The Story of Florence Part 17

A series of smaller rooms, no less gorgeously decorated, adjoins the Sala dell' Iliade. In the _Sala dell' Educazione di Giove_ are: Fra Bartolommeo's Holy Family with St. Elizabeth (256), over the door; the Zingarella or Gipsy Girl (246), a charming little idyllic picture by Boccaccino of Cremona, formerly ascribed to Garofalo; Philip IV. of Spain (243) by Velasquez. Carlo Dolci's St Andrew (266) is above his usual level; but it is rather hard to understand how Guido Reni's Cleopatra (270) could ever be admired.

In the _Sala di Prometeo_ are some earlier paintings; but those ascribed to Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, and Ghirlandaio are merely school-pieces. Fra Filippo Lippi's Madonna and Child with the Pomegranate (343) is a genuine and excellent work; in the background are seen the meeting of Joachim and Anne, with the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. Crowe and Cavalcasella observe that "this group of the Virgin and Child reminds one forcibly of those by Donatello or Desiderio da Settignano," and it shows how much the painters of the Quattrocento were influenced by the sculptors; the Madonna's face, for no obvious reason, is said to be that of Lucrezia Buti, the girl whom Lippo carried off from a convent at Prato. A curious little allegory (336) is ascribed by Morelli to Filippino Lippi. We should also notice the beautiful Madonna with Angels adoring the Divine Child in a rose garden (347), a characteristic Florentine work of the latter part of the Quattrocento, once erroneously ascribed to Filippino Lippi; an Ecce h.o.m.o in fres...o...b.. Fra Bartolommeo (377); a Holy Family by Mariotto Albertinelli (365); and a tondo by Luca Signorelli (355), in which St. Catherine is apparently writing at the dictation of the Divine Child. But the two gems of this room are the head of a Saint (370) and the portrait of a man in red dress and hat (375) by one of the earlier painters of the Quattrocento, probably Domenico Veneziano; "perhaps," writes Mr Berenson, "the first great achievements in this kind of the Renaissance." Here, too, is a fine portrait by Lorenzo Costa (376) of Giovanni Bentivoglio.

In the _Sala del Poccetti_, _Sala della Giustizia_, _Sala di Flora_, _Sala dei Putti_, the pictures are, for the most part, unimportant.

The so-called portrait of the _bella Simonetta_, the innamorata of Giuliano dei Medici (353), is not authentic and should not be ascribed to Sandro Botticelli. There are some fairly good portraits; a t.i.tian (495), a Sebastiano del Piombo (409), Duke Cosimo I. by Bronzino (403), Oliver Cromwell by Lely (408). Calumny by Francia Bigio (427) is curious as a later rendering of a theme that attracted the greatest masters of the Quattrocento (Botticelli, Mantegna, Luca Signorelli all tried it). Lovers of Browning will be glad to have their attention called to the Judith of Artemisia Gentileschi (444): "a wonder of a woman painting too."

A pa.s.sage leads down two flights of steps, with occasional glimpses of the Boboli Gardens, through corridors of Medicean portraits, Florentine celebrities, old pictures of processions in piazza, and the like. Then over the Ponte Vecchio, with views of the Arno on either hand as we cross, to the Uffizi.

Behind the Pitti Palace are the delicious Boboli Gardens, commenced for Duke Cosimo I., with shady walks and exquisitely framed views of Florence. In a grotto near the entrance are four unfinished statues by Michelangelo; they are usually supposed to have been intended for the tomb of Julius II., but may possibly have been connected with the projected facade of San Lorenzo.

Nearly opposite the Palazzo Pitti is the Casa Guidi, where the Brownings lived and wrote. Here Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in June 1861, she who "made of her verse a golden ring linking England to Italy"; these were the famous "Casa Guidi windows" from which she watched the liberation and unification of Italy:--

"I heard last night a little child go singing 'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, _O bella liberta, O bella!_--stringing The same words still on notes he went in search So high for, you concluded the upspringing Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green, And that the heart of Italy must beat, While such a voice had leave to rise serene 'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street."

