The Story of Florence Part 14

In the Via Cavour, beyond San Marco, is the _Chiostro dello Scalzo_, a cloister belonging to a brotherhood dedicated to St. John, which was suppressed in the eighteenth century. Here are a series of frescoes painted in grisaille by Andrea del Sarto and his partner, Francia Bigio, representing scenes from the life of the Precursor, with allegorical figures of the Virtues. The Baptism of Christ is the earliest, and was painted by the two artists in collaboration, in 1509 or 1510. After some work for the Servites, which we shall see presently, Andrea returned to this cloister; and painted, from 1515 to 1517, the Justice, St. John preaching, St. John baptising the people, and his imprisonment. Some of the figures in these frescoes show the influence of Albert Durer's engravings. Towards the end of 1518, Andrea went off to France to work for King Francis I.; and, while he was away, Francia Bigio painted St. John leaving his parents, and St.

John's first meeting with Christ. On Andrea's return, he set to work here again and painted, at intervals from 1520 to 1526, Charity, Faith and Hope, the dance of the daughter of Herodias, the decollation of St. John, and the presentation of his head, the Angel appearing to Zacharias, the Visitation, and, last of all, the Birth of the Baptist.

The Charity is Andrea's own wife, Lucrezia, who at this very time, if Vasari's story is true, was persuading him to break his promise to the French King and to squander the money which had been intrusted to him for the purchase of works of art.

The Via della Sapienza leads from San Marco into the _Piazza della Santissima Annunziata_. In one of the houses on the left, now incorporated into the Reale Ist.i.tuto di Studi Superiori, Andrea del Sarto and Francia Bigio lodged with other painters, before Andrea's marriage; and here, usually under the presidency of the sculptor Rustici, the "Compagnia del Paiuolo," an artists' club of twelve members, met for feasting and disport.[48]

[48] See _Andrea del Sarto_, by H. Guinness in the _Great Masters_ series, and _G. F. Rustici_ in Vasari.

This Piazza was a great place for processions in old Florence. Here stand the church of the _Santissima Annunziata_ and the convent of the Servites, while the Piazza itself is flanked to right and left by arcades originally designed by Brunelleschi. The equestrian statue of the Grand Duke Ferdinand I. was cast by Giovanni da Bologna out of metal from captured Turkish guns. The arcade on the right, as we face the church, with its charming medallions of babies in swaddling clothes by Andrea della Robbia, is a part of the Spedale degli Innocenti or Hospital for Foundlings, which was commenced from Brunelleschi's designs in 1421, during the Gonfalonierate of Giovanni dei Medici; the work, which was eloquently supported in the Council of the People by Leonardo Bruni, was raised by the Silk-merchants Guild, the Arte di Por Santa Maria. On its steps the Compagnacci murdered their first victim in the attack on San Marco. There is a picturesque court, designed by Brunelleschi, with an Annunciation by Andrea della Robbia over the door of the chapel, and a small picture gallery, which contains nothing of much importance, save a Holy Family with Saints by Piero di Cosimo. In the chapel, or church of Santa Maria degli Innocenti, there is a masterpiece by Domenico Ghirlandaio, painted in 1488, an Adoration of the Magi (the fourth head on the left is the painter himself), in which the Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents is seen in the background, and two of these glorified infant martyrs, under the protection of the two St. Johns, are kneeling most sweetly in front of the Madonna and her Child, for whom they have died, joining in the adoration of the kings and the _gloria_ of the angelic choir.

