Then
you pass a church; some shadow seems to glide across the way, and it is
almost in dismay you glance up at the silent palaces, the colour of
pearl, barred and empty; and then looking down see the great paved way
where your footsteps make an echo; while there amid the great slabs of
granite the grass is peeping. It is generally out of such a shadowy
street as this that one comes into the dazzling Piazza del Duomo. But
indeed, all Pisa is like that. You pass from church to church, from one
deserted Piazza to another, and everywhere you disturb some shadow, some
silence is broken, some secret seems to be hid. The presence of those
marvellous abandoned things in the far corner of the city is felt in
every byway, in every alley, in every forgotten court. "Amid the
desolation of a city" this splendour is immortal, this glory is not
dead.
II
"Varie sono le opinioni degli Scrittori circa l'edificazione di Pisa,"
says Tronci in his _Annali Pisani_, published at Livorno in the
seventeenth century. "Various are the opinions of writers as to the
building of Pisa, but all agree that it was founded by the Greeks. Cato
in his _Fragment_, and Dionysius Halicarnassus in the first book of his
_History_, affirm that the founders were the Pisi Alfei Pelasgi, who had
for their captain the King Pelops, as Pliny says in his _Natural
History_ (lib. 5), and Solinus too, as though it were indubitable: who
does not know that Pisa was from Pelops?" Certainly Pisa is very old,
and whether or no King Pelops, as Pliny thought, founded the city, the
Romans thought her as old as Troy. In 225 B.C. she was an Etruscan city,
and the friend of Rome; in Strabo's day she was but two miles from
the sea; Caesar's time she became a Roman military station; while in 4
A.D. we read that the disturbances at the elections were so serious that
she was left without magistrates. That fact in itself seems to bring the
city before our eyes: it is so strangely characteristic of her later
history.
[Illustration: PISA
_Alinari_]
But in spite of her enormous antiquity, there are very few left of her
Etruscan and Roman days, the remains of some Roman Thermae, Bagni di
Nerone near the Porta Lucca being, indeed, all that we may claim, save
the urns and sarcophagi scattered in the Campo Santo, from the great
days of Rome. The glory of Pisa is the end of the Middle Age and the
early dawn of the Renaissance. There, amid all the hurly-burly and
terror of invasion and civil wars, she shines like a beacon beside the
sea, proud, brave, and full of hope, almost the only city not altogether
enslaved in a country in the grip of the barbarian, almost overwhelmed
by the Lombards. And indeed, she was one of the first cities of Italy to
fling off the Lombard yoke. Favoured by her position on the shores of
the Tyrrhenian Sea, yet not so near the coast as to invite piracy, she
waged incessant war on Greek and Saracen. Lombardy, heavy with conquest,
fearful for her prize, which was Italy, was compelled to encourage the
growth of the naval cities. It was on the sea that the future of Pisa
lay, like the glory of the sun that in its splendour and pride passes
away too soon.
Already in the ninth century we hear of her prowess at Salerno, while in
the tenth, having possessed herself of her own government under consuls,
she sent a fleet to help the Emperor Otho II in Sicily. Fighting without
respite or rest, continually victorious, never downhearted, she had
opened the weary story of the civil strife of Italy with a war against
Lucca, in the year 1004.[17] It was the first outburst of that hatred
in her heart which in the end was to destroy her for she died of a
poverty of love.
In 1005, still with her fleet engaged in Sicilian waters, the Arab
pirates fell upon her, and, forcing the harbour, sacked a whole quarter
of the city. For the time Pisa could do little against the foes of
Europe, but in 1016 she allied herself with that city which proved at
last to be her deadliest foe, Genoa the Proud, and the united fleets
swept down on Sardinia for vengeance. It was this victorious expedition
that aroused the hatred of the Pisans for Genoa, a jealousy that was
only extinguished when at last Pisa was crushed at Meloria.
Many were the attempts of the Arabs to regain Sardinia, but Pisa was not
to be deceived. Coasting along the African shore, her fleet took Bona
and threatened Carthage. Yet in 1050 the Arabs of Morocco and Spain
stole the island from her, only Cagliari holding out under the nobles
for the mother city. There was more than the loss of Sardinia at stake,
for with the victory of the Arabs the highway of the sea was no longer
secure, the existence of Pisa, and not of Pisa only, was threatened. So
we find Genoa once more standing beside Pisa in the fight of Europe. The
fleets again were combined, this time under the command of a Pisan, one
Gualduccio, a plebeian. He sailed for Cagliari, landed his men, and
engaged the enemy on the beach. The Arabs were led by the King Mogahid,
Re Musetto, as the Italians called him. He was over eighty years old at
the time, and though still full of cunning valour, attacked by the
fleets in front and the garrison in the rear, his army was defeated and
put to flight. He himself, fleeing on horseback, was wounded in two
places, and falling was captured; and they took him in chains to Pisa,
where he died. Thus Sardinia once more fell into the hands of Europe,
and the island, divided in fiefs under the rule of Pisa,[18] was held
and governed by her.
But Pisa was not yet done with the Arab. She stood for Europe. In 1063
she fought at Palermo, returning laden with booty. It was then, after
much discussion in the Senate,[19] sending an embassy to the Pope and
another to "Re Henrico di Germania," that she decided to employ this
spoil in building the Duomo, in the place where the old Church of S.
Reparata stood, and more anciently the Baths of Hadrian, the Emperor.
The temple, Tronci tells us,[20] was dedicated to the Magnificent Queen
of the Universe, Mary, ever Virgin, most worthy Mother of God, Advocate
of sinners. It was begun in 1064, and many years, as Tronci says, were
consumed in the building of it.[21] The pillars--and there are
many--were brought by the Pisans from Africa, from Egypt, from
Jerusalem, from Sardinia, and other far lands.
At this time Pisa was divided into four parts, called _Quartieri_. The
first was called _Ponte_, the ensign of which was a rosy Gonfalon; the
second, _di Mezzo_, which had a standard with seven yellow stripes on a
red field; the third, _Foriporta_, which had a white gate in a rosy
field; and the fourth, _Chinsica_ with a white cross in a red field.[22]
Nor was the Duomo the only building that the Pisans undertook about this
time. Eight years later, the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, called
to-day S. Pierino, was built on a spot where of old "there was a temple
of the Gentiles" dedicated to Apollo; that, when the Pisans received
the faith of Jesus Christ, they gave to St. Peter, the Prince of the
Apostles. This church appears to have been consecrated by the great
Archbishop Peter on 30th August 1119.
These two churches, and especially the Duomo, still perhaps the most
wonderful church in Italy, prove the greatness of the civilisation of
Pisa at this time. She was then a self-governed city, owing allegiance,
it is true, to the Marquisate of Tuscany, but with consuls of her own.
Since she was so warlike, the nobles naturally had a large part in her
affairs. In the Crusade of 1099 the Pisans were late, as the Genoese
never ceased to remind them,--to come late, in Genoa, being spoken of as
"_Come l'ajuto di Pisa_"; and, indeed, like the Genoese, the Pisans
thought as much of their own commercial advantage in these Holy Wars as
of the Tomb of Jesus. In 1100 they returned from Jerusalem, their
merchants having gained, _una loggia, una contrada, un fondaco e una
chiesa_ for their nation in Constantinople, with many other fiscal
benefits. Nor were they forgetful of their Duomo, for they came home
with much spoil, bringing the bodies of the Saints Nicodemus the Prince
of the Pharisees, Gamaliel the master of St. Paul, and Abibone, one of
the seventy-two disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.[23]
Encouraged by their success, not long afterwards, they, in their
invincible confidence and force, decided to undertake another
enterprise. Urged thereto by their Archbishop Peter, they set out,
partly for glory, partly in the hope of spoil to free the thousands of
Christians held captive by the Arabs in the Balearic islands. The fleet
sailed on the 6th August 1114, the Feast of S. Sisto, the anniversary of
other victories. There were, it seems, some three hundred ships of
diverse strength; and every sort of person, old and young, took part in
this adventure. Going astray, they first landed in Catalonia and did
much damage; then, "acknowledging their unfortunate mistake," they found
the island, where, under Archbishop Peter and the Pope's gonfalone,
they were entirely successful. They released the captives, and, amid the
immense spoil, they brought away the son of the Moorish king, whom later
they baptized in Pisa and sent back to the Moors. The Pisan dead were,
however, very many. At first they thought to load a ship with the slain
and bring them home again; but this was not found possible. Sailing at
last for Marseilles, they buried them there in the Badia di S. Vittore,
later bringing the monks to Pisa.
Now, while the glory of Pisa shone thus upon the waters far away, the
Lucchesi thought to seize Pisa herself, deprived of her manhood. But the
Florentines, who at this time were friends with Pisa, since their
commerce depended upon the Porto Pisano, sent a company to guard the
city, encamping some two miles off; for since so much loot lay to hand,
to wit, Pisa herself, the Florentine captains feared lest they might not
be able to hold their men. And, indeed, one of their number entered the
city intent on the spoil, but was taken, and they judged him worthy only
of death. But the Pisans, not to be outdone in honour, refused to allow
him to be executed in their territory; then the Florentines bought a
plot of ground near the camp, and killed him there. When the fleet
returned and heard this, they determined to send Florence a present to
show their gratitude. Now, among the spoil were some bronze gates and
two rosy pillars of porphyry, very precious. Then they besought the
Florentines to choose one of these, the gates or the pillars, as a gift.
And Florence chose the pillars, which stand to-day beside the eastern
gate of the Baptistery in that city. But on the way to Florence they
encountered the Mugnone in flood, and were thrown down and broken there.
Hence the Florentines, that scornful and suspicious folk, swore that the
Pisans had cracked their gifts themselves with fire before sending them,
that Florence might not possess things so fair.
Other jealousies, too, arose out of the success of Pisa, though
indirectly. For the Genoese, never content that she should have the
overlordship of Sardinia, were still more disturbed when Pope Gelasius
II., that Pisan, gave Corsica to Pisa, so that about 1125[24] they made
war on her. The war lasted many years, till Innocent II, being Pope and
come to Pisa, made peace, giving the Genoese certain rights in Corsica.
About this time S. Bernard was in Pisa, where in 1134 Innocent II held a
General Council; not for long, however, for in the same year he set out
for Milan to reconcile that Church with Rome.
Her quarrel with Genoa was scarcely finished when Pisa found herself at
war with the Normans in Southern Italy, defending heroically the city of
Naples and utterly destroying Amalfi, the wonderful republic of the
South.[25] Certainly the might of Pisa was great; her supremacy was
unquestionable from Lerici to Piombino, but behind her hills Lucca was
on watch, not far away Florence her friend as yet, held the valley of
the Arno, while Genoa on the sea dogged her steps between the
continents. Thus Pisa stood in the middle of the twelfth century the
strongest and most warlike city in Tuscany, full of ambition and the
love of beauty and glory. For it was now in 1152 that she began to build
the Baptistery, and in 1174 the famous Campanile, a group of buildings
with the Duomo unrivalled in the world.
Meanwhile the Great Countess of Tuscany had died in 1115; more and more
Italy became divided against itself, and by the end of the century
Guelph and Ghibelline, commune and noble, were tearing her in pieces.
Tuscany, really little more than a group of communes devoted to trade,
with the great feudatories ever in the offing, without any real unity,
slowly became the stronghold of the Guelphs. Only Pisa,[26] glorying in
the strength of the sea and the splendour of war, was Ghibelline, with
Siena on her sunny hills. Now, having won Sardinia for herself, her
nobles there established were, as was their manner everywhere,
continually at feud. The Church, thinking to make Pisan sovereignty less
secure, supported the weaker. Already Innocent III had, following this
plan, called on the Pisans to withdraw their claim to the island. And it
was a Pisan noble, Visconti, who, marrying into one of the island
families related to Gregory IX, recognised the Papal suzerainty. Thus
this family in Pisa became Guelph. But the other nobles, among whom was
the Gherardesca family, threw their weight on the other side, and so
Pisa, who had ever leaned that way, became staunchly Ghibelline.[27]
The quarrel with Florence was certain sooner or later, for Florence was
growing in strength and riches; she would not for ever be content to let
Pisa hold her sea-gate, taking toll of all that passed in and out. It
was in 1222 that the first war broke out with the White Lily. Any excuse
was good enough; the bone of contention appears to have been a lap-dog
belonging to one of the Ambassadors[28]. Pisa was beaten. In 1259,
nevertheless, she turned on the Genoese and drove them down the seas.
But the death of Frederic in 1250 was the true end of the Ghibelline
cause in Italy.
What then did Pisa look like in these the days of her great power and
prosperity? She was a city, we may think, of narrow shadowy streets like
the Via delle Belle Torri, full of refuse and garbage too, for then, as
now in the remoter places, the household slops were simply hurled out of
the windows with a mere _guarda_! called from an upper window. And to
the horror of less fortunate cities, these streets were full of "Pagans,
Turks, Libyans, Parthians, and foul Chaldeans, with their incense,
pearls, and jewels." Yet though so good a Guelph as Donizo, the
biographer of the great Countess, can express his horror of these
"Gentiles," Genoa, too, must have been in much the same case; but then
Genoa was Guelph, and Pisa Ghibelline. Yet then, as to-day in that quiet
far corner of the city, in a meadow sprinkled with daisies, the great
white Duomo stood a silent witness to the splendour of the noblest
republic in Tuscany.
But her day was too soon over. In 1254, Florence and Lucca met and
defeated her. The Guelphs had won. In Pisa we find the government
reformed, elders appointed, a senate, a great council, and Podesta, a
Captain of the People. It seemed as though Pisa herself was about to
become Guelph, or at any rate to fling out her nobles. But in many a
distant colony the nobles ruled, undisturbed by the disaster at home.
And then, almost before she had set her house in order, the splendid
victory of Monteaperto threw the Guelphs into confusion, and the banners
of Pisa once more flew wide and far. But the fatal cause of the Empire
was doomed; Manfred fell at Benevento, and Corradino was defeated at
Tagliacozzo by Charles of Anjou, who, not content with victory, expelled
the Pisan merchants from his ports. There was left to her the sea.
Now Ugolino della Gherardesca, of the great family which had been
especially enraged by the conduct of Visconti, married his sister to one
of that family reigning at Gallura in Sardinia. This man, the judge of
Gallura, as he was called, had come to live in Pisa. The Pisans looked
with much suspicion on this alliance, and exiled first the Visconti and
later Ugolino himself, with all the other Guelphs. Ugolino went to
Lucca, and with her help in 1276 overcame his native city and forced her
to receive again the exiles. Then the merchandise of Florence passed
freely through her port, Lucca regained her fortresses, and Pisa herself
fell into the possession of Ugolino.
Nevertheless, without a thought of fear, looking ever seaward, she
awaited the Genoese attack, certain that it would come, since she was
divided within her gates. It was to be a fight to the death. During the
year 1282 the Genoese were driven back from the mouth of the Arno, the
Pisans were driven from Genoa, and scattered and spoiled by a storm.
These were but skirmishes; the fight was yet to come. In Genoa they
built a hundred and fifty ships of war; the Pisans, too, were straining
every nerve. Then came a running fight off Sardinia, in which the Pisans
had the worse of it, losing eight galleys and fifteen hundred men. Yet
they were not disheartened. They made Alberto Morosini, a Venetian,
their Podesta, and with him as Admirals were Count Ugolino della
Gherardesca and Andreotto Saracini. When the treasury was empty the
nobles gave their fortunes for the public cause. We hear of one family
giving eleven ships of war, others gave six, others less, as they were
able. At midsummer 1284 more than a hundred galleys sailed to Genoa, and
in scorn shot arrows of silver into the great harbour. But the Genoese
were not yet prepared. They were ready a few days later, however, when
the watchers by Arno "descried a hundred and seven sail" making for the
Porto. Then Pisa thrust forth her ships. With songs and with
thanksgiving the Archbishop Ubaldino, at the head of all the clergy of
the city, flung the Pisan standard out on the wind. It was night when
the fleet was lost to sight in the offing. In that night there came to
the Genoese thirty ships by way of reinforcement unknown to the Pisans.
These they hid behind the island of Meloria. At dawn the battle broke.
In many squadrons the ships flung themselves on one another, and for
long the victory hung in the balance. The Pisans had already grappled
for boarding, the battle was yet to win, when the Genoese reinforcements
sailed out from the island straight for the Pisan Admirals. The battle
was over. Flight--it was all that was left for Pisa. Ugolino himself was
said to have given the signal.
There fell that day five thousand Pisans, with eleven thousand captured,
and twenty-eight galleys lost to Genoa. There was no family in Pisa but
mourned its dead: for six months on every side nothing was heard but
lamentations and mourning. If you would see Pisa, it was said, you must
go to Genoa.
Pisa had lost the sea. In Tuscany she stood with Arezzo facing the
Guelph League. She elected Ugolino her Captain-General.[29] A man of the
greatest force and ability, he was ambitious rather for himself than for
Pisa. Having many Guelph friends, his business was to beat Genoa and the
Guelph League. He succeeded in part. He bribed Florence with certain
strongholds to leave the League, and he expelled the Ghibellines from
Pisa. Then he offered Genoa Castro in Sardinia as ransom for the Pisan
prisoners; but they sent word to the Council that they would not accept
their freedom at the price of the humiliation of their city. Such were
the Pisans. And, indeed, they threatened that if at such a price they
were set free, they would return only to punish those who had thought
such treason. Ugolino for his part cared not.[30] He proceeded to bribe
Lucca with other strongholds. In the city all was confusion. Ugolino was
turned out of the Dictatorship, he became Captain of the People. Not for
long, however, for soon he contrived to make himself tyrant again.
Now the Genoese, seeing they were like to get nothing out of their
prisoners by this, were anxious for a money ransom. But Ugolino, fearing
those brave men, broke the truce with Genoa, urging certain pirates of
Sardinia to attack the Genoese; and, in order to make sure of this,
while he himself went to his castle in the country, he arranged with
Ruggieri dei Ubaldini, the Archbishop, to expel the Guelphs, among them
his own nephew, from Pisa. The plot succeeded; but Pisa desired that the
Archbishop should for the future divide the power with Ugolino. To this
Ugolino would not agree, and in a rage he slew the nephew of the
Archbishop. Meanwhile, Ugolino's nephew, Nino Visconti, was plotting
with him to return. This came to the ears of Ruggieri, who called the
Ghibellines to arms, and at last succeeded in capturing Ugolino and his
family, after days of fighting. Well had Marco Lombardo, that "wise and
valiant man of affairs," told him, "The wrath of God is the only thing
lacking to you."
"Of a truth," says Villani, the old Florentine Chronicler,--"of a truth
the wrath of God soon came upon him, as it pleased God, because of his
treacheries and crimes; for when the Archbishop of Pisa and his
followers had succeeded in driving out Nino and his party, by the
counsel and treachery of Count Ugolino the forces of the Guelphs were
diminished; and then the Archbishop took counsel how to betray Count
Ugolino; and in a sudden uproar of the people he was attacked and
assaulted at the palace, the Archbishop giving the people to understand
that he had betrayed Pisa, and given up their fortresses to the
Florentines and the Lucchesi; and, being without any defence, the people
having turned against him, he surrendered himself prisoner; and at the
said assault one of his bastard sons and one of his grandsons were
slain, and Count Ugolino was taken and two of his sons and three
grandsons, his son's children, and they were put in prison; and his
household and followers, the Visconti and Ubizinghi, Guatini and all the
other Guelph houses, were driven out of Pisa. Thus was the traitor
betrayed by the traitor.... In the said year 1288, in the said month of
March ... the Pisans chose for their captain Count Guido of Montefeltro,
giving him wide jurisdiction and lordship; and he passed the boundaries
of Piedmont, within which he was confined by his terms of surrender to
the Church, and came to Pisa; for which thing he and his sons and family
and all the commonwealth of Pisa were excommunicated by the Church of
Rome, as rebels and enemies against Holy Church. And when the said Count
was come to Pisa ... the Pisans, which had put in prison Count Ugolino
and his two sons, and two sons of Count Guelpho his son ... in the tower
on the Piazza degli Anziani, caused the door of the said tower to be
locked and the keys thrown into Arno, and refused to the said prisoners
any food, which in a few days died there of hunger. And albeit first the
said Count demanded with cries to be shriven; yet did they not grant him
a friar or a priest to confess him. And when all the five dead bodies
were taken out of the tower, they were buried without honour; and
thenceforward the said prison was called the Tower of Hunger, and will
be always[31]."
Enough of Ugolino. Count Guido, that mystical, fierce soul from Urbino,
seeing danger everywhere, called the whole city to the army. Florence
had allied herself with Lucca and Genoa[32]. Count Guido's business was
to beat them. He did it[33]; so that by the Assumption of Our Lady in
1292 he had won back again nearly all the lost fortresses, and wrung
peace from the Guelph League. Nevertheless, Pisa was compelled to
sacrifice her captain, and to see Genoa established in Corsica and in
part of Sardinia; also she had to pay 160,000 lire to Genoa for the
Pisan captives, and in Elba to admit Genoese trade free of tax.
Some idea of the glory of Pisa even when she had suffered so much may be
had, perhaps, from Tronci's account of that Festival of the Assumption
of the Blessed Virgin as it was kept in August 1293, when the peace had
been signed.
The Anziani, Tronci tells us[34], "were used, for a month before the
Festa, to publish it in the following manner. Twenty horses covered all
with scarlet, went out of the city bearing twenty youths dressed in
fanciful and rich costumes. The first two carried two banners, one of
the Comunita, the other of the Popolo. Two others carried two lances of
silver washed with gold, on which were the Imperial eagles. Two others
bore on their fists two living eagles crowned with gold. The rest
followed in a company, dressed in rich liveries. There came after, the
trumpeters of the Comunita with the silver trumpets, and others with
fifes and wind instruments of divers loudness, and they proclaimed the
_Palii_ which were to be won on land and water.
"On land, the first prize was of red velvet lined with fur, with a great
eagle of silver. This he received who first reached the goal. To the
second was given a silken stuff of the value of thirty gold florins, to
the third in jest was offered a pair of geese and a bunch of garlic. On
the water the race was rowed in little galleys and brigantini. He who
came in first won a Bull covered with scarlet, and fifty _scudi_; the
second a piece of silken stuff with thirty gold florins, the third got
only geese and garlic.
"On the first day of August were placed on the towers of the city,
certainly some 16,000 in number, three banners on each of them; one with
the Imperial eagle, another of the Commune, and the third of the People.
In like manner, on the cupola, facade, and corners of the Duomo, on S.
Giovanni, on the Campo Santo and the Campanile, these banners flew not
only on the top, but at all the angles of the columns. The same were
seen on all the churches of the city, and on all the palaces, the
Palazzo Pubblico, the Palace of the Podesta, the Palazzo del Capitano
del Conservatore, the Corte del Consulato di Mare, on the palaces of the
Mercati and of the seven Arti. The Contado followed the example of the
city; and thus it continued all the month of August. And the whole
people of every sort made great rejoicing and feasting, to which
foreigners were particularly invited.
"At the first Vespers of the Festa, the Anziani went to the Duomo in
state: and before them walked the maidens dressed in new costumes; and
after came the trumpeters, and the Captain with his company, and all the
other lesser magistrates. When they were come to the Cathedral, the
Archbishop, vested _a Pontificale_, began solemn Vespers. This ended, a
youth mounted into the pulpit and chanted a prayer in praise of the
Assumption of the Most Glorious Virgin. Then Matins was sung; and that
finished, the procession made its way round about the church, and was
joined by all the Companies and the Regulars, carrying each man a candle
of wax of half a pound weight, alight in his hands. The Clergy followed
with the Canons and the Archbishop with lighted candles of greater
weight; and last came the Anziani, the Podesta, the Captain and other
Magistrates, the Representatives of the Arti, and all the People with
lights of wax in their hands. And the procession being over, all went to
see the illuminations, the bonfires, and the festa, through the city.
"On the morning of the Festa, the _ceri_ were placed on the _trabacche_,
that were more than sixty in number, carried, by boys dressed in
liveries, with much pomp. Immediately after followed the Anziani, the
Podesta, and the Captain of the People with all the other Magistrates
and Officials and the people, with the Company of Horse richly dressed
and with the Companies of Foot; and a little after came all the _arti_,
carrying each one his great _cero_ all painted, and accompanied by all
the wind instruments. It was a thing sweet to hear and beautiful to see.
The offering made, they went out to bring the silver girdle[35] borne
with great pomp on a _carretta_; and there assisted all the clergy in
procession with exquisite music both of voices and of instruments. The
usual ceremonies being over, they encircled the Cathedral, and hung the
girdle to the irons that were set round about. Yes, it was this girdle
of a great value and very beautiful that was spoken of through the whole
world, so that from many a city of Italy people came in haste to see it;
but to-day there is nothing of it left save a small particle[36]."
Misfortune certainly had not broken the spirit of Pisa. And so it is not
surprising that, though she dared scarcely fly her flag on the seas, on
land she thought to hold her own. No doubt this hope was strengthened by
the advent in 1312 of Henry VII of Luxembourg. With him on her side she
dreamed of the domination of Tuscany. But it was not to be. She found
money and arms in his cause and her own. She opened a new war with the
Guelph League; she suspended her own Government and made him lord of
Pisa. He remained with her two months, and then in 1313 he died at
Buonconvento. They buried him sadly in the Duomo. The two million
florins she had expended were lost for ever. Frederick of Sicily,
Henry's ally, though he came to Pisa, refused the proferred lordship, as
did Henry of Savoy; and at last Pisa placed herself under the Imperial
Vicar of Genoa, for that city also had been delivered by her nobles into
the hands of Henry VII.
Uguccione della Faggiuola, the Imperial Vicar of Genoa, remained, as
Imperial legate, Podesta, Captain of the People, and Elector, bringing
with him one thousand German horse. The rest of the army of Henry
returned over the Alps. Pisa thought herself on the verge of ruin; she
must make terms with her foes. This being done, there appeared to be no
further need for Uguccione, whose German troops were expensive, and
whose presence did but anger the Guelphs. Uguccione was a man of
enormous strength, brave, too, and resolute, swift to decide an issue,
wise in council, but a barbarian. What had he to do with peace. His
business was war, as he very soon let the Pisans know. Nor were they
slow to take him at his word. Pisa was never beaten. Uguccione marched
through the streets with the living eagles of the Empire borne before
him. Before long he had deprived the Guelphs of power, and was
practically tyrant of Pisa. Everything now seemed to depend on victory.
Lucca scarcely ten miles away, Guelph by tradition and hatred of Pisa,
was in an uproar. Uguccione saw his chance and took it; he flung himself
on the city and delivered it up to its own factions while the Pisans
sacked it. Nor did they spare the place. The spoil was enormous; among
the rest, a large sum belonging to the Pope fell into their hands.
Florence and her allies sprang to arms. Uguccione took up the challenge,
burnt the lands of Pistoja and San Miniato al Tedesco, ravaged the
vineyards of Volterra, seized the fortresses of Val di Nievole, and at
last besieged Montecatini.
It was now that the Ghibellines of Lucca with Castruccio Castracani
joined Uguccione. They met the army of Florence at Montecatini.
Machiavelli states that Uguccione fell ill, and had no part in the
battle, which was won by Castruccio. Villari, however, gives the glory
to Uguccione.
It might seem that Uguccione, whether ill or not on the day of battle,
was jealous, and perhaps afraid, of Castruccio. Certainly he plotted
against him, sending his son Nerli to Lucca with orders to trap
Castruccio and imprison him; which was done. Nerli, however, wanted
resolution to kill him; and his father hearing this, set out from Pisa
with four hundred horse to take the matter in hand. The Pisans, who were
by this time completely enslaved by Uguccione, seized the opportunity to
rise. Macchiavelli tells us "they cut his Deputies' throats, and slew
all his Family. Now, that he might be sure they were in earnest, they
chose the Conte de Gherardesca, and made him their Governor." When
Uguccione got to Lucca he found the city in an uproar, and the people
demanding the release of Castruccio. This he was compelled to allow.
With Castruccio at liberty, Lucca was too hot for him, and he fled into
Lombardy to the Lords of Scala, where no long time after, he died.
After the great victory of Montecatini, Gherardesca and Castruccio soon
came to terms with the Guelphs; and all that Pisa really seems to have
gained by the war was that she was compelled to build a hospital and
chapel for the repose of the souls of the dead at Montecatini. This
chapel, hidden away in the Casa dei Trovatelli at the top of Via S.
Maria in Pisa, became a glorious monument of the victory of Pisa over
Florence.
But the freedom of Pisa was gone for ever; others, lords and tyrants,
arose, Castruccio Castracani and the rest, yet she was still at bay. On
the 2nd October 1325 she again defeated Florence at Altopascio, and even
excluded her from the port, and, in 1341, when Florence had bought Lucca
from Mastino della Scala for 250,000 florins, she besieged it to prevent
the entry of the Florentine army then aided by Milan, Mantova, and
Padova, In 1342, the Florentines having failed to relieve Lucca, the
Pisans entered the city. The possession of Lucca seemed to put Pisa,
where centuries ago Luitprand had placed her, at the head of the
province of Tuscany. This view, which certainly she herself was not slow
to take, was confirmed when Volterra and Pistoja placed themselves under
her protection; yet, as ever, her greatest danger was the discord within
her walls. The Republic was weak, nearly a million and a half of florins
had been spent on the war, and many tyrants were her allies; moreover,
she had lent troops to Milan.[37] It was this moment of reaction after
so great an effort that Visconti d'Oleggio chose for a conspiracy
against Gherardesca the Captain-General. It is true the plot was
discovered, the traitors exiled, and Visconti banished; but the mischief
was done. When Lucchino Visconti heard of it in Milan, he imprisoned the
Pisan troops in that city and sent Visconti d'Oleggio back with two
thousand men to seize Pisa. Thus the war dragged on; and though these
Milanese were destroyed for the most part by malaria in the Maremma,
still Pisa had no rest. After Visconti came famine, and after the famine
the Black Death. Seventy in every hundred of the population died, Tronci
tells us,[38] while during the famine, bread, such as it was, had to be
distributed every day at the taverns. Then followed a revolution in the
city. Count Raniero of the Gherardesca house had succeeded to the
Captain-Generalship of Pisa as though it were his right by birth. This
brought him many enemies; and, indeed, the city was in uproar for some
years: for, while he was so young, Dino della Rocca acted for him. Among
the more powerful enemies of della Rocca was Andrea Gambacorti, whose
family was soon to enslave the city. Now the one party was called
_Bergolini_, for they had named Raniero Bergo for hate, and of these
Gambacorti was chief. The other party which was at this time in power,
as I have said, was named _Raspanti_, which is to say graspers, and of
them Dino della Rocca was head. In the midst of this disputing Raniero
died, and the Raspanti were accused of having murdered him, among others
by Gambacorti. Every sort of device to heal these wounds was resorted
to; marriages and oaths all alike failed. The city blazed with their
arson every night, till at last the people rose and expelling the
Raspanti, chose Andrea Gambacorti for captain. This happened in 1348.
Seven years later, Charles IV, on his way to Rome to be crowned, came to
the city. Now the Conte di Montescudaio was known to Charles, who years
before had ruled in Lucca; therefore the Raspanti, of when Montescudaio
was one, took heart, and at the moment when Charles was in the Duomo
receiving the homage of the city, they roused the people assembled in
the Piazza, shouting for the Emperor and Liberty; but Charles heeded
them not. Nevertheless Gambacorti, to save himself, thought fit to give
Charles the lordship of the city; but the people, angered at this,
demanded their liberty, so that the magistrates, fearing for peace,
reconciled the two factions, who then together demanded of Charles his
new lordship. And he gave it them with as good a grace as he could, for
his men were few. Then again he heard from Lucca. There, too, they
demanded liberty, and especially from the dominion of Pisa, and, it is
said, the Lucchesi in France gave him 20,000 florins for this. But Pisa
heard of it. When Charles sent his troops to occupy Lucca, the Raspanti
saw their opportunity and rose. They put themselves at the head of the
people, who slew one hundred and fifty of Charles's Germans, and held
Charles himself a prisoner in the Duomo, where he lodged since the
Palazzo Comunale had been fired. Montescudaio, however, secretly joined
Charles with his men; he burnt the houses of the Gambacorti and
dispersed the mob. Apparently Lucca was free. But Charles had reckoned
without the Pisan garrison in the subject city. They fired their
beacons, and Pisa saw the blaze. It was enough, their dominion was in
danger; there were no longer any factions; Raspanti and Bergolini alike
stood together for Pisa. They streamed out of the great Porta a Lucca to
the relief of their own people, and though six thousand armed peasants
opposed them, they won to Lucca and took it, the Pisani still holding
the gates. Then they fired the city, and when the flames closed in round
S. Michele the Lucchesi surrendered. Thus they served their enemies. But
Charles had his revenge. He seized the Gambacorti, and appointing a
judge, having given instructions to find them guilty, tried them and
beheaded seven of them in Piazza degli Anziani, in spite of the rage of
Pisa. Then, with a large amount of treasure, of which he had spoiled the
Pisans, he fled back with his barbarians to his Germany. And as soon as
he was gone the city took Montescudaio and sent him into exile[39], with
the remaining Gambacorti also. So Charles left Pisa more Ghibelline than
he found her.