The church in question, San Felice, contains a good picture of St.

Anthony, St. Rock and St. Catherine by some follower of Botticelli and Filippino Lippi; also a Crucifixion of the school of Giotto. Thence the Via Mazzetta leads into the Piazza Santo Spirito, at the corner of which is the Palazzo Guadagni, built by Cronaca at the end of the Quattrocento; with fine iron work, lantern holders and the like, on the exterior.

The present church of Santo Spirito--the finest Early Renaissance church in Florence--was built between 1471 and 1487, after Brunelleschi's designs, to replace his earlier building which had been burned down in 1471 on the occasion of the visit of Galeazzo Maria Sforza to Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother. It is a fine example of Brunelleschi's adaptation of the early basilican type, is borne upon graceful Corinthian columns and n.o.bly proportioned. The octagonal sacristy is by Giuliano da San Gallo and Cronaca, finished in 1497, and the campanile by Baccio d'Agnolo at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The stained gla.s.s window over the entrance was designed by Perugino.

In the right transept is an excellent picture by Filippino Lippi; Madonna and Child with the little St. John, St. Catherine and St.

Nicholas, with the donor, Tanai de' Nerli, and his wife. Also in the right transept is the tomb of the Capponi; Gino, the conqueror of Pisa and historian of the Ciompi; Neri, the conqueror of the Casentino; and that great republican soldier and hero, Piero Capponi, who had saved Florence from Charles of France and fell in the Pisan war. The vision of St. Bernard is an old copy from Perugino. None of the other pictures in the church are more than school pieces; there are two in the left transept ascribed to Filippino's disappointing pupil, Raffaellino del Garbo--the Trinita with St. Mary of Egypt and St.

Catherine, and the Madonna with Sts. Lawrence, Stephen, John and Bernard. The latter picture is by Raffaellino di Carlo.

During the last quarter of the fourteenth century the convent of Santo Spirito--which is an Augustinian house--was the centre of a circle of scholars, who represent an epoch intermediate between the great writers of the Trecento and the humanists of the early Quattrocento. Prominent among them was Coluccio Salutati, who for many years served the Republic as Chancellor and died in 1406. He was influential in founding the first chair of Greek, and his letters on behalf of Florence were so eloquent and powerful that the "great viper," Giovanni Galeazzo Visconti, declared that he dreaded one of them more than many swords. Also Filippo Villani, the nephew of the great chroniclers, Giovanni and Matteo, who had succeeded Boccaccio as lecturer on Dante. They met here with other kindred spirits in the cell of Fra Luigi Marsili, a learned monk and impa.s.sioned wors.h.i.+pper of Petrarch, upon whose great crusading canzone--_O aspettata in ciel, beata e bella_--he wrote a commentary which is still extant. Fra Luigi died in 1394. A century later, the monks of this convent took a violent part in opposition to Savonarola; and it was here, in the pulpit of the choir of the church, that Landucci tells us that he heard the bull of excommunication read "by a Fra Leonardo, their preacher, and an adversary of the said Fra Girolamo,"--"between two lighted torches and many friars," as he rather quaintly puts it.

"The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up," says Browning's Lippo Lippi to his captors; and the Via Mazzetta and the Via Santa Monaca will take us to it. This church of the Carmelites, Santa Maria del Carmine, was consecrated in 1422; and, almost immediately after, the mighty series of frescoes was begun in the Brancacci Chapel at the end of the right transept--frescoes which were to become the school for all future painting. In the eighteenth century the greater part of the church was destroyed by fire, but this chapel was spared by the flames, and the frescoes, though terribly damaged and grievously restored, still remain on its walls.

This Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine plays the same part in the history of painting as the bronze gates of the Baptistery in that of sculpture. It was in that same eventful year, 1401, of the famous compet.i.tion between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, that the new Giotto was born--Tommaso, the son of a notary in Castello San Giovanni di Valdarno. With him, as we saw in chapter iii., the second great epoch of Italian painting, the Quattrocento, or Epoch of Character, opens.