The church of the Santissima Annunziata was founded in the thirteenth century, but has been completely altered and modernised since at different epochs. In summer mornings lilies and other flowers lie in heaps in its portico and beneath Ghirlandaio's mosaic of the Annunciation, to be offered at Madonna's shrine within. The entrance court was built in the fifteenth century, at the expense of the elder Piero dei Medici. The fresco to the left of the entrance, the Nativity of Christ, is by Aless...o...b..ldovinetti. Within the gla.s.s, to the left, are six frescoes representing the life and miracles of the great Servite, Filippo Benizzi; that of his receiving the habit of the order is by Cosimo Rosselli (1476); the remaining five are early works by Andrea del Sarto, painted in 1509 and 1510, for which he received a mere trifle; in the midst of them is an indifferent seventeenth century bust of their painter. The frescoes on the right, representing the life of the Madonna, of whom this order claims to be the special servants, are slightly later. The approach of the Magi and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, the latter dated 1514, are among the finest works of Andrea del Sarto; in the former he has introduced himself and the sculptor Sansovino, and among the ladies in the latter is his wife. Fifty years afterwards the painter Jacopo da Empoli was copying this picture, when a very old lady, who was going into the church to hear ma.s.s, stopped to look at his work, and then, pointing to the portrait of Lucrezia, told him that it was herself. The Sposalizio, by Francia Bigio, painted in 1513, was damaged by the painter himself in a fit of pa.s.sion at the meddling of the monks. The Visitation, by Jacopo da Pontormo, painted in 1516, shows what admirable work this artist could do in his youth, before he fell into his mannered imitations of Michelangelo; the a.s.sumption, painted slightly later by another of Andrea's pupils, Rosso Fiorentino, is less excellent.

Inside the church itself, on the left, is the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Annunciation, one of the most highly revered shrines in Tuscany; it was constructed from the designs of Michelozzo at the cost of the elder Piero dei Medici to enclose the miraculous picture of the Annunciation, and lavishly decorated and adorned by the Medicean Grand Dukes. After the Pazzi conspiracy, Piero's son Lorenzo had a waxen image of himself suspended here in thanksgiving for his escape. Over the altar there is usually a beautiful little head of the Saviour, by Andrea del Sarto. The little oratory beyond, with the Madonna's mystical emblems on its walls, was constructed in the seventeenth century.

In the second chapel from the shrine is a fres...o...b.. Andrea del Castagno, which was discovered in the summer of 1899 under a copy of Michelangelo's Last Judgment. It represents St. Jerome and two women saints adoring the Blessed Trinity, and is characteristic of the _modo terribile_ in which this painter conceived his subjects; the heads of the Jerome and the older saint to our right are particularly powerful.

For the rest, the interior of this church is more gorgeous than tasteful; and the other works which it contains, including the two Peruginos, and some tolerable monuments, are third rate. The rotunda of the choir was designed by Leo Battista Alberti and erected at the cost of the Marquis of Mantua, whose descendant, San Luigi Gonzaga, had a special devotion to the miraculous picture.

From the north transept, the cloisters are entered. Here, over the door, is the Madonna del Sacco, an exceedingly beautiful fres...o...b.. Andrea del Sarto, painted in 1525. St. Joseph, leaning upon the sack which gives the picture its name, is reading aloud the Prophecies to the Mother and Child whom they concern. In this cloister--which was built by Cronaca--is the monument of the French knight slain at Campaldino in 1289 (_see_ chapter ii.), which should be contrasted with the later monuments of condottieri in the Duomo. Here also is the chapel of St. Luke, where the Academy of Artists, founded under Cosimo I., used to meet.

A good view of the exterior of the rotunda can be obtained from the Via Gino Capponi. At the corner of this street and the Via del Mandorlo is the house which Andrea del Sarto bought for himself and his Lucrezia, after his return from France, and here he died in 1531, "full of glory and of domestic sorrows." Lucrezia survived him for nearly forty years, and died in 1570. Perhaps, if she had not made herself so unpleasant to her husband's pupils and a.s.sistants, good Giorgio Vasari--the youngest of them--might not have left us so dark a picture of this beautiful Florentine.

The rather picturesque bit of ruin in the Via degli Alfani, at the corner of the Via del Castellaccio, is merely a part of an oratory in connection with Santa Maria degli Angioli, which Brunelleschi commenced for Filippo Scolari, but which was abandoned. _Santa Maria degli Angioli_ itself, a suppressed Camaldolese house, was of old one of the most important convents in Florence. The famous poet, Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, of whom Dante speaks disparagingly in the _Commedia_ and in the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_, was instrumental in its foundation in 1293. It was sacked in 1378 during the rising of the Ciompi. This convent in the earlier portion of the fifteenth century was a centre of h.e.l.lenic studies and humanistic culture, under Father Ambrogio Traversari, who died at the close of the Council of Florence.