It was at this time that Pisa really began to see perhaps her true
danger from Florence. Certainly she did everything to prick her into
war. But Florence was already victorious. Her answer was more disastrous
than any battle; she took her trade from the port of Pisa to the Sienese
port Talamone. Then Florence purchased Volterra, over the head of Pisa
as it were; and at last, careless whether it pleased the Pisans or no,
she permitted the Gambacorti to make raid upon Pisan territory, and
allowed Giovanni di Sano, who had lately been in her service, to seize a
fortress in the territory of Lucca. The peace was broken. On the brink
of ruin, ravaged by plague, Pisa turned to confront her hard, merciless
foe. For months Florence ravaged her territory, while she, too weak to
strike a blow in her own honour, could but hold her gates. Then the
plague left her, and she rose.
Bernabo Visconti was sending her help for 150,000 florins.[40] The
English were on the way; already over the mountains, Hawkwood and his
White Company were coming to save her; meantime she tried to strike for
herself. Pietro Farnese of the Florentines laid her low, taking one
hundred and fifty prisoners and her general. The English tarried, but a
new ally was already by her side. The Black Death which had brought down
her pride, now fell upon the enemy, both in camp and in their city of
the Lily: and then--the English were come. On the 1st of February 1364,
Hawkwood, with a thousand horse and two thousand foot, drove the
Florentines through the Val di Nievole; he harried them above Vinci and
chased them through Serravalle, crushed them at Castel di Montale, and
scattered them in the valley of Arno. They found their city at last, as
foxes find their holes, and went to earth. There Pisa halted. Before the
gates of Pisa the Florentines for years had struck money: so the Pisans
did before Florence. Nor was this all. Halting there three days, says
the chronicle,[41] "they caused three palii to be run well-nigh to the
gates of Florence. One was on horseback, another was on foot, and the
third was run by loose women (_le feminine mundane_); and they caused
newly-made priests to sing Mass there, and they coined money of divers
kinds of gold and of silver; and on one side thereof was Our Lady, with
Her Son in Her arms; on the other side was the Eagle, with the Lion
beneath its feet.... Thereafter for further dispite they set up a pair
of gallows over against the gate of Florence, and hanged thereon three
asses."
Florence refused to submit. Other Free Companies such as Hawkwood's
joined in the war. The Florentines hired that of the Star. But Hawkwood
was not to be denied. He marched up Arno, devastating the country, and
at last deigned to return to Pisa by Cortona and Siena.
Then Florence did what might have been expected. She bribed Baumgarten,
who with his Germans had fought since the rout with Hawkwood. They met
at the Borgo di Cascina on 28th July. Hawkwood was caught napping, and
Pisa in her turn was humbled. The Florentines returned with two thousand
prisoners, having slain a thousand men. They took with them "forty-two
wagons full of prisoners, all packed together 'like melons,' with a dead
eagle tied by the neck and dragging along the ground."[42] Such was war
in Italy in the fourteenth century.
Then followed the Doge Agnello: the greatness of Pisa was past.
It had ever been the plan of Milan to weaken Florence by aiding Pisa,
and to weaken Pisa by this continual war, for it was the Visconti's
dream to carry their dominion into Tuscany. Now at this time, amid all
these disasters, the Pisan ambassador at Milan was a certain Giovanni
dell' Agnello, a merchant, ambitious but without honour. This plebeian
readily lent himself to the Visconti to betray the city, if thereby he
might win power; and this Visconti promised him, for, said he, "if I win
Pisa, you shall be my lieutenant, and all the world will take you even
for my ally."
Agnello went back to Pisa full of this dream:[43] and at the first
opportunity suggested that Visconti would be flattered if a Lord were
to be elected in Pisa, if only for a year at a time; and in his subtilty
he proposed Pietro d' Albizzo da Vico, a very much respected (_di gran
stima_) citizen, as Lord. But Messer Pietro replied by asking to be sent
with other citizens to Pescia to arrange the peace with Florence. Then a
certain Vanni Botticella applied for the post; and Agnello praised him
for his patriotism, but asked him whether he had money enough to be
Lord. Certainly Pisa had fallen. By this Agnello was suspected, and
indeed one night certain citizens got leave to search his house, for
they believed him to be a traitor[44]. But he had warning, and already
Hawkwood had sold himself, for it was his business. So, when those
citizens had returned disappointed, for they found Agnello abed, he
arose and joined his bandits. With Hawkwood he went to the Palazzo dei
Anziani, bound the guard and had the Elders summoned, and told them a
tale of how the Blessed Virgin had bidden him assume the lordship of the
city. Well, he had his way, his bandits saw to that; so the Anziani
agreed and swore obedience. Next day Pisa acclaimed her Doge.
Agnello remained Doge, or Lord as he preferred to be called, for four
years. Then Charles IV marched back over the Alps into Italy. Bought off
and thwarted in Lombardy, he came towards Lucca, which the Lucchesi
exiles again offered to buy from him. Agnello was terrified. In haste he
sent to Charles offering to give him Lucca if he were made sure in Pisa.
Outside the walls of Lucca, Charles knighted this astute tradesman.
Agnello ran back to Pisa and conferred knighthood on his nephews. Then
he built a platform and awaited the Emperor. His end was in keeping with
his life. As he stood on the insecure "hustings" which he had built,
that in sight of all the people Charles might declare him Imperial Vicar
of Pisa, the platform collapsed and Agnello's leg was broken. Now,
whether the comic spirit, so helpful to justice, be strong in our Pisans
still, I know not, but on learning of the misfortune of their Lord, they
rose, and, without noticing their Imperial Vicar, appointed Anziani to
rule by the old laws.
Then the burghers and nobles--"Cittadini amatori della Patria," Tronci
calls them--formed the Campagnia di S. Michele, for it bore on its
gonfalon St. Michael Archangel, and the black eagle of the Empire. It
was the business of this company to restore peace and unity to the city.
The leaders resolved to recall the exiles, among them Pietro Gambacorti.
He came, and the city greeted him, and he swore to serve the Republic
and to forgive his enemies. A riot followed; the Bergolini armed
themselves and burnt the Gambacorti palaces. But Pietro Gambacorti
called to the city, which had risen to defend itself and to make
reprisals, saying, "I have pardoned them--I, whose parents they slew. By
what right do you refuse to do what I have done?"[45] The Bergolini took
the government, and there was peace. Then the Campagnia di S. Michele
broke up.
Not for long, however, could there be peace in Pisa. The Raspanti still
held one of the gates; and thinking to better themselves, they sent an
embassy to Charles, who was in Lucca, asking his help. He imprisoned the
embassy, and at once sent his Germans to seize the city. But the Pisans
heard of it. They rang the great bells in the Campanile, and barricaded
the gates with the benches and stalls in the Duomo, on the Baptistery
they set their bowmen, and on the Campanile the slingers. Then they tore
up the streets, and waited to give death for death. The Germans,
however, were easily beaten and bought off, and Pisa again returned to
her internal quarrels.
Out of these sprang, in 1385, Pietro Gambacorti, as Captain of the
people. It was the beginning of the last twenty years of Pisa's life as
an independent city. She now stood between Visconti in the north and
Florence close at hand. Florence was her friend against Visconti for
her own sake: she meant to have Pisa herself. Gambacorti did his best.
With infinite tact he kept friends with both cities. Under him Pisa
seemed to regain something of her old confidence and prosperity. A man
of fine courage, simplicity, and passing honest, he was incapable of
suspecting a tried friend whom he had benefited. Yet it was by the hand
of such an one he fell.
Jacopo d'Appiano's father had been exiled with Gambacorti in 1348. Like
many another Pisan house which had risen from nothing, Appiano was at
feud with certain of his fellow-citizens, among them the Lanfranchi
family. For this cause he kept a guard about him. Now Gambacorti, who
remembered his father's exile, made Appiano permanent "Chancellor of the
Republic": and hoping to reconcile the Lanfranchi with the new
chancellor, he sent for Lanfranchi, but the bandits of Appiano murdered
him as he went thither, and then joined Appiano in his house. Gambacorti
ordered his chancellor to deliver them up, but he refused. Then the
Bergolini offered Gambacorti their assistance, but he refused it,
trusting to justice. Appiano, however, at the head of the Raspanti,
marched to the palace of Gambacorti. The city was in arms, and they had
to fight their way. Arrived before the palace, Gambacorti ordering his
men not to shoot his friend, agreed to confer with Appiano. So he went
out of his house, and as Appiano stretched out his hand, in token, as it
were, of friendship, his bandits fell upon him and slew him. A fight
followed, in which the Bergolini were beaten; then Appiano became
Captain of the People. In truth, it was only a device of Visconti for
seizing the city. Appiano admitted the Milanese, and what Agnello had
failed to do, he did, for he ruled as the creature of Gian Galeazzo. But
there is no honour among thieves. Soon Visconti, hoping to win Pisa all
for himself, plotted against Appiano. The quarrel went on, Appiano
fearing to make treaty with Florence lest he should fall, and fearing,
too, to decide with Visconti lest he should be murdered, till he died,
and his son became Captain, only to sell Pisa to Visconti for 200,000
florins, with Elba also, and many castles.[46] Then Gian Galeazzo died
in 1404.
Now Florence knew that in the confusion which followed the death of the
great Visconti, Pisa was weak and almost without defence, so without
hesitation she sent an army to seize the city: but Pisa, always at her
best in danger, worked night and day, nor was any man idle in building
fortifications. In Genoa the Frenchman Boucicault, who had held that
city, came to her assistance, for the last thing Genoa or Milan desired
was to see Pisa and her port in the hands of Florence. Boucicault
imprisoned all the Florentines in Genoa, and seized Livorno, nor would
he agree to release his prisoners till Florence had signed a four years'
peace. But Pisa soon wearied of this. In the grip of Genoa, fearing
Visconti, unable to save herself, she revolted, and Boucicault sold her
to Florence, for he had to defend himself in Genoa. It was in August
1405 that Pisa was given up to Florence, but although for a moment
Florence then held the city, she was to fight for it in earnest before
she could hold it for good. As yet she only possessed the citadel, and
by a ruse the Pisans managed to win that from her: then they sent to
Florence to negotiate. They offered to buy their freedom, but Florence
was obdurate. She was determined to possess herself of Pisa; her armies
were ordered to advance.
Pisa was ready. At that moment all feuds were forgotten; a united city
opposed the Florentines: there was but one way to take it--by famine.
And it was thus at last, on 9th October 1406, Pisa fell. Preferring to
die rather than to surrender, it would have been into a city of the dead
that the armies of Florence would have marched, but for the brutal
treachery of Giovanni Gambacorti. As it was, it was only a city of the
dying that Florence occupied. After every kind of heroic effort,
Giovanni Gambacorti sold Pisa when she was too weak to fight, save
against a declared enemy, for 50,000 florins, the citizenship of
Florence and Borgo to rule. He opened the gates, and Florence streamed
in. There was scarcely a crust left in the city which was at last
become the vassal of Florence.
Here, truly, the chronicles of Pisa end--in the horrid cruelty, scorn,
and disdain so characteristic of the Florentine. Certainly with the
Medici a more humane government was adopted, so that in 1472 we read of
Lorenzo Magnifico restoring the University to something of its old
splendour, but nothing he could do was able to extinguish the undying
hatred of Pisa for those who had stolen away her liberty. In 1494 that
carnival army of Charles VIII, winding through the valleys and over the
mountains, seemed to offer them a hope of freedom. They welcomed him
with every sort of joy, and hurled the Marzocco and the Gonfalon of
Florence into Arno, all to no purpose. And truly without hope, from 1479
to 1505, they bore heroically three sieges and flung back three
different armies of Florence. Soderini and Macchiavelli urged on the
war. In 1509, Macchiavelli, that mysterious great man, besieged her on
three sides, and at last, forced by hunger and famine, Pisa admitted him
on the 8th June. It was her last fight for liberty. But she had won for
herself the respect of her enemies. A more humane and moderate policy
was adopted in dealing with her. Nevertheless, as in 1406, so now, her
citizens fled away, so that there was scarcely left a Pisan in Pisa for
the victor to rule.
Grand Duke Cosimo seems to have loved her. It was there he founded his
Order of the Knights of St. Stephen to harry the pirates in the
Mediterranean. Still she was a power on the sea, though in the service
of another. And though dead, she yet lived, for she is of those who
cannot die. The ever-glorious name of Galileo Galilei crowns her
immortality. Born within her walls, he taught at her University, and his
first experiments in the knowledge of the law of gravity were made from
her bell-tower, while, as it is said, the great lamp of her Duomo taught
him the secret of the pendulum.
Looking on her to-day, remembering her immortal story, one thinks only
of the beauty that is from of old secure in silence on that meadow among
the daisies just within her walls.
III
It is with a peculiar charm and sweetness that Pisa offers herself to
the stranger, who maybe between two trains has not much time to give
her. And indeed to him she knows she has not much to offer, just a few
things passing strange or beautiful, that are spread out for him as at a
fair, on the grass of a meadow in the dust and the sun. But to such an
one Pisa can never be more than a vision, vanished as soon as seen, in
the heat of midday or the shadow of evening.
But for me, of all the cities that grow among the flowers in Tuscany, it
is Pisa that I love best. She is full of the sun; she has the gift of
silence. Her story is splendid, unfortunate, and bitter, and moves to
the song of the sea: still she keeps her old ways about her, the life of
to-day has not troubled her at all. In her palaces the great mirrors are
still filled with the ghosts of the eighteenth century; on her Lung'
Arno you may almost see Byron drive by to mount his horse at the gate,
while in the Pineta, not far away, Shelley lies at noonday writing
verses to Miranda.
It is on the Lung' Arno, curved like a bow, so much more lovely than any
Florentine way, that what little world is left to Pisa lingers yet.
Before one is the Ponte di Mezzo, the most ancient bridge of the city,
built in 1660, but really the representative of its forerunners that
here bound north and south together: _En moles olim lapidea vix aetatem
ferrus nunc mormorea pulchrior et firmior stat simulato Marte virtutis
verae specimen saepe datura_, you read on one of the pillars at the
northern end. For indeed the first bridge seems to have been of wood,
partly rebuilt of stone after the great victory off the coast of Sicily,
and finished in 1046[47]. This bridge, called the Ponte Vecchio, took
ten years to build, and any doubt we might have as to whether it was of
wood or stone is set at rest by Tronci,[48] who tells us that in 1382,
"Pietro Gambacorta, together with the Elders and the Consiglio dei
Cittadini, determined to rebuild in stone the bridge of wood which
passed over Arno from the mouth of the Strada del Borgo to that of S.
Egidio, for the greater ornament of the city, chiefly because there were
many shops on the bridge that impeded the view of the beautiful Lung'
Arno." One sees the bridge that was thus built, the foundations having
been laid with much ceremony, a procession and a sung mass, in a
seventeenth-century print in the Museo Civico.[49] There is a buttress a
quarter of the way from each end, on which houses were still standing.
Then in 1635 this bridge was carried away by a flood. A new bridge was
immediately built, only to be destroyed in the same way on 1st January
1644. In 1660 the present Ponte di Mezzo was finished by Francesco Nave
of Rome.
It was on these bridges that the great Pisan game the _Giuoco del Ponte_
was played,[50] a model of which may be found in the Museo. This new
bridge, at any rate, does not shut out the view of the beautiful Lung'
Arno, _il bello di Pisa_, as one writer calls it. Standing there you may
see the yellow river, curved like a bow, pass through the beautiful
city, between the palaces of marble, their wrinkled image reflected in
the stream, till it is lost in the green fields on its way to the sea;
while on the other side, looking eastward, on either side the river are
the palaces of Byron and Shelley, just before the hideous iron bridge,
where Arno turns suddenly into the city from the plain and the hills. To
the south of the bridge is the Loggia dei Banchi, and farther to the
west, on the Lung' Arno, the great palace of the Gambacorti rises, now
the Palazzo del Comune, and farther still, the Madonna della Spina, a
little Gothic church of marble; while if you pass a little way westward,
the Torre Guelfa comes into sight at the bend of the river among the
ruins of the old arsenal.
It is of course to the wonderful group of buildings to the north of the
city, just within the walls, that every traveller will first make his
way. Passing from Ponte di Mezzo down the Lung' Arno Regio, past the
Palazzo Agostini, beautiful in its red brick past Palazzo Lanfreducci
with its little chain and enigmatic motto, "Alla Giornata," past the
Grand Ducal Palace, you turn at last into the Via S. Maria, a beautiful
and lovely street that winds like a stream full of shadows to the Piazza
del Duomo. On your right is the Church of S. Niccolo, founded about the
year 1000 by Ugo, Marquis of Tuscany. It seems that with Otho III there
came into Italy the Marquis Hugh. "I take it," says Villani,[51] "this
must have been the Marquis of Brandenburg, inasmuch as there is no other
marquisate in Germany." His sojourn in Italy, and especially in our city
of Florence, liked him so well that he caused his wife to come thither,
and took up his abode in Florence as Vicar of Otho the Emperor. It came
to pass as it pleased God, that when he was riding to the chase in the
country of Bonsollazzo, he lost sight of all his followers in a wood,
and came out, as he supposed, at a workshop where iron was wont to be
wrought. Here he found men black and deformed, who in place of iron
seemed to be tormenting men with fire and with hammer, and he asked them
what this might be: and they answered and said that these were damned
souls, and that to similar pains was condemned the soul of the Marquis
Hugh by reason of his worldly life, unless he should repent. With great
fear he commended himself to the Virgin Mary, and when the vision was
ended he remained so pricked in spirit, that after his return to
Florence he sold all his patrimony in Germany and commanded that seven
monasteries should be founded. The first was the Badia of Florence, to
the honour of St. Mary; the second, that of Bonsollazzo, where he beheld
the vision; the third was founded at Arezzo, the fourth at Poggibonizzi,
the fifth at the Verruca of Pisa, the sixth at the city of Castello, the
last was the one at Settimo; and all these abbeys he richly endowed,
and lived afterwards with his wife in holy life, and had no son, and
died in the city of Florence on St. Thomas's Day in the year of Christ
1006, and was buried with great honour in the Badia of Florence.
Tronci[52] says, that beside the Badia di S. Michele di Verruca outside
Pisa, "this most pious Marquis" founded also the Church of S. Niccolo,
for the use of the Monks of S. Michele Fuori. The Church of S. Niccolo
has been altogether restored. The Campanile, however, the oldest tower
left in the city, is strange and lovely. It has been given to Niccolo
Pisano, but is certainly older than his day, and, resembling as it does
the tower of the Badia at Florence and of the Badia at Settimo, seems to
be of the same date as the church. There is a gallery joining the church
with the palace of the Grand Dukes, to which it served as chapel.
Coming as one does out from this narrow deserted street of S. Maria into
the space and breadth of the Piazza del Duomo, one is almost blinded by
the sudden light and glory of the sun on those buildings, that seem to
be made of old ivory intricately carved and infinitely noble. Standing
there as though left stranded upon some shore that life has long
deserted, they are an everlasting witness to the Latin genius, symbols
as it were of what has had to be given up so that we may follow life at
the heels of the barbarian Teuton.
It was in 1063,[53] after the great victory at Palermo, that the ships
of the Republic returning full of spoil, "after much discourse made in
the Senate,"[54] it was decided at last to build "a most magnificent
temple" to S. Maria Assunta, for it was about the time of her Festa,
that is to say, the 15th August, that the victory had been won. This
having been decided on, the Republic sent ambassadors to Rome to the
Pope and to King Henry of Germany, and the Pope sent the church many
privileges, and the King a royal dowry. So they began to build the
temple where stood the old Church of S. Reparata, and more anciently the
Baths of the Emperor Hadrian; and they brought marble from Africa,
Egypt, Jerusalem, Sardinia, and other far places to adorn the church. In
1065 we read that the Pope received under his protection the Chapter and
Canons of Pisa. The Cathedral was finished in about thirty years, and
was consecrated by Pope Gelasius II in 1118. The architects, two dim
names still to be read on the facade ever kissed by the setting sun,
were Rainaldus and Busketus. They built in that Pisan style which, as
some of us may think, was never equalled till Bramante and his disciples
dreamed of St. Peter's and built the little church at Todi, and S.
Pietro in Montorio. However this may be, the Duomo of Pisa, the first
modern cathedral of Italy, was to be the pattern of many a church built
later in the contado, and even in Lucca and Pistoja and the country
round about. It was a style at once splendid and devout, not forgetful
of the Roman Empire, yet with new thoughts concerning it, so that where
a Roman building had once really stood, now a Latin Church should stand,
white with marble and glistening with precious stones. It is strange to
find in this far-away piazza the great buildings of the city; and
stranger still, when we remember that S. Reparata, the church that was
destroyed to make room for the Duomo, was called S. Reparata in Palude,
in the swamp. It may be that Pisa was less open to attack on this side,
or that this being the highest spot near the city, a flood was less to
be feared. But there were other foes beside the flood and the enemy, for
the church was damaged by fire in 1595, and was restored in 1604.
The Duomo is a basilica with nave and double aisles[55], with a
transept flanked with aisles, covered by a dome over the crossing. Built
all of white marble, that has faded to the tone of old ivory, it is
ornamented with black and coloured bands, and stands on a beautiful
marble platform in the grass of a meadow. It is, however, the facade
that is the most splendid and beautiful part of the church. It consists
of seven round arches; in the centre and in each alternate arch is a
door of bronze made by Giovanni da Bologna in 1602. Above these arches
is the first tier of columns, eighteen in number, of various coloured
marbles, supporting the round arches of the first storey; above, the
roof of the aisles slopes gradually inwards, and is supported again by a
tier of pillars of various marbles, while above rise two other tiers
supporting the roof of the nave. On the corners of the church and on the
corners of the nave are figures of saints, while above all, on the cusp
of the facade, stands Madonna with Her Son in Her arms. The door in the
south transept is by Bonannus, whose great doors were destroyed in 1595.
Within, the church is solemn and full of light. Sixty-eight antique
columns, the spoil of war, uphold the church, while above is a coffered
Renaissance ceiling, of the seventeenth century. There is but little to
see beside the church itself, a few altar-pieces, one by Andrea del
Sarto; a few tombs; the bronze lamp of Battista Lorenzi, which is said
to have suggested the pendulum to Galileo, and that is all in the nave.
The choir screens, work of the Renaissance, are very lovely, while above
them are the _ambones_, from which on a Festa the Epistle and Gospel are
sung. The stalls are of the end of the fifteenth century, and the altar,
a dreadful over-decorated work, of the year 1825. Matteo Civitali of
Lucca made the wooden lectern behind the high altar, and Giovanni da
Bologna forged the crucifix, while Andrea del Sarto, not at his best,
painted the Saints Margaret and Catherine, Peter and John, to the right
and left of the altar. The capital of the porphyry column here is by
Stagio Stagi of Pietrasanta, while the porphyry vase is a prize from a
crusade. The mosaics in the apsis are much restored, but they are the
only known work of Cimabue,[56] and are consequently, even in their
present condition, valuable and interesting. The most beautiful and the
most interesting work of art in the Duomo is the Madonna, carved in
ivory in 1300 by Giovanni Pisano, in the sacristy. This Madonna is a
most important link in the history of Italian art; it seems to suggest
the way in which French influence in sculpture came into Italy. Such
work as this, by some French master, probably came not infrequently into
Italian hands; nor was its advent without significance; you may find its
influence in all Giovanni's work, and in how much of that which came
later.[57]
It is but a step across that green meadow to the Baptistery, that like a
casket of ivory and silver stands to the west of the Duomo. It was begun
in 1153 by Diotisalvi, but the work went very slowly forward. In 1164,
out of 34,000 families in Pisa subject to taxes, each gave a gold sequin
for the continuation of the work, but it was not finished altogether
till the fourteenth century. There are four doors; above them on the
east and north are sculptures of the thirteenth century.[58]
Truly, one might as well try to describe the face of one's angel as
these holy places of Pisa, which are catalogued in every guide-book ever
written. At least I will withhold my hand from desecrating further that
which is still so lovely. Only, if you would hear the heavenly choirs
before death has his triumph over you, go by night into the Baptistery,
having bribed some choir-boy to sing for you, and you shall hear from
that marvellous roof a thousand angels singing round the feet of San
Raniero.
Perhaps the loveliest thing here is the great octagonal font of various
marbles, in which every Pisan child has been christened since 1157; but
it is the pulpit of Niccolo Pisano that everyone praises.
Niccolo Pisano appears to have been born in Apulia, and to have come to
Pisa about the middle of the thirteenth century. We know scarcely
anything of his life. The earliest record in which we find his name is
the contract of 1265, in which he binds himself to make a pulpit for the
Duomo of Siena.[59] There he is called _Magister Niccolus lapidum de
paroccia ecclesie Sancti Blasii de Ponte, de Pisis quondam Petri_.
Another document of later date describes him as _Magister Nichola Pietri
de Apulia_. Coming thus to Pisa from Apulia, possibly after many
wanderings, in about 1250, his childhood had been passed not among the
Tuscan hills, but in Southern Italy among the relics of the Roman world.
It is not any sudden revelation of Roman splendour he receives in the
Campo Santo of Pisa, but just a reminder, as it were, of the things of
his childhood, the broken statues of Rome that littered the country of
his birth. Thus in a moment this Southerner transforms the rude art of
his time here in Tuscany, the work of Bonannus, for instance, the
carvings of Biduinus, and the bas-reliefs at San Cassiano,[60] with the
faint memory of Rome that lingered like a ghost in the minds of men,
that already had risen in the laws and government of the cities, in the
desire of men here in Pisa, for instance, for liberty, and that was soon
to recreate the world. If the Roman law still lived as tradition and
custom in the hearts of men, the statues of the gods were but hiding for
a little time in Latin earth. It was Niccolo Pisano who first brought
them forth.
The pulpit which he made for Pisa--perhaps his earliest work--is in the
form of a hexagon resting upon nine columns; the central pillar is set
on a strange group, a man, a griffin, and animals; three others are
poised on the backs of lions; while three are set on simple pediments on
the ground; and three again support the steps. A "trefoil arch" connects
the six chief pillars, on each of which stands a statue of a Virtue. It
is here that we came for the first time upon a figure not of the
Christian world, for Fortitude is represented as Hercules with a lion's
cub on his shoulder. In the spandrels of the trefoils are the four
Evangelists and six Prophets. Above the Virtues rise pillars clustered
in threes, framing the five bas-reliefs and supporting the parapet of
the pulpit; and it is here, by these the most beautiful and
extraordinary works of that age in Italy, that Niccolo Pisano will be
for ever remembered.
Poor in composition though they be, they are full of marvellous energy,
a Roman dignity and weight. It is antiquity flowering again in a
Christian soil, with a certain new radiance and sweetness about it, a
naivete almost ascetic, that was certainly impossible from any Roman
hand.
On the far side you may see the Birth of Our Lord, where Mary sits in
the midst, enthroned, unmoved, with all the serenity of a goddess, while
in another part the angel brings her the message with the gesture of an
orator. Consider, then, those horses' heads in the Adoration of the
Magi, or the high priest in the Presentation, and then compare them with
the rude work of Bonannus on the south transept door of the Duomo; no
Pisan, certainly no Tuscan, could have carved them thus in high relief
with the very splendour of old Rome in every line. And in the
Crucifixion you see Christ really for the first time as a God reigning
from the cross; while Madonna, fallen at last, is not the weeping Mary
of the Christians, but the mother of the Gracchi who has lost her elder
son. In the Last Judgment it is a splendid God you see among a crowd of
men with heads like the busts in a Roman gallery, with all the aloofness
and dignity of those weary emperors. There is almost nothing here of any
natural life observed for the first time, and but little of the
Christian asceticism so marvellously lovely in the French work of this
age; Niccolo has in some way discovered classic art, and has been
content with that, as the humanists of the Renaissance were to be
content with the discovery of ancient literature later: he has imitated
the statues and the bas-reliefs of the sarcophagi, as they copied
Cicero.
To pass from the Baptistery into the Campo Santo, where among Christian
graves the cypresses are dying in the earth of Calvary, and the urns and
sarcophagi of pagan days hold Christian dust, is perhaps to make easier
the explanation we need of the art of Niccolo. Here, it is said, he
often wandered "among the many spoils of marbles brought by the
armaments of Pisa to this city." Among these ancient sarcophagi there is
one where you may find the Chase of Meleager and the Calydonian boar;
this was placed by the Pisans in the facade of the Duomo opposite S.
Rocco, and was used as a tomb for the Contessa Beatrice, the mother of
the great Contessa Matilda. Was it while wandering here, in looking so
often on that tomb on his way to Mass, that he was moved by its beauty
till his heart remembered its childhood in a whole world of such things?
It must have been so, for here all things meet together and are
reconciled in death.
Out of the dust and heat of the Piazza one comes into a cool cloister
that surrounds a quadrangle open to the sky, in which a cypress still
lives. The sun fills the garden with a golden beauty, in which the
butterflies flit from flower to flower over the dead. I do not know a
place more silent or more beautiful. One lingers in the cool shadow of
the cloisters before many an old marble,--a vase carved with
Bacchanalian women, the head of Achilles, or the bust of Isotta of
Rimini. But it is before the fresco of the Triumph of Death that one
stays longest, trying to understand the dainty treatment of so horrible
a subject. Those fair ladies riding on horseback with so brave a show of
cavaliers, even they too must come at last to be just dust, is it, or
like that swollen body, which seems to taint even the summer sunshine,
lying there by the wayside, and come upon so unexpectedly? What
love-song was that troubadour, fluttering with ribbons, singing to that
little company under the orange-trees, cavaliers and ladies returned
from the chase, or whiling away a summer afternoon playing with their
falcons and their dogs? The servants have spread rich carpets for their
feet, and into the picture trips a singing girl, who has surely called
the very loves from Paradise or from the apple-trees covered with
blossom, where they make their temporary abode. What love song were they
singing, ere the music was frozen on their lips by a falling leaf or
chance flutter of bird life calling them to turn, and lo, Death is here?
It is in such a place as this that any meditation upon death loses both
its sentimental and its ascetic aspect, and becomes wholly aesthetic, so
that it can never be before this fresco that such a contemplation should
be, as it were, "a lifelong following of one's own funeral." And indeed,
it is not any gross fear of death that comes to one at all here in the
mysterious sunshine, but a new delight in life. Those joyful pleasant
paintings of Benozzo Gozzoli, a third-rate master, but one who is always
full of joy and sunshine, with a certain understanding and love, too, of
the hills and the trees, seem to confirm us in our delight at the sun
and the sea wind, here in Italy, in Italy at last. For, indeed, in what
other land than this could a cemetery be so beautiful, and where else in
the world do frescoes like these stain the walls out of doors amid a
litter of antique statues, graves, and flowers over the heroic or holy
dead? Here you may see life at its sanest and most splendid moments. In
the long hot days of the vintage, for instance, when the young men tread
the wine-press, the girls bear the grapes in great baskets, and boy and
girl together pluck the purple fruit. Call it, if you will, the
Drunkenness of Noah, you will forget the subject altogether in your
delight in the sun and the joy of the vintage itself, where the girls
dance among the vines under the burden of the grapes, and the little
children play with the dogs, and the goodman tastes the wine. Or again,
in the fresco of the Tower of Babel: think if you can of all the mere
horror of the confusion, and the terror of death, but in a moment you
will forget it, remembering only that heroic Republic which amid her
enemies built her splendid city, her beautiful Duomo, her Tower like the
horn of an unicorn, and this Campo Santo too, where the hours pass so
softly, and the hottest days are cool and full of delight. The Victory
of Abraham is a battle gay with the banners of Pisa, when the Gonfalons
of Florence lay low in the dust. The Curse of Ham, with its multitude of
children, is just the departure of some prodigal for the Sardinian wars
on a summer evening beyond the city gate. Thus alone in this place of
death Pisa lives, ah! not in the desolate streets of the modern city,
but fading on the walls of her Campo Santo, a ghost among ghosts,
immortalised by an alien hand.
Coming last of all to the greatest wonder of the Piazza, it is really
with surprise you find the Campanile so beautiful, perhaps the most
beautiful tower of Italy. It is like a lily leaning in the wind, it is
like the slanting horn of an unicorn, it is like an ivory Madonna that
the artist has not had the heart to carve since the ivory was so fair.