His was a rare and piquant personality; _persona astrattissima e molto a caso_, says Vasari, "an absent-minded fellow and very casual."

Intent upon his art, he took no care of himself and thought nothing of the ordinary needs and affairs of the world, though always ready to do others a good turn. From his general negligence and untidiness, he was nicknamed _Masaccio_--"hulking Tom"--which has become one of the most honourable names in the history of art. The little chapel in which we now stand and survey his handiwork, or what remains of it, is nothing less than the birthplace of modern painting. Sculpture had indeed preceded painting in its return to nature and in its direct study of the human form, and the influence of Donatello lies as strongly over all the painters of the Quattrocento. Vasari even states that Masolino da Panicale (Masolino = "dear little Tom"), Masaccio's master, had been one of Ghiberti's a.s.sistants in the casting of the bronze gates, but this is questionable; it is possible that he had been Ghiberti's pupil, though he learned the principles of painting from Gherardo Starnina, one of the last artists of the Trecento. It was shortly after 1422 that Masolino commenced this great series of frescoes setting forth the life of St. Peter; within the next few years Masaccio continued his work; and, more than half a century later, in 1484, Filippino Lippi took it up where Masaccio had left off, and completed the series.

Masolino's contribution to the whole appears to be confined to three pictures: St. Peter preaching, with Carmelites in the background to carry his doctrines into fifteenth century Florence, on the left of the window; the upper row of scenes on the right wall, representing St. Peter and St. John raising the cripple at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, and the healing of Tabitha (according to others, the resuscitation of Petronilla); and the narrow fresco of the Fall of Adam and Eve, on the right of the entrance. Some have also ascribed to him the striking figure of St. Peter enthroned, attended by Carmelites, while the faithful approach to kiss his feet--the picture in the corner on the left which, in a way, sets the keynote to the whole--but it is more probably the work of Masaccio (others ascribe it to Filippino). Admirable though these paintings are, they exhibit a certain immaturity as contrasted with those by Masaccio: in the Raising of Tabitha, for instance, those two youths with their odd headgear might almost have stepped out of some Giottesque fresco; and the rendering of the nude in the Adam and Eve, though wonderful at that epoch, is much inferior to Masaccio's opposite. Nevertheless, Masolino's grave and dignified figures introduced the type that Masaccio was soon to render perfect.

From the hand of Masaccio are the Expulsion from Paradise; the Tribute Money; the Raising of the Dead Youth (in part); and (probably) the St.

Peter enthroned, on the left wall; St. Peter and St. John healing the sick with their shadow, under Masolino's Peter preaching (and the figure behind with a red cap, leaning on a stick, is Masaccio's pious portrait of his master Masolino himself); St. Peter baptising, St.

Peter and St. John giving alms, on the opposite side of the window.

Each figure is admirably rendered, its character perfectly realised; Masaccio may indeed be said to have completed what Giotto had begun, and freed Italian art from the mannerism of the later followers of Giotto, even as Giotto himself had delivered her from Byzantine formalism. "After Giotto," writes Leonardo da Vinci, "the art of painting declined again, because every one imitated the pictures that were already done; thus it went on from century to century until Tommaso of Florence, nicknamed Masaccio, showed by his perfect works how those who take for their standard any one but Nature--the mistress of all masters--weary themselves in vain."[54] This return to nature is seen even in the landscape, notably in the n.o.ble background to the Tribute Money; but above all, in his study of man and the human form.

"For the first time," says Kugler, "his aim is the study of form for itself, the study of the external conformation of man. With such an aim is identified a feeling which, in beauty, sees and preserves the expression of proportion; and in repose or motion, the expression of an harmonious development of the powers of the human frame." For sheer dignity and grandeur there is nothing to compare with it, till we come to the work of Raphael and Michelangelo in the Vatican; the composition of the Tribute Money and the Healing of the Sick initiated the method of religious ill.u.s.tration that reached its ultimate perfection in Raphael--what has been called giving Greek form to Hebrew thought. The treatment of the nude especially seemed a novel thing in its day; the wonderful modelling of the naked youth s.h.i.+vering with the cold, in the scene of St. Peter baptising, was hailed as a marvel of art, and is cited by Vasari as one of the _cose rarissime_ of painting. In the scene of the Tribute Money, the last Apostle on our right (in the central picture where our Lord and His disciples are confronted by the eager collector) whose proud bearing is hardly evangelical, is Masaccio himself, with scanty beard and untidy hair.