In the cloister there is still a powerful fres...o...b.. Andrea del Castagno representing Christ on the Cross, with Madonna and the Magdalene, the Baptist, St. Benedict and St. Romuald. The Romuald especially, the founder of the order, is a fine life-like figure.

The _Spedale di Santa Maria Nuova_ was originally founded by Messer Folco Portinari, the father of the girl who may have been Dante's "Giver of Blessing," in 1287. Folco died in 1289, and is buried within the church, which contains one of Andrea della Robbia's Madonnas. Over the portal is a terracotta Coronation of the Madonna by Bicci di Lorenzo, erected in 1424. The two frescoes, representing scenes in the history of the hospital, are of the early part of the fifteenth century; the one on the right was painted in 1424 by Bicci di Lorenzo.

In the Via Bufalini, Ghiberti had his workshop; in what was once his house is now the picture gallery of the hospital. Here is the fresco of the Last Judgment, commenced by Fra Bartolommeo in 1499, before he abandoned the world, and finished by Mariotto Albertinelli. Among its contents are an Annunciation by Albertinelli, Madonnas by Cosimo Rosselli and Rosso Fiorentino, and a terracotta Madonna by Verrocchio. The two pictures ascribed to Angelico and Botticelli are not authentic. But in some respects more interesting than these Florentine works is the triptych by the Fleming, Hugo Van der Goes, painted between 1470 and 1475 for Tommaso Portinari, Messer Folco's descendant; in the centre is the "Adoration of the Shepherds," with deliciously quaint little Angels; in the side wings, Tommaso Portinari with his two boys, his wife and their little girl, are guarded by their patron saints. Tommaso Portinari was agent for the Medici in Bruges; and, on the occasion of the wedding of Charles the Bold of Burgundy with Margaret of York in 1468, he made a fine show riding in the procession at the head of the Florentines.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLOISTER OF THE INNOCENTI]

A little more to the east are the church and suppressed convent of Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi. In the church, which has a fine court designed by Giuliano da San Gallo, is a Coronation of the Madonna by Cosimo Rosselli; in the chapter-house of the convent is a Crucifixion by Perugino, painted in the closing years of the Quattrocento, perhaps the grandest of all his frescoes. In Ruskin's chapter on the _Superhuman Ideal_, in the second volume of _Modern Painters_, he cites the background of this fresco (together with Benozzo Gozzoli's in the Palazzo Riccardi) as one of the most perfect examples of those ideal landscapes of the religious painters, in which Perugino is supreme: "In the landscape of the fresco in Sta. Maria Maddalena at Florence there is more variety than is usual with him: a gentle river winds round the bases of rocky hills, a river like our own Wye or Tees in their loveliest reaches; level meadows stretch away on its opposite side; mounds set with slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer ground, and a small village with its simple spire peeps from the forest at the bend of the valley."

Beyond is the church of Sant' Ambrogio, once belonging to the convent of Benedictine nuns for whom Fra Lippo Lippi painted his great Coronation of Madonna. The church is hardly interesting at present, but contains an a.s.sumption by Cosimo Rosselli, and, in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, a marble tabernacle by Mino da Fiesole and a fres...o...b.. Cosimo Rosselli painted in 1486, representing the legend of a miraculous chalice with some fine Florentine portrait heads, altogether above the usual level of Cosimo's work.

The Borgo la Croce leads hence to the Porta alla Croce, in the very prosaic and modern Piazza Beccaria. This Porta alla Croce, the eastern gate of Florence in the third walls, was commenced by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1284; the frescoed Madonna in the lunette is by one of the later followers of Ghirlandaio. Through this gate, on October 6th 1308, Corso Donati fled from Florence, after his desperate attempt to hold the Piazza di San Piero Maggiore against the forces of the Signoria. Following the Via Aretina towards Rovezzano, we soon reach the remains of the Badia di San Salvi, where he was slain by his captors--as Dante makes his brother Forese darkly prophesy in the twenty-fourth canto of the _Purgatorio_. Four year later, in October 1312, the Emperor Henry VII. lay sick in the Abbey, while his army ineffectually besieged Florence. Nothing remains to remind us of that epoch, although the district is still called the Campo di Marte or Campo di Arrigo. We know from Leonardo Bruni that Dante, although he had urged the Emperor on to attack the city, did not join the imperial army like many of his fellow exiles had done: "so much reverence did he yet retain for his fatherland." In the old refectory of the Abbey is Andrea del Sarto's Last Supper, one of his most admirable frescoes, painted between 1525 and 1527, equally excellent in colour and design.