Begun in 1174, it was designed by Bonannus. He made it all of white
marble, which has faded now to the colour of old ivory. Far away at the
top of the tower live the great bells, and especially La
Pasquareccia,[61] founded in 1262, stamped with a relief of the
Annunciation, for it used to ring the Ave. I think there can be no
reasonable doubt that the lean of the Tower is due to some terrible
accident which befell it after the third gallery had been built, for the
fourth gallery, added in 1204 by Benenabo, begins to rectify the
sinking; the rest, built in 1260, continues to throw the weight from the
lower to the higher side. As we know, the whole Piazza was a marsh, and
just as the foundations of the Tower of S. Niccolo have given a little,
so these sank much earlier, offering an unique opportunity to a
barbarian architect. There is, as has been often very rightly said, no
such thing as a freak in Italian art: its aim was beauty, very simple
and direct; nowhere in all its history will you find a grotesque such as
this. It is strange that a northerner, William of Innspruck, finished
the Tower the fifth storey in 1260; and it may well be that this Teuton
brought to the work something of a natural delight in such a thing as
this, and contrived to finish it, instead of beginning again. It seems
necessary to add that the tower would be more beautiful if it were
perfectly upright.
The Piazza del Duomo is full of interest. Almost opposite the Campanile,
at the corner of the Via S. Maria, is the Casa dei Trovatelli. It was
here, as I suppose,[62] that the Pisans built that hospital and chapel
to S. Giorgio after the great day of Montecatini.[63] Not far away,
behind the Via Torelli in Via Arcevescovado, is the archbishop's palace,
with a fine courtyard. If we follow the Via Torelli a little, we pass,
on the right, the Oratory of S. Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa, where
there is a crucifix by Giunta Pisano which used to hang in the kitchen
of the Convent of S. Anna,[64] not far away, where Emilia Viviani was
"incarcerated," as Shelley says. Close by are the few remains of the
Baths of Hadrian. At the corner we pass into Via S. Anna, and then,
taking the first turning to the left, we come into the great Piazza di
S. Caterina, before the church of that name. Built in the thirteenth
century, it has a fine Pisan facade, but the church is now closed and
the convent has become a boys' school. Passing through the shady Piazza
under the plane-trees, we come into the Via S. Lorenzo, and then,
turning to the right into Vicolo del Ruschi, we come into a Piazza out
of which opens the Piazza di S. Francesco. S. Francesco fell on evil
days, and was altogether desecrated, but is now in the hands of the
Franciscans again. This is well, for the whole church, founded in 1211,
and not the Campanile only, is said to be by Niccolo Pisano.[65] Behind
it, in the old convent, is the Museo.
As you come into this desecrated and ruined cloister littered with
rubbish, among which here and there you may see some quaint or charming
thing, it is difficult to remember S. Francis. Yet, indeed, the place
was founded by two of his followers, the blessed Agnolo and the blessed
Alberto, and still holds in a locked room one of the most extraordinary
of his portraits. In the old Chapter-house are some fragments of the
pulpit from the Duomo by Giovanni Pisano, destroyed in the fire of 1595.
Here we may see very easily the difference between father and son. It is
no longer the influence of the antique that gives life to Italian
sculpture, but certainly French work, something of that passionate
restless energy that, whether we like it or not, puts certain statues at
Chartres, for instance, without shame beside the best Greek work. The
subjects of these panels are the same as those of Niccolo's pulpit in
the Baptistery; one could not wish for a better opportunity of comparing
the work of the two men who stand at the source of the Renaissance.
Passing through the cloister, we enter the convent through a great room
on the first floor, hung with the banners of the Giuoco del Ponte, and
bright with service books. In a little room on the left (Sala I) we come
into the gallery proper. Here, among all sorts of stained parchments, is
the precious remnant of the Cintola del Duomo, that girdle of Maria
Assunta which used to be bound round the Duomo.[66] It took some three
hundred yards of the fabric, crusted with precious stones, painted with
miniatures, sewn with gold and silver, to gird the Duomo. I know not
when first it was made, nor who first conceived the proud thought,[67]
nor what particular victory put it into his heart. Only the tyrant and
thief who stole it I know, Gambacorti, whom Pisa brought back from
exile.
In the chamber next to this are some strangely beautiful crucifixes by
Giunta Pisano, and a little marvellous portrait of S. Francesco on
copper with a bright red book in his hand.
Of the pictures which follow, but two ever made any impression upon me.
One, a Madonna and Child by Gentile da Fabriano, is full of a mysterious
loveliness that did not survive him; the other is an altar-piece from S.
Caterina by Simone Martini of Siena, where a Magdalen holds the delicate
casket of precious ointment, and, as though fainting with the sweetness
of her weeping, leans a little, her sleepy, languorous eyes drooping
under her heavy hair, which a jewelled ribbon hardly holds up. Something
in this "primitive" art has been lost when we come to Angelico, some
almost morbid loveliness that you may find even yet in the air about
Perugia and Siena, in the delicate flowers there, the honeysuckle which
the country people call _le manine della Madonnina_--the little hands of
the Virgin, and even in the people sometimes, in their soft gestures and
dreamy looks. And for these I pass by the pictures by Benozzo Gozzoli,
by Sodoma, and the rest, for they are as nothing.
It is, however, not a work of art at all that is perhaps the most
interesting thing in the Museo; but a model of the _Giuoco del Ponte_,
with certain banners, flags, bucklers, and such, once used by the Pisans
in their national game.[68] This _Giuoco_ was played on the Ponte di
Mezzo, by the people who lived on the north bank of the river and those
on the south, nor were the country folk excluded; and Mr. Heywood tells
us that it was no uncommon sight a quarter of a century ago "to see
hanging above the doorway of a contadino's house the _targone_ [or
shield] with which his sires played at Ponte."[69] The city and
countryside being thus divided into two camps, as it were, each chose an
army, that was divided into six _squadre_ of from thirty to sixty
_soldati_. The _squadre_ of the north were, Santa Maria with a banner of
blue and white; San Michele, whose colours were white and red; the
Calci, white and green and gold; Calcesana, yellow and black; the
Mattaccini, white, blue, and peach-blossom; the Satiri, red and black.
The southern _squadre_ were called S. Antonio, whose banner was of
flame colour, on which was a pig; S. Martino, with a banner of white,
black, and red; San Marco, with a banner of white and yellow with a
winged lion, and under its feet was the gospel, on which was written
_Pax tibi Marce_; the Leoni, with a banner of black and white; the
Dragoni, with a banner of green and white; the Delfini, with a banner of
blue and yellow. All these banners were of silk, and very large.[70]
Originally the game was played on St. Anthony's day, the 17th of
January; later, this first game came to be a sort of trial match, in
which the players were chosen for the _Battaglia generale_, which took
place on some later date agreed upon by both parties. Thus, I suppose,
if any noble visited Pisa, the _Battaglia generale_ would be fought in
his honour.
The challenge of the side defeated at the last contest having been
received, a council of war was held in both camps, and permission being
given by the authorities, on that evening, the city was illuminated. The
great procession (the _squadre_ in each camp, in the order in which I
have named them) took place on the day of battle, each army keeping to
its own side of Arno. Then the Piazza del Ponte for the northern army,
the Piazza de' Bianchi for the southern, were enclosed with palisades to
form the camps, and the battle began.
In order to save the _soldato_ from hurt, his head was covered with a
_falzata_ of cotton, and guarded by an iron casque with a barred
vizor.[71] The body was also swathed in cotton or a doublet of leather,
over which iron armour was worn. The arms, too, were covered with
quilted leather and the hands in gauntlets, and the legs were protected
with gaiters, while round the neck a quilted collar was tied to save the
collar bone. The only weapon allowed was the _targone_, a shield of wood
curved at the top, and almost but not quite pointed at the foot. At the
back of this were two handles, which were gripped by both hands, and
the blow delivered with the smaller end of the shield. When the press of
the fight was not very great, no doubt this shield was used as a club.
These _targoni_ were decorated with mottoes or a device, as we may see
from these now in the Museo; they were evidently even heirlooms in the
family which had the honour to see one of its members chosen for the
_Battaglia_.
Four _comandanti_ or captains on each side entered the battle itself.
Two of these on each side stood on the parapet of the bridge directing
their men. The two northerners wore a scarlet uniform with white
facings, the two southerners a green uniform with white facings. Two
other _comandanti_ in each army stood on the ground. The two first were
unarmed, and were not allowed to interfere with the fight, but the two
on the ground, who were allowed two adjutants, could scarcely have been
prevented from giving or receiving blows.
Before the fight began, the banner of Pisa, a silver cross on a red
ground, floated from a staff in the middle of the bridge. This was
lowered across the bridge to divide the two armies; and at the close of
the fight it was so lowered again, and, according as either side was in
the enemy's territory, so the victory went.
When the battle was over, the victorious side made procession through
the city. If the north had won, all Pisa north of Arno was alight with
bonfires, the houses were decorated, everyone was in the streets; while
south of Arno the city was in darkness, the people in their houses, not
a dog lurked without. Then followed, after a few days, the great trionfo
of the victors.
"The procession was headed," says Mr. Heywood, "by two trumpeters on
horseback, followed by a band of horsemen clad in military costumes, and
by war-cars full of arms and banners of the vanquished. Thereafter came
certain soldiers on foot with their hands bound, to represent prisoners
taken in the battle; then more trumpeters and drummers; and then the
triumphal chariot, drawn by four or six horses richly draped and adorned
with emblems and mottoes. It was accompanied and escorted by knights
and gentlemen on horseback. The noble ladies of the city followed in
their carriages, and behind them thronged an infinite people (_infinito
popolo_) scattering broadcast various poetical compositions, and singing
with sweet melodies in the previously appointed places, the glories of
the victory won, making procession through the city until night." After
dark, bonfires were lighted. On high above the triumphal car was set
some allegorical figure, such as Valour, Victory, or Fame.[72]
The last _Giuoco del Ponte_ was fought in 1807. "Certain pastimes," says
Signor Tribolati, "are intimately connected with certain institutions
and beliefs; and when the latter cease to exist, the former also perish
with them. The _Giuoco del Ponte_ was a relic of popular chivalry, one
of the innumerable knightly games which adorned the simple, artistic,
warlike life of the hundred Republics of Italy.... What have we to do
with the arms and banners of the tourneys? At most we may rub the
cobwebs away and shake off the dust and lay them aside in a museum."[73]
To come out of the Museo, that graveyard of dead beauty, of forgotten
enthusiasms, into the quiet, deserted Piazza di S. Francesco, where the
summer sleeps ever in the sun and no footstep save a foreigner's ever
seems to pass, is to fall from one dream into another, not less
mysterious and full of beauty. How quiet now is this old city that once
rang with the shouts of the victors home from some sea fight, or
returned from the Giuoco. Only, as you pass along Via S. Francesco and
turn into Piazza di S. Paolo, the children gather about you, reminding
you that in Italy even the oldest places--S. Paolo al Orto, for
instance, with its beautiful old tower that is now a dwelling--are put
to some use, and are really living still like the gods who have taken
service with us, perhaps in irony, to console themselves for our
treachery in watching our sadness without them.
It is certainly with some such thought as this in his heart the
unforgetful traveller will enter S. Pierino, not far from S. Paolo al
Orto, at the corner of Via Cavour and Via delle belle Torri. Coming into
this old church suddenly out of the sunshine, how dark a place it seems,
full of a mysterious melancholy too, a sort of remembrance of change and
death, as though some treachery asleep in our hearts had awakened on the
threshold and accused us. The crypt has long been used as a charnel
house, the guide-book tells you, but maybe it is not any memory of the
unremembered and countless dead that has stirred in your heart, but some
stranger impulse urging you to a dislike of the darkness, that dim
mysterious light that is part of the north and has nothing to do with
Italy. How full of twilight it is, yet once in this place a temple to
Apollo stood, full of the sun, almost within sound of the sea, when, we
know not how,[74] the Pisans received news of Jesus Christ, and,
forgetting Apollo, gave his temple to St. Peter. Then in 1072 they
pulled down that old "house of idols,"[75] and built this church,
calling it S. Pietro in Vincoli, perhaps because of the presence of the
old gods, perhaps because it was so dark--who knows; and on the 30th of
August 1119, Archbishop Pietro, he who brought the cross of silver from
Rome and put in it the banner of the city and led Pisa to victory in
Majorca, solemnly consecrated it.
I was thinking somewhat in this fashion, resting on a bench in that cool
twilight place, where the sounds of life come from very far off, when
out of the darkness an old man crept toward me; he seemed as old as the
church itself. "The Signore would see the church," he asked; "who can
the Signore wish for better than myself?--it is my own church, I am its
guardian." Truly he was very old: if he were Apollo, long and evil had
been his days; if he were St. Peter, indeed he was very like.
It was a long story of buried treasure, buried or lost I know not which,
that he tried to tell me, while he pointed to the beautiful pavement, or
caressed the old fading pillars, leading me up the broken steps into the
greater darkness of the nave, where he showed me one of the most ancient
pictures in Pisa, a great, mournful, and grievous crucifix, a colossal
Christ, His feet nailed separately to the cross, His body tortured and
emaciated, a hideous mask of death;--here in the temple of Apollo. "It
is here," said he, smiling, "that Paganism and Christianity were
married; and in the temple lie the dead, and in the church the living
pray, as you see, Signore, beside these old pillars that were not built
for any Christian house. Such is the splendour and antiquity of our
city. For, as you know, doubtless, the Duomo itself is built on the
foundations of Nero's Palace,[76] S. Andrea (not far away) was once a
temple of Venus, in S. Niccola we besought Ceres, and in S. Michele
called on Mars; such, Signore, is the splendour and glory of our
city...."
Evening had come when I found myself again on the Lung' Arno, in a world
neither Pagan nor Christian, in which I am a stranger.
* * * * *
Leaving behind you Ponte di Mezzo and the Lung' Arno, _quasi a modo d'un
archo di balestro_,[77] you come into the Borgo, under the low arches of
the old houses that make a covered way. This is perhaps the oldest part
of Pisa. Almost at once on your right you pass S. Michele in Borgo,
built probably just before his death by Fra Guglielmo, that disciple of
Niccolo Pisano. Fra Guglielmo died in the convent of S. Caterina, for he
had been fifty-seven years in the Dominican Order. Tronci tells us
that, being one day in Bologna, where he had gone with Niccolo his
master to make a tomb for S. Domenico, when the old tomb was opened he
secretly took a bone and hid it, and without saying anything presently
set out for Pisa. Arrived there, he placed the relic under the table of
the altar of S. Maria Maddalena, and was seen often by the brethren
praying there,--they knew not why. But at his death he revealed his
pious theft, and showed the bone in its place, and it was guarded and
shown to the people.
But S. Michele in Borgo is older than Fra Guglielmo, who died about the
year 1313. Certainly the crypt is ancient as are the pillars. A certain
_Buono_ is said to have built a church here in 990; but little, however,
now remaining can be of that date, the church as a whole being of about
1312, and, as I have said, probably the last work of Fra Guglielmo.
Passing up the Borgo, here and there we may see signs of ancient Pisa in
the sunken pillars, for instance, before a house in a street on the
left, Via del Monte, following which we come into the most beautiful
Piazza in Pisa, perhaps in Italy, Piazza dei Cavalieri, once the Piazza
dei Anziani.
On the right is the Church of the Knights of St. Stephen, Santo Stefano
dei Cavalieri; next to it is the beautiful palace of the Anziani, later
the Palazzo Conventuale dei Cavalieri, rebuilt by Vasari. Almost
opposite this is a palace under which the road passes, built to the
shape of the Piazza; it marks the spot where the Tower of Hunger once
stood, where the eagles of the Republic were housed, and where Conte
Ugolino della Gherardesca with his sons and nephews was starved to death
by Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini. Opposite to this is the marble
Palazzo del Consiglio, also belonging to the Order of St. Stephen.
The Knights of St. Stephen, to whom, indeed, the whole Piazza seems to
be devoted, were a religious and military Order founded by Cosimo I,
Grand Duke of Tuscany, who sits on horseback in front of the beautiful
steps of the _Conventuale_. The object of the Order was to harry the
Moorish pirates of the Mediterranean, to redeem their captives, and to
convert these Moors to Christianity; nor were they wanting in war, for
they fought at Lepanto. Cosimo placed the Order under the protection of
St. Stephen, because he had gained his greatest victory on that saint's
day. The Knights seem to have been of two kinds: the religious, who took
three major vows and lived in the Conventuale under the rule of St.
Benedict, and served the Church of S. Stefano; and the military, who
might not only hold property but marry. Their cross is very like the
cross of Pisa, but red, while that is white.
In S. Stefano there is little to see, a few old banners, a series of bad
frescoes, and a bust of S. Lussorius by Donatello, perhaps,--at least,
that sculptor was working for eighteen months in the city. Before the
sixteenth century this Piazza must have been very different from what it
is to-day. Where S. Stefano stands now S. Sebastiano stood, that church
where the Anziani met so often to decide peace or war.[78] Close by was
the palace of the Podesta, while beyond the Palazzo Anziani rose the
Torre delle Sette Vie, Torre Gualandi, Torre della Fame, for it bore all
three names; only, the last came to it after the hideous crime of
Ruggiero. If we cross the Piazza opposite the Palazzo Conventuale, and
pass into Via S. Sisto, we come to the church of that saint, where also
the Grand Council used to meet. It was founded to commemorate the great
victories that came to Pisa on that day. Those antique columns are the
spoil of war, as Tronci tells us.[79] Returning to the Piazza, and
leaving it by Via S. Frediano, we soon come to the church of that saint,
with its lovely and spacious nave and antique columns. A little farther
on is the University, La Sapienza, founded by Conte Fazio della
Gherardesca in 1338. In that year Conte Fazio enlarged the Piazza degli
Anziani, so that _la nobilita_ should be able to walk there more
readily; and to render the city more honourable, with the consent of the
_Anziani_ and all the Senate, he founded a university, to lead the
greatest doctors to lecture there; and to establish the Theatre of the
Schools he sent ambassadors in the name of the Republic to Pope Benedict
for his authorisation. Needless to say, this was given and in 1340 we
find Messer Bartolo da Sassoferrato and Messer Guido da Prato, Doctor of
Physics, lecturing on "Chirugia."[80] In 1589, Galileo was Professor of
Mathematics here. The present building dates from 1493. Close by,
between the University and the Lung' Arno, are the remains of an old
gate of the city, Porta Aurea, and some remnants of towers.
Crossing Arno by Ponte Solferino, and turning along the Lung' Arno
Gambacorti to the left, we come suddenly upon a great Piazza in which an
old and splendid church is hidden away. And just as the Duomo, the great
church of the northern part of the city, is set just within the walls
far away from the Borgo, so here, in the southern part of Pisa, S. Paolo
a Ripa d'Arno is abandoned by the riverside on the verge of the country,
for the fields are at its threshold. And indeed, this desolate church is
really older than the Duomo, for, as some say, it served as the Great
Church of Pisa while the Cathedral was building. Founded, as the Pisans
assert, by Charlemagne in 805, it was rather the model of the Duomo, if
this be true, than, as is generally supposed, a copy of it. Bare for the
most part and empty, its original beauty and simplicity still remain to
it; nor should any who find it omit to pass into the priest's house, to
see the old Baptistery now in the hands of Benedictine nuns.
On our way back to Pisa by the Lung' Arno Gambacorti, we may look always
with new joy at the Torre Guelfa, almost all that is left of the great
arsenal built in 1200. And then you will not pass without entering, it
may be, S. Maria della Spina, where of old the huntsmen used to hear
Mass at dawn before going about their occasions.
And many another church in Pisa is devout and beautiful. S. Sepolcro,
which Diotisalvi made, he who built the Baptistery, a church of the
Knights Templars below the level of the way; S. Martino too, both in
Chinseca, that part of the city named after her who gave the alarm
nearly a thousand years ago when the Saracen sails hove in sight.--Ah,
do not be in a hurry to leave Pisa for any other city. Let us think of
old things for a little, and be quiet. It may be we shall never see that
line of hills again--Monti Pisani; it were better to look at them a
little carefully. A little while before to-day the most precious of our
dreams was not so lovely as that spur of the Apennines.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Muratori, _Annali ad ann._: He quotes from _Annali Pisani_ (see
tom. vi., Rer. Ital. Scrip): "Fecerunt bellum Pisani cum Lucensibus in
Aqua longa, et vicerunt illos." See Arch. St. It. VI. ii. p. 4. Cron.
Pis. ad annum.
[18] Muratori, _Annali ad ann. 1050_: "et Pisa fuit firmata de tota
Sardinia a Romana sede."--_Ann. Pis._, R.I.S., tom. vi.
[19] Tronci, _Annali Pisani_, Livorno, 1682, p. 21.
[20] Ibid. p. 22.
[21] Muratori (_Annali ad ann._) says Pope Alexander visited in this
year S. Martino the Duomo of Lucca. Ad ann. 1118 he suggests 1092 for
the foundation of the Duomo of Pisa.
[22] Thus Tronci; but Volpe, _Studi sulle Istituzioni Comunali a Pisa_,
p. 6, tells us that these quarters did not exist till much later,--till
after 1164, when the system of division by _porte e base_ was abandoned
for division by _quartieri_. Tronci, later, says that the city was
unwalled (p. 38). But even in the eleventh century Pisa was a walled
city; the first walls included only the Quartiere di Mezzo; and in those
days the city proper, the walled part, was called "Populus Pisanus,"
while the suburbs were called Cinthicanus, Foriportensis, and de Burgis.
Cf. _Arch. St. It._ iii. vol. VIII. p. 5. Muratori, _Dissertazioni_, 30,
"De Mercat." says that in the tenth century a part of the city was
called Kinzic; cf. Fanucci, _St. dei Tre celebri Popoli Maritt._ I. 96.
Kinzic is Arabic, and means _magazzinaggi_.
[23] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 38.
[24] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 60.
[25] It was from Amalfi that they brought home the Pandects.
[26] The first Podesta of the city was Conte Tedicis della Gherardesca.
[27] Pisa was perhaps influenced, too, in her choice of the Ghibelline
side by the interference of the Papacy against her in Corsica. While, if
Pisa was Ghibelline, Lucca, of course, was Guelph.
[28] Cf. G. Villani, _op. cit._ lib. vii. cap. ii., "La cagione perche
si comincio la guerra da' Fiorentini a' Pisani," and Villari, _History
of Florence_ (Eng. ed. 1902), p. 176.
[29] This seems to give the lie to the accusation of treachery, which
said that he gave the signal for flight at Meloria; but in fact it does
not, for Pisa elected Ugolino for reasons, in the hope of conciliating
Florence; cf. Villari, _op. cit._ p. 284.
[30] He knew them to be Ghibellines.
[31] It was also called _la muda_. It seems hardly necessary to refer
the reader to Dante, _Inferno_, xxxiii. 1-90. This tower (now to be
called the Tower of Hunger) was the mew of the eagles. For even as the
Romans kept wolves on the Capitol, so the Pisans kept eagles, the
Florentines lions, the Sienese a wolf. See Villani, bk. vii. 128.
Heywood, _Palio and Ponte_, p. 13, note 2.
[32] Florence here means the League, to wit, Prato, Pistoja, Siena even,
and all the allies, including the Guelphs of Romagna, who were fighting
Arezzo under Archb. Uberti, and Pisa under Archb. Ruggieri.
[33] Yet in 1290 Genoa seized Porto Pisano: "Furono allora disfatte le
torri ... il fanale e tutte."
[34] Tronci, _op. cit._ 269-271. For the _Palio_,--the name of the race
and the prize of victory, a piece of silk not too much unlike the
banners given at a modern battle of Flowers,--see Heywood, _Palio and
Ponte_, 1904, p. 12.
[35] The girdle was made of silver and jewels and silk to represent the
girdle of the B.V.M. It encircled the Duomo--a most splendid and unique
thing, only possible, I think, in Pisa. No parsimonious Florentine could
have imagined it.
[36] Now in the Museo, room 1. See page 119.
[37] Tronci, _op. cit._ 366.
[38] See Tronci, _op. cit._ 304.
[39] They imprisoned him in Lucca.
[40] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 404.
[41] Cronaca Sanese in _Muratori_, xv. 177.
[42] Heywood, _Palio and Ponte_, p. 22.
[43] Tronci, _op. cit._ 412.
[44] A pleasing story of how these citizens found Agnello's house in
darkness and all sleeping within, of his awakened maid-servant and
frightened wife, is told in Marangoni, _Cron. di Pisa_. See _Sismondi_,
ed. Boulting (1906), p. 401.
[45] _See_ Sismondi, _op. cit._ p. 403.
[46] Cf. Sismondi, _op. cit._ p. 557.
[47] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 18.
[48] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 453.
[49] The print is dated 1634.
[50] For all things concerning this game and the Palio, see Heywood,
_Palio and Ponte_.
[51] Villani, _op. cit._ Bk. iv. 2. The Badia, like that of Firenze,
seems rather to have been founded by Ugo's mother, Countess Willa.
[52] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 9.
[53] It may be as well to explain here that the Pisan Calendar differed
not only from our own but from that of other cities of Tuscany. The
Pisans reckoned from the Incarnation. The year began, therefore, on 25th
March: so did the Florentine and the Sienese year, but they reckoned
from a year after the Incarnation. The Aretines, Pistoiese, and
Cortonese followed the Pisans.
[54] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 21.
[55] 104 yards long by 35-1/2 yards wide.
[56] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _History of Painting in Italy_, new
edition, 1903, vol. i. pp. 185, 186.
[57] There is a miracle picture, S. Maria sotto gli Orcagni in the
Duomo. Mr. Carmichael, in his book, _In Tuscany_, gives a full account
of this picture. See also my _Italy and the Italians_, pp. 117-120.
[58] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _op. cit._ vol. i. p. 103.
[59] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _op. cit._ vol. i. p. 109.
[60] See below, p. 134.
[61] See _On the Old Road through France to Florence_ (Murray, 1904), in
which Mr. Carmichael wrote the Italian part. He has much pleasant
information about the bells of Pisa, p. 223.
[62] Was it here, or in the Ospedale dei Trovatelli close to S. Michele
in Borgo? cf. Tronci, p. 179.
[63] See p. 95.
[64] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _op. cit_, vol. i. p. 146, note.
[65] See _Pisa_. da I.B. Supino, 1905, p. 43.
[66] See p. 91.
[67] Mr. Carmichael (_On the Old Road through France to Florence_, p.
224) says it must have been worth L30,000 of our money.
[68] Let me refer the reader again to Mr. William Heywood's exhaustive
work on Italian mediaeval games, _Palio and Ponte_, Methuen, 1904.
[69] See also F. Tribolati, _Il Gioco del Ponte_, Firenze, 1877, p. 5.
[70] Many of these banners are hung in the great Salone--the first room
you enter on the first floor of the Museo.
[71] All the coverings and armour are illustrated in the _Oplomachia
Pisana_ of Camillo Borghi. (Lucca, 1713.)
[72] There is a rich literature of poems and _Relazioni_, etc., on the
_Gioco del Ponte_.
[73] F. Tribolati, _Il Gioco del Ponte_, Firenze, 1877. See also
Heywood, _op. cit._ p. 136.
[74] Yet it is said that St. Peter himself came to Pisa from Antioch,
and founded the Church of S. Pietro in Grado, and consecrated Pierino
first bishop of Pisa; cf. Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 3.
[75] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 23.
[76] He said palace, and palace it may be, for the baths are a quarter
of a mile away.
[77] So a nineteenth-century writer calls it. Leopardi, too, cannot find
words enough to express its beauty: "Questo Lung' Arno e uno spetaccolo
cosi bello cosi ampio cosi magnifico," etc.
[78] It was in S. Sebastiano that Ruggiero condemned Count Ugolino and
his sons.
[79] Tronci, _op. cit._ p. 30.
[80] Tronci, op. cit. p. 343.
VII. LIVORNO[81]
It was only after many days spent in the Pineta, those pinewoods that go
down to the sea at Gombo, where the silent, deserted shore, strewn with
sea-shells and whispering with grass, stretches far away to the Carrara
hills, that very early one morning I set out for Livorno, that port
which has taken the place of the old Porto Pisano,[82] so famous through
the world of old. Leaving Pisa by the Porta a Mare, I soon came to S.
Pietro a Grado, a lonely church among the marshes, that once, as I
suppose, stood on the seashore. It was here St. Peter, swept out of his
course by a storm on his way from Antioch, came ashore before setting
out again for Naples, entering Italy first, then, on the shores of
Etruria. So the tale goes; but the present church seems to be a building
of the twelfth century. Its simple beauty, which the seawind and the sun
have kissed for seven hundred years, seems to give character to the
whole plain, so ample and green, beyond the wont of Italy; but, indeed,
here we are on the threshold of the Maremma, that beautiful, wild,
deserted country that man has not yet reclaimed from Death, where the
summer is still and treacherous in its loveliness, where in winter for a
little while the herdsmen come down with their cattle from the
Garfagnana, and the hills musical with love songs. On the threshold of
that treacherous summer, as it were, this lonely church stands on guard.
Within, she is beautiful, in the old manner, splendid with antique
pillars caught about now with iron; but it is perhaps the frescoes, that
have faded on the walls till they are scarcely more than the shadows of
a thousand forgotten sunsets, that you will care for most. They are the
work of Giunta Pisano, or if, indeed, they are not his they are of his
school,--a school already decadent, splendid with the beauty that has
looked on death and can never be quite sane again. No one, I think, can
ever deny the beauty of Giunta's work; it is full of a strange subtilty
that is ready to deny life over and over again. He is concerned not with
life, but chiefly with religion, and with certain bitter yet altogether
lovely colours which evoke for him, and for us too, if we will lend
ourselves to their influence, all the misery and pessimism of the end of
the Middle Age, its restlessness and ennui, that find consolation only
in the memory of the grotesque frailty of the body which one day Jesus
will raise up. All the anarchy and discontent of our own time seems to
me to be expressed in such work as this, in which ugliness, as we might
say, has as much right as beauty. It is, I think, the mistake of much
popular criticism in our time to assert that these "primitive" painters
were beginners, and could not achieve what they wished. They were not
beginners, rather they were the most subtle artists of a convention--and
all art is a convention--that was about to die. If one can see their
work aright, it is beautiful; but it has lost touch with life, or is a
mere satirical comment upon it, that Giotto, with his simplicity, his
eager delight in natural things and in man, will supersede and banish.
In him, Europe seems to shake off the art and fatality of the East,
under whose shadow Christianity had grown up, to be altogether
transformed and humanised by Rome, when she at the head really of
humanism and art should once more give to the world the thoughts and
life of another people full of joy and temperance--things so hard for
the Christian to understand. And it is really with such a painter as
Giunta Pisano that Christian art pure and simple comes to end. Some
divinity altogether different has touched those who came after: Giotto,
who is enamoured of life which the Christian must deny; Angelico, whose
world is full of a music that is about to become pagan; Botticelli, who
has mingled the tears of Mary with the salt of the sea, and has seen a
new star in heaven, and proclaimed the birth not of the Nazarene, but
the Cyprian.
But it is not such thoughts as these you will find in Livorno, one of
the busiest towns in Italy, full of modern business life; material in
the manner of the Latin people that by reason of some inherent purity of
heart never becomes sordid in our fashion.
"There is absolutely nothing to see in Leghorn," says Mr. Hare. Well,
but that depends on what you seek, does it not? If you would see a
Tuscan city that is absolutely free from the tourist, I think you must
go to Livorno. It is true, works of art are not many there; but the
statue of Grand Duke Ferdinand, with four Moors in bronze chained to his
feet, a work of Piero Jacopo Tacca, made in 1617-1625, is something;
though I confess those chained robbers at the feet of a petty tyrant who
was as great a robber, he and his forebears, as any among them, are in
this age of sentimental liberalism, from which who can escape, a little
disconcerting. Ferdinand has his best monument in the city itself, which
he founded to take the place of Porto Pisano, that in the course of
centuries had silted up. In order to populate the new port, he
proclaimed there a religious liberty he denied to his Duchy at large.
His policy was splendidly successful. Every sort of outcast made Livorno
his home--especially the Jews, for whom Ferdinando had a great respect;
but there were there Greeks also, and _nuovi christiani_, Moors
converted to Christianity. These last, I think, indeed, must have been
worth seeing; for no doubt Ferdinand's politic grant of religious
liberty did not include Moors who had not been "converted to
Christianity."
But the great days of Livorno are over; though who may say if a new
prosperity does not await her in the near future, she is so busy a
place. Livorno la cara, they call her, and no doubt of old she endeared
herself to her outcasts. To-day, however, it is to the Italian summer
visitor that she is dear. There he comes for sea-bathing, and it is
difficult to imagine a more delightful seaside. For you may live on the
hills and yet have the sea. Beyond Livorno rises the first high ground
of the Maremma, Montenero, holy long ago with its marvellous picture of
the Madonna, which, as I know, still works wonders. Here Byron lived,
and not far away Shelley wrote the principal part of _The Cenci_.