Although less excellent than the Baptism as a study of the nude, the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden is a masterpiece of which it is impossible to speak too highly. Our _primi parenti_, weighed down with the consciousness of ineffable tragedy, are impelled irresistibly onward by divine destiny; they need not see the Angel in his flaming robe on his cloud of fire, with his flas.h.i.+ng sword and out-stretched hand; terrible in his beauty as he is to the spectator, he is as nothing to them, compared with the face of an offended G.o.d and the knowledge of the _tanto esilio_. Surely this is how Dante himself would have conceived the scene.

[54] In Richter's _Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci_. Leonardo rather too sweepingly ignores the fact that there were a few excellent masters between the two.

Masaccio died at Rome in 1428, aged twenty-seven years. In his short life he had set modern painting on her triumphant progress, and his frescoes became the school for all subsequent painters, "All in short," says Vasari, "who have sought to acquire their art in its perfection, have constantly repaired to study it in this chapel, there imbibing the precepts and rules necessary to be followed for the command of success, and learning to labour effectually from the figures of Masaccio." If he is to rank among "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown," Masaccio may be said to stand towards Raphael as Keats towards Tennyson. Masolino outlived his great pupil for several years, and died about 1435.

The fresco of the Raising up of the dead Youth, left unfinished by Masaccio when he left Florence for Rome, was completed by Filippino Lippi (the son of that run-a-way Carmelite in whom the spirit of Masaccio was said to have lived again), in 1484. The five figures on the left appear to be from Filippino's hand (the second from the end is said to be Luigi Pulci, the poet), as also the resuscitated boy (said to be Francesco Granacci the painter, who was then about fifteen years old) and the group of eight on the right. Under Masaccio's Adam and Eve, he painted St. Paul visiting St. Peter in prison; under Masolino's Fall, the Liberation of Peter by the Angel, two exceedingly beautiful and simple compositions. And, on the right wall of the chapel, St. Peter and St. Paul before the Proconsul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter are also by Filippino. In the Crucifixion scene, which is inferior to the rest, the last of the three spectators on our right, wearing a black cap, is Filippino's master, Sandro Botticelli. In the presence of the Proconsul, the elderly man with a keen face, in a red cap to the right of the judge, is Antonio Pollaiuolo; and, on our right, the youth whose head appears in the corner is certainly Filippino himself--a kind of signature to the whole.

Apart from the Brancacci chapel, the interest of the Carmine is mainly confined to the tomb of the n.o.ble and simple-hearted ex-Gonfaloniere, Piero Soderini (who died in 1513), in the choir; it was originally by Benedetto da Rovezzano, but has been restored. There are frescoes in the sacristy, representing the life of St. Cecilia, by one of Giotto's later followers, possibly Spinello Aretino, and, in the cloisters, a noteworthy Madonna of the same school, ascribed to Giovanni da Milano.

Beyond the Carmine, westwards, is the Borgo San Frediano, now, as in olden time, the poorest part of Florence. It was the ringing of the bell of the Carmine that gave the signal for the rising of the Ciompi in 1378. Unlike their neighbours, the Augustinians of Santo Spirito, the good fathers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel were for the most part ardent followers of Savonarola, and, on the first of October 1497, one of them preached an open-air sermon near the Porta San Frediano, in which he declared that he himself had had a special revelation from G.o.d on the subject of Fra Girolamo's sanct.i.ty, and that all who resisted the Friar would be horribly punished; even Landucci admits that he talked arrant nonsense, _pazzie_. The parish church of this district, San Frediano in Cestello, is quite uninteresting. At the end of the Via San Frediano is the great Porta San Frediano, of which more presently.