"I know not," writes Vasari, "what to say of this _Cenacolo_ that would not be too little, seeing it to be such that all who behold it are struck with astonishment." When the siege was expected in 1529, and the defenders of the city were destroying everything in the suburbs which could give aid or cover to the enemy, a party of them broke down a wall in the convent and found themselves face to face with this picture. Lost in admiration, they built up a portion of what they had destroyed, in order that this last triumph of Florentine painting might be secure from the hand of war.

On this side of the river, those walls of Florence which Lapo Gianni would fain have seen _inargentate_--the third circle reared by Arnolfo and his successors--have been almost entirely destroyed, and their site marked by the broad utterly prosaic Viali. Besides the Porta alla Croce, the Porta San Gallo and the Porta al Prato still stand, on the north and west respectively. The Porta San Gallo was begun from Arnolfo's design in 1284, but not finished until 1327; the fresco in the lunette is by Michele di Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Ridolfo's adopted son. On July 21, 1304, the exiled Bianchi and Ghibellines made a desperate attempt to surprise Florence through this gate, led by the heroic young Baschiera della Tosa. In 1494, Piero dei Medici and his brother Giuliano fled from the people through it; and in 1738 the first Austrian Grand Duke, Francis II., entered by it. The triumphant arch beyond, at which the lions of the Republic, to right and left of the gate, appear to gaze with little favour, marked this latter event.

These Austrian Grand Dukes were decidedly better rulers than the Medici, to whom, by an imperial usurpation, they succeeded on the death of Gian Gastone. Leopold I., Ferdinand III., Leopold II., were tolerant and liberal-minded sovereigns, and under them Tuscany became the most prosperous state in Italy: "a Garden of Paradise without the tree of knowledge and without the tree of life." But, when the Risorgimento came, their sway was found incompatible with the aspirations of the Italians towards national unification; the last Grand Duke, after wavering between Austria and young Italy, threw in his lot with the former, and after having brought the Austrians into Tuscany, was forced to abdicate. Thus Florence became the first capital of Victor Emmanuel's kingdom.

In the Via di San Gallo is the very graceful Palazzo Pandolfini, commenced in 1520 from Raphael's designs, on the left as we move inwards from the gate. From the Via 27 Aprile, which joins the Via di San Gallo, we enter the former convent of Sta. Appollonia. In what was once its refectory is a fresco of the Last Supper by Andrea del Castagno, with the Crucifixion, Entombment, and Resurrection. Andrea del Castagno impressed his contemporaries by his furious pa.s.sions and savage intractability of temper, his quality of _terribilita_; although we now know that Vasari's story that Andrea obtained the secret of using oil as a vehicle in painting from his friend, Domenico Veneziano, and then murdered him, must be a mere fable, since Domenico survived Andrea by nearly five years. Rugged unadorned strength, with considerable power of characterisation and great technical dexterity, mark his extant works, which are very few in number. This _Cenacolo_ in the finest of them all; the figures are full of life and character, although the Saviour is unpleasing and the Judas inclines to caricature. The nine figures from the Villa Pandolfini, frescoes transferred to canvas, are also his; Filippo Scolari, known as Pippo Spano (a Florentine connected with the Buondelmonti, but Ghibelline, who became Count of Temesvar and a great Hungarian captain), Farinata degli Uberti, Niccol Acciaiuoli (a Florentine who became Grand Seneschal of the kingdom of Naples and founded the Certosa), the c.u.maean Sibyl, Esther, Queen Tomyris, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.