Passing out by tramway by the Porta Maremmana, you come to Byron's
villa, almost at the foot of the hills, on a sloping ground on your
right. Entering by the great iron gates of what looks like a neglected
park, you climb by a stony road up to the great villa itself, among the
broken statues and the stone pines, where is one of the most beautiful
views of the Pisan country and seashore, with the islands of Gorgona,
Capraja, Elba, and Corsica in the distance. Villa Dupoy, as it was
called in Byron's day, is now in the summer months used as a girls'
school: and, indeed, it would be easy to house a regiment in its vast
rooms, where here and there a seventeenth century fresco is still
gorgeous on the walls, and the mirrors are dim with age. From here the
walk up to Our Lady of Montenero is delightful; and once there, on the
hills above the church, the rolling downs towards Maremma lie before you
without a single habitation, almost without a road, a country of heath
and fierce rock, desolate and silent, splendid with the wind and the
sun.
The Church of Madonna lies just under the crest of the hill, and is even
to-day a place of many pilgrimages: for the whole place is strewn and
hung with thank-offerings, silver hearts, shoes, crutches, and I know
not what else, among the pathetic pictures of her kindly works. The
picture itself, loaded now with jewellery, is apparently a work of the
thirteenth century; but it is said to have been miraculously brought
hither from Negroponte. It was found at Ardenza close by, by a shepherd,
who carried it to Montenero, where, as I suppose, he lived; but just
before he won the top of the hill it grew so heavy he had to set it
down. So the peasants built a shrine for it; and the affair getting
known, the Church inquired into it, with the result that certainly by
the fifteenth century the shrine was in charge of a Religious Order;
to-day the monks of the Vallombrosan Benedictines serve the church.
One returns always, I think, with regret from Montenero to Livorno; yet,
after all, not with more sadness than that which always accompanies us
in returning from the country to any city, howsoever fair and lovely.
God made the country; man made the town; and though in Italy both God
and man have laboured with joy and done better here than anywhere else
in the world, who would not leave the loveliest picture to look once
more on the sky, or neglect the sweetest music if he might always hear
the sea, or give up praising a statue, if he might always look on his
beloved? So it is in Italy, where all the cities are fair; flowers they
are among the flowers; yet any Tuscan rose is fairer far than ever Pisa
was, and the lilies of Madonna in the gardens of Settignano are more
lovely than the City of Flowers: come, then, let us leave the city for
the wayside, for the sun and the dust and the hills, the flowers beside
the river, the villages among the flowers. For if you love Italy you
will follow the road.
FOOTNOTES:
[81] Livorno, in the barbarian dialect of the Genovesi, Ligorno; and
hence our word Leghorn. It is excusable that we should have taken St.
George from Genoa, but not that we should have stolen her dialect also.
[82] Perhaps, but Bocca d'Arno, that delicious place, is far and far
to-day from Livorno.
VIII. TO SAN MINIATO AL TEDESCO
The road from Pisa to Florence, out of the Porta Fiorentina, to-day the
greatest gate of the city, passes at first across the Pisan plain,
beside Arno though not following it in its wayward and winding course,
to Cascina at the foot of those hills behind which Lucca is hidden away:
Monti Pisani
"Perche i Pisani veder Lucca non ponno."
And unlike the way through the Pineta to the sea, the road, so often
trodden by the victorious armies of Florence, is desolate and sombre,
while beside the way to-day a disused tramway leads to Calci in the
hills. On either side of this road, so deep in dust, are meadows lined
with bulrushes, while there lies a village, here a lonely church. It is
indeed a rather sombre world of half-reclaimed marshland that Pisa thus
broods over, in which the only landmarks are the far-away hills, the
smoke of a village not so far away, or the tower of a church rising
among these fields so strangely green. For Pisa herself is soon lost in
the vagueness of a world thus delicately touched by sun and cloud, and
seemingly so full of ruinous or deserted things like the beautiful great
Church of Settimo, whose tower you may see far away in the golden summer
weather standing quite alone in a curve of the river; so that you leave
the highway and following a little by-road come upon Pieve di S.
Cassiano, a basilica in the ancient Pisan manner set among the trees in
a shady place, and over the three doors of the facade you find the
beautiful work of Biduino da Pisa, as it is said, sculptures in relief
of the resurrection of Lazarus, the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, a
fight of dragons, and certain subjects from the Bestiaries.
Another lonely church, set, not at the end of a byway by the river, but
on the highroad itself, greets you as you enter Cascina. It is the
Chiesa della Madonna dell' Acqua, rebuilt in the eighteenth century. In
this wide plain there are many churches, some of them of a great
antiquity, as S. Jacopo at Zambra and S. Lorenzo alle Corti, and in the
hills you may find a place so wonderful as the Certosa di Calci, a
monastery founded in 1366, but altered and spoiled in the seventeenth
century, and the marvellous Church of S. Giovanni there. Cascina itself
is as it were the image of this wide flat country between the hills and
the Maremma, where the sun has so much influence and the shadows of the
clouds drift over the fields all day long, and the mist shrouds the
evening in blue and silver. Desolate and sober enough on a day of rain,
when the sun shines this gaunt outpost of Pisa, for it is little more,
is as gay as a flower by the wayside. The road runs through it, giving
it its one long and almost straight street, while behind the poor houses
that have so little to boast of, lies a beautiful old Piazza, with a
great palace seemingly deserted on one side and an old tower and a
church with a beautiful facade on another. Always a prize of the enemy,
Cascina in the Pisan wars fell to Lucca, to the Guelph League, and to
Florence. Its old walls, battered long ago, still remain to it, so that
from afar, from the Pisan hills, for instance, it looks more picturesque
than in fact it proves to be.
The high road, Via Pisana, as it is still called, though, indeed, it was
more often the way of the Florentines, sometimes almost deserted,
sometimes noisy with peasants returning from market, finds the river
again at Cascina only to lose it, however, till after a walk of some
five miles you come to Pontedera, a wild and miserable place, full of
poor and rebellious people, who eye you with suspicion and a sort of
envy. Yet in spite of the proclamation of their wretchedness, I think of
them now in London, as fortunate. At least upon them the sun will
surely shine in the morning, the unsullied infinite night will fall;
while for us there is no sun, and in the night the many are too unhappy
to remember even that. There in Pontedera they preach their socialism,
and none is too miserable to listen; these poor folk have been told they
are unhappy, and, indeed, Pontedera is not beautiful. Yet on a market
day you may see the whole place transformed. It has an aspect of joy
that lights up the dreary street. All day on Friday you may watch them
at their little stalls, which litter Via Pisana and make it impassable.
You might think you were at a fair, but that a fair in England, at any
rate, is not so gay. All along the highway that runs through the town in
front of the shops and the inn you see the stalls of the crockery
merchants, of the dealers in lace and stuffs, of those who sell macaroni
and pasti, and of those who sell mighty umbrellas. And it is then, I
think, that Pontedera is at her best; life which ever contrives in Italy
to keep something of a gay sanity, disposing for that day at least of
the surliness of this people, who are very poor, and far from any great
city.
As for me, I left Pontedera with all speed, being intent on Vico Pisano,
a fortress built by Filippo Brunellesco for the Republic of Florence,
after the fall of the old Pisan Rocca of Verruca, on the hill-top.
There, too, if we may believe Villani,[83] the Marchese Ugo founded a
monastery. To-day on Monte della Verruca there is nothing remaining of
the Rocca, and the monastery is a heap of stones; but in Vico Pisano the
fortifications and towers of Brunellesco still stand, battered though
they be,--gaunt and bitter towers, their battlements broken, the walls
that the engines of old time have battered, hung now with ivy, over
which, all silver in the wind, the ancient olive leans.
Here, where the creeping ivy has hidden the old wounds, and the
oleanders speak of the living, and the lilies remind us of the dead, let
us, too, make peace in our hearts and suffer no more bitterness for the
fallen, nor think hardly of the victor. Florence, too, in her turn
suffered slavery and oblivion; and from the same cause as her own
victims, because she would not be at peace. If Pisa fell, it was just
and right; for that she was Ghibelline, and would not make one with her
sisters. For this Siena was lopped like a lily on her hills, and Lucca
pruned like her own olive trees, and Pistoia gathered in the plain. This
Florence stood for the Guelph cause and for the future, yet she too in
her turn failed in love, and great though she was, she too was not great
enough. One of her sons, seeing her power, dreamed of the unity of
Italy, and for this cause followed Cesare Borgia; but she could not
compass it, and so fell at last as Pisa fell, as Siena fell, as all must
fall who will not be at one. How beautiful these old towers of Vico
Pisano look now among the flowers, yet once they were cruel enough: men
defended them and thought nothing of their beauty, and time has spoiled
them of defence and left only their beauty to be remembered. For the
ancients of Pisa have met for the last time; the signory of Florence
plots no more; no more will any Emperor with the pride of a barbarian,
the mien of a beggar or a thief, cross the Alps, or such an one as
Hawkwood was sell his prowess for a bag of silver; and if the ships of
war shall ever put out from Genoa, they will be the ships of Italy. For
she who slept so long has awakened at last, and around her as she stands
on the Capitol, there cluster full of the ancient Latin beauty that can
never die, the beautiful cities of the sea, the plain, and the mountain,
who have lost life for her sake, to find it in her.
It is a long road of some fifteen miles from Pontedera to S. Miniato al
Tedesco: a hot road not without beauty passing through Rotta, own sister
to Pontedera, through Castel del Bosco, only a dusty village now, for
the castello is gone which guarded the confines of the Republic of Pisa,
divided from the Republic of Florence by the Chiecinella, a torrent bed
almost without water in the summer heat, while not far away on the
southern hills Montopoli thrusts its tower into the sky, keeping yet its
ancient Rocca, once in the power of the Bishops of Lucca, but later in
the hands of Florence, an answer, as it were, to Castel del Bosco of
Pisa in the land where both Pisa and Florence were on guard. There is
but little to see at Montopoli, just two old churches and a picture by
Cigoli; indeed the place looks its best from afar; and then, since the
day is hot, you may spend a pleasanter hour in S. Romano in the old
Franciscan church there, which is worth a visit in spite of its modern
decorations, and is full of coolness and quiet. It was afternoon when I
left S. Romano and caught sight of Castelfranco far away to the north,
and presently crossed Evola at Pontevola, and already sunset when I saw
the beautiful cypresses of Villa Sonnino and the tower of S. Miniato
came in sight. Slowly in front of me as I left Pinocchio a great ox
wagon toiled up the hill winding at last under a splendid Piazza fronted
with flowers; and it was with surprise and joy that, just as the angelus
rang from the Duomo, I came into a beautiful city that, like some
forgotten citadel of the Middle Age, lay on the hills curved like the
letter S, smiling in the silence while the sun set to the sound of her
bells.
And indeed you may go far in Tuscany, covered as it is to-day by the
trail of the tourist, before you will find anything so fair as S.
Miniato. Some distance from the railway, five miles from Empoli,
half-way between Pisa and Florence, it alone seems to have escaped
altogether the curiosity of the traveller, for even the few who so
wisely rest at Empoli come not so far into the country places.
Lying on the hills under the old tower of the Rocca, of which nothing
else remains, S. Miniato is itself, as it were, a weather-beaten
fortress, that was, perhaps, never so beautiful as now, when no one
keeps watch or ward. You may wander into the Duomo and out again into
the cloistered, narrow streets, and climbing uphill, pass down into the
great gaunt church like a fortress, S. Domenico, with its scrupulous
frescoes, and though you will see many wonderful and some delightful
things, it will be always with new joy you will return to S. Miniato
herself, who seems to await you like some virgin of the centuries of
faith, that age has not been able to wither, fresh and rosy as when she
first stood on her beautiful hills. Yet unspoiled as she is, Otto I has
dwelt with her, she was a stronghold of the Emperors, the fortress of
the Germans; Federigo Barbarossa knew her well, and Federigo II has
loved her and hated her, for here he spoke with poets and made a few
songs, and here he blinded and imprisoned Messer Piero della Vigna, that
famous poet and wise man, accusing him of treason.[84] Was it that he
envied him his verses or feared his wisdom, or did he indeed think he
plotted with the Pope? Piero della Vigna was from Capua, in the Kingdom;
very eloquent, full of the knowledge of law, the Emperor made him his
chancellor, and indeed gave him all his confidence, so that his
influence was very great with a man who must have been easily influenced
by his friends. Seeing his power, others about the Emperor, remembering
Piero's low condition, no doubt sought to ruin him; and, as it seems, at
last in this they were successful, forging letters to prove that the
chancellor trafficked with the Pope. It was a time of danger for
Frederick; he was easily persuaded of Piero's guilt, and having put out
his eyes, he imprisoned him. Driven to despair at the loss of that fair
world, Piero dashed his head against the walls of his prison, and so
died. Dante meets him among the suicides in the seventh circle of the
Inferno.
But the Rocca of S. Miniato, as it is said, having brought death to a
poet and housed many Emperors, gave birth at last to the greatest
soldier of the fifteenth century, Francesco Sforza himself, he who made
himself Duke of Milan and whose statue Leonardo set himself to make, on
which the poets carved _Ecce Deus_. A mere fort, perhaps, in its origin,
in the days of Federigo II the Rocca must have been of considerable
strength, size, and luxury, dominating as it did the road to Florence
and the way to Rome: and then even in its early days it was a
stronghold of the German foreigner from which he dominated the Latins
round about, and not least the people of S. Miniato. Like all the
Tuscans, they could not bear the yoke, and they fled into the valley to
S. Genesio: soon to return, however, for the people of the plain liked
them as little as he of the tower. This exodus is, as it were,
commemorated in the dedication of the Duomo to S. Maria e a S. Genesio.
The church is not very interesting; some fragments of the old pulpit or
_ambone_, where you may see in relief the Annunciation and a coat of
arms with a boar and an inscription, are of the thirteenth century. It
is, however, in S. Domenico, not far away, that what remains to S.
Miniato of her art treasures will be found. Everyone seems to call the
church S. Domenico, but in truth it belongs to S. Jacopo and S. Lucia.
As in many another Tuscan city, it guards one side of S. Miniato, while
S. Francesco watches on the other, as though to befriend all who may
pass by. S. Domenico was founded in 1330, but it has suffered much since
then. The chapels, built by the greatest families of the place, in part
remain beautiful with the fourteenth-century work of the school of Gaddi
and of some pupil of Angelico; but it is a work of the fifteenth century
by some master of the Florentine school that chiefly delights us. For
there you may see Madonna, her sweet, ambiguous face neither happy nor
sad, with the Prince of Life in her lap, while on the one side stand S.
Sebastian and St. John Baptist, and on the other perhaps S. Jacopo and
S. Roch. Below the donors kneel a man and his wife and little daughter,
while in the predella you see our Lord's birth, baptism, and
condemnation. Altogether lovely, in that eager yet dry manner, a little
uncertain of its own dainty humanism, this picture alone is worth the
journey to S. Miniato. Yet how much else remains--a tomb attributed to
Donatello in this very chapel, a lovely terra-cotta of the Annunciation
given to Giovanni della Robbia, and indeed, not to speak of S. Francesco
with its spaciousness and delicate light, and the Palazzo Comunale, with
its frescoed Sala del Consiglio, there is S. Miniato itself, full of
flowers and the wind. Like a city of a dream, at dawn she rises out of
the mists of the valley pure and beautiful upon her winding hills that
look both north and south; cool at midday and very still, hushed from
all sounds, she sleeps in the sun, while her old tower tells the slow,
languorous hours; golden at evening, the sunset ebbs through her streets
to the far-away sea, till she sinks like some rosy lily into the night
that for her is full of familiar silences peopled by splendid dreams.
Then there come to her shadows innumerable--Otto I, Federigo Barbarossa,
Federigo II, poor blinded Piero della Vigna, singing his songs, and
those that we have forgotten. The ruined dream of Germany, the Holy
Roman Empire, the resurrection of the Latin race--she has seen them all
rise, and two of them she helped to shatter for ever. It is not only in
her golden book that she may read of splendour and victory, but in the
sleeping valley and the whisper of her olives, the simple song of the
husbandman among the corn, the Italian voices in the vineyard at dawn:
let her sleep after the old hatred, hushed by this homely music.
FOOTNOTES:
[83] See p. 107.
[84] "Io son colui che tenni ambo le chiavi
Del cuor di Federigo e che le volsi
Serrando e disserando si soavi
Che dal segreto suo quasi ogni uom tolsi."
IX. EMPOLI, MONTELUPO, LASTRA, SIGNA
It is but four miles down the hillside and through the valley along Via
Pisana to Empoli in the plain. And in truth that way, difficult truly at
midday--for the dusty road is full of wagons and oxen--is free enough at
dawn, though every step thereon takes you farther from the hills of S.
Miniato. Empoli, which you come to not without preparation, is like a
deserted market-place, a deserted market-place that has been found, and
put once more to its old use. Set as it is in the midst of the plain
beside Arno on the way to Florence, on the way to Siena, amid the
villages and the cornfields, it was the Granary of the Republic of
Florence, its very name, may be, being derived from the word Emporium,
which in fact it was. Not less important perhaps to-day than of old, its
new villas, its strangely busy streets, its cosy look of importance and
comfort there in the waste of plain, serve to hide any historical
importance it may have, so that those who come here are content for the
most part to go no farther than the railway station, where on the way
from Pisa or from Florence they must change carriages for Siena. And
indeed, for her history, it differs but little from that of other Tuscan
towns within reach of a great city. Yet for Empoli, as her Saint willed,
there waited a destiny. For after the rout of the Guelphs, and
especially of Florence, the head and front of that cause at Montaperti,
when in all Tuscany only Lucca remained free, and the Florentine
refugees built the loggia in front of S. Friano, there the Ghibellines
of Tuscany proposed to destroy utterly and for ever the City of the
Lily, and for this cause Conte Giordano and the rest caused a council to
be held at Empoli; and so it happened. Now Conte Giordano, Villani tells
us, was sent for by King Manfred to Apulia, and there was proclaimed as
his vicar and captain, Conte Guido Novello of the Conti Guidi of
Casentino, who had forsaken the rest of the family, which stood for the
Guelph cause. This man was eager to fling every Guelph out of Tuscany.
There were assembled at that council all the cities round about, and the
Conti Guidi and the Conti Alberti, and those of Santafiora and the
Ubaldini; and these were all agreed that for the sake of the Ghibelline
cause Florence must be destroyed, "and reduced to open villages, so that
there might remain to her no renown or fame or power." It was then that
Farinata degli Uberti, though a Ghibelline and an exile, rose to oppose
this design, saying that if there remained no other, whilst he lived he
would defend the city, even with his sword. Then, says Villani, "Conte
Giordano, seeing what manner of man he was, and of how great authority,
and how the Ghibelline party might be broken up and come to blows,
abandoned the design and took new counsel, so that by one good man and
citizen our city of Florence was saved from so great fury, destruction,
and ruin." But Florence was ever forgetful of her greatest sons, and
Farinata's praise was not found in her mouth, but in that of her
greatest exile, who, finding him in his fiery tomb, wishes him rest.
"Deh se riposi mai vostra semenza
Prega io lui."
To-day, however, in Empoli the long days are unbroken by the whisperings
from any council; and as though to mark the fact that all are friends at
last, if you come to her at all, you will sleep at the Aquila Nera in
the street of the Lily; Guelph and Ghibelline hate no more. And as
though to prove to man, ever more mindful of war than peace, that it is
only the works of love after all that abide for ever, in Empoli at least
scarcely anything remains from the old beloved days save the churches,
and, best of all, the pictures that were painted for them.
You pass the Church of S. Maria a Ripa just before you enter the city by
the beautiful Porta Pisana, but though you may find some delightful
works of della Robbia ware there, especially a S. Lucia, it is in the
Collegiata di S. Andrea in the lovely Piazza Farinata degli Uberti, that
most of the works have been gathered in some of the rooms of the old
college. The church itself is very interesting, with its beautiful
facade in the manner of the Badia at Fiesole, where you may see carved
on either side of the great door the head of S. Andrea and of St. John
Baptist.
In the Baptistery, however, comes your first surprise, a beautiful
fresco, a Pieta attributed to Masolino da Panicale, where Christ is laid
in the tomb by Madonna and St. John, while behind rises the Cross, on
which hangs a scourge of knotted chords. And then in the second chapel
on the right is a lovely Sienese Madonna, and a strange fresco on the
left wall of men taming bulls.
In the gallery itself a few lovely things have been gathered together,
of which certainly the finest are the angels of Botticini, two children
winged and crowned with roses, dressed in the manner of the fifteenth
century, with purfled skirts and slashed sleeves powdered with flowers,
who bow before the S. Sebastian of Rossellino. Two other works
attributed to Botticini, certainly not less lovely, are to be found
here: an Annunciation in the manner of his master Verrocchio, where Mary
sits, a delicate white girl, under a portico into which Gabriele has
stolen at sunset and found her at prayer; far away the tall cypresses
are black against the gold of the sky, and in the silence it almost
seems as though we might overhear the first Angelus and the very message
from the angel's lips. And if this is the Annunciation as it happened
long ago in Tuscany, in heaven the angels danced for sure, thinking of
our happiness, as Botticini knew; and so he has painted those seven
angels playing various instruments, while about their feet he has strewn
a song of songs. A S. Andrea and St. John Baptist in a great
fifteenth-century altar are also given to him, while below you may see
S. Andrea's crucifixion, the Last Supper, and Salome bringing the head
of St. John Baptist to Herodias at her supper with Herod. Some fine
della Robbia fragments and a beautiful relief of the Madonna and Child
by Mino da Fiesole are among the rest of the treasures of the
Collegiata, where you may find much that is merely old or curious. Other
churches there are in Empoli, S. Stefano, for instance, with a Madonna
and two angels, given to Masolino, and the marvellously lovely
Annunciation by Bernardo Rossellino; and S. Maria di Fuori, with its
beautiful loggia, but they will not hold you long. The long white road
calls you; already far away you seem to see the belfries of Florence
there, where they look into Arno, for the very water at your feet has
held in its bosom the fairest tower in the world, whiter than a lily,
rosier than the roses of the hills. With this dream, dream or
remembrance, in your heart, it is not Empoli with its brown country face
that will entice you from the way. And so, a little weary at last for
the shadows of the great city, it was with a sort of impatience I
trudged the dusty highway, eager for every turn of the road that might
bring the tall towers, far and far away though they were, into sight.
Somewhat in this mood, still early in the morning, I passed through
Pontormo, the birthplace of the sixteenth-century painter Jacopo
Carrucci, who has his name from this little town. Two or three pictures
that he painted, a lovely font of the fourteenth century in the Church
of S. Michele Arcangiolo, called for no more than a halt, for there,
still far away before me, were the hills, the hills that hid Florence
herself.
It was already midday when I came to the little city of Montelupo at the
foot of these hills, and, in front of a beautiful avenue of plane trees,
to the trattoria, a humble place enough, and full at that hour of
drivers and countrymen, but quite sufficient for my needs, for I found
there food, a good wine, and courtesy. Later, in the afternoon, climbing
the stony street across Pesa, I came to the Church of S. Giovanni
Evangelista, and there in the sweet country silence was Madonna with her
Son and four Saints, by some pupil of Sandro Botticelli.
It is not any new vision of Madonna you will see in that quiet country
church, full of afternoon sunshine and wayside flowers, but the same
half-weary maiden of whom Botticelli has told us so often, whose honour
is too great for her, whose destiny is more than she can bear. Already
she has been overwhelmed by our praise and petitions; she has closed her
eyes, she has turned away her head, and while the Jesus Parvulus lifts
his tiny hands in blessing, she is indifferent, holding Him languidly,
as though but half attentive to those priceless words which St. John,
with the last light of a smile still lingering round his eyes, notes so
carefully in his book. Something of the same eagerness, graver, and more
youthful, you may see in the figure of St. Sebastian, who, holding three
arrows daintily in his hand, has suddenly looked up at the sound of that
Divine childish voice. Two other figures, S. Lorenzo and perhaps S.
Roch, listen with a sort of intent sadness there under that splendid
portico, where Mary sits on a throne, she who was the carpenter's wife,
with so little joy or even surprise. Below, in the predella, you may see
certain saints' heads, S. Lorenzo giving alms, the death of S. Lorenzo,
the risen Christ.
[Illustration: BADIA AL SETTIMO]
But though Montelupo possesses such a treasure as this picture, for me
at least the fairest thing within her keeping is the old fortress,
ruined now, on her high hill, and the view one may have thence. For,
following that stony way which brought me to S. Giovanni, I came at last
to the walls of an old fortress, that now houses a few peasants, and
turning there saw all the Val d'Arno, from S. Miniato far and far away
to the west, to little Vinci on the north, where, as Vasari says,
Leonardo was born; while below me, beside Arno, rose the beautiful Villa
Ambrogiana, with its four towers at the corners; and then on a hill
before me, not far away, a little town nestling round another fortress,
maybe less dilapidated than Montelupo, Capraja, that goat which
caused Montelupo to be built. For in the days when Florence disputed Val
d'Arno and the plains of Empoli with many nobles, the Conti di Capraja
lorded it here, and, as the Florentines said:
"Per distrugger questa Capra non ci vuol altro che un Lupo."
To-day Montelupo is but a village; yet once it was of importance not
only as a fortress, for that she ceased to be almost when the Counts of
Capraja were broken, and certainly by 1203, when Villani tells us that
the Florentines destroyed the place because it would not obey the
commonwealth; but as a city of art, or at any rate of a beautiful
handicraft. Even to-day the people devote themselves to pottery, but of
old it was not merely a matter of commerce, but of beauty and
craftsmanship.
It was through a noisy gay crowd of these folk, the young men lounging
against the houses, the girls talking, talking together, arm in arm, as
they went to and fro before them, with a wonderful sweet air of
indifference to those who eyed them so keenly and yet shyly too, and
without anything of the brutal humour of a northern village, that in the
later afternoon I again sought the highway. And before I had gone a mile
upon my road the whole character of the way was changed; no longer was I
crossing a great plain, but winding among the hills, while Arno, noisier
than before, fled past me in an ever narrower bed among the rocks and
buttresses of what soon became little more than a defile between the
hills. Though the road was deep in dust, there was shadow under the
cypresses beside the way, there was a whisper of wind among the reeds
beside the river, and the song of the cicale grew fainter and the hills
were touched with light; evening was coming.
And indeed, when at last I had left the splendid villa of Antinori far
behind, evening came as I entered Lastra, and by chance taking the wrong
road, passing under a most splendid ilex, huge as a temple, I climbed
the hill to S. Martino a Gangalandi. Standing there in the pure calm
light just after sunset, the whole valley of Florence lay before me. To
the left stood Signa, piled on her hill like some fortress of the Middle
Age; then Arno, like a road of silver, led past the Villa delle Selve to
the great mountain Monte Morello, and there under her last spurs lay
Florence herself, clear and splendid like some dream city, her towers
and pinnacles, her domes and churches shining in the pure evening light
like some delectable city seen in a vision far away, but a reality, and
seen at last. Very far off she seemed in that clear light, that
presently fading fled away across the mountains before the advance of
night, that filled the whole plain with its vague and beautiful shadow.
And so, when morning was come, I went again to S. Martino a Gangalandi,
but Florence was hidden in light. In my heart I knew I must seek her at
once, that even the fairest things were not fair, since she was hidden
away. Not without a sort of reluctance I heard Mass in S. Martino, spent
a moment before the beautiful Madonna of that place, a picture of the
fifteenth century, and looked upon the fortifications of Brunellesco.
Everywhere the women sitting in their doorways were plaiting straw, and
presently I came upon a whole factory of this craft, the great courtyard
strewn with hats of all shapes, sizes, and colours, drying in the sun.
Signa, too, across the river as I passed, seemed to be given up to this
business. Then taking the road, hot and dusty, I set out--not by Via
Pisana, but by the byways, which seemed shorter--for Florence. For long
I went between the vines, in the misty morning, all of silver and gold,
till I was weary. And at last houses began to strew the way, herds of
goats led by an old man in velveteen and a lad in tatters, one herd
after another covered me with dust, or, standing in front of the houses,
were milked at the doorways, where still the women, their brown legs
naked in the sun, plaited the straw. Then at a turning of the way, as
though to confirm me in any fears I might have of the destruction of the
city I had come so far to see, a light railway turned into the highway
between the houses, where already there was not room for two carts to
pass. How may I tell my anger and misery as I passed through that
endless suburb, the great hooting engine of the train venting its
stench, and smoke, and noise into the very windows of the houses,
chasing me down the narrow way, round intricate corners, over tiny
piazzas, from the very doors of churches. Yet, utterly weary at last,
covered with dust, it was in this brutal contrivance that I sought
refuge, and after an hour of agony was set down before the Porta al
Prato. The bells were ringing the Angelus of midday when I came into
Florence.
X. FLORENCE
Florence is like a lily in the midst of a garden gay with wild-flowers;
a broken lily that we have tied up and watered and nursed into a
semblance of life, an image of ancient beauty--as it were the _memento
mori_ of that Latin spirit which contrived the Renaissance of mankind.
As of old, so to-day, she stands in the plain at the foot of the
Apennines, that in their sweetness and strength lend her still something
of their nobility. Around her are the hills covered with olive gardens
where the corn and the wine and the oil grow together between the iris
and the rose; and everywhere on those beautiful hills there are villas
among the flowers, real villas such as Alberti describes for us, full of
coolness and rest, where a fountain splashes in an old courtyard, and
the grapes hang from the pergolas, and the corn is spread in July and
beaten with the flail. And since the vista of every street in Florence
ends in the country, it is to these hills you find your way very often
if your stay be long, fleeing from the city herself, perhaps to hide
your disappointment, in the simple joy of country life. More and more as
you live in Florence that country life becomes your consolation and your
delight: for there abide the old ways and the ancient songs, which you
will not find in the city. And indeed the great treasure of Florence is
this bright and smiling country in which she lies: the old road to
Fiesole, the ways that lead from Settignano to Compiobbi, the path
through the woods from S. Martino a Mensola, that smiling church by the
wayside, to Vincigliata, to Castel di Poggio, the pilgrimage from Bagno
a Ripoli to the Incontro. There, on all those beautiful gay roads, you
will pass numberless villas whispering with summer, laughing with
flowers; you will see the _contadini_ at work in the _poderi_, you will
hear the _rispetti_ and _stornelli_ of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries sung perhaps by some love-sick peasant girl among the olives
from sunrise till evening falls. And the ancient ways are not forgotten
there, for they still reap with the sickle and sing to the beat of the
flail; while the land itself, those places "full of nimble air, in a
laughing country of sweet and lovely views, where there is always fresh
water, and everything is healthy and pure," of which Leon Alberti tells
us, are still held and cultivated in the old way under the old laws by
the _contadino_ and his _padrone_. This ancient order, quietness, and
beauty, which you may find everywhere in the country round about
Florence, is the true Tuscany. The vulgarity of the city, for even in
Italy the city life has become insincere, blatant, and for the most part
a life of the middle class, seldom reaches an hundred yards beyond the
_barriera_: and this is a charm in Florence, for you may so easily look
on her from afar. And so, if one comes to her from the country, or
returns to her from her own hills, it is ever with a sense of loss, of
sadness, of regret: she has lost her soul for the sake of the stranger,
she has forgotten the splendid past for an ignoble present, a strangely
wearying dream of the future.
Yet for all her modern ways, her German beer-houses, her English
tea-shops, her noisy trams on Lung' Arno, her air as of a museum, her
eagerness to show her contempt for the stranger while she sells him her
very soul for money, Florence remains one of the most delightful cities
of Italy to visit, to live with, to return to again and again. Yet I for
one would never live within her walls if I could help it, nor herd with
those barbarian, exclamatory souls who in guttural German or cockney
English snort or neigh at the beauties industriously pointed out by a
loud-voiced cicerone, quoting in American all the appropriate
quotations, Browning before Filippo Lippi, Ruskin in S. Croce, Mrs.
Browning at the door of S. Felice, Goethe everywhere.
No, I will live a little way out of the city on the hillside, perhaps
towards Settignano, not too far from the pine woods, nor too near the
gate. And my garden there shall be a vineyard, bordered with iris, and
among the vines shall be a garden of olives, and under the olives there
shall be the corn. And the yellow roses will litter the courtyard, and
the fountain will be full of their petals, and the red roses will strew
the paths, and the white roses will fall upon the threshold; and all day
long the bees will linger in the passion-flowers by the window when the
mulberry trees have been stripped of leaves, and the lilies of Madonna,
before the vines, are tall and like ghosts in the night, the night that
is blue and gold, where a few fire-flies linger yet, sailing faintly
over the stream, and the song of the cicale is the burden of endless
summer.