The gates and walls of Oltrarno were built between 1324 and 1327, in the days of the Republic's great struggle with Castruccio Interminelli. Unlike those on the northern bank, they are still in part standing. There are five gates on this side of the river--the Porta San Niccol, the Porta San Miniato, the Porta San Giorgio, the Porta Romana or Por San Piero Gattolino, and the Porta San Frediano.

It was all round this part of the city that the imperial army lay during the siege of 1529 and 1530.

On the east of the city, on the banks of the Arno, rises first the Porta San Niccol--mutilated and isolated, but the only one of the gates that has retained a remnant of its ancient height and dignity.

In a lunette on the inner side is a fresco of 1357--Madonna and Child with Saints, Angels and Prophets. Around are carved the lilies of the Commune. On the side facing the hill are the arms of the Parte Guelfa and of the People, with the lily of the Commune between them. Within the gate the Borgo San Niccol leads to the church of San Niccol, which contains a picture by Neri di Bicci and one of the Pollaiuoli, and four saints ascribed to Gentile da Fabriano. It is one of the oldest Florentine churches, though not interesting in its present state. There is an altogether untrustworthy tradition that Michelangelo was sheltered in the tower of this church after the capitulation of the city, but he seems to have been more probably in the house of a trusted friend. Pope Clement ordered that he should be sought for, but left at liberty and treated with all courtesy if he agreed to go on working at the Medicean monuments in San Lorenzo; and, hearing this, the sculptor came out from his hiding place. It may be observed that San Niccol was a most improbable place for him to have sought refuge in, as Malatesta Baglioni had his headquarters close by.

Beyond the Porta San Niccol is the Piano di Ripoli, where the Prince of Orange had his headquarters. Before his exile Dante possessed some land here. It was here that the first Dominican house was established in Tuscany under St Dominic's companion, Blessed John of Salerno. Up beyond the terminus of the tramway a splendid view of Florence can be obtained.

Near the Porta San Niccol the long flight of stairs mounts up the hill of _San Francesco e San Miniato_, which commands the city from the south-east, to the Piazzale Michelangelo just below the church. A long and exceedingly beautiful drive leads also to this Piazzale from the Porta Romana--the Viale dei Colli--and pa.s.ses down again to the Barriera San Niccol by the Viale Michelangelo. This Viale dei Colli, at least, is one of those few works which even those folk who make a point of sneering at everything done in Florence since the unification of Italy are constrained to admire. It would seem that even in the thirteenth century there were steps of some kind constructed up the hill-side to the church. In that pa.s.sage from the _Purgatorio_ (canto xii.) which I have put at the head of this chapter, Dante compares the ascent from the first to the second circle of Purgatory to this climb: "As on the right hand, to mount the hill where stands the church which overhangs the well-guided city, above Rubaconte, the bold abruptness of the ascent is broken by the steps that were made in the age when the ledger and the stave were safe."[55]

[55] The ledger and the stave (_il quaderno e la doga_): "In 1299 Messer Niccola Acciaiuoli and Messer Baldo d' Aguglione abstracted from the public records a leaf containing the evidence of a disreputable transaction, in which they, together with the Podesta, had been engaged. At about the same time Messer Durante de'

Chiaramontesi, being officer of the customs for salt, took away a stave (_doga_) from the standard measure, thus making it smaller."--_A. J. Butler._

The Piazzale, adorned with bronze copies of Michelangelo's great statues, commands one of the grandest views of Florence, with the valley of the Arno and the mountains round, that "in silence listen for the word said next," as Mrs Browning has it. Up beyond is the exceedingly graceful Franciscan church of San Salvadore al Monte--"the purest vessel of Franciscan simplicity," a modern Italian poet has called it--built by Cronaca in the last years of the fifteenth century. It contains a few works by Giovanni della Robbia. It was as he descended this hill with a few armed followers that Giovanni Gualberto met and pardoned the murderer of his brother; a small chapel or tabernacle, on the way up from the convent to San Miniato, still marks the spot, but the Crucifix which is said to have bowed down its head towards him is now preserved in Santa Trinita.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FORTIFICATIONS OF MICHELANGELO]

This Monte di San Francesco e di San Miniato overlooks the whole city, and Florence lay at the mercy of whoever got possession of it.