The two poets and Boccaccio are the least successful, since they were altogether out of Andrea's line, but there must have been something n.o.ble in the man to enable him so to realise Farinata degli Uberti, as he stood alone at Empoli when all others agreed to destroy Florence, to defend her to the last: _Colui che la difese a viso aperto._

A _Cenacolo_ of a very different character may be seen in the refectory of the suppressed convent of Sant' Onofrio in the Via di Faenza. Though showing Florentine influence in its composition, this fresco is mainly Umbrian in character; from a half deciphered inscription on the robe of one of the Apostles (which appears to have been altered), it was once attempted to ascribe it to Raphael. It is now believed to be partly the work of Perugino, partly that of some pupil or pupils of his--perhaps Gerino da Pistoia or Giannicola Manni.

It has also been ascribed to Giovanni Lo Spagna and to Raffaellino del Garbo. Morelli supposed it to be the work of a pupil of Perugino who was inspired by a Florentine engraving of the fifteenth century, and suggested Giannicola Manni. In the same street is the picturesque little Gothic church of San Jacopo in Campo Corbolini.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FLORENTINE SUBURB]

At the end of the Via Faenza--where once stood one of Arnolfo's gates--we are out again upon the Viale, here named after Filippo Strozzi. Opposite rises what was the great Medicean citadel, the Fortezza da Ba.s.so, built by Alessandro dei Medici to overawe the city.

Michelangelo steadfastly refused, at the risk of his life, to have anything to do with it. Filippo Strozzi is said to have aided Alessandro in carrying out this design, and even to have urged it upon him, although he was warned that he was digging his own grave. After the unsuccessful attempt of the exiles to overthrow the newly-established government of Duke Cosimo, while Baccio Valori and the other prisoners were sent to be beheaded or hanged in the Bargello, Filippo Strozzi was imprisoned here and cruelly tortured, in spite of the devoted attempts of his children to obtain his release.

Here at length, in 1538, he was found dead in his cell. He was said to have left a paper declaring that, lest he should be more terribly tortured and forced to say things to prejudice his own honour and inculpate innocent persons, he had resolved to take his own life, and that he commended his soul to G.o.d, humbly praying Him, if He would grant it no other good, at least to give it a place with that of Cato of Utica. It is not improbable that the paper was a fabrication, and that Filippo had been murdered by orders of the Duke.

CHAPTER XI

_The Bridges--The Quarter of Santa Maria Novella_

"Sopra il bel fiume d'Arno alla gran villa."

--_Dante._

Outside the portico of the Uffizi four Florentine heroes--Farinata degli Uberti, Piero Capponi, Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Francesco Ferrucci--from their marble niches keep watch and ward over the river.

This Arno, which Lapo Gianni dreamed of as _balsamo fino_, is spanned by four ancient and famous bridges, and bordered on both banks by the Lungarno.

To the east is the Ponte Rubaconte--so called after the Milanese Podesta, during whose term of office it was made--or Ponte alle Grazie, built in 1237; it is mentioned by Dante in Canto xii. of the _Purgatorio_, and is the only existing Florentine bridge which could have actually felt the footsteps of the man who was afterwards to tread scathless through the ways of h.e.l.l, "unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume." It has, however, been completely altered at various periods. On this bridge a solemn reconciliation was effected between Guelfs and Ghibellines on July 2, 1273, by Pope Gregory X. The Pope in state, between Charles of Anjou and the Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople, blessed his "reconciled" people from the bridge, and afterwards laid the first stone of a church called San Gregorio della Pace in the Piazza dei Mozzi, now destroyed. As soon as the Pope's back was turned, Charles contrived that his work should be undone, and the Ghibellines hounded again out of the city.[49]

[49] Opposite the bridge, at the beginning of the Via dei Benci, is the palace of the old Alberti family; the remains of their loggia stand further up the street, at the corner of the Borgo Santa Croce.

In all these streets, between the Lungarno della Borsa and the Borgo dei Greci, there are many old houses and palaces; in the Piazza dei Peruzzi the houses, formerly of that family and partly built in the fourteenth century, follow the lines of the Roman amphitheatre--the _Parlascio_ of the early Middle Ages. The Palazzo dei Giudici--in the piazza of that name--was originally built in the thirteenth century, though reconstructed at a later epoch.

Below the Ponte alle Grazie comes the Ponte Vecchio, the Bridge _par excellence_; _il ponte_, or _il pa.s.so d'Arno_, as Dante calls it. More than a mere bridge over a river, this Ponte Vecchio is a link in the chain binding Florence to the Eternal City. A Roman bridge stood here of old, and a Roman road may be said to have run across it; it heard the tramp of Roman legionaries, and shook beneath the horses of Totila's Gothic chivalry. This Roman bridge possibly lasted down to the great inundation of 1333. The present structure, erected by Taddeo Gaddi after 1360, with its exquisite framed pictures of the river and city in the centre, is one of the most characteristic bits of old Florence still remaining. The shops of goldsmiths and jewellers were originally established here in the days of Cosimo I., for whom Giorgio Vasari built the gallery that runs above to connect the two Grand Ducal Palaces. Connecting the Porta Romana with the heart of the city, the bridge has witnessed most of the great pageants and processions in Florentine history. Popes and Emperors have crossed it in state; Florentine generals, or hireling condottieri, at the head of their victorious troops; the Piagnoni, bearing the miraculous Madonna of the Impruneta to save the city from famine and pestilence; and Savonarola's new Cyrus, Charles VIII., as conqueror, with lance levelled. Across it, in 1515, was Pope Leo X. borne in his litter, blessing the people to right and left, amidst the exultant cries of _Palle, Palle!_ from the crowd, who had forgotten for the time all the crimes of his house in their delight at seeing their countryman, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, raised to the papal throne.

In Dante's day, what remained of the famous statue supposed of Mars, _quella pietra scema che guarda il ponte_, "that mutilated stone which guardeth the bridge," still stood here at the corner, probably at the beginning of the present Lungarno Acciaiuoli. "I was of that city that changed its first patron for the Baptist," says an unknown suicide in the seventh circle of h.e.l.l, probably one of the Mozzi: "on which account he with his art will ever make it sorrowful. And were it not that at the pa.s.sage of the Arno there yet remains some semblance of him, those citizens, who afterwards rebuilt it on the ashes left by Attila, would have laboured in vain." Here, as we saw in chapter i., young Buondelmonte was murdered in 1215, a sacrifice to Mars in the city's "last time of peace," _nella sua pace postrema_.

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

Lower down comes the Ponte Santa Trinita, originally built in 1252; and still lower the Ponte alla Carraia, built between 1218 and 1220 in the days of Frederick II., for the sake of the growing commerce of the Borgo Ognissanti. This latter bridge was originally called the Ponte Nuovo, as at that time the only other bridge over the Arno was the Ponte Vecchio. It was here that a terrible disaster took place on May 1st, 1304--a strange piece of grim mediaeval jesting by the irony of fate turned to still grimmer earnest. After a cruel period of disasters and faction fights, there had come a momentary gleam of peace, and it was determined to renew the pageants and festivities that had been held in better days on May-day, "in the good time pa.s.sed, of the tranquil and good state of Florence," each contrada trying to rival the other. What followed had best be told in the words of Giovanni Villani, an eye-witness:--

"Amongst the others, the folk of the Borgo San Frediano, who had been wont of yore to devise the newest and most diverse pastimes, sent out a proclamation, that those who wished to know news of the other world should be upon the Ponte alla Carraia and around the Arno on the day of the calends of May. And they arranged scaffolds on the Arno upon boats and s.h.i.+ps, and made thereon the likeness and figure of h.e.l.l with fires and other pains and torments, with men arrayed like demons, horrible to behold, and others who bore the semblance of naked souls, that seemed real persons; and they hurled them into those divers torments with loud cries and shrieks and uproar, the which seemed hateful and appalling to hear and to behold. Many were the citizens that gathered here to witness this new sport; and the Ponte alla Carraia, the which was then of wood from pile to pile, was so laden with folk that it broke down in several places, and fell with the people who were upon it, whereby many persons died there and were drowned, and many were grieviously injured; so that the game was changed from jest to earnest, and, as the proclamation had run, so indeed did many depart in death to hear news of the other world, with great mourning and lamentation to all the city, for each one thought that he had lost son or brother."