Then very early in the morning I will rise from my bed under the holy
branch of olive, I will walk in my garden before the sun is high, I will
look on my beloved city. Yes, I shall look over the near olives across
the valley to the hill of cypresses, to the poplars beside Arno that
tremble with joy; and first I shall see Torre del Gallo and then S.
Miniato, that strange and beautiful place, and at last my eyes will rest
on the city herself, beautiful in the mist of morning: first the tower
of S. Croce, like a tufted spear; then the tower of Liberty, and that
was built for pride; and at last, like a mysterious rose lifted above
the city, I shall see the dome, the rosy dome of Brunellesco, beside
which, like a slim lily, pale, immaculate as a pure virgin, rises the
inviolate Tower of the Lowly, that Giotto built for God. Yes, often I
shall thus await the Angelus that the bells of all the villages will
answer, and I shall greet the sun and be thankful. Then I shall walk
under the olives, I shall weigh the promised grapes, I shall bend the
ears of corn here and there, that I may feel their beauty, and I shall
bury my face in the roses, I shall watch the lilies turn their heads, I
shall pluck the lemons one by one. And the maidens will greet me on
their way to the olive gardens, the newly-married, hand in hand with
her husband, will smile upon me, she who is heavy with child will give
me her blessing, and the children will laugh and peep at me from behind
the new-mown hay; and I shall give them greeting. And I shall talk with
him who is busy in the vineyard, I shall watch him bare-foot among the
grapes, I shall see his wise hands tenderly unfold a leaf or gather up a
straying branch, and when I leave him I shall hear him say, "May your
bread be blessed to you." Under the myrtles, on a table of stone spread
with coarse white linen, such we see in Tuscany, I shall break my fast,
and I shall spill a little milk on the ground for thankfulness, and the
crumbs I shall scatter too, and a little honey that the bees have given
I shall leave for them again.
So I shall go into the city, and one will say to me, "The Signore must
have a care, for the sun will be hot, in returning it will be necessary
to come under the olives." And I shall laugh in my heart, and say, "Have
no fear, then, for the sun will not touch me." And how should I but be
glad that the sun will be hot, and how should I but be thankful that I
shall come under the olives?
And I shall come into the city by Porta alla Croce for love, because I
am but newly returned, and presently through the newer ways I shall come
to the oldest of all, Borgo degli Albizzi, where the roofs of the
beautiful palaces almost touch, and the way is cool and full of shadow.
There, amid all the hurry and bustle of the narrow, splendid street, I
shall think only of old things for a time, I shall remember the great
men who founded and established the city, I shall recall the great
families of Florence. Here in this Borgo the Albizzi built their towers
when they came from Arezzo, giving the city more than an hundred
officers, Priori and Gonfalonieri, till Cosimo de' Medici thrust them
out with the help of Eugenius IV. The grim, scornful figure of Rinaldo
seems to haunt the old palace still. How often in those September days
must he have passed to and fro between his palace and the Bargello close
by, the Palace of the Podesta: but the people, fearing they knew not
what, barricaded the place so that Rinaldo was persuaded to consult
with the Pope in S. Maria Novella. At dawn he dismissed his army, and
remained alone. Then the friends of Cosimo in exile went to the Pope and
thanked him, thus, as some have thought, surprising him into an
abandonment of Rinaldo. However that may be, Rinaldo was expelled,
leaving the city with these words, "He is a blind man without a guide,
who trusts the word of a Pope." And what figure haunts Palazzo Altovite,
the home of that fierce Ghibelline house loved by Frederick II, if not
that hero who expelled the Duke of Athens. Palazzo Pazzi and Palazzo
Nonfinito at the Canto de' Pazzi where the Borgo degli Albizzi meets Via
del Proconsolo, brings back to me that madman who first set the Cross
upon the walls of Jerusalem in 1099, and who for this cause was given
some stones from Christ's sepulchre by Godfrey de Bouillon, which he
brought to Florence and presented to the Republic. They were placed in
S. Reparata, which stood where the Duomo now is, and, as it is said, the
"new fire" was struck from them every Holy Saturday, and the clergy, in
procession, brought that sacred flame to the other churches of the city.
And the Pazzi, because of their gift, gave the guard of honour in this
procession: and this they celebrated with much pomp among themselves;
till at last they obtained permission to build a _carro_, which should
be lighted at the door of S. Reparata by some machine of their
invention, and drawn by four white oxen to their houses. And even to
this day you may see this thing, and to this day the car is borne to
their canto. But above all I see before that "unfinished" palace the
ruined hopes of those who plotted to murder Lorenzo de' Medici with his
brother at the Easter Mass in the Duomo. Even now, amid the noise of the
street, I seem to hear the shouting of the people, _Vive le Palle, Morte
ai Pazzi_.
So I shall come into the Proconsolo beside the Bargello, where so many
great and splendid people are remembered, and she, too, who is so
beautiful that for her sake we forget everything else, Vanna degli
Albizzi, who married Lorenzo de' Tornabuoni, whom Verrocchio carved and
Ghirlandajo painted. Then I shall follow the Via del Corso past S.
Margherita, close to Dante's mythical home, into Via Calzaioli, the
busiest street of the city, and I shall think of the strange difference
between these three great ways, Via del Proconsolo, Via Calzaioli, and
Via Tornabuoni, which mark and divide the most ancient city. I shall
turn toward Or San Michele, where on St. John's Day the banners of the
guilds are displayed above the statues, and for a little time I shall
look again on Verrocchio's Christ and St. Thomas. Then in this
pilgrimage of remembrance I shall pass up Via Calzaioli, past the gay
cool caffe of Gilli, into the Piazza del Duomo. And again, I shall fear
lest the tower may fall like a lopped lily, and I shall wish that Giotto
had made it ever so little bigger at the base. Then I shall pass to the
right past the Misericordia, where for sure I shall meet some of the
_confraternita_, past the great gazing statue of Brunellesco, till, at
the top of Via del Proconsolo, I shall turn to look at the Duomo, which,
seen from there, seems like a great Greek cross under a dome, that might
cover the world. And so I shall pass round the apse of the Cathedral
till I come to the door of the Cintola, where Nanni di Banco has
marvellously carved Madonna in an almond-shaped glory: and this is one
of the fairest things in Florence. And I shall go on my way, past the
Gate of Paradise to the open door of the Baptistery, and returning find
the tomb of Baldassare Cossa, soldier and antipope, carved by Donatello:
and here, in the most ancient church of Florence, I shall thank St. John
for my return.
Out in the Piazza once more, I shall turn into Borgo S. Lorenzo, and
follow it till I come to Piazza di S. Lorenzo, with its bookstalls where
Browning found that book, "small quarto size, part print, part
manuscript," which told him the story of "The Ring and the Book." There
I shall look once more on the ragged, rugged front of S. Lorenzo, and
entering, find the tomb of Piero de' Medici, made by Verrocchio, and
thinking awhile of those other tombs where Michelangelo hard by carved
his Night and Day, Twilight and Dawn, I shall find my way again into the
Piazza del Duomo, and, following Via Cerretani, that busy street, I
shall come at last into Piazza S. Maria Novella, and there on the north
I shall see again the bride of Michelangelo, S. Maria Novella of the
Dominicans.
Perhaps I shall rest there a little before Duccio's Madonna on her high
altar,[85] and linger under the grave, serene work of Ghirlandajo; but
it may be the sky will be too fair for any church to hold me, so that
passing down the way of the Beautiful Ladies, and taking Via dei Serpi
on my left, I shall come into Via Tornabuoni, that smiling, lovely way
just above the beautiful Palazzo Antinori, whence I may see Palazzo
Strozzi, but without the great lamp at the corner where the flowers are
heaped and there are always so many loungers. Indeed, the whole street
is full of flowers and sunshine and cool shadow, and in some way, I know
not what, it remains the most beautiful gay street in Florence, where
past and present have met and are friends. And then I know if I follow
this way I shall come to Lung' Arno,--I may catch a glimpse of it even
from the corner of Via Porta Rossa over the cabs, past the Column of S.
Trinita.
[Illustration: PONTE VECCHIO]
Presently, in the afternoon, I shall follow Via Porta Rossa, with its
old palaces of the Torrigiani (now, Hotel Porta Rossa), and the
Davanzati into Mercato Nuovo, where, because it is Thursday, the whole
place will be smothered with flowers and children, little laughing
rascals as impudent as Lippo Lippi's Angiolini, who play about the Tacca
and splash themselves with water. And so I shall pass at last into
Piazza della Signoria, before the marvellous palace of the people with
its fierce, proud tower, and I shall stand on the spot before the
fountains where Humanism avenged itself on Puritanism, where Savonarola,
that Ferrarese who burned the pictures and would have burned the city,
was himself burned in the fire he had invoked. And I shall look once
more on the Loggia de' Lanzi, and see Cellini's young _contadino_
masquerading as Perseus, and in my heart I shall remember the little wax
figure he made for a model, now in Bargello, which is so much more
beautiful than this young giant. So, under the cool cloisters of Palazzo
degli Uffizi I shall come at last on to Lung' Arno, where it is very
quiet, and no horses may pass, and the trams are a long way off. And I
shall lift up my eyes and behold once more the hill of gardens across
Arno, with the Belvedere just within the old walls, and S. Miniato, like
a white and fragile ghost in the sunshine, and La Bella Villanella
couched like a brown bird under the cypresses above the grey olives in
the wind and the sun. And something in the gracious sweep of the hills,
in the gentle nobility of that holy mountain which Michelangelo has
loved and defended, which Dante Alighieri has spoken of, which Gianozzo
Manetti has so often climbed, will bring the tears to my eyes, and I
shall turn away towards Ponte Vecchio, the oldest and most beautiful of
the bridges, where the houses lead one over the river, and the little
shops of the jewellers still sparkle and smile with trinkets. And in the
midst of the bridge I shall wait awhile and look on Arno. Then I shall
cross the bridge and wander upstream towards Porta S. Niccolo, that
gaunt and naked gate in the midst of the way, and there I shall climb
through the gardens up the steep hill
"... Per salire al monte
Dove siede la chiesa...."
to the great Piazzale, and so to the old worn platform before S. Miniato
itself, under the strange glowing mosaics of the facade: and, standing
on the graves of dead Florentines, I shall look down on the beautiful
city.
Marvellously fair she is on a summer evening as seen from that hill of
gardens, Arno like a river of gold before her, leading over the plain
lost in the farthest hills. Behind her the mountains rise in great
amphitheatres,--Fiesole on the one side, like a sentinel on her hill; on
the other, the Apennines, whose gesture, so noble, precise, and
splendid, seems to point ever towards some universal sovereignty, some
perfect domination, as though this place had been ordained for the
resurrection of man. Under this mighty symbol of annunciation lies the
city, clear and perfect in the lucid light, her towers shining under the
serene evening sky. Meditating there alone for a long time in the
profound silence of that hour, the whole history of this city that
witnessed the birth of the modern world, the resurrection of the gods,
will come to me.
Out of innumerable discords, desolations, hopes unfilled, everlasting
hatred and despair, I shall see the city rise four square within her
rosy walls between the river and the hills; I shall see that lonely,
beautiful, and heroic figure, Matilda the great Countess; I shall suffer
the dream that consumes her, and watch Germany humble in the snow. And
the Latin cause will tower a red lily beside Arno; one by one the great
nobles will go by with cruel alien faces, prisoners, to serve the Lily
or to die. Out of their hatred will spring that mongrel cause of Guelph
and Ghibelline, and I shall see the Amidei slay Buondelmonte
Buondelmonti. Through the year of victories I shall rejoice, when
Pistoja falls, when Siena falls, when Volterra is taken, and Pisa forced
to make peace. Then in tears I shall see the flight at Monteaperti, I
shall hear the thunder of the horses, and with hate in my heart I shall
search for Bocca degli Abati, the traitor, among the ten thousand dead.
And in the council I shall be by when they plot the destruction of the
city, and I shall be afraid: then I shall hear the heroic, scornful
words of Farinata degli Uberti, when in his pride he spared Florence for
the sake of his birth. And I shall watch the banners at Campaldino, I
shall hear the intoxicating words of Corso Donati, I shall look into his
very face and read the truth.
And at dawn I shall walk with Dante, and I shall know by the softness of
his voice when Beatrice passeth, but I shall not dare to lift my eyes. I
shall walk with him through the city, I shall hear Giotto speak to him
of St. Francis, and Arnolfo will tell us of his dreams. And at evening
Petrarch will lead me into the shadow of S. Giovanni and tell me of
Madonna Laura. But it will be a morning of spring when I meet
Boccaccio, ah, in S. Maria Novella, and as we come into the sunshine I
shall laugh and say, "Tell me a story." And Charles of Valois will pass
by, who sent Dante on that long journey; and Henry VII, for whom he had
prayed; and I shall hear the trumpets of Montecatini, and I shall
understand the hate Uguccione had for Castracani. And I shall watch the
entry of the Duke of Athens, and I shall see his cheek flush at the
thought of a new tyranny. Then for the first time I shall hear the
sinister, fortunate name Medici. Under the banners of the Arti I shall
hear the rumour of their names, Silvestro who urged on the Ciompi, Vieri
who once made peace; nor will the death of Gian Galeazzo of Milan, nor
the tragedy of Pisa, hinder their advent, for I shall see Giovanni di
Bicci de' Medici proclaimed Gonfaloniere of the city. Then they will
troop by more splendid than princes, the universal bankers, lords of
Florence: Cosimo the hard old man, Pater Patriae, the greatest of his
race; Piero, the weakling; Lorenzo il Magnifico, tyrant and artist; and
over his shoulder I shall see the devilish, sensual face of Savonarola.
And there will go by Giuliano, the lover of Simonetta; Piero the exile;
Giovanni the mighty pope, Leo X; Giulio the son of Guiliano, Clement
VII; Ippolito the Cardinal, Alessandro the cruel, Lorenzino his
assassin, Cosimo l'Invitto, Grand Duke of Tuscany, bred in a convent and
mourned for ever.
So they pass by, and their descendants follow after them, even to poor,
unhappy, learned Gian Gastone, the last of his race.
And around them throng the artists; yes, I shall see them all. Angelico
will lead me into his cell and show me the meaning of the Resurrection.
With Lippo Lippi I shall play with the children, and talk with Lucrezia
Buti at the convent gate; Ghirlandajo will take me where Madonna Vanna
is, and with Baldovinetti I shall watch the dawn. And Botticelli will
lead me into a grove apart: I shall see the beauty of those three women
who pass, who pass like a season, and are neither glad nor sorry; and
with him I shall understand the joy of Venus, whose son was love, and
the tears of Madonna, whose Son was Love also. And I shall hear the
voice of Leonardo; and he will play upon his lyre of silver, that lyre
in the shape of a horse's head which he made for Sforza of Milan; and I
shall see him touch the hands of Monna Lisa. And I shall see the statue
of snow that Buonarotti made; I shall find him under S. Miniato, and I
shall weep with him.
So I shall dream in the sunset. The Angelus will be ringing from all the
towers, I shall have celebrated my return to the city that I have loved.
The splendour of the dying day will lie upon her; in that enduring and
marvellous hour, when in the sound of every bell you may find the names
that are in your heart, I shall pass again through the gardens, I shall
come into the city when the little lights before Madonna will be shining
at the street corners, and the streets will be full of the evening,
where the river, stained with fading gold, steals into the night to the
sea. And under the first stars I shall find my way to my hillside. On
that white country road the dust of the day will have covered the vines
by the way, the cypresses will be white half-way to their tops, in the
whispering olives the cicale will still be singing; as I pass every
threshold some dog will rouse, some horse will stamp in the stable, or
an ox stop munching in his stall. In the far sky, marvellous with
infinite stars, the moon will sail like a little platter of silver, like
a piece of money new from the mint, like a golden rose in a mirror of
silver. Long and long ago the sun will have set, but when I come to the
gate I shall go under the olives; though I shall be weary I shall go by
the longest way, I shall pass by the winding path, I shall listen for
the whisper of the corn. And I shall beat at my gate, and one will say
_Chi e_, and I shall make answer. So I shall come into my house, and the
triple lights will be lighted in the garden, and the table will be
spread. And there will be one singing in the vineyard, and I shall hear,
and there will be one walking in the garden, and I shall know.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] Alas, this too has now become as nothing and its place knows it no
more.--E.H.
XI. FLORENCE
PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA AND PALAZZO VECCHIO
In every ancient city of the world, cities that in themselves for the
most part have been nations, one may find some spot holy or splendid
that instantly evokes an image of that of which it is a symbol,--which
sums up, as it were, in itself all the sanctity, beauty, and splendour
of her fame, in whose name there lives even yet something of the glory
that is dead. It is so no longer; in what confused street or shapeless
square shall I find hidden the soul of London, or in what name then
shall I sum up the lucid restless life of Paris? But if I name the
Acropolis, all the pale beauty of Athens will stir in my heart; and when
I speak the word Capitolium, I seem to hear the thunder of the legions,
to see the very face of Caesar, to understand the dominion and majesty
of Rome.
Something of this power of evocation may still be found in the Piazza
della Signoria of Florence: all the love that founded the city, the
beauty that has given her fame, the immense confusion that is her
history, the hatred that has destroyed her, lingers yet in that strange
and lovely place where Palazzo Vecchio stands like a violated fortress,
where the Duke of Athens was expelled the city, where the Ciompi rose
against the Ghibellines, where Jesus Christ was proclaimed King of the
Florentines, where Savonarola, was burned, and Alessandro de' Medici
made himself Duke.
It is not any great and regular space you come upon in the Piazza della
Signoria, such as the huge empty Place de la Concorde of Paris, but one
that is large enough for beauty, and full of the sweet variety of the
city; it is the symbol of Florence--a beautiful symbol.
In the morning the whole Piazza is full of sunlight, and swarming with
people: there, is a stall for newspapers; here, a lemonade merchant
dispenses his sweet drinks. Everyone is talking; at the corner of Via
Calzaioli a crowd has assembled, a crowd that moves and seems about to
dissolve, that constantly re-forms itself without ever breaking up. On
the benches of the loggia men lie asleep in the shadow, and children
chase one another among the statues. Everywhere and from all directions
cabs pass with much cracking of whips and hallooing. There stand two
Carabinieri in their splendid uniforms, surveying this noisy world; an
officer passes with his wife, leading his son by the hand; you may see
him lift his sword as he steps on the pavement. A group of tourists go
by, urged on by a gesticulating guide; he is about to show them the
statues in the loggia; they halt under the Perseus. He begins to speak
of it, while the children look up at him as though to catch what he is
saying in that foreign tongue.
And surely the Piazza, which has seen so many strange and splendid
things, may well tolerate this also; it is so gay, so full of life. Very
fair she seems under the sunlight, picturesque too, with her buildings
so different and yet so harmonious. On the right the gracious beauty of
the Loggia de' Lanzi; then before you the lofty, fierce old Palazzo
Vecchio; and beside it the fountains play in the farther Piazza. Cosimo
I rides by as though into Siena, while behind him rises the palace of
the Uguccioni, which Folfi made; and beside you the Calzaioli ebbs and
flows with its noisy life, as of old the busiest street of the city.
The Palazza Vecchio, peaceful enough now, but still with the fierce
gesture of war stands on one side, facing the Piazza, a fortress of huge
stones four storeys high--the last, thrust out from the wall and
supported by arches on brackets of stone, as though crowning the
palace itself. It stands almost four-square, and above rises the
beautiful tower, the highest tower in the city, with a gallery similar
to the last storey of the palace, and above a loggia borne by four
pillars, from which spring the great arches of the canopy that supports
the spire; and whereas the battlements of the palazzo are square and
Guelph, those of the tower are Ghibelline in the shape of the tail of
the swallow. Set, not in the centre of the square, nor made to close it,
but on one side, it was thus placed, it is said, in order to avoid the
burned houses of the Uberti, who had been expelled the city. However
this may be, and its position is so fortunate that it is not likely to
be due to any such chance, Arnolfo di Cambio began it in February 1299,
taking as his model, so some have thought, the Rocca of the Conti Guidi
of the Casentino, which Lapo his father had built. Under the arches of
the fourth storey are painted the coats of the city and its gonfaloni.
And there you may see the most ancient device of Florence, the lily
argent on a field gules; the united coats gules and argent of Florence
and Fiesole in 1010; the coat of Guelph Florence, a lily gules on a
field argent; and, among the rest, the coat of Charles of Anjou, the
lilies or on a field azure.
[Illustration: LOGGIA DE' LANZI]
On the platform or ringhiera before the great door, the priori watched
the greater festas, and made their proclamations, before the Loggia de'
Lanzi was built in 1387; and here in 1532 the last Signoria of the
Republic proclaimed Alessandro de' Medici first Duke of Florence, in
front of the Judith and Holofernes of Donatello, whose warning went
unheeded. And indeed, that group, part of the plunder that the people
found in Palazzo Riccardi, in the time of Piero de' Medici, who sought
to make himself tyrant, once stood beside the great gate of Palazzo
Vecchio, whence it was removed at the command of Alessandro, who placed
there instead Bandinelli's feeble Hercules and Cacus. Opposite to it
Michelangelo's David once stood, till it was removed in our own time to
the Accademia, where it looks like a cast.
Over the great door where of old was set the monogram of Christ, you
may read still REX REGUM ET DOMINUS DOMINANTIUM, and within the gate is
a court most splendid and lovely, built after the design of Arnolfo, and
once supported by his pillars of stone, but now the columns of
Michelozzo, made in 1450, and covered with stucco decoration in the
sixteenth century, form the cortile in which, over the fountain of
Vasari, Verrocchio's lovely Boy Playing with the Dolphin ever half turns
in his play. Altogether lovely in its naturalism, its humorous grace,
Verrocchio made it for Lorenzo Magnifico, who placed it in his gardens
at Careggi, whence it was brought here by Cosimo I.
Passing through that old palace, up the great staircase into the Salone
del Cinquecento, where Savonarola was tried, with the Cappella di S.
Bernardo, where he made his last communion, and at last up the staircase
into the tower, where he was tortured and imprisoned, it is ever of that
mad pathetic figure, self-condemned and self-murdered, that you think,
till at last, coming out of the Palazzo, you seek the spot of his awful
death in the Piazza. Fanatic puritan as he was, vainer than any Medici,
it is difficult to understand how he persuaded the Florentines to listen
to his eloquence, spoiled as it must have been for them by the Ferrarese
dialect. How could a people who were the founders of the modern world,
the creators of modern culture, allow themselves to be baffled by a
fanatic friar prophesying judgment? Yet something of a peculiar charm, a
force that we miss in the sensual and almost devilish face we see in his
portrait, he must have possessed, for it is said that Lorenzo desired
his company; and even though we are able to persuade ourselves that it
was for other reasons than to enjoy his friendship, we have yet to
explain the influence he exercised over Sandro Botticelli and Pico della
Mirandola, whose lives he changed altogether. In the midst of a people
without a moral sense he appears like the spirit of denial. He was
kicking against the pricks, he was guilty of the sin against the light,
and whether his aim was political or religious, or maybe both, he
failed. It is said he denied Lorenzo absolution, that he left him
without a word at the brink of the grave but when he himself came to
die by the horrible, barbaric means he had invoked in a boast, he did
not show the fortitude of the Magnificent. Full of every sort of
rebellion and violence, he made anarchy in Florence, and scoffed at the
Holy See, while he was a guest of the one and the officer of the other.
His bonfires of "vanities," as he called them, were possibly as
disastrous for Florence as the work of the Puritan was for England; for
while he burned the pictures, they sold them to the Jews. He is dead,
and has become one of the bores of history; and while Americans leave
their cards on the stone that marks the place of his burning, the
Florentines appear to have forgotten him. Peace to his ashes!
As you enter the Loggia de' Lanzi, gay with children now, once the
lounge of the Swiss Guard, whose barracks were not far away, you wonder
who can have built so gay, so happy a place beside the fortress of the
Signoria. Yet, in truth, it was for the Priori themselves that loggia
was built, though not by Orcagna as it is said, to provide, perhaps, a
lounge in summer for the fathers of the city, and for a place of
proclamation that all Florence might hear the laws they had made. Yes,
and to-day, too, do they not proclaim the tombola where once they
announced a victory? Even now, in spite of forgotten greatness, it is
still a garden of statues. Looking ever over the Piazza stands the
Perseus of Cellini, with the head of Medusa held up to the multitude,
the sword still gripped in his hand. It is the masterpiece of one who,
like all the greatest artists of the Renaissance--Giotto, Orcagna,
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael--did not confine himself to one art, but
practised many. And though it would be unjust to compare such a man as
Cellini with the greatest of all, yet he was great not only as a
sculptor and a goldsmith, but as a man of letters and as a man of the
world. His Perseus, a little less than a demigod, is indeed not so
lovely as the wax model he made for it, which is now in the Bargello;
but in the gesture with which he holds out the severed head from him, in
the look of secret delight that is already half remorseful for all that
dead beauty, in the heroic grace with which he stands there after the
murder, the dead body marvellously fallen at his feet, Cellini has
proved himself the greatest sculptor of his time. That statue cost him
dear enough, as he tells you in his Memoirs, but, as Gautier said, it is
worth all it cost.
On the pedestal you may see the deliverance of Andromeda; but the finest
of these reliefs has been taken to the Bargello. The only other bronze
here is the work of Donatello--a Judith and Holofernes, under the arch
towards the Uffizi. It is Donatello's only large bronze group, and was
probably designed for the centre piece of a fountain, the mattress on
which Holofernes has fallen having little spouts for water. Judith
stands over her victim, who is already dead, her sword lifted to strike
again; and you may see by her face that she will strike if it be
necessary. Beneath you read--"Exemplum salut. publ. cives posuere,
MCCCCXV." Poor as the statue appears in its present position, the three
bronze reliefs of the base gain here what they must lose in the midst of
a fountain, yet even they too are unfortunate. Indeed, very few statues
of this sort were made by the sculptors of the Renaissance; for the most
part they confined themselves to single figures and to groups in relief:
even Michelangelo but rarely attempted the "freestanding group." It is,
however, to such a work we come in the splendidly composed Rape of the
Sabines by Giovanni da Bologna in the Loggia itself. Spoiled a little by
its too laboured detail, its chief fault lies in the fact that it is
top-heavy, the sculptor having placed the mass of the group so high that
the base seems unsubstantial and unbalanced. Bologna's other group here,
Hercules and Nessus, which once stood at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio,
is dramatic and well composed, but the forms are feeble and even
insignificant. The antique group of Ajax dragging the body of Patrocles,
is not a very important copy of some great work, and it is much
restored: it was found in a vineyard near Rome.
The great fountain which plays beside the Palazzo, where of old the
houses of the Uberti stood, is rich and grandiose perhaps, but in some
unaccountable way adds much to the beauty of the Piazza. How gay and
full of life it is even yet, that splendid and bitter place, that in its
beauty and various, everlasting life seems to stand as the symbol of
this city, so scornful even in the midst of the overwhelming foreigner
who has turned her into a museum, a vast cemetery of art. Only here you
may catch something of the old life that is not altogether passed away.
Still, in spite of your eyes, you must believe there are Florentines
somewhere in the city, that they are still as in Dante's day proud and
wise and easily angry, scornful too, a little turbulent, not readily
curbed, but full of ambition--great nobles, great merchants, great
bankers. Does such an one never come to weep over dead Florence in this
the centre of her fame, the last refuge of her greatness, in the night,
perhaps, when none may see his tears, when all is hushed that none may
mark his sorrow?
[Illustration: WAX MODEL FOR THE PERSEUS IN THE BARGELLO
_Benvenuto Cellini_
_Alinari_]
It was past midnight when once more I came out of the narrow ways,
almost empty at that hour, when every footfall resounds between the old
houses, into the old Piazza to learn this secret. Far away in the sky
the moon swung like a censer, filling the place with a fragile and
lovely light. Standing there in the Piazza, quite deserted now save for
some cloaked figure who hurried away up the Calzaioli, and two
Carabinieri who stood for a moment at the Uffizi corner and then turned
under the arches, I seemed to understand something of the spirit that
built that marvellous fortress, that thrust that fierce tower into the
sky;--yes, surely at this hour some long dead Florentine must venture
here to console the living, who, for sure, must be gay so sadly and with
so much regret.
In the Loggia de' Lanzi the moonlight fell among the statues, and in
that fairy light I seemed to see in those ghostly still figures of
marble and bronze some strange fantastic parable, the inscrutable
prophecy of the scornful past. Gian Bologna's Sabine woman, was she not
Florence struggling in the grip of the modern vandal; Cellini's Perseus
with Medusa's head, has it not in truth turned the city to stone?
The silence was broken; something had awakened in the Piazza: perhaps a
bird fluttered from the battlements of the Palazzo, perhaps it was the
city that turned in her sleep. No, there it was again. It was a human
voice close beside me: it seemed to be weeping.
I looked around: all was quiet. I saw nothing, only there at the corner
a little light flickered before a shrine; and yes, something was moving
there, someone who was weeping. Softly, softly over the stones I made my
way to that little shrine of Madonna at the street corner, and I found,
ah! no proud and scornful noble mourning over dead Florence, but an old
woman, ragged and alone, prostrate under some unimaginable sorrow, some
unappeasable regret.
Did she hear as of old--that Virgin with narrow half-open eyes and the
sidelong look? God, I know not if she heard or no. Perhaps I alone have
heard in all the world.
XII. FLORENCE
THE BAPTISTERY--THE DUOMO--THE CAMPANILE--THE OPERA DEL DUOMO
On coming into the Piazza del Duomo, perhaps from the light and space of
the Lung' Arno or from the largeness of the Piazza della Signoria, one
is apt to think of it as too small for the buildings which it holds, as
wanting in a certain spaciousness such as the Piazza of St. Peter at
Rome certainly possesses, or in the light of the meadow of Pisa; and yet
this very smallness, only smallness when we consider the great buildings
set there so precisely, gives it an element of beauty lacking in the
great Piazza of Rome and in Pisa too--a certain delicate colour and
shadow and a sense of nearness, of homeliness almost; for the shadow of
the dome falls right across the city itself every morning and evening.
And indeed the Piazza del Duomo of Florence is still the centre of the
life of the city, and though to some this may be matter for regret, I
have found in just that a sort of consolation for the cabs which Ruskin
hated so, for the trams which he never saw; for just these two necessary
unfortunate things bring one so often there that of all the cathedrals
of Italy that of Florence must be best known to the greatest number of
people at all hours of the day. And this fact, evil and good working
together for life's sake, makes the Duomo a real power in the city, so
that everyone is interested, often passionately interested, in it: it
has a real influence on the lives of the citizens, so that nothing in
the past or even to-day has ever been attempted with regard to it
without winning the people's leave. Yet it is not the Duomo alone that
thus lives in the hearts of the Florentines, but the whole Piazza. There
they have established their trophies, and set up their gifts, and
lavished their treasure. It was built for all, and it belongs to all; it
is the centre of the city.
This enduring vitality of a place so old, so splendid, and so beloved,
is, I think, particularly manifest in the Church of S. Giovanni
Battista, the Baptistery. It is the oldest building in Florence, built
probably with the stones from the Temple of Mars about which Villani
tells us, and almost certainly in its place; every Florentine child,
fortunate at least in this, is still brought there for baptism, and
receives its name in the place where Dante was christened, where
Ippolito Buondelmonti first saw Dianora de' Bardi, where Donatello has
laboured, which Michelangelo has loved.
Built probably in the sixth or seventh century, it was Arnolfo di Cambio
who covered it with marble in 1288, building also three new doorways
where before there had been but one, that on the west side, which was
then closed. The mere form, those octagonal walls which, so it is said,
the Lombards brought into Italy, go to show that the church was used as
a Baptistery from the first, though Villani speaks of it as the Duomo;
and indeed till 1550 it had the aspect of such a church as the Pantheon
in Rome, in that it was open to the sky, so that the rain and the
sunlight have fallen on the very floor trodden by so many generations.
Humble and simple enough as we see it to-day before the gay splendour of
the new facade of the Duomo, it has yet those great treasures which the
Duomo cannot boast, the bronze doors of Andrea Pisano and of Ghiberti.