Varchi in his history apologises for those architects who built the walls of the city by reminding us that, in their days, artillery was not even dreamed of, much less invented. Michelangelo armed the campanile of San Miniato, against which the fiercest fire of the imperialists was directed, and erected bastions covering the hill, enclosing it, as it were, within the walls up from the Porta San Miniato and down again to the Porta San Niccol. It was intrusted to the guard of Stefano Colonna, who finally joined Malatesta Baglioni in betraying the city. Some bits of Michelangelo's work remain near the Basilica, which itself is one of the most venerable edifices of the kind in Tuscany; the earliest Florentine Christians are said to have met here in the woods, during the reign of Nero, and here Saint Miniatus, according to tradition the son of an Armenian king, lived in his hermitage until martyred by Decius outside the present Porta alla Croce. In the days of Gregory the Great, San Frediano of Lucca came every year with his clergy to wors.h.i.+p the relics of Miniatus; a basilica already stood here in the time of Charlemagne; and the present edifice is said to have been begun in 1013 by the Bishop Alibrando, with the aid of the Emperor St Henry and his wife Cunegunda. It was held by the Benedictines, first the black monks and then the Olivetans who took it over from Gregory XI. in 1373. The new Bishops of Florence, the first time they set foot out of the city, came here to sing Ma.s.s. In 1553 the monastery was suppressed by Duke Cosimo I., and turned into a fortress.

San Miniato al Monte is one of the earliest and one of the finest examples of the Tuscan Romanesque style of architecture. Both interior and exterior are adorned with inlaid coloured marble, of simple design, and the fine "nearly cla.s.sical" pillars within are probably taken from some ancient Roman building. Fergusson remarks that, but for the rather faulty construction of the facade, "it would be difficult to find a church in Italy containing more of cla.s.sical elegance, with perfect appropriateness for the purposes of Christian wors.h.i.+p." In the crypt beneath the altar is the tomb of San Miniato and others of the Decian martyrs. The great mosaic on the upper part of the apse was originally executed at the end of the thirteenth century. The Early Renaissance chapel in the nave was constructed by Michelozzo in 1448 for Piero dei Medici, to contain Giovanni Gualberto's miraculous Crucifix. In the left aisle is the Cappella di San Jacopo with the monument of the Cardinal James of Portugal, who "lived in the flesh as if he were freed from it, like an Angel rather than a man, and died in the odour of sanct.i.ty at the early age of twenty-six," in 1459. This tomb by Antonio Rossellino is the third of the "three finest Renaissance tombs in Tuscany," the other two being those of Leonardo Bruni (1444) by Antonio's brother Bernardo, and Carlo Marsuppini by Desiderio (1453), both of which we have seen in Santa Croce. Mr Perkins observes that the present tomb preserves the golden mean in point of ornament between the other two. The Madonna and Child with the Angels, watching over the young Cardinal's repose, are especially beautiful. The Virtues on the ceiling are by Luca della Robbia, and the Annunciation opposite the tomb by Aless...o...b..ldovinetti. The Gothic sacristy was built for one of the great Alberti family, Benedetto di Nerozzo, in 1387, and decorated shortly after with a splendid series of frescoes by Spinello Aretino, setting forth the life of St. Benedict. These are Spinello's n.o.blest works and the last great creation of the genuine school of Giotto. Especially fine are the scenes with the Gothic king Totila, and the death and apotheosis of the Saint, which latter may be compared with Giotto's St. Francis in Santa Croce. The whole is like a painted chapter of St.