The famous inundation of November 1333 swept away all the bridges, excepting the Ponte Rubaconte. The present Ponte Santa Trinita and Ponte alla Carraia were erected for Duke Cosimo I. by Bartolommeo Ammanati, shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century.

Turning from the river at the Ponte Vecchio by the Via Por Sta. Maria, we see on the right the old church of San Stefano, with a completely modernised interior. Here in 1426 Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Niccol da Uzzano held a meeting of some seventy citizens, and Rinaldo proposed to check the growing power of the populace by admitting the magnates into the government and reducing the number of Arti Minori. Their plan failed through the opposition of Giovanni dei Medici, who acquired much popularity thereby. It should be remembered that it was not here, as usually stated, but in the Badia, which was also dedicated to St.

Stephen, that Boccaccio lectured on Dante.

Right and left two very old streets diverge, the Via Lambertesca and the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, with splendid mediaeval towers. In the former, at the angle of the Via di Por Santa Maria, are the towers of the Girolami and Gherardini, round which there was fierce fighting in the expulsion of the Ghibellines in 1266. Opposite, at the opening of the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, are the towers of the Baldovinetti (the tower of San Zen.o.bio) and of the Amidei--_la casa di che nacque il vostro fleto_, as Cacciaguida puts it to Dante: "the house from which your wailing sprang," whose feud with the Buondelmonti was supposed to have originated the Guelf and Ghibelline factions in Florence. And further down the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, at the opening of the Chia.s.so delle Misure, is the tall and stately tower of these Buondelmonti themselves, who also had a palace on the opposite side of the street.

The old church of the Santissimi Apostoli, in the Piazza del Limbo, has an inscription on its facade stating that it was founded by Charlemagne, and consecrated by Archbishop Turpin, with Roland and Oliver as witnesses. It appears to have been built in the eleventh century, and is the oldest church on this side of the Arno, with the exception of the Baptistery. Its interior, which is well preserved, is said to have been taken by Filippo Brunelleschi as the model for San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito. In it is a beautiful Ciborium by Andrea della Robbia, with monuments of some of the Altoviti family.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TOWER OF S. ZAn.o.bI]

The Piazza Santa Trinita was a great place for social and other gatherings in mediaeval and renaissance Florence. Here on the first of May 1300, a dance of girls was being held to greet the calends of May in the old Florentine fas.h.i.+on, when a band of mounted youths of the Donati, Pazzi and Spini came to blows with a rival company of the Cerchi and their allies; and thus the first blood was shed in the disastrous struggle between the Bianchi and Neri. A few days later a similar faction fight took place on the other side of the bridge, in the Piazza Frescobaldi, on the occasion of a lady's funeral. The great Palazzo Spini, opposite the church, was built at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century by Geri Spini, the rich papal banker and one of the leaders of the "black" faction. Here he received the Pope's amba.s.sadors and made a great display of his wealth and magnificence, as we gather from Boccaccio's _Decameron_, which gives us an amusing story of his friends.h.i.+p with Cisti the baker, and another of the witty repartees of Madonna Oretta, Geri's wife, a lady of the Malaspina. When Charles of Valois entered Florence in November 1301, Messer Geri entertained a portion of the French barons here, while the Prince himself took up his quarters with the Frescobaldi over the river; during that tumultuous period of Florentine history that followed the expulsion of the Bianchi, Geri was one of the most prominent politicians in the State.

Savonarola's processions of friars and children used to pa.s.s through this piazza and over the bridge, returning by way of the Ponte Vecchio. On the Feast of Corpus Christi, 1497, as the Blessed Sacrament was being borne along, with many children carrying red crosses, they were set upon by some of the Compagnacci. The story is quaintly told by Landucci: "As the said procession was pa.s.sing over the Bridge of Santa Trinita, certain youths were standing to see it pa.s.s, by the side of a little church which is on the bridge on the right hand going towards Santo Spirito. Seeing those children with the crosses, they said: 'Here are the children of Fra Girolamo.' And one of them coming up to them, took one of these crosses and, s.n.a.t.c.hing it out of the hand of that child, broke it and threw it into the Arno, as though he had been an infidel; and all this he did for hatred of the Friar."