[Illustration: PIAZZA DEL DUOMO]
Over the south doorway there was placed in the end of the sixteenth
century a group by Vincenzo Danti, said to be his best work, the
Beheading of St. John Baptist; and under are the gates of Andrea Pisano
carved in twenty bronze panels with the story of St. John and certain
virtues: and around the gate Ghiberti has twined an exquisite pattern of
leaves and fruits and birds, it is strange to find Ghiberti's work
thus completing that of Andrea Pisano, who, as it is said, had Giotto to
help him, till we understand that originally these southern gates stood
where now are the "Gates of Paradise" before the Duomo. Standing there
as they used to do before Ghiberti moved them, they won for Andrea not
only the admiration of the people, but the freedom of the city. To-day
we come to them with the praise of Ghiberti ringing in our ears, so that
in our hurry to see everything we almost pass them by; but in their
simpler, and, as some may think, more sincere way, they are as lovely as
anything Ghiberti ever did, and in comparing them with the great gates
that supplanted them, it may be well to remind ourselves that each has
its merit in its own fashion. If the doors of Andrea won the praise of
the whole city, it was with an ever-growing excitement that Florence
proclaimed a public competition, open to all the sculptors of Italy, for
the work that remained, those two doors on the north and east. Ghiberti,
at that time in Rimini at the court of Carlo Malatesta, at the entreaty
of his father returned to Florence, and was one of the two artists out
of the thirty-four who competed, to be chosen for the task: the other
was Filippo Brunellesco. You may see the two panels they made in the
Bargello side by side on the wall. The subject is the Sacrifice of
Isaac, and Ghiberti, with the real instinct of the sculptor, has
altogether outstripped Brunellesco, not only in the harmony of his
composition, but in the simplicity of his intention. Brunellesco seems
to have understood this, and, perhaps liking the lad who was but
twenty-two years old, withdrew from the contest. However this may be,
Ghiberti began the work at once, and finished the door on the north side
of the Baptistery in ten years. There, amid a framework of exquisite
foliage, leaves, birds, and all kinds of life, he has set the gospel
story in twenty panels, beginning with the Annunciation and ending with
the Pentecost; and around the gate he has set the four Evangelists and
the doctors of the Church and the prophets. Above you may see the group
of a pupil of Verrocchio, the Preaching of St. John.
In looking on these beautiful and serene works, we may already notice
an advance on the work of Andrea Pisano in a certain ease and harmony, a
richness and variety, that were beyond the older master. Ghiberti has
already begun to change with his genius the form that has come down to
him, to expand it, to break down its limitations so that he may express
himself, may show us the very visions he has seen. And the success of
these gates with the people certainly confirmed him in the way he was
going. In the third door, that facing the Duomo, which Michelangelo has
said was worthy to be the gate of Paradise, it is really a new art we
come upon, the subtle rhythms and perspectives of a sort of pictorial
sculpture, that allows him to carve here in such low relief that it is
scarcely more than painting, there in the old manner, the old manner but
changed, full of a sort of exuberance which here at any rate is beauty.
The ten panels which Ghiberti thus made in his own way are subjects from
the Old Testament: the Creation of Adam and Eve, the story of Cain and
Abel, of Noah, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph, of
Moses on Sinai, of Joshua before Jericho, of David and Goliath, of
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. At his death in 1455 they were
unfinished, and a host of sculptors, including Brunellesco and Paolo
Uccello, are said to have handled the work, Antonio del Pollajuolo being
credited with the quail in the lower frame. Over the door stands the
beautiful work of Sansovino, the Baptism of Christ.
It is with a certain sense of curiosity that one steps down into the old
church; for in spite of every sort of witness it has the air of some
ancient temple: nor do the beautiful antique columns which support the
triforium undeceive us. For long enough now the mosaics of the vault
have been hidden by the scaffolding of the restorers; but the beautiful
thirteenth-century floor of white and black marble, in the midst of
which the font once stood, is still undamaged. The font, which is
possibly a work of the Pisani, is on one side, set there, as it is said,
because of old the roof of the church was open, and many a winter
christening spoiled by rain.[86] It was not, however, till 1571 that
the old font, surrounded by its small basins, one of which Dante broke
in saving a man from drowning there, was removed from the church by
Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, for the christening of his son.
Certain vestiges of the oldest church remain: you may see a sarcophagus,
one of those which, before Arnolfo covered the church with marble, stood
without and held the ashes of some of the greater families. But the most
beautiful thing here is the tomb that Donatello made for Baldassare
Cossa, pirate, condottiere, and anti-pope, who, deposed by the Council
of Constance (1414), came to Florence, and, as ever, was kindly received
by the people. It stands beside the north door. On a marble couch
supported by lions, the gilt bronze statue of this prince of
adventurers, who grasped the very chair of St. Peter as booty, lies, his
brow still troubled, his mouth set firm as though plotting new conquests
even in the grave. Below, on the tomb itself, two winged _angiolini_
hold the great scroll on which we read the name of the dead man,
Johannes Quondam Papa XXIII: to which inscription Martin V, Cossa's
successful rival at Constance, is said to have taken exception; but the
Medici who had built the tomb answered in Pilate's words to the
Pharisees, "What I have written, I have written." The three marble
figures in niches at the base may be by Michelozzo, who worked with
Donatello, or possibly by Pagano di Lapo, as the Madonna above the tomb
almost certainly is.
Coming up once more into the Piazza from that mysterious dim church, dim
with the centuries of the history of the city, you come upon two
porphyry columns beside the eastern door. They are the gift of Pisa[87]
when her ships returned from the Balearic Islands to Florence, who had
defended their city from the Lucchesi. The column with the branch of
olive in bronze upon it to the north of the Baptistery reminds us of the
miracle performed by the body of S. Zenobio in 490. Borne to burial in
S. Reparata, the bier is said to have touched a dead olive tree standing
on this spot, which immediately put forth leaves: the column
commemorates this miracle. So in Florence they remind us of the gods.
In turning now to the Duomo we come to one of the great buildings of the
world. Standing on the site of the old church of S. Salvatore, of S.
Reparata, it is a building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
begun in 1298 from the designs of Arnolfo; and it is dedicated to S.
Maria del Fiore. Coming to us without the wonderful romantic interest,
the mysticism and exaltation of such a church as Notre Dame d'Amiens,
without the more resolute and heroic appeal of such a stronghold as the
Cathedral of Durham, it is more human than either, the work of a man
who, as it were, would thank God that he was alive and glad in the
world. And it will never bring us delight if we ask of it all the
consummate mystery, awe, and magic of the great Gothic churches of the
North. The Tuscans certainly have never understood the Christian
religion as we have contrived to do in Northern Europe. It came to them
really as a sort of divine explanation of a paganism which entranced but
bewildered them. Behind it lay the Roman Empire; and its temples became
their churches, its halls of justice their cathedrals, its tongue the
only language understood of the gods. It is unthinkable that a people
who were already in the twelfth century the possessors of a marvellous
decadent art in the painting of the Byzantine school, who, finding again
the statues of the gods, created in the thirteenth century a new art of
painting, a Christian art that was the child of imperial Rome as well as
of the Christian Church, who re-established sculpture and produced the
only sculptor of the first rank in the modern world, should have failed
altogether in architecture. Yet everywhere we may hear it said that the
Italian churches, spoken of with scorn by those who remember the
strange, subtle exaltation of Amiens, the extraordinary intricate
splendour of such a church as the Cathedral of Toledo, are mere barns.
But it is not so. As Italian painting is a profound and natural
development from Greek and Roman art, certainly influenced by life, but
in no doubt of its parentage; so are the Italian churches a very
beautiful and subtle development of pagan architecture, influenced by
life not less profoundly than painting has been, but certainly as sure
of their parentage, and, as we shall see, not less assured of their
intention. Just as painting, as soon as may be, becomes human, becomes
pagan in Signorelli and Botticelli, and yet contrives to remain true to
its new gods, so architecture as soon as it is sure of itself moves with
joy, with endless delight and thanksgiving, towards that goal of the old
builders: in such a church as S. Maria della Consolazione outside Todi,
for instance,--in such a church as S. Pietro might have been,--and that
it is not so, we may remind ourselves, is the fault of that return to
barbarism and superstition which Luther led in the North.
What then, we may ask ourselves, were the aim and desire of the Italian
builders, which it seems have escaped us for so long? If we turn to the
builders of antiquity and seek for their intention in what remains to us
of their work, we shall find, I think, that their first aim was before
all things to make the best building they could for a particular
purpose, and to build that once for all. And out of these two intentions
the third must follow; for if a temple, for instance, were both fit and
strong it would be beautiful because the purpose for which it was needed
was noble and beautiful. Now the first necessity of the basilica, for
instance, was space; and the intention of the builder would be to build
so that that space should appear as splendid as possible, and to do this
and to enjoy it would necessitate, above all things, light,--a problem
not so difficult after all in a land like Italy, where the sun is so
faithful and so divine. Taking the necessity, then, of the Italian to be
much the same as that of the Roman builder when he was designing a
basilica,--that is to say, the accommodation of a crowd of people who
are to take part in a common solemnity,--we shall find that the
intention of the Italian in building his churches is exactly that of the
Roman in building his basilica: he desires above all things space and
light, partly because they seem to him necessary for the purpose of the
church, and partly because he thinks them the two most splendid and
majestic things in the world.
Well, he has altogether carried out his intention in half a hundred
churches up and down Italy: consider here in Florence S. Croce, S. Maria
Novella, S. Spirito, and above all the Duomo. Remember his aim was not
the aim of the Gothic builder. He did not wish to impress you with the
awfulness of God, like the builder of Barcelona; or with the mystery of
the Crucifixion, like the builders of Chartres: he wished to provide for
you in his practical Latin way a temple where you might pray, where the
whole city might hear Mass or applaud a preacher. He did this in his own
noble and splendid fashion as well as it could be done. He has never
believed, save when driven mad by the barbarians, in the mysterious
awfulness of our far-away God. He prays as a man should pray, without
self-consciousness and not without self-respect. He is without
sentiment; he believes in largeness, grandeur, splendour, and sincerity;
and he has known the gods for three thousand years.
What, then, we are to look for in entering such a church as S. Maria del
Fiore is, above all, a noble spaciousness and the beauty of just
that.[88]
The splendour and nobility of S. Maria del Fiore from without are
evident, it might seem, to even the most prejudiced observer; but
within, I think, the beauty is perhaps less easily perceived.
One comes through the west doors out of the sunshine of the Piazza into
an immense nave, and the light is that of an olive garden,--yes, just
that sparkling, golden, dancing shadow of a day of spring in an old
olive grove not far from the sea. In this delicate and fragile light the
beauty and spaciousness of the church are softened and simplified. You
do not reason any longer, you accept it at once as a thing complete and
perfect. Complete and perfect--yet surely spoiled a little by the
gallery that dwarfs the arches and seems to introduce a useless detail
into what till then must have been so simple. One soon forgets so small
a thing in the immensity and solemnity of the whole, that seems to come
to one with the assurance of the sky or of the hills, really without an
afterthought. And indeed I find there much of the strange simplicity of
natural things that move us we know not why: the autumn fields of which
Alberti speaks, the far hills at evening, the valleys that in an hour
will make us both glad and sorry, as the sun shines or the clouds gather
or the wind sings on the hills. Not a church to think in as St. Peter's
is, but a place where one may pray, said Pius IX when he first saw S.
Maria del Fiore: and certainly it has that in common with the earth,
that you may be glad in it as well as sorry. It is not a museum of the
arts; it is not a pantheon like Westminster Abbey or S. Croce; it is the
beautiful house where God and man may meet and walk in the shadow.
Yet little though there be to interest the curious, Giovanni Acuto, that
Englishman Sir John Hawkwood of the White Company, one of the first of
the Condottieri, the deliverer of Pisa, "the first real general of
modern times," is buried here. You may see his equestrian portrait by
Paolo Uccello over the north-west doorway in his habit as he lived.
Having fought against the Republic and died in its service, he was
buried here with public honours in 1394. And then in the north aisle you
may see the statue called a portrait of Poggio Bracciolini[89] by
Donatello. Donatello carved a number of statues, of which nine have been
identified, for the Opera del Duomo, three of these are now in the
Cathedral: the Poggio, the so-called Joshua in the south aisle, which
has been said to be a portrait of Gianozzo Manetti; and the St. John
the Evangelist in the eastern part of the nave. The Poggio certainly
belongs to the series: it would be delightful if the cryptic writing on
the borders of the garment were to prove it to be the Job. The St. John
Evangelist is an earlier work than the Poggio; it was begun when
Donatello was twenty-two years old, and, as Lord Balcarres says, "it
challenges comparison with one worthy rival, the Moses of Michelangelo."
It was to have stood on one side of the central door. Something of the
wonder of this work in its own time may be understood if we compare it,
not with the later work of Michelangelo, but with the statues of St.
Mark by Niccolo d'Arezzo, the St. Luke of Nanni di Banco, and the St.
Matthew of Bernardo Ciuffagni, which were to stand beside it and are now
placed in a good light in the nave, while the work of Donatello is
almost invisible in this dark apsidal chapel. Of the other works which
Donatello made for the Opera del Duomo, the David is in the Bargello,
while the Jeremiah, and Habbakuk, the so-called Zuccone, the Abraham,
and St. John Baptist are still on the Campanile.
The octagonal choir screens carved in relief by Baccio Bandinelli, whom
Cellini hated so scornfully because he spoke lightly of Michelangelo,
will not keep you long; but there behind the high altar is an unfinished
Pieta by Michelangelo himself. It is a late work, but in that fallen
Divine Figure just caught in Madonna's arms you may see perhaps the most
beautiful thing in the church, less splendid but more pitiful than the
St. John of Donatello, but certainly not less moving than that severe,
indomitable son of thunder. Above, the dome soars into heaven; that
mighty dome, higher than St. Peter's, the despair of Michelangelo, one
of the beauties of the world. One wanders about the church looking at
the bronze doors of the Sagrestia Nuova, or the terra-cottas of Luca
della Robbia, always to return to that miracle of Brunellesco's. Not far
away in the south aisle you come upon his monument with his portrait in
marble by Buggiano. The indomitable persistence of the face! Is it any
wonder that, impossible as his dream appeared, he had his way with
Florence at last--yes, and with himself too? As you stand at the corner
of Via del Proconsolo, and, looking upward, see that immense dome
soaring into the sky over that church of marble, something of the joy
and confidence and beauty that were immortal in him come to you too from
his work. Like Columbus, he conquered a New World. His schemes, which
the best architects in Europe laughed at, were treated with scorn by the
Consiglio, yet he persuaded them at last. In 1418 he made his designs,
and the people, as now, were called upon to vote. Two years went by, and
nothing was done; then in 1420 he was elected by the Opera to the post
of Provveditore della Cupola, but not alone, for Lorenzo Ghiberti and
Battista d'Antonio were elected with him. Still he persisted, and, as
the Florentines say, by pretending sickness and leaving the work to
Ghiberti, who knew nothing about it and could do nothing without him, in
1421 he won over the Consiglio. He began at once. What his agonies may
have been, what profound difficulties he discovered and conquered, we do
not know, but by 1434, when Eugenius IV was in Florence and the Duomo
was consecrated, his dome was finished, wanting only the lantern and the
ball. These he began in 1437, but died too soon to see, for the lantern
was not finished till 1458, and it was only in 1471 that Verrocchio cast
the bronze ball.[90]
Wandering round to the facade, finished in 1886, it is a careful
imitation of fifteenth-century work we see, saved from the mere routine
of just that, in its design at any rate, by the vote of the people, who,
against the opinion of all the artists in Florence at that time,
insisted on the cornice following the basilical form of the tower,
refusing to endorse the pointed "tricuspidal" design. It is not,
however, in such merely competent work as this that we shall find
ourselves interested, but rather in the beautiful door on the north
just before the transept, over which, in an almond-shaped glory, Madonna
gives her girdle to St. Thomas. Given now to Nanni di Banco, a sculptor
of the end of the fourteenth century, whom Vasari tells us was the pupil
of Donatello, it long passed as the work of Jacopo della Quercia.
Certainly one of the loveliest works of the early Renaissance, it is so
full of life and gracious movement, so natural and so noble, that
everything else in the Cathedral, save the work of Donatello, is
forgotten beside it. Madonna enthroned among the Cherubim in her oval
mandorla, upheld by four puissant fair angels, turns with a gesture most
natural and lovely to St. Thomas, who kneels to her, his drapery in
beautiful folds about him, lifting his hands in prayer. Above, three
angels play on pipes and reeds; while in a corner a great bear gnaws at
the bark of an oak in full leaf.
In turning now to the Campanile, which Giotto began in 1334, on the site
of a chapel of S. Zenobio, we come to the last building of the great
group. Fair and slim as a lily, as light as that, as airy and full of
grace, to my mind at least it lacks a certain stability, so that looking
on it I always fear in my heart lest it should fall. It seems to lack
roots, as it were, yet by no means to want confidence or force. Can it
be that, after all, it would have seemed more secure, more firm and
established, if the spire Giotto designed for it had in truth been
built? The consummate and supreme artist, architect, sculptor, and
painter was not content to design so fair, so undreamed-of a flower as
this, but set himself to make the statues and the reliefs that were
necessary also. And then has he not built as only a painter could have
done, in white and rose and green? He died too soon to see the fairest
of his dreams, and it is really to two other artists--Taddeo Gaddi and
Francesco Talenti--that the actual work, after the first five
storeys--those windows, for instance, that add so much to the beauty of
the tower--is owing.[91]
[Illustration: THE MADONNA DELLA CINTOLA
_By Nanni di Banco. Duomo, Florence_
_Alinari_]
The reliefs that, set some five-and-twenty feet from the ground, are
so difficult to see, are the work of Andrea Pisano, the sculptor of the
south gate of the Baptistery. Born at Pontedera, the pupil of Giovanni
Pisano, this great and lovable artist has been robbed of much that
belongs to him. Vasari tells us--and for long we believed him--that
Giotto helped him to design the gate of the Baptistery; and again, that
Giotto designed these reliefs for Andrea to carve and found. It might
seem impossible to believe that the greatest sculptor then living, fresh
from a great triumph, would have consented to use the design of a
painter, even though he were Giotto. However this may be, the reliefs
really speak for themselves: those on the south side--early Sabianism,
house-building, pottery, training horses, weaving, lawgiving, and
exploration--are certainly by Andrea; while among the rest the Jubal,
the Creation of Man, the Creation of Woman, seem to be his own among the
work of his pupils. It is to quite another hand, however, to Luca della
Robbia, that the Grammar, Poetry, Philosophy, Astrology, and Music must
be given. The genius of Andrea Pisano, at its best in those Baptistery
gates, in the panel of the Baptism of our Lord, for instance, or in
those marvellous works on the facade of the Duomo at Orvieto, so full of
force, vitality, and charm, is, as I think, less fortunate in its
expression when he is concerned with such work as these statues of the
prophets in the niches on the south wall of the Campanile,--if indeed
they be his. Seen as these figures are, beside the large, splendid,
realistic work of Donatello, so wonderfully ugly in the Zuccone, so
pitiless in the Habakkuk, they are quickly forgotten; but indeed
Donatello's work seems to stand alone in the history of sculpture till
the advent of Michelangelo.
I speak of Donatello elsewhere in this book,[92] but you will find one
of his best works among much curious, interesting litter from the Duomo
in the Opera del Duomo, the Cathedral Museum in the old Falconieri
Palace just behind the apse of the Cathedral. A bust of Cosimo Primo
stands over the entrance, and within you find a beautiful head of
Brunellesco by Buggiano. It is, however, in a room on the first floor
that you will find the great organ lofts, one by Donatello and the other
by Luca della Robbia, which I suppose are among the best known works of
art in the world. Made for the Cathedral, these galleries for singers
seem to be imprisoned in a museum.
The beautiful youths of Luca, the children of Donatello, for all their
seeming vigour and joy, sing and dance no more; they are in as evil a
case as the Madonnas of the Uffizi, who, in their golden frames behind
the glass, under the vulgar, indifferent eyes of the multitude, envy
Madonna of the street-corner the love of the lowly. So it is with the
beautiful Cantorie made for God's praise by Donatello and Luca della
Robbia. Before the weary eyes of the sight-seer, the cold eyes of the
scientific critic, in the horrid silence of a museum, amid so much that
is dead, here the headless trunk of some saint, there the battered
fragments of what was once a statue, some shadow has fallen upon them,
and though they keep still the gesture of joy, they are really dead or
sleeping. Is it only sleep? Do they perhaps at night, when all the doors
of their prisons are barred and their gaolers are gone, praise God in
His Holiness, even in such a hell as this? Who knows? They were made for
a world so different, for a time that out of the love of God had seen
arise the very beauty of the world, and were glad therefor. Ah, of how
many beautiful things have we robbed God in our beggary! We have
imprisoned the praise of the artists in the museums that Science may
pass by and sneer; we have arranged the saints in order, and Madonna we
have carefully hidden under the glass, because now we never dream of God
or speak with Him at all. Art is dying, Beauty is become a burden,
Nature a thing for science and not for love. They are become too
precious, the old immortal things; we must hide them away lest they fade
and God take them from us: and because we have hidden them away, and
they are become too precious for life, and we have killed them because
we loved them, we seldom pass by where they are save to satisfy the
same curiosity that leads us to any other charnel-house where the dead
are exposed.
[Illustration: SINGING BOYS FROM THE CANTORIA OF LUCA DELLA ROBBIA
_In Opera del Duomo, Florence_
_Alinari_]
Thus they have stolen away the silver altar of the Baptistery, that
miracle of the fourteenth-century silversmiths, Betto di Geri, Leonardo
di Ser Giovanni, and the rest, that it may be a cause of wonder in a
museum. So a flower looks between the cold pages of a botanist's album,
so a bird sings in his case: for life is to do that for which we were
created, and if that be the praise of God in His sanctuary, to stand
impotently by under the gaze of innumerable unbelievers in a museum is
to die. And truly this is a shame in Italy that so many fair and lovely
things have been torn out of their places to be catalogued in a gallery.
It were a thousand times better that they were allowed to fade quietly
on the walls of the church where they were born. It is a vandalism only
possible to the modern world in which the machines have ground out every
human feeling and left us nothing but a bestial superstition which we
call science, and which threatens to become the worst tyranny of all,
that we should thus herd together, catalogue, describe, arrange, and
gape at every work of art and nature we can lay our hands on. No doubt
it brings in, directly and indirectly, an immense revenue to the country
which can show the most of such death chambers. Often by chance or
mistake one has wandered into a museum--though I confess I never
understood in what relation it stood to the Muses--where your scientist
has collected his scraps and refuse of Nature, things that were
wonderful or beautiful once--birds, butterflies, the marvellous life of
the foetus, and such--but that in his hands have died in order that he
may set them out and number them one by one. Here you will find a leg
that once stood firm enough, there an arm that once for sure held
someone in its embrace: now it is exposed to the horror and curiosity of
mankind. Well, it is the same with the Pictures and the statues. Why,
men have prayed before them, they have heard voices, tears have fallen
where they stood, and they have whispered to us of the beauty and the
love of God. To-day, herded in thousands, chained to the walls of their
huge dungeons, they are just specimens like the dead butterflies which
we pay to see, which some scientific critic without any care for beauty
will measure and describe in the inarticulate and bestial syllables of
some degenerate dialect he thinks is language. Our unfortunate gods! How
much more fortunate were they of the older world: Zeus, whose statue of
ivory and gold mysteriously was stolen away; Aphrodite of Cnidus, which
someone hid for love; and you, O Victory of Samothrace, that being
headless you cannot see the curious, peeping, indifferent multitude. Was
it for this the Greeks blinded their statues, lest the gods being in
exile, they might be shamed by the indifference of men? And now that our
gods too are exiled, who will destroy their images and their pictures
crowded in the museums, that the foolish may not speak of them we have
loved, nor the scientist say, such and such they were, in stature of
such a splendour, carved by such a man, the friend of the friend of a
fool? But our gods are dead.
FOOTNOTES:
[86] I give this story for what it is worth. So far as I know, however,
the font was placed in its present position in 1658, more than a hundred
years after the church was roofed in. It may, however, have occupied
another position before that.
[87] See p. 82.
[88] To compare an Italian church with a French cathedral would be to
compare two altogether different things, a fault in logic, and in
criticism the unforgivable sin; for a work of art must be judged in its
own category, and praised only for its own qualities, and blamed only
for its own defects.
[89] Cf. _Donatello_, by Lord Balcarres: Duckworth, 1903, p. 12.
[90] Not the ball we see now, which was struck by lightning and hurled
into the street in 1492. Verrocchio's was rather smaller than the
present ball.
[91] See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _History of Painting in Italy_: London,
1903, p. 116, note 4.
[92] See pp. 283-289.
XIII. FLORENCE
OR SAN MICHELE
Or San Michele, S. Michele in Orto, was till the middle of the
thirteenth century a little church belonging, as it is said, to the
Cistercians, who certainly claimed the patronage of it. About 1260,
however, the Commune of Florence began to dispute this right with the
Order, and at last pulled down the church, building there, thirty years
later, a loggia of brick, after a design by Arnolfo di Cambio, according
to Vasari, who tells us that it was covered with a simple roof and that
the piers were of brick. This loggia was the corn-market of the city, a
shelter, too, for the contadini who came to show their samples and to
talk, gossip, and chaffer, as they do everywhere in Italy even to-day.
And, as was the custom, they made a shrine of Madonna there, hanging on
one of the brick pillars a picture (_tavola_) of Madonna that, as it is
said, was the work of Ugolino da Siena. This shrine soon became famous
for the miracles Madonna wrought there. "On July 3rd," says Giovanni
Villani, writing of the year 1292, "great and manifest miracles began to
be shown forth in the city of Florence by a figure of Saint Mary which
was painted on a pilaster of the loggia of S. Michele d'Orto, where the
corn was sold: the sick were healed, the deformed were made straight,
and those who were possessed of devils were delivered from them in
numbers." In the previous year the Compagnia di Or San Michele, called
the Laudesi, had been established, and this Company, putting the fame of
the miracles to good use, grew rich, much to the disgust of the Friars
Minor and the Dominicans. "The Preaching Friars and the Friars Minor
likewise," says Villani, "through envy or some other cause, would put no
faith in that image, whereby they fell into great infamy with the
people. But so greatly grew the fame of these miracles and the merits of
Our Lady, that pilgrims flocked thither from all Tuscany for her festas,
bringing divers waxen images because of the wonders, so that a great
part of the loggia in front of and around Madonna was filled."
Cavalcanti, too, speaks of Madonna di Or San Michele, likening her to
his Lady, in a sonnet which scandalised Guido Orlandi--
"Guido an image of my Lady dwells
At S. Michele in Orto, consecrate
And duly worshipped. Fair in holy state
She listens to the tale each sinner tells:
And among them that come to her, who ails
The most, on him the most doth blessing wait.
She bids the fiend men's bodies abdicate;
Over the curse of blindness she prevails,
And heals sick languors in the public squares.
A multitude adores her reverently:
Before her face two burning tapers are;
Her voice is uttered upon paths afar.
Yet through the Lesser Brethren's jealousy
She is named idol; not being one of theirs."[93]
The feuds of Neri and Bianchi at this time distracted Florence; at the
head of the Blacks, though somewhat their enemy, was Corso Donati; at
the head of the Whites were the Cerchi and the Cavalcanti. After the
horrid disaster of May Day, when the Carraja bridge, crowded with folk
come to see that strange carnival of the other world, fell and drowned
so many, there had been much fighting in the city, in which Corso Donati
stood neutral, for he was ill with gout, and angered with the Black
party. Robbed thus of their great leader, the Neri were beaten day and
night by the Cerchi, who with the aid of the Cavalcanti and Gherardini
rode through the city as far as the Mercato Vecchio and Or San
Michele, and from there to S. Giovanni, and certainly they would have
taken the city with the help of the Ghibellines, who were come to their
aid, if one Ser Neri Abati, clerk and prior of S. Piero Scheraggio, a
dissolute and worldly man, and a rebel and enemy against his friends,
had not set fire to the houses of his family in Or San Michele, and to
the Florentine Calimala near to the entrance of Mercato Vecchio. This
fire did enormous damage, as Villani tells us, destroying not only the
houses of the Abati, the Macci, the Amieri, the Toschi, the Cipriani,
Lamberti, Bachini, Buiamonti, Cavalcanti, and all Calimala, together
with all the street of Porta S. Maria, as far as Ponte Vecchio and the
great towers and houses there, but also Or San Michele itself. In this
disaster who knows what became of the miracle picture of Madonna? For
years the loggia lay in ruins, till peace being established in 1336, the
Commune decided to rebuild it, giving the work into the hands of the
Guild of Silk, which, according to Vasari, employed Taddeo Gaddi as
architect. The first stone of the new building was laid on July 29,
1337, the old brick piers, according to Villani, being removed, and
pillars of stone set up in their stead.[94] In 1339 the Guild of Silk
won leave from the Commune to build in each of these stone piers a
niche, which later should hold a statue; while above the loggia was
built a great storehouse for corn, as well as an official residence for
the officers of the market.
[Illustration: OR SAN MICHELE]
Nine years later there followed the great plague, of which Boccaccio has
left us so terrible an impression. In this dreadful calamity, which
swept away nearly two-thirds of the population, the Compagnia di Or San
Michele grew very wealthy, many citizens leaving it all their
possessions. No doubt very much was distributed in charity, for the
Company had become the greatest charitable society in the city, but by
1347, so great was its wealth, that it resolved to build the most
splendid shrine in Italy for the Madonna di Or San Michele. The loggia
was not yet finished, and after the desolation of the plague the Commune
was probably too embarrassed to think of completing it immediately. Some
trouble certainly seems to have arisen between the Guild of Silk, who
had charge of the fabric, and the Company, who were only concerned for
their shrine, the latter, in spite of their wealth, refusing in any way
to assist in finishing the building. Whether from this cause or another,
a certain suspicion of the Company began to rise in Florence, and Matteo
Villani roundly accuses the Capitani della Compagnia of peculation and
corruption. However this may be, by 1355 Andrea Orcagna had been chosen
to build the shrine of Madonna, which is still to-day one of the wonders
of the city. It seems to have been in a sort of recognition of the
splendour and beauty of Orcagna's work that the Signoria, between 1355
and 1359, removed the corn-market elsewhere, and thus gave up the whole
loggia to the shrine of Madonna. Thus the loggia became a church, the
great popular church of Florence, built by the people for their own use,
in what had once been the corn-market of the city. The architect of this
strange and secular building, more like a palace than a church, is
unknown. Vasari, as I have said, speaks of Taddeo Gaddi; others again
have thought it the work of Orcagna himself; while Francesco Talenti and
his son Simone are said to have worked on it. The question is to a large
extent a matter of indifference. What is important here is the fact that
it is to the greater Guilds and to the Parte Guelfa that we owe the
church itself--that is to say, to the merchants and trades of the
city--while the beautiful shrine within is due to a secular Company
consisting of some of the greatest citizens, and to a large extent
opposed to the regular Orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis. It is,
then, as the great church of the _popolo_ that we have to consider Or
San Michele. Here, because their greatest and most splendid deed, the
expulsion of the Duke of Athens, had been achieved on St. Anne's Day,
July 26, 1343, they built a chapel to St. Anne, and around the church
on every anniversary, above the fourteen niches which hold the statues
presented by the seven greater arts, by six of the fourteen lesser arts,
and by the Magistrato della Mercanzia, that magistracy which governed
all the guilds,[95] their banners are set up even to this day.
The great Guild of Wool was already responsible for the Duomo, and it
was for this reason, it might seem, that to the Guild of Silk was given
the care of Or San Michele; not altogether without jealousy, it might
seem, for when they had asked leave to place the image of their saint in
one of the niches there, all the other guilds had demanded a like
favour, thus in an especial manner marking the place as the Church of
the Merchants, the true _popolo_; the great popular shrine of Florence,
therefore, since Florence was a city of merchants.
It is on the south side, in the niche nearest to Via Calzaioli, that the
Guild of Silk set its statue of St. John the Evangelist by Baccio da
Montelupo; next to it is an empty niche belonging to the Guild of
Apothecaries and Doctors. Here a Madonna and Child by Simone Ferrucci
once stood, but, owing to a rumour current in the seventeenth century,
that Madonna sometimes moved her eyes, the statue was placed inside the
church, so that the crowd which always collected to see this miracle
might no longer stop the way. In the next niche the Furriers placed a
statue of St. James by Nanni di Banco, and beyond, the Guild of Linen
set up a statue of St. Mark by Donatello. On the west, in the first
niche, is S. Lo, the patron of the Furriers, carved by Nanni di Banco,
and beyond, St. Stephen, set there by the Guild of Wool and carved by
Ghiberti; while next to him stands St. Matthew, set there by the Bankers
and carved by Ghiberti, and cast in 1422 by Michelozzo. On the north,
Donatello's statue of St. George used to fill the first niche, somewhat
shallower than the rest owing to a staircase inside the church, but it
was removed to the Bargello for fear of the weather: the beautiful
relief, also by Donatello, below the copy, is still in its place, under
the St. George of the Armourers. The four statues in the next niche were
placed there by the Guilds of Sculptors, Masons, Smiths, and
Bricklayers; they are the work of Nanni di Banco. Further, is the St.
Philip of the Shoemakers, again by Nanni di Banco, and the St. Peter of
the Butchers, by Donatello. On the east stands St. Luke, placed there by
the Notaries, and carved by Giovanni da Bologna; the great bronze group
of Christ and St. Thomas, the gift of the Magistrato della Mercanzia,
the governor of all the guilds; and the St. John Baptist, the gift of
the Calimala, and the work of Ghiberti: this last was the first statue
placed here--in 1414.
Nanni di Banco, that delightful sculptor of the Madonna della Cintola of
the Duomo, has thus four works here at Or San Michele--the S. Lo, the
group on the north side, the St. Philip, and the St. James. The St.
Philip, and the group which represents the four masons who, being
Christians, refused to build a Pagan temple, and were martyred long and
long ago, have little merit; and though the S. Lo has a certain force,
and the relief below it a wonderful simplicity, they lack altogether the
charm of the Madonna della Cintola.
Ghiberti has three works here--the St. Stephen, the St. Matthew, and the
St. John Baptist, the only sculptures of the kind he ever produced. Full
of energy though the St. Stephen may be, it has about it a sort of
divine modesty that lends it a charm altogether beyond anything we may
find in the St. John Baptist, a figure full of character, nevertheless.
It is, however, in the St. Matthew that we see Ghiberti at his best
perhaps, in a figure for once full of strength, and altogether splendid.
Donatello, too, had three figures here beside the relief beneath the St.
George. The St. Peter on the north side is probably the earliest work
done for Or San Michele, and is certainly the poorest. The St. Mark on
the south side is, however, a fine example of his earlier manner, with
a certain largeness, strength, and liberty about it a frankness, too, in
expression so that he has made us believe in the goodness of the
Apostle, which, as Michelangelo is reported to have said must have
vouched for the truth of what he taught.
The masterpiece, certainly, of these Tuscan sculptures is the bronze
group of Christ and St. Thomas by Verrocchio, which I have so loved. All
the work of this master is full of eagerness and force: something of
that strangeness without which there is no excellent beauty, that later
was so characteristic of the work of his pupil Leonardo, you will find
in this work also, a subtlety sometimes a little elaborate, that, as I
think is but a sort of over-eagerness to express all he has thought to
say. Donatello prepared this niche for him at the end of his life it was
almost his last work; and Verrocchio, after many years of labour, had
thought to place here really his masterpiece, in the church that, more
than any other, belonged to the people of the city, that middle class,
as we might say, from which he sprang. How perfectly, and yet not
altogether without affectation, he has composed that difficult scene, so
that St. Thomas stands a little out of the setting, and places his
finger--yes, almost as a child might do--in the wounded side of Jesus,
who stands majestically fair before him. It is true the drapery is
complicated, a little heavy even, but with what care he has remembered
everything! Consider the grace of those beautiful folds, the beauty of
the hair, the loveliness of the hands: and then, as Burckhardt reminds
us, as a piece of work founded and cast in bronze, it is almost
inimitable.
* * * * *
Within, the church is strange and splendid. It is as though one stood in
a loggia in deep shadow, at the end of the day in the last gold of the
sunset; and there, amid the ancient fading glory of the frescoes, is the
wonderful shrine that Orcagna made for the picture of Madonna, who had
turned the Granary of S. Michele into the Church of the People. Finished
in 1359, this tabernacle is the loveliest work of the kind in Italy, an
unique masterpiece, and perhaps the most beautiful example of the
Italian Gothic manner in existence. Orcagna seems to have been at work
on it for some ten years, covering it with decoration and carving those
reliefs of the Life of the Virgin in that grand style which he had found
in Giotto and learned perhaps from Andrea Pisano. To describe the shrine
itself would be impossible and useless. It is like some miniature and
magic church, a casquet made splendid not with jewels but with beauty,
where the miracle picture of Madonna--not that ancient and wonderful
picture by Ugolino da Siena, but a work, it is said, of Bernardo
Daddi--glows under the lamps. On the west side, in front of the altar,
Orcagna has carved the Marriage of the Virgin and the Annunciation; on
the south, the Nativity of Our Lord and the Adoration of the Magi; on
the north, the Presentation of the Virgin and her Birth; and on the
east, the Purification and the Annunciation of her Death. And above
these last, in a panel of great beauty, he has carved the Death of the
Virgin, where, among the Apostles crowding round her bed, while St.
Thomas--or is it St. John?--passionately kisses her feet, Jesus Himself
stands with her soul in His arms, that little Child which had first
entered the kingdom of heaven. Above this sorrowful scene you may see
the Glory and Assumption of Our Lady in a mandorla glory, upheld by six
angels, while St. Thomas kneels below, stretching out his arms, assured
at last. It is, as it were, the prototype of the Madonna della Cintola,
that exquisite and lovely relief which Nanni di Banco carved later for
the north gate of the Duomo, only here all the sweetness that Nanni has
seen and expressed seems to be lost in a sort of solemnity and strength.
Between these panels Orcagna has set the virtues Theological and
Cardinal, little figures of much force and beauty; and at the corners he
has carved angels bearing palms and lilies. Some who have seen this
shrine so loaded with ornament, so like some difficult and complicated
canticle, have gone away disappointed. Remembering the strength and
significance of Orcagna's work in fresco, they have perhaps looked for
some more simple thing, and indeed for a less rhetorical praise. Yet I
think it is rather the fault of Or San Michele than of the shrine
itself, that it does not certainly vanquish any possible objection and
assure us at once of its perfection and beauty. If it could be seen in
the beautiful spacious transept of S. Croce, or even in Santo Spirito
across Arno, that sense as of something elaborate and complicated would
perhaps not be felt; but here in Or San Michele one seems to have come
upon a priceless treasure in a cave.
FOOTNOTES:
[93] Rossetti's translation of Guido Cavalcanti's Sonnet written in
exile.
[94] Franceschini, however, in his record (_L'Oratorio di S. Michele in
Orto in Firenze_: P. Franceschini: Firenze, 1892), says that the
Tabernacle of Orcagna was built round the old brick pillars. It may well
be that the pillar on which the Madonna was painted or was hung (for it
is not clear whether the painting was a panel or a wall painting) was
saved while the rest was destroyed.
[95] The Parte Guelfa originally set up their statue of St. Louis of
Toulouse, carved by Donatello, in the place where now stands the statue
of Magistrates, the group of Christ and St. Thomas made by Verrocchio.
Eight of the fourteen lesser arts are not represented--namely, the
Bakers, the Carpenters, the Leatherworkers, the Saddlers, the
Innkeepers, the Vintners, and the Cheesemongers.
XIV. FLORENCE
PALAZZO RICCARDI, AND THE RISE OF THE MEDICI
It is in the Ciompi rising of 1278, that social revolution in which all
Florence seems for once to have been interested, that we catch really
for the first time the name of Medici. In 1352, Salvestro de'
Medici--_non gia Salvestro ma Salvator mundi_, Franco Sacchetti calls
him--had led the Florentines against the Archbishop of Milan, and in
1370 he had been chosen Gonfaloniere of Justice. He was filling this
office against the wishes of the Parte Guelfa, when, not without his
connivance, the Ciompi riot broke out against the magnates, whose power
he had sought to break by means of the Ordinances of Justice.
The result of that bloody struggle was really a victory for the Arti
Maggiori, the Arti Minori being bribed with promises and thus separated
from the populace, who had sided with the Parte Guelfa, which was beaten
for ever. The oligarchy was saved, but the struggle between rich and
poor was by no means over. Soon the older Guilds seem to lose grip, and
we see instead great trusts arising, associations of wealth, and above
all, Banking Companies. What was wanting in Florence, as elsewhere in
Italy, was some legitimate authority that might have guided the people
in their desire for power. As it was, the city became divided into
classes, each anxious to gain power at the expense of others, the result
being an oligarchy, continually a prey to schism, merely waiting for a
despot to declare himself.
Seemingly in the hands of a group of families without any legitimate
right, the government was really in the power of one among them, and
thus of one man, the head of it, Maso degli Albizzi. Brilliant, clever,
and fascinating, Maso ruled with a certain strength and generosity; but
Florence was a city of merchants, and between the Scylla of oligarchy
and the Charybdis of despotism, was really driven into the latter by her
economic position. The Duke Gian Galeazzo of Milan closed the trade
routes, and Florence was compelled to fight for her life. Pisa, too, had
to be overcome, again for economic reasons, and in 1414 a long war with
King Ladislaus brought Cortona into the power of the Republic; but all
these wars cost money, and the taxes pressed on the poor, who obtained
no advantage from them. Maso's son Rinaldo, who succeeded him before the
wars were over, had less ability than his father, and was certainly less
beloved; he seems, however, to have been upright and incorruptible. He
was, nevertheless, capable of mistakes, and, while engaged in war with
Milan, attempted to seize Lucca. At length, when the grumbling of the
poor had already gone too far, he readjusted the taxes, and thus
alienated the rich also. His own party was divided, he himself heading
the more conservative party, which refused to listen to the clamour of
the wealthier families for a part in the government, while Niccolo
Uzzano, with the more liberal party, would have admitted them. Among
these wealthy families excluded from the government was the Medici.
The Medici had been banished after the Ciompi riots, but a branch of the
family had returned, and was already established in the affections of
the people. To the head of this branch, Giovanni de' Medici, all the
enemies of Rinaldo looked with hope. This extraordinary man, who
certainly was the founder of the greatness of his house, had long since
understood that in such an oligarchy as that of Florence, the wealthiest
must win. He had busied himself to establish his name and credit
everywhere in Europe. He refused to take any open and active part in
the fight that he foresaw must, with patience decide in his favour, but
on his death, Cosimo, his elder son, no longer put off the crisis. He
opposed Rinaldo for the control of the Signoria, and was beaten, in
spite of every sort of bribery and corruption. It fell out that Bernardo
Guadagni, whom Rinaldo had made his creature, was chosen Gonfaloniere
for the months of September and October 1433. Rinaldo at once went to
him and persuaded him that the greatest danger to the State was the
wealth of Cosimo, who had inherited vast riches, including some sixteen
banks in various European cities, from his father. He encouraged him to
arrest Cosimo, and to have no fear, for his friends would be ready to
help him, if necessary, with arms. Cosimo was cited to appear before the
Balia, which, much against the wishes of his friends, he did. "Many,"
says Machiavelli, "would have him banished many executed, and many were
silent, either out of compassion for him or apprehension of other
people, so that nothing was concluded." Cosimo, however, was in the
meantime a prisoner in the Palazzo Vecchio in the Alberghettino
tower[96] in the custody of Federigo Malavolti. He could hear all that
was said, and the clatter of arms and the tumult made him fear for his
life, and especially he was afraid of assassination or poison, so that
for four days he ate nothing. This was told to Federigo, who, according
to Machiavelli, addressed him in these words: "You are afraid of being
poisoned, and you kill yourself with hunger. You have but small esteem
of me to believe I would have a hand in any such wickedness; I do not
think your life is in danger, your friends are too numerous, both within
the Palace and without; if there be any such designs, assure yourself
they must take new measures, I will never be their instrument, nor
imbrue my hands in the blood of any man, much less of yours, since you
have never offended me. Courage, then, feed as you did formerly, and
keep yourself alive for the good of your country and friends, and
that you may eat with more confidence, I myself will be your taster."
[Illustration: THE FLOWER MARKET, FLORENCE]
Now Malavolti one night brought home with him to supper a servant of the
Gonfaloniere's called Fargannaccio, a pleasant man and very good
company. Supper over, Cosimo, who knew Fargannaccio of old, made a sign
to Malavolti that he should leave them together. When they were alone,
Cosimo gave him an order to the master of the Ospedale di S. Maria Nuova
for 1100 ducats, a thousand for the Gonfaloniere and the odd hundred for
himself. On receipt of this sum Bernardo became more moderate, and
Cosimo was exiled to Padua. "Wherever he passed," says Machiavelli, "he
was honourably received, visited publicly by the Venetians, and treated
by them more like a sovereign than a prisoner." Truly the oligarchy had
at last produced a despot.
The reception of Cosimo abroad seems to have frightened the Florentines,
for within a year a Balia was chosen friendly disposed towards him. Upon
this Rinaldo and his friends took arms and proceeded to the Palazzo
Vecchio, the Senate ordering the gates to be closed against them;
protesting at the same time that they had no thought of recalling
Cosimo. At this time Eugenius IV, hunted out of Rome by the populace,
was living at the convent of S. Maria Novella. Perhaps fearing the
tumult, perhaps bribed or persuaded by Cosimo's friends, he sent
Giovanni Vitelleschi to desire Rinaldo to speak with him. Rinaldo
agreed, and marched with all his company to S. Maria Novella. They
appear to have remained in conference all night, and at dawn Rinaldo
dismissed his men. What passed between them no man knows, but early in
October 1434 the recall of Cosimo was decreed and Rinaldo with his son
went into exile. Cosimo was received, Machiavelli tells us, "with no
less ostentation and triumph than if he had obtained some extraordinary
victory; so great was the concourse of people, and so high the
demonstration of their joy, that by an unanimous and universal
concurrence he was saluted as the Benefactor of the people and the
Father of his country." Thus the Medici established themselves in
Florence. Practically Prince of the Commune, though never so in name,
Cosimo set himself to consolidate his power by a judicious munificence
and every political contrivance known to him. Thus, while he enriched
the city with such buildings as his palace in Via Larga, the Convent of
S. Marco, the Church of S. Lorenzo, he helped Francesco Sforza to
establish himself as tyrant of Milan, and in the affairs of Florence
always preferred war to peace, because he knew that, beggared, the
Florentines must come to him. Yet it was in his day that Florence became
the artistic and intellectual capital of Italy. Under his patronage and
enthusiasm the Renaissance for the first time seems to have become sure
of itself. The humanists, the architects, the sculptors, the painters
are, as it were, seized with a fury of creation; they discover new
forms, and express themselves completely, with beauty and truth. For a
moment realism and beauty have kissed one another: for reality is not
enough, as Alberti will find some day, it is necessary to find and to
express the beauty there also. It was an age that was learning to enjoy
itself. The world and the beauty of the world laid bare, partly by the
study of the ancients, partly by observation, really almost a new
faculty, were enough; that conscious paganism which later, but for the
great disaster, might have emancipated the world, had not yet discovered
itself; in Cosimo's day art was still an expression of joy, impetuous,
unsophisticated, simple. In this world of brief sunshine Cosimo appears
to us very delightfully as the protector of the arts, the sincere lover
of learning, the companion of scholars. To him in some sort the world
owes the revival of the Platonic Philosophy, for the Greek Argyropolis
lived in his house, and taught Piero his son and Lorenzo his grandson
the language of the Gods. When Gemisthus Pletho came to Florence, Cosimo
made one of his audience, and was so moved by his eloquence that he
determined to establish a Greek academy in the city on the first
opportunity. He was the dear friend of Marsilio Ficino, and he founded
the Libraries of S. Marco and of the Badia at Fiesole. The great
humanists of his time, Leonardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio and
Niccolo de' Niccoli were his companions, and in his palace in Via Larga,
and in his villas at Careggi and Poggio a Caiano, he gathered the most
precious treasures, rare manuscripts, and books, not a few antique
marbles and jewels, coins and medals and statues, while he filled the
courts and rooms, built and decorated by the greatest artists of his
time, with the statues of Donatello, the pictures of Paolo Uccello,
Andrea del Castagno, Fra Filippo Lippo, and Benozzo Gozzoli. Cosimo,
says Gibbon, "was the father of a line of princes whose name and age are
almost synonymous with the restoration of learning; his credit was
ennobled with fame; his riches were dedicated to the service of mankind;
he corresponded at once with Cairo and London, and a cargo of Indian
spices and Greek books were often imported in the same vessel." While
Burckhardt, the most discerning critic of the civilisation of the
Renaissance, tells us that "to him belongs the special glory of
recognising in the Platonic philosophy the fairest flower of the ancient
world of thought, and of inspiring his friends with the same belief."
Among those who had loved Cosimo so well as to go with him into exile,
had been Michelozzo Michelozzi, the architect and sculptor, the pupil of
Donatello. Already, Vasari tells us in 1430, Cosimo had caused
Michelozzo to prepare a model for a palace at the corner of Via Larga
beside S. Giovannino, for one already made by Brunellesco appeared to
him too sumptuous and magnificent, and quite as likely to awaken envy
among his fellow-citizens as to contribute to the grandeur and ornament
of the city, and to his own convenience. The palace which we see to-day
at the corner of Via Cavour and Via Gori and call Palazzo Riccardi, was
perhaps not begun till 1444, and is certainly somewhat changed and
enlarged since Michelozzo built it for Cosimo Vecchio. The windows on
the ground floor, for instance, were added by Michelangelo and the
Riccardi family, whose name it now bears, and who bought it in 1695 from
Ferdinando II, enlarged it in 1715.
In 1417, Cosimo, after his marriage with Contessina de' Bardi, had
bought and Michelozzo had rebuilt for him the Villa Careggi, where, in
the Albizzi conspiracy, he had retired, he said, "to escape from the
contests and divisions in the city." It was here that he lay dying when
he wrote to Marsilio Ficino to come to him. "Come to us, Marsilio, as
soon as you are able. Bring with you your translation of Plato _De Summo
Bono_, for I desire nothing so much as to learn the road to the greatest
happiness": and there too Lorenzo his grandson turned his face to the
wall, when Savonarola came to him in his last hours and bade him give
back liberty to Florence.
It is, however, the palace in the Via Larga that recalls to us most
vividly the lives and times of these first Medici, Cosimo Vecchio, Piero
the gouty, Lorenzo il Magnifico. Michelozzo, Vasari tells us, deserves
infinite credit for this building, since it was the first palace built
in Florence after modern rules in which the rooms were arranged with a
view to convenience and beauty. "The cellars are excavated," he
explains, "to more than half their depth under the ground, having four
braccia beneath the earth, that is with three above, on account of the
lights. There are, besides buttresses, store-rooms, etc., on the same
level. In the first or ground floor are two court-yards with magnificent
loggia, on which open various saloons, bed-chambers, ante-rooms,
writing-rooms, offices, baths, kitchens, and reservoirs, with staircases
both for private and public use, all most conveniently arranged. In the
upper floors are dwellings and apartments for a family, with all those
conveniences proper, not only to that of a private citizen, as Cosimo
then was, but sufficient also for the most powerful and magnificient
sovereign. Accordingly, in our time, kings, emperors, popes, and
whatever of most illustrious Europe can boast in the way of princes,
have been most commodiously lodged in this palace, to the infinite
credit of the magnificent Cosimo, as well as that of Michelozzo's
eminent skill in architecture."
It is not, however, the splendour of the palace, fine as it is, or the
memory of Cosimo even, that brings us to that beautiful house to-day,
but the work of Donatello in the courtyard, those marble medallions
copied from eight antique gems, and the little chapel on the second
floor, almost an afterthought you might think, since in a place full of
splendidly proportioned rooms, it is so cramped and cornered under the
staircase, where Benozzo Gozzoli has painted in fresco quite round the
walls, the Journey of the Three Kings, in which Cosimo himself, Piero
his son, and Lorenzo his grandson, then a golden-haired youth, ride
among the rest, in a procession that never finds the manger at
Bethlehem, is indeed not concerned with it, but is altogether occupied
with its own light-hearted splendour, and the beauty of the fair morning
among the Tuscan hills. Is it the pilgrimage of the Magi to the lowly
cot of Jesus that we find in that tiny dark chapel, or the journey of
man, awake now on the first morning of spring in quest of beauty? Over
the grass scattered with flowers, that gay company passes at dawn by
little white towns and grey towers, through woods where for a moment is
heard the song of some marvellous bird, past running streams, between
hedges of pomegranates and clusters of roses; and by the wayside rise
the stone-pine and the cypress, while over all is the far blue sky, full
of the sun, full of the wind, which is so soft that not a leaf has
trembled in the woods, nor the waters stirred in a single ripple. Truly
they are come to Tuscany where Beauty is, and are far from Bethlehem,
where Love lies sleeping. There on a mule, a black slave beside his
stirrup, rides Cosimo Pater Patriae, and beside him comes Piero his son,
attended too, and before them on a white horse stepping proudly, with
jewels in his cap, rides the golden-haired Lorenzo, the youngest of the
three kings, already magnificent, the darling of this world of hills and
streams, which one day he will sing better than anyone of his time. Not
thus came the Magi of the East across the deserts to stony Judaea, and
though the Emperor of the East be of them, and the Patriarch of
Constantinople another, we know it is to the knowledge of Plato they
would lead us, and not to the Sedes Sapientiae. And so it is before an
empty shrine that those clouds of angels sing; Madonna has fled away,
and the children are singing a new song, surely the Trionfo of Lorenzo,
it is the first time, perhaps, that we hear it--
Quant' e' bella giovinezza.
Ah, if they had but known how tragically that day would close.
As Cosimo lay dying at Careggi, often closing his eyes, "to use them to
it," as he told his wife, who wondered why he lay thus without sleeping,
it was perhaps some vision of that conflict which he saw and would fain
have dismissed from his mind, already divided a little in its
allegiance--who knows--between the love of Plato and the love of Jesus.
Piero, his son, gouty and altogether without energy, was content to
confirm his political position and to overwhelm the Pitti conspiracy. It
is only with the advent of Lorenzo and Giuliano, the first but
twenty-one when Piero died, that the spirit of the Renaissance, free for
the first time, seems to dance through every byway of the city, and,
confronted at last by the fanatic hatred of Savonarola, to laugh in his
face and to flee away through Italy into the world.
Born in 1448, Lorenzo always believed that he owed almost everything
that was valuable in his life to his mother Lucrezia, of the noble
Florentine house of Tornabuoni, which had abandoned its nobility in
order to qualify for public office. A poetess herself, and the patron of
poets, she remained the best counsellor her son ever had. In his early
youth she had watched over his religious education, and in his
grandfather's house he had met not only statesmen and bankers, but
artists and men of letters. His first tutor had been Gentile Becchi of
Urbino, afterwards Bishop of Arezzo; from him he learned Latin, but
Argyropolus and Ficino and Landino taught him Greek, and read Plato and
Aristotle with him. Nor was this all, for we read of his eagerness for
every sort of exercise. He could play calcio and pallone, and his own
poems witness his love of hunting and of country life, and he ran a
horse often enough in the palii of Siena. He was more than common tall,
with broad shoulders, and very active. In colour dark, though he was not
handsome, his face had a sort of dignity that compelled respect, but he
was shortsighted too, and his nose was rather broad and flat. If he
lacked the comeliness of outward form, he loved all beauteous things,
and was in many ways the most extraordinary man of his age; his verse,
for instance, has just that touch of genius which seems to be wanting in
the work of contemporary poets. His love for Lucrezia Donati, in whose
honour the tournament of 1467 was popularly supposed to be held, though
in reality it was given to celebrate his betrothal with Clarice Orsini,
seems to have been merely an affectation in the manner of Petrarch, so
fashionable at that time. Certainly the Florentines, for that day at
least, wished to substitute a lady of their city for the Roman beauty,
and Lorenzo seems to have agreed with them. Like the tournament that
Giuliano held later in honour of Simonetta Vespucci, which Poliziano has
immortalised, and for which Botticelli painted a banner, this pageant of
Lorenzo's, for it was rather a pageant than a fight, was sung, too, by
Luca Pulci, and was held in Piazza S. Croce. A rumour of the splendour
of the dresses, the beauty and enthusiasm of the scene, has come down to
us, together with Lorenzo's own account of the day, and Clarice's
charming letter to him concerning it. "To follow the custom," he writes
unenthusiastically in his Memoir--"to follow the custom and do as others
do, I gave a tournament in Piazza S. Croce at a great cost, and with a
considerable magnificence; it seems about 10,000 ducats were spent.
Although I was not a great fighter, nor even a very strong hitter, I won
the prize, a helmet of inlaid silver, with a figure of Mars as a crest."
"I have received your letter, in which you tell me of the tournament
where you won the prize," writes Clarice, "and it has given me much
pleasure. I am glad you are fortunate in what pleases you and that my
prayers are heard, for I have no other wish but to see you happy. Give
my respects to my father Piero and my mother Lucrezia, and all who are
near to you, and I send, too, my respect to you. I have nothing else to
say.--Yours, Clarice de Orsinis." Poor little Clarice, she was married
to Lorenzo on June 4, in the following year. "I, Lorenzo, took to wife
Clarice, daughter of Signor Jacopo, or rather she was given to me." He
writes more coldly, certainly, than he was used to do. The marriage
festa was celebrated in Palazzo Riccardi with great magnificence.
Clarice, who was tall, slender, and shapely, with long delicate hands
and auburn hair, but without great beauty of feature, dressed in white
and gold, was borne on horseback through the garlanded way, in a
procession of girls and matrons, trumpeters and pipers, all Florence
following after to the Palace. There in the loggia above the garden she
dined with the newly-married ladies of the city. In the courtyard, round
the David of Donatello, some seventy of the greatest among the citizens
sat together, while the stewards were all sons of the _grandi_. Piero
de' Medici entertained each day some thousand guests, while for their
entertainment mimic battles were fought, and in the manner of the time
wooden forts were built, defended, and taken by assault, and at night
there were dances and songs. Almost immediately after the marriage
Lorenzo set out for Milan to visit the new Duke, and stand godfather to
his heir. All his way through Prato, Pistoja, Lucca, Pietrasanta
Sarzana, Pontremoli to Milan was a triumphal progress. He came home to
find his father ailing, and on 2nd December 1469, Piero de' Medici died.
He was buried in S. Lorenzo, in a tomb made by Verrocchio.
It was to a great extent owing to the prompt action of Tommaso Soderini
that the power of the Medici did not pass away at Piero's death, as that
of many another family had done in Florence. The tried friend of that
house, Soderini gathered some six hundred of the leading citizens in the
convent of S. Antonio, and, as it seems, with the help of the relatives
of Luca Pitti, persuaded them that the fortunes of Florence were wrapped
up in the Medici. "The second day after my father's death," writes
Lorenzo in his Memoir, "although I, Lorenzo, was very young, in fact
only in my twenty-first year, the leading men of the city and of the
ruling party came to our house to express their sorrow for our
misfortune, and to persuade me to take upon myself the charge of the
government of the city as my grandfather and father had already done.
This proposal being contrary to the instincts of my age, and entailing
great labour and danger, I accepted against my will, and only for the
sake of protecting my friends and our own fortunes, for in Florence one
can ill live in the possession of wealth without control of the
government." Thus Lorenzo came to be tyrant of Florence. It was a rule
illegitimate in its essence, purchased with gold, and without any
outward sign of office. That it would come to be disputed might have
seemed certain.
FOOTNOTES:
[96] The Alberghettino was the prison in the great tower.
XV. FLORENCE
SAN MARCO AND SAVONAROLA
For there was another spirit, too, moving secretly through the ways of
the city, among the crowds that gathered round the Cantastoria of the
Mercato Vecchio, or mingled with the wild procession of the carnival, a
spirit not of life, but of denial, a little forgetful as yet that the
days of the Middle Age were over: and even as one day that joy in the
earth and the beauty of world was to pass almost into Paganism, so this
mysticism, that was at first like some marvellous fore-taste of heaven,
fell into just Puritanism, a brutal political and schismatic hatred in
the fanaticism of--let us be thankful for that--a foreigner. "If I am
deceived, Christ, thou hast deceived me," Savonarola will come to say;
and amid his cursing and prophecies it is perhaps difficult to catch the
words of Pico--"We may rather love God than either know Him or by speech
utter Him." But in Cosimo's day men had no fear, the day was at the
dawn: who could have thought by sunset life would be so disastrous?
[Illustration: CHIOSTRO DI S. MARCO]
Cosimo de' Medici had a villa near the convent of S. Domenico at
Fiesole, where, as it is said, he would often go when Careggi was too
far, and the summer had turned the city into a furnace. Here, as we may
think, he may well have talked with Fra Angelico, for he would often
walk in the cloisters in the evening with the friars, and must have seen
and praised the frescoes there. These Dominicans at Fiesole had already
sent a colony to Florence, for in June 1435 they had obtained from
Pope Eugenius iv, who was then at S. Maria Novella the little church of
S. Giorgio across Arno. Seeing the order and comeliness of that convent
at Fiesole, Cosimo, on behalf of the magistrates of Florence, presented
a petition to the Pope about this time, praying that since he was
engaged on a reform of the Religious Orders, which, partly owing to the
schism and partly to the plague, were much relaxed, he would suppress
the Sylvestrians who dwelt in the old convent of S. Marco, and give it
to the Dominicans of Fiesole, who in exchange would give up their
convent of S. Giorgio, for in the centre of the city numerous and
zealous ministers were needed. Eugenius very gladly agreed to this, and
in a Bull of January 1436, S. Marco was given to the Dominican
Friars.[97] So they came down from Fiesole in procession, and went
through the city accompanied by three bishops, all the clergy, and an
immense concourse of people, and Fra Cipriano took possession of S.
Marco "in the name of his congregation." The convent at this time would
seem to have been in a deplorable state: in the previous year a fire had
destroyed much of it, and the church even was without a roof, so that
the friars were obliged to build themselves wooden cells to live in, and
to roof the church with timber. When Cosimo heard this he prepared at
once to rebuild the convent, and sent Michelozzo to see what could be
done. Michelozzo first pulled down the old cloister, leaving only the
church and the refectory; and in 1437 began to build the beautiful
convent we see to-day, completing it in 1443, at a cost of 36,000
ducats. The church which was then restored has suffered many violations
since, and is very different to-day from what it was at the end of the
fifteenth century. It was consecrated in 1442, on the feast of the
Epiphany, by Pope Eugenius in the presence of his Cardinals. The
library, Vasari tells us, was built later. It was vaulted above and
below, and had sixty-four bookcases of cypress wood filled with most
valuable books, among them later the famous collection of Niccolo
Niccoli, whose debts Cosimo paid on condition that he might dispose
freely of his books, which were arranged here by Thomas of Sarzana,
afterwards Nicholas v. The convent thus completed is "believed to be,"
says Vasari, "the most perfectly arranged, the most beautiful and most
convenient building of its kind that can be found in Italy, thanks to
the skill and industry of Michelozzo."
Fra Angelico was nearly fifty years old when his Order took possession
of S. Marco. Already he had painted three choir books, which Cosimo so
loved that he wished nothing else to be used in the convent, for, as
Vasari tells us, their beauty was such that no words can do justice to
it. Born in 1387, he had entered the Order of S. Dominic in 1408 at
Fiesole. The convent into which he had come had only been founded in
1406, and as with S. Marco later, so with S. Domenico, many disputes as
to the property had to be encountered, so that he had early been a
traveller, going with the brethren to Foligno and later to Cortona,
returning to Fiesole in 1418. Who amid these misfortunes could have been
his master? It might seem that in the silence of the sunny cloister in
the long summer days of Umbria some angel passing up the long valleys
stayed for a moment beside him, so that for ever after he could not
forget that vision. And then, who knows what awaits even us too, in that
valley where Blessed Angela heard Christ say, "I love thee more than any
other woman in the valley of Spoleto"? It is certainly some divinity
that we find in those clouds of saints and angels, those marvellously
sweet Madonnas, those majestic and touching crucifixions, that with a
simplicity and sincerity beyond praise, Angelico has left up and down
Italy, and not least in the convent of S. Marco.
Yes, it is a divine world he has dreamed of, peopled by saints and
martyrs, where the flowers are quickly woven into crowns and the light
streams from the gates of Paradise, and every breeze whispers the sweet
sibilant name of Jesus, and there, on the bare but beautiful roads,
Christ meets His disciples, or at the convent gate welcomes a
traveller, and if He be not there He has but just passed by, and if He
has not just passed by He is to come. It is for Him the sun is darkened;
to lighten His footsteps the moon shall rise; because His love has
lightened the world men go happily, and because He is here the world is
a garden. In all that convent of S. Marco you cannot turn a corner but
Christ is awaiting you, or enter a room but His smile changes your
heart, or linger on the threshold but He bids you enter in, or eat at
midday but you see Him on the Cross, and hear, "Take, eat; this is My
Body, which was given for you."
You enter the cloister, and the first word is Silence; St. Peter Martyr,
with finger on lip, seems to utter the first indispensable word of the
heavenly life. The second you see over the door of the chapter-house,
Discipline and the denial of the body; St. Dominic with a scourge of
nine cords is about to give you the difficult book of heavenly wisdom.
The third is spoken by Christ Himself; Faith, for He points to the wound
in His side. And the fourth Christ speaks too, for none other may utter
it; Love, for as a pilgrim He is welcomed by two pilgrims, two Dominican
brothers, to their home. Pass into the Refectory and He is there; go
into the Capitolo and He is there also, the Prince of life between two
malefactors, hanging on a cross for love of the world, and in His face
all the beauty and sweetness of the earth have been gathered and purged
of their dross, and between His arms is the kingdom of Heaven. In that
room the name of Jesus continually vibrates with an intense and
passionate life, more wonderful, more beautiful, and more terrible than
the tremor of all the sea. And it has brought together in adoration not
the world, which cannot hear its music, but those who above the tumult
of their hearts have caught some faint far echo of that supernal concord
which has bound together this whispering universe: for there beneath the
Cross of Jesus are none but saints, Madonna and the two SS. Maries, St.
John the Baptist and St. John the Divine, and beside them kneel the
founders of the Religious Orders St. Dominic, the founder of the
preaching friars, St. Jerome the father of monasticism, St. Francis the
little poor man, St. Bernard who spoke with Madonna, S. Giovanni
Gualberto the founder of Vallombrosa, St. Peter Martyr who was wounded
for Christ's sake. Above him stands St. Thomas Aquinas the angelic
doctor, St. Romuald the founder of Camaldoli St. Benedict who overthrew
the temples, St. Augustine who has spoken of the City of God, S. Alberto
di Vercelli the founder of the Carmelites. And on the other side, beside
St. John Baptist, St. Mark the patron of the convent kneels with his
open Gospel, St. Laurence stands with his gridiron, and behind him come
the two other Medici saints, S. Cosmo and S. Damiano.
Pass into the dormitories, and in every cell you enter Jesus is there
before you; on the threshold the angel announces His advent, and little
by little, scene by scene, you are involved in the beauty and the
tragedy of His life. You see Him transfigured (No. 6), you see Him
buffeted (No. 7), you see Him rise from the tomb (No. 8), and you see
Him in glory crowning Madonna (No. 9), or as a youth presented in the
Temple (No. 11). Many times you come upon Him crucified (15-23), once
John baptizes Him in Jordan (24), or Madonna and St. John the Divine
weep over Him dead (26). Here He bears His Cross (28), there descends
into Hades (31), preaches to the people (32), is betrayed by Judas (33),
agonises in the Garden (34), gives us His Body to eat, His Blood to
drink (35), is nailed to the Cross (36); crucified (37), and again
adored as a Child by the Magi (38), speaks with Mary in the garden (1),
is buried (2); the angel announces His birth (3), He is crucified (4),
and born in Bethlehem (5). It is the rosary of Jesus that we tell,
consisting of the glorious and sorrowful mysteries of His life and
death. It is the spirit of Christianity that we see here, blossoming
everywhere, haphazard like the wild flowers that are the armies of
spring. As Benozzo Gozzoli has expressed with an immense good fortune,
the very spirit of the Renaissance at its birth almost, the spirit and
the joy of youth, so Angelico with as simple an eagerness and a more
sure sincerity has expressed here the very spirit of Christianity,--He
that loseth his life shall gain it: take no thought for your life.
[Illustration: THE CRUCIFIXION
_By Fra Angelica. S. Marco, Florence_
_Alinari_]
It was here, then, amid all this mystical and heavenly beauty, that
first S. Antonino and later Savonarola sought to oppose the "new
religion of love and beauty" which had already filled Florence with a
new joy. At first, certainly, that new joy seemed not unfriendly to the
mysterious and heavenly beauty of the Christian ideal. It is not till
later, when both have been a little spoiled by love, that there seems to
have been any antagonism between them. It is true that it was only with
reluctance that S. Antonino accepted the Arch-bishopric of Florence, but
this seems rather to have been owing to humility, the most beautiful
characteristic of a beautiful nature, than to any perception that he
might have to oppose that new spirit fostered so carefully, and indeed
so unwittingly, by Cosimo de' Medici, his benefactor. Born of Florentine
parents in 1389, the son of a notary, Antonino, at the age of sixteen,
had entered the convent of S. Domenico at Fiesole, not without a severe
test of his steadfastness, for Fra Domenico made him learn the whole of
Gratian's decree by heart before he would admit him to the Order. Later,
he became priest, wrote his _Summa Theologicae_, and was called by
Eugenius, who loved him, to the General Council in Florence in 1439;
while there he was made Prior of the Convent of S. Marco. Having set his
Congregation in order, and, as such a man was bound to do, endeared
himself to the Florentines, he set out for other convents, not in
Tuscany only, but in Naples, which needed his presence. He was absent
for two years. During that time the See of Florence became vacant, and
Eugenius, to the great joy of the city, appointed Antonino Archbishop.
Surprised and troubled that he should have been thought of for such a
dignity, he set out to hide himself in Sardinia, but, being prevented,
came at last to Siena, whence he wrote to the Pope begging him to change
his mind, saying that he was old, sick and unworthy. How little he knew
Eugenius, the on altogether inflexible will in all that time, so full of
trouble for the Church! The Pope sent him to S. Domenico at Fiesole and
told the Florentines their Archbishop was at their gates. So, with
Cosimo de' Medici at their head, they went out to meet him, but he
refused to enter the city till Eugenius threatened him with
excommunication. He was consecrated Archbishop of Florence in March 1446
borne in procession from S. Piero down Borgo degli Albizzi to the
Duomo.[98] As a boy, it is said, he would pray before the Madonna of Or
San Michele, and, indeed, in his Chronicle he defends his Order against
the charges of scepticism as to the miracles worked there, with a
certain eloquence. Many are the stories told of him, and Poccetti has
painted the story of his life round the first cloister of S. Marco,
where he was buried in May 1459. S. Antonino was a saint and a
theologian, not a politician or an historian. Certainly he did not
foresee the tragedy that was already opening, and that was to end, not
in the lenten fires of Piazza Signoria, nor even in the death of
Savonarola, but in the siege of Florence, the establishment of the House
of Medici, the tombs of S. Lorenzo. How often in those days Cosimo would
walk with him and Fra Angelico in the cloisters on a summer night, after
listening may be to Marsilio Ficino or to the vague and wonderful
promises of Argyropolis. "To serve God is to reign," Antonino told him,
not without a certain understanding of those restless ambitions which at
that time seemed to promise the city nothing but good. And then, was it
not Cosimo who had rebuilt the convent, was it not Cosimo who had built
S. Lorenzo and S. Spirito too, by the hand of Michelozzo?
Antonino was not a politician; the _Chronicon Domini Antonini
Archipraesulis Florentini_ is the work rather of a theologian than of an
historian: the friend of Leonardo Bruni, or at least well acquainted
with his work, he cared rather for charity than for learning; and it was
as the father of the poor that Florence loved him. He lived by love. An
in those days of uncertain fortune, amid the swift political changes of
the time, there were many whom, doubtless, he saved from degradation or
suicide. I poveri vergognosi--the poor who are ashamed, it was these he
first took under his protection. We read of him sending for twelve men
of all classes and various crafts, and, laying the case before them,
refounded a charity--_Provveditori dei poveri vergognosi_, which soon
became in the mouth of Florence _I Buonomini di S. Martino_, the good
men of S. Martin, for the society had its headquarters in the Church S.
Martino; and, was not S. Martino himself, as it were, the first of this
company?
Born in Ferrara in 1452, the grandson of a famous doctor of Padua,
Girolamo Savonarola had entered the Dominican Order at Bologna when he
was twenty-two years old, finding the world but a wretched place, and
the wickedness of men more than he could bear. Something of this strange
and almost passionate pessimism remained with him his whole life long.
In 1481 he had been sent to the convent of S. Marco, in Florence, when
Lorenzo de' Medici had been at the head of affairs for some twelve
years. The Pazzi conspiracy, in which Giuliano de' Medici lost his life,
had come in 1478, and Lorenzo was fixed more firmly than ever in the
affections of the people. Simonetta had been borne like a dead goddess
through the streets of the city to burial; Lorenzo was already busy with
those carnival songs which, as some thought, were written to corrupt the
people: the Renaissance had come. "Gladius Domini super terram cite et
velociter," thought Savonarola, unable to understand that life from
which he had fled into the cloister. It was the first voice that had
been raised against the resurrection of the Gods, but at that moment
Martin Luther was lying in his mother's arms, while his father worked in
the mines at Eisleben: the Reaction was already born.
On a Latin city such as Florence was, Savonarola at first made little or
no impression; too often the friars had prophesied evil for no cause,
wandering through every little city in Italy denouncing the Signori. It
was in San Gemignano, even to-day the most medieval of Tuscan cities, a
place of towers and winding narrow ways, that Savonarola first won a
hearing; and so it was not till nine years after his first coming to her
that Florence seems to have listened to his prophecy, when, in August
1490, in S. Marco he began to preach on the Revelation of St. John the
Divine. It was a programme half political, half spiritual, that he
suggested to those who heard him, the reformation of the Church and the
fear of a God who had been forgotten but who would not forget. In the
spring of the year following, so great were the crowds who flocked to
hear his half-political discourses that he had to preach in the Duomo.
There unmistakably we are face to face with a political agitator. "God
intends to punish Lorenzo Magnifico,--yes, and his friends too"; and
when, a little later, he was made prior of S. Marco, he refused to
receive Lorenzo in the house his grandfather had built. In the following
year Lorenzo died; Savonarola, as the tale goes, refusing him absolution
unless he would restore liberty to the people of Florence. Consider the
position. How could Lorenzo restore that which he had never stolen away,
that which had, in truth, never had any real existence? He was without
office, without any technical right to government, merely the first
among the citizens of what, in name at least, was a Republic. If he was
a tyrant, he ruled by the will of the people, not by divine right, a
thing unknown among the Signori of Italy, nor by the will of the Pope,
nor by the will of the Emperor, but by the will of Florence. Yet
Savonarola, the Ferrarese, whether or no he refused him absolution, did
not hesitate to denounce him, with a wild flood of eloquence and fanatic
prophecy worthy of the eleventh century. "Leave the future alone,"
Lorenzo had counselled him kindly enough: it was just that he could not
do, since for him the present was too disastrous. And the future?--the
future was big with Charles VIII and his carnival army, gay with
prostitutes, bright with favours, and behind him loomed the fires of
Piazza della Signoria.
The peace of Italy is dead, the Pope told his Cardinals, when in the
spring of 1492 Lorenzo passed away at Careggi It was true. In September
1494, Charles VIII, on his way to Naples, came into Italy, was received
by Ludovico of Milan at Asti, while his Switzers sacked Rapallo. Was
this, then, the saviour of Savonarola's dreams? "It is the Lord who is
leading those armies," was the friar's announcement. Amid all the horror
that followed, it is not Savonarola that we see to-day as the hero of a
situation he had himself helped to create, but Piero Capponi, who, Piero
de' Medici having surrendered Pietrasanta and Sarzana, stood for the
Republic. On 9th November Piero and Giuliano his brother fled out of
Porta di S. Gallo, while Savonarola with other ambassadors went to meet
the King. A few days later, on 17th November 1494, at about four o'clock
in the afternoon, Pisa in the meantime having revolted, Charles entered
Florence[99] with Cardinal della Rovere, the soldier and future Pope,
and in his train came the splendour and chivalry of France, the Scotch
bowmen, the Gascons, and the Swiss. "Viva la Francia!" cried the people,
and Charles entered the Duomo at six o'clock in the evening, down a lane
of torches to the high altar. And coming out he was conducted to the
house of Piero de' Medici, the people crying still all the time "Viva la
Francia!" The days passed in feasting and splendour, Charles began to
talk of restoring the Medici, nor were riots infrequent in Borgo
Ognissanti; in Borgo S. Frediano the Switzers and French pillaged and
massacred, and were slain too in return. Florence, always ready for
street fighting, was, as we may think, too much for the barbarians. On
24th November the treaty was signed, an indemnity being paid by the
city, but the rioting did not cease. Landucci gives a very vivid account
of it. Even the King himself was not slow to pillage: he was
discontented with the indemnity offered, and threatened to loot the
city. "_Io faro dare nelle trombe_," said he; Piero Capponi was not slow
to answer, "_E noi faremo dare nello campane_"--and we will sound our
bells. The King gave in, and Florence was saved. On 26th November he
heard Mass for the last time in S. Maria del Fiore, and on the 28th he
departed--_si parti el Re di Firenze dopo desinare, e ando albergo alla
Certosa e tutta sua gente gli ando dietro e innanzi, che poche ce ne
rimase_, says Landucci thankfully.
Then the city, free from this rascal, who carried off what he could of
the treasures of Cosimo and Lorenzo, turned not to Piero Capponi but to
another foreigner, Girolamo Savonarola. The political eagerness of this
friar now came to the point of action. He set up a Greater Council,
which in its turn elected a Council of Eighty; he refused to call a
parliament, since he told them that "parliament had ever stolen the
sovereignty from the people." Then, on the 1st of April, he said that
the Virgin Mary had revealed to him that the city would be more
glorious, rich, and powerful than ever before, and, as Landucci says,
"_La maggiore parte del popolo gli credeva."_ He also said that the
Greater Council was the creation of God, and that whoever should attempt
to change it would be eternally damned. Nor was this all. If it were
right and splendid for Florence to be free, free as she always had been
from the domination of any other city, so it was for revolted Pisa. Yet
this fanatic Ferrarese told the people that he had had a vision in which
the Blessed Virgin had told him that Florence should make treaty with
France, and thus regain Pisa. This was on the return of the King from
Naples with Piero de' Medici in his train. However, he met the King at
Poggibonsi, told him Florence was his friend, that God desired him to
spare it, and with other tales succeeded in keeping Charles out of the
city. This, as it seems to me, is the one good deed Savonarola did for
Florence.
But the people still believed in him, though he turned the whole life of
the city into a sort of religious carnival. Now, if Lorenzo had kept the
people quiet with songs, Savonarola was equally successful with hymns.
"Viva Cristo e la Vergine Maria, nostra regina," shouted the
people,--merchants, friars, women, and children dancing before the
crucifix with olive boughs in their hands. "On 27th March 1496, which
was Palm Sunday, Fra Girolamo made a procession of children with olive
branches in their hands and crowns of olive on their heads and all
bore, too, a red cross. There were some five thousand boys, and a great
number of girls all dressed in white, then after came all the Ufici, and
all the guilds, and then all the men, and after all the women of the
city. There never was so great a procession," says Landucci. Indeed,
there was not a man nor a woman who did not join the company. "It was a
holy time, but it was short," says Landucci again, whose own children
were among "these holy and blessed companies."
Short indeed! The Italian League had been formed against France; only
Florence and Ferrara remained outside. If it were politics that had
taken Savonarola so high, it was to them he owed his fall. He denounced
all Italy, and not least Alexander VI, the vicious but very capable
Pope. When he began to denounce Rome he signed his own death; her hour
was not yet come. "I announce to you, Italy and Rome, the Lord will come
out of His place.... I tell you, Italy and Rome, the Lord will tread you
down. I have commanded penance, yet you are worse and worse.... Soon all
priests, friars, bishops, cardinals, and great masters shall be trampled
down." It was a brave denunciation, and if it were unjust, what was
justice to one who had made Jesus King of Florence and established
himself as His Vicegerent.
The Pope excommunicated him: the factions in Florence--the Arrabbiati,
the Compagnacci, the Palleschi--rejoiced; yet the people he had led so
long seemed inclined to support him. Then came the plague, and then the
discovery of a plot to bring back Piero. Well, Savonarola began to
preach again; but he was beaten. Many would not go to hear him, of whom
Landucci was one, because of the excommunication.[100] And at last
Savonarola himself seems to have seen the end. "If I am deceived, Christ
Thou hast deceived me," he says and at last he challenged the fire to
prove it. It was too much for the Signoria; they agreed. It was the
Franciscans he had to meet; whether or no they meant to persist with the
"trial by fire" we shall never know, but when, on 7th April 1498, the
fire was lighted in Piazza della Signoria, it was Savonarola who
refused. A few minutes later, amid the uproar, a deluge of rain put out
the flames. Savonarola's last chance was gone. The people hounded him
back to S. Marco, and but for the Guards of the Signoria he would have
been torn in pieces. On 8th April, which was Palm Sunday, in the
evening, the attack that had been threatening all day began: through the
church, through the cloisters the fight raged, while the whole city was
in the streets. At last Savonarola and Fra Domenico, his friend, gave
themselves up to the guard, really for protection, and were lodged in
Palazzo Vecchio. There the Signoria tortured them, with another friar,
Silvestro, and at last from Savonarola even they seem to have dragged
some sort of admission. What such a confession was worth, drawn from the
poor mangled body of a broken man, one can well imagine; but that
mattered nothing to the wild beasts he had taught to roar, who now had
him at their mercy. The effect of this on the city seems to have been
very great. "We had thought him to be a prophet," writes Luca Landucci
simply, "and he confessed he was not a prophet, that he had not from God
the things he preached.... And I was by when this was read, and I was
astonished, bewildered, amazed.... Ah, I expected Florence to be, as it
were, a New Jerusalem, ... and I heard the very contrary."
The Signoria which tortured Savonarola was presently replaced by
another; and though, like its predecessor, it too refused to send him to
Rome, it went about to compass his death. Again they tortured him; then
on the 23rd May, the gallows having been built over night in the Piazza,
they killed him with his companions, afterwards burning their bodies.
"They wish to crucify them,"[101] cried one in the crowd; and indeed,
the scaffold seems to have resembled a cross. Was it Florence herself
perhaps who hung there?
FOOTNOTES:
[97] Not without protest, for the Sylvestrians appealed to the
schismatic counsel at Basle, but got no good by it; and a whole series
of lawsuits followed.
[98] See p. 256.
[99] Cf. L. Landucci, _Diario Fiorentino_ (Sansoni, 1883), p. 80.
[100] It would be wrong to conclude that Savonarola attacked the faith
of the Catholic Church. He never did. He protested himself a faithful
Catholic to the last. He was a puritan and a politician, and it was on
these two counts that he fought the Papacy.
[101] Landucci, _op. cit. p_. 176.
XVI. FLORENCE
S. MARIA NOVELLA
If Florence built the Baptistery, the Duomo, and the Campanile for the
glory of the whole city, that there might be one place, in spite of all
the factions, where without difference all might enter the kingdom of
heaven, one temple in which all the city might wait till Jesus passed
by, one tower which should announce the universal Angelus, she built
other churches too, more particular in their usefulness, less splendid
in their beauty, but not less necessary in their hold on the life of the
city, or their appeal to us to-day. You may traverse the city from east
to west without forsaking the old streets, and a little fantastically,
perhaps, find some hint in the buildings you pass of that old far-away
life, so restless and so fragile, so wanting in unity, and yet, as it
seems to us, with but one really profound intention in all its work, the
resurrection of life among men. In the desolate but beautiful Piazza of
S. Maria Novella, at the gates of the old city, you find a Dominican
convent, and before it the great church of that Order, S. Maria Novella
herself, the bride of Michelangelo. Then, following Via dei Fossi, you
enter the old city at the foot of the Carraja bridge, following Via di
Parione past an old Medici palace into Via Porta Rossa and so into Via
Calzaioli, where you came upon that strange and beautiful church so like
a palace, Or San Michele, built by the merchants, the Church of the
Guilds of the city. Passing thence into Piazza Signoria, and so into Via
de' Gondi, in the Proconsolo you find the Church of the great monastic
Order the Badia of the Benedictines, having passed on your way Palazza
Vecchio, the Palace of the Republic, afterwards of the Medici; and the
Bargello, the Palace of the Podesta, afterwards a prison; coming later
through Borgo de' Greci to the Church of S. Croce, the convent of the
Franciscans. Thus, while beyond the old west gate of the city there
stood the house of the Dominicans, the Franciscans built their convent
on the east, just without the city; and between them in the heart of
Florence dwelt the oldest Order of all, the Benedictines, busy with
manuscripts. Again, if the tower of authority throws its shadow over the
Bargello, it is the tower of liberty that rises over Palazzo Vecchio,
and the whole tragedy of the beautiful city seems to be expressed for us
in the fact that while the one became a prison the other came to house
the gaoler.
So this city of warm brick, with its churches of marble, its old ways,
its palaces of stone, its convents at the gates, comes to hold for us,
as it were, the very dream of Italy, the dream that was too good to
last, that was so soon to be shattered by the barbarian. Yet in that
little walk through the narrow winding ways from the west to the east of
the city, all the eloquence and renown, the strength and beauty of Italy
seem to be gathered for you, as in a nosegay you may find all the beauty
of a garden. And of all the broken blossoms that you may find by the
way, not one is more fragrant and fair than the sweet bride of
Michelangelo, S. Maria Novella.
Standing in a beautiful Piazza, itself the loveliest thing therein,
dressed in the old black and white habit, it dreams of the past: it is
full of memories too, for here Boccaccio one Tuesday morning, just after
Mass in 1348, amid the desolation of the city, found the seven beloved
ladies of the _Decamerone_ talking of death; here Martin V, and Eugenius
IV, fugitives from the Eternal City, found a refuge; here Beata Villana
confessed her sins; here Vanna Tornabuoni prayed and the Strozzi made
their tombs. Full of memories--and of what else, then, but the past
can she dream? For her there is no future. Her convent is suppressed,
the great cloister has become a military gymnasium. What has she, then,
in common with the modern world, with the buildings of Piazza Vittorio
Emmanuele, for instance?--the past is all that we have left her.
[Illustration: S. MARIA NOVELLA]
Begun in 1278, as some say, from the design of Fra Ristoro and Fra
Sisto, the facade, one of the most beautiful in the world, is really the
fifteenth-century work of Leon Alberti working to the order of Giovanni
Rucellai--you may see their blown sail everywhere--with that profound
and unifying genius which involved everything he touched in a sort of
reconciliation, thus prophesying to us of Leonardo da Vinci. For Alberti
has here very fortunately made the pointed work of the Middle Age
friends with Antiquity, Antiquity seen with the eyes of the Renaissance,
full of a new sort of eagerness and of many little refinements. In the
fagade of his masterpiece, the Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini, that
beautiful unfinished temple where the gods of Greece seem for once to
have come to the cradle of Jesus with something of the wonder of the
shepherds who left their flocks to worship Him, Leon Alberti has taken
as his model the arch of Augustus, that still, though broken, stands on
the verge of the city in the Flaminian Way; but as though aware at last
of the danger of any mere imitation of antiquity such as that, he has
here contrived to express the beauty of Roman things, just what he
himself had really felt concerning them, and has combined that very
happily with the work of the age that was just then passing away; thus,
as it were, creating for us one of the most perfect buildings of the
fifteenth century, very characteristic too, in its strange beauty, as of
the dead new risen. And then how subtly he has composed this beautiful
facade, so that somehow it really adds to the beauty of the Campanile,
with its rosy spire, in the background.
Within, the church is full of a sort of twilight, in which certainly
much of its spaciousness is lost; those chapels in the nave, for
instance, added by Vasari in the sixteenth century have certainly
spoiled it of much of its beauty. Built in the shape of a tau cross--a
Latin cross that is almost tau, in old days it was divided, where still
there is a step across the nave into two parts, one of which was
reserved for the friars, while the other was given to the people. There
is not much of interest in this part of the church: a crucifix over the
great door, attributed to Giotto; a fresco of the Holy Trinity, with
Madonna and St. John, by Masaccio, that rare strong master; the altar,
the fourth in the right aisle, dedicated to St. Thomas of
Canterbury,--almost nothing beside. It is in the south transept, where a
flight of steps leads to the Rucellai Chapel, that we came upon one of
the most beautiful and mysterious things in the city, the Madonna, so
long given to Cimabue, but now claimed for Duccio of Siena.[102]
Vasari describes for us very delightfully the triumph of this picture,
when, so great was the admiration of the people for it that "it was
carried in solemn procession, with the sound of trumpets and other
festal demonstrations, from the house of Cimabue to the church,--he
himself being highly rewarded and honoured for it"; while, as he goes on
to tell us, when Cimabue was painting it, in a garden as it happened
near the gate of S. Pietro, King Charles of Sicily, brother of St.
Louis, saw the picture, and praising it, "all the men and women of
Florence hastened in great crowds to admire it, making all possible
demonstrations of delight. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood,
rejoicing in this occurrence, ever after called that place Borgo
Allegri,"--the name it bears to this day. However reluctant we may be to
find Vasari, that divine gossip, at fault, it might seem that Cimabue's
Triumph is a fable, or if, indeed, it happened, was stolen, for the
Rucellai Madonna is apparently the work of Duccio the Sienese.[103] Of
the works of Cimabue not one remains to us; we do not know, we have
certainly no means of knowing, whether he was, as Ghiberti tells us, a
painter in the old Greek manner, or whether, as Vasari suggests, he was
the true master of Giotto, in that to him was owing the impulse of life
which we find so moving in Giotto's work. And then Vasari, it seems, is
wrong in his account of Borgo Allegri, for that place was named not
after happiness, the happiness of that part of the city in their great
neighbour, but from a family who in those days lived thereabout and bore
that name.
It is, however, of comparatively little importance who painted the
picture. The controversy, which is not yet finished, serves for the most
part merely to obscure the essential fact that here is the picture still
in its own place, and that it is beautiful. Very lovely, indeed, she is,
Madonna of Happiness, and still at her feet the poor may pray, and still
on her dim throne she may see day come and evening fall. Far up in the
obscure height she holds Christ on her knees. Perhaps you may catch the
faint dim loveliness of her face in the early dawn amid the beauty of
the angels kneeling round her throne when the light steals through the
shadowy windows across the hills; or perhaps at evening in the splendour
of some summer sunset you may see just for a moment the whiteness of her
delicate hands; but she is secret and very far away, she has withdrawn
herself to hear the prayers of the poor in spirit who come when the
great church is empty, when the tourists have departed, when the workmen
have returned to their homes. And beside her in that strange, mysterious
place Beata Villana sleeps, where the angels draw back the curtain, in a
tomb by Desiderio da Settignano. She was not of the great company whose
names we falter at our altars and whisper for love over and over again
in the quietness of the night; but of those who are weary. Born to a
wealthy Florentine merchant, Andrea di Messer Lapo by name, little Vanna
went her ways with the children, yet with a sort of naive sincerity
after all, so that when she heard Saint Catherine praised or Saint
Francis, she believed it and wished to be of that company; but the
world, full of glamour and laughter in those days, and now too, caught
her by the waist and bore her away, in the person of a noble youth of
the Benintendi, who loved her well enough; yet it was love she loved
rather than her husband; and life calling sweetly enough down the long
narrow streets, she followed, yes, till she was a little weary. So she
would question her beauty, and, looking in her glass, see not herself
but the demon love that possessed her; and again in another mirror she
found a devil, she said, like a faun prick-eared and with goat's feet,
peering at her with frightening eyes. So she stripped off her fair gay
dresses, and took instead the rough hair-shirt, and came at evening
across the Piazza to confess in S. Maria Novella; and gave herself to
the poor, and forgot the sun till weary she fled away. Her grandson, as
it is said, built this tomb to her memory, and they wrote above, Beata
Villana.
It is always with reluctance, I think, that one leaves that dim chapel
of the Rucellai, and yet how many wonderful things await us in the
church. In the second chapel of the transept, the Chapel of Filippo
Strozzi, who is buried behind the altar, Filippino Lippi, the son of Fra
Lippo, the pupil of Botticelli, has painted certain frescoes,--a little
bewildering in their crowded beauty, it is true, but how good after all
in their liveliness, their light and shadow, the pleasant, eager faces
of the women--where St. John raises Drusiana from the grave, or St.
Philip drives out the Dragon of Hierapolis; while above St. John is
martyred, and St. Philip too. But it is in the choir behind the high
altar, where for so long the scaffolding has prevented our sight, that
we come upon the simple serious work of Domencio Ghirlandajo, whom all
the critics have scorned. Born in 1449, the pupil of Alessio
Baldovinetti, Ghirlandajo is not a great painter perhaps, but rather a
craftsman, a craftsman with a wonderful power of observation, of noting
truly the life of his time. He seems to have asked of art rather truth
than beauty. Almost wholly, perhaps, without the temperament of an
artist, his success lies in his gift for expressing not beauty but the
life of his time, the fifteenth century in Florence, which lives still
in all his work. Consider, then, the bright facile mediocre work of
Benozzo Gozzoli, not at its best, in the Campo Santo of Pisa, remember
how in the dark chapel of the Medici palace he lights up the place
almost as with a smile, in the gay cavalcade that winds among the hills.
There is much fancy there, much observation too; here a portrait, there
a gallant fair head, and the flowers by the wayside. Well, it is in much
the same way that Ghirlandajo has painted here in the choir of S. Maria
Novella. He has seen the fashions, he has noted the pretty faces of the
women, he has watched the naive homely life of the Medici ladies, for
instance, and has painted not his dreams about Madonna, but his dreams
of Vanna Tornabuoni, of Clarice de' Medici, and the rest. And he was
right; almost without exception his frescoes are the most interesting
and living work left in Florence. He has understood or divined that one
cannot represent exactly that which no longer exists; and it is to
represent something with exactitude that he is at work. So he contents
himself very happily with painting the very soul of his century. It is a
true and sincere art this realistic, unimpassioned, impersonal work of
Ghirlandajo's, and in its result, for us at any rate, it has a certain
largeness and splendour. Consider this "Birth of the Virgin." It is full
of life and homely observation. You see the tidy dusted room where St.
Anne is lying on the bed, already, as in truth she was, past her youth,
but another painter would have forgotten it. She is just a careful
Florentine housewife, thrifty too, not flurried by her illness, for she
has placed by her bedside, all ready for her need, two pomegranates and
some water. Then, again, they are going to wash the little Mary. She
lies quite happily sucking her fingers in the arms of her nurse, the
basin is in the middle of the floor, a servant has just come in briskly,
no doubt as St. Anne has always insisted, and pours the water quickly
into the vessel. It is not difficult to find all sorts of faults, of
course, as the critics have not hesitated to do. That perspective, for
instance, how good it is: almost as good as Verrocchio's work,--and
those dancing _angiolini_; yes, Verrocchio might have thought of them
himself. But the lady in the foreground, how unmoved she seems; it is as
though the whole scene had been arranged for the sake of her portrait;
and, indeed it is a portrait, for the richly dressed visitor is Ginevra
de' Benci, who stands too in the fresco of the Birth of St. John. Again
in the fresco of the angel appearing to Zacharias in the Temple, there
are some thirty portraits of famous Florentines, painted with much
patience, and no doubt with an extraordinary truth of likeness. In the
left corner you may see Marsilio Ficino dressed as a priest; Gentile de'
Becchi turns to him, while Cristoforo Landini in a red cloak stands by,
and Angelo Poliziano lifts up his hands.
Does one ever regret, I wonder, after looking at these realistic
fifteenth-century works, that the frescoes of Orcagna--for he painted
the whole choir--were destroyed in a storm, it is said, in 1358.
Fragments of his work, however, we are told, remained for more than a
hundred years, till, indeed, Ghirlandajo was employed to replace them.
We find his work, however, sadly damaged it is true, and really his
perhaps only in outline, in the Strozzi chapel here, the lofty chapel
of north transept, where he has painted on the wall facing the entrance
the Last Judgment, while to the left you may see Paradise, to the right
the Inferno. The pupil of Giotto and of Andrea Pisano, Orcagna is the
most important artist of his time, the one vital link in the chain that
unites Masolino with Giotto. He was a universal artist, practising as an
architect and goldsmith no less than as a painter. In the Last Judgment
in this chapel he seems not only to have absorbed the whole art of his
time, but to have advanced it; for to the grandeur and force of his work
he added a certain visionary loveliness that most surely already
foretells Beato Angelico. If in the Paradise and the Inferno we are less
moved by the greatness of his achievement, we remind ourselves how
terribly they have suffered from damp, from neglect, from the restorer.
In the altar-piece itself we have perhaps the only "intact painting" of
his remaining to us, and splendid as it is in colour and form, it lacks
something of the rhythm of the frescoes that like some slow and solemn
chant fill the chapel with their sincere unforgetable music.
As you pass, beckoned by a friar, into the half-ruined cloisters below
S. Maria Novella, you come on your right into a little alley of tombs,
behind which, on the wall, you may find two bits of fresco by Giotto,
the Meeting of S. Joachim and S. Anna at the Golden Gate, and the Birth
of the Virgin. On your left you pass into the Chiostro Verde, where
Paolo Uccello has painted scenes from the Old Testament in a sort of
green monotone, for once without enthusiasm. Above you and around you
rises the old convent and the great tower; there, in the far corner,
perhaps a friar plays with a little cat, here a pigeon flutters under
the arches about the little ruined space of grass, the meagre grass of
the south, where now and then the shadow of a white cloud passes over
the city, whither who knows. For a moment in that silent place you
wonder why you have come, you feel half inclined to go back into the
church, when shyly the friar comes towards you, and, leading you round
the cloister, enters the Cappellina degli Spagnuoli.
How much has been written in praise of the frescoes in the Spa |