Gregory's Dialogues.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTA SAN GIORGIO]

The Porta San Miniato, below the hill, almost at the foot of the Basilica, is little more than a gap in the wall. On both sides are the arms of the Commune and the People, the Cross of the latter outside the lily of the former. Upwards from the Porta San Miniato to the Porta San Giorgio a glorious bit of the old wall remains, clad inside and out with olives, running up the hillside of San Giorgio; even some remnants of the old towers are standing, two indeed having been only partially demolished. Beneath the former Medicean fortress and upper citadel of Belvedere stands the Porta San Giorgio. This, although small, is the most picturesque of all the gates of Florence. On its outer side is a spirited bas-relief of St. George and the Dragon in stone--of the end of the fourteenth century--over the lily of the Commune; in the lunette, on the inner side, is a fresco painted in 1330--probably by Bernardo Daddi--of Santa Maria del Fiore enthroned with the Divine Babe between St. George and St. Leonard. This was the only gate held by the n.o.bles in the great struggle of 1343, when the banners of the people were carried across the bridge in triumph, and the Bardi and Frescobaldi fought from street to street; through it the magnates had secretly brought in banditti and retainers from the country, and through it some of the Bardi fled when the people swept down upon their palaces. Inside the gate the steep Via della Costa San Giorgio winds down past Galileo's house to Santa Felicita. Outside the gate the Via San Leonardo leads, between olive groves and vineyards, into the Viale dei Colli. In the curious little church of San Leonardo in Arcetri, on the left, is an old _ambone_ or pulpit from the demolished church of San Piero Scheraggio, with ancient bas-reliefs.

This pulpit is traditionally supposed to have been a part of the spoils in the destruction of Fiesole; it appears to belong to the latter part of the twelfth century.

The great Porta Romana, or Porta San Piero Gattolino, was originally erected in 1328; it is still of imposing dimensions, though its immediate surroundings are somewhat prosaic. Many a Pope and Emperor has pa.s.sed through here, to or from the eternal city; the marble tablets on either side record the entrance of Leo X. in 1515, on his way from Rome to Bologna to meet Francis I. of France, and of Charles V. in 1536 to confirm the infamous Duke Alessandro on the throne--a confirmation which the dagger of Lorenzino happily annulled in the following year. It was here that Pope Leo's brother, Piero dei Medici, had made his unsuccessful attempt to surprise the city on April 28th 1497, with some thousand men or more, horse and foot. A countryman at daybreak had seen them resting and breakfasting on the way, some few miles from the city; by taking short cuts over the country, he evaded their scouts who were intercepting all persons pa.s.sing northwards, and reached Florence with the news just at the morning opening of the gate. The result was that the Magnifico Piero and his braves found it closed in their faces and the forces of the Signoria guarding the walls, so, after ignominiously skulking for a few hours out of range of the artillery, they fled back towards Siena.

Near the Porta Romana the Viale dei Colli commences to the left, as the Viale Machiavelli; and, straight on, the beautifully shady Stradone del Poggio Imperiale runs up to the villa of that name, built for Maria Maddalena of Austria in 1622. The statues at the beginning of the road were once saints on the second facade of the Duomo. It was on the rising ground that divides the Strada Romana from the present Stradone that the famous convent of Monticelli stood, recorded in Dante's _Paradiso_ and Petrarca's _Trionfo della Pudicizia_, in which Piccarda Donati took the habit of St. Clare, and from which she was dragged by her brother Corso to marry Rossellino della Tosa:--

"Perfetta vita ed alto merto inciela donna piu su, mi disse, alla cui norma nel vostro mondo giu si veste e vela,

perche in fino al morir si vegghi e dorma con quello sposo ch'ogni voto accetta, che caritate a suo piacer conforma.

Dal mondo, per seguirla, giovinetta fuggi'mi, e nel suo abito mi chiusi, e promisi la via della sua setta.

Uomini poi, a mal piu ch'al bene usi, fuor mi rapiron della dolce chiostra; e Dio si sa qual poi mia vita fusi."[56]

[56] "Perfected life and high desert enheaveneth a lady more aloft,"

she said, "by whose rule down in your world there are who clothe and veil themselves,

That they, even till death, may wake and sleep with that Spouse who accepteth every vow that love hath made conform with his good pleasure.