CHAPTER II.
THE two public picture galleries of Florence—the Pitti and the Uffizi—are on either side of the Arno. They are connected by a covered way, which runs along over the roofs of houses, and crosses the jewelers’ bridge, so called because upon it are built the shops of all the jewelers in town,—or so it would seem at first sight. At all events, here are nothing but jewelers’ shops; small shops, such as I imagine the shops of the middle ages to have been. But in the narrow windows, and in the unostentatious show-cases, are displayed most exquisite workmanship in Florentine mosaic, in turquoise, in malakite, exquisite as to the quality of the mosaic and the character of the designs in which the earrings, brooches, bracelets, were made up. As a rule, however, the gold-work was inferior, and the settings were very apt to come apart, and the pins to break and bend, after a very short wear.
Sauntering across this bridge, one passes, on his way to the Uffizi, various shops in narrow streets, where the silks of Florentine manufacture are displayed. Such pretty silks, dear girls, and so cheap! For a mere song you may go dressed like the butterflies, in Florence, clad in bright, sheeny raiment, spun by native worms out of native mulberry leaves. Equally cheap are the cameos, and the coral, that are brought here from neighboring Naples, and the turquoises, imported directly from the Eastern market, and the mosaics, inlaid of precious stones in Florence herself.
So we come out upon the Piazza, or Square, of the Uffizi. The Uffizi Palace itself is of irregular form, and inclosed by loggiae, or covered colonnades. In front of the palace stands the David of Michael Angelo, in its strong beauty. Michael Angelo said of this that “the only test for a statue is the light of a public square.” To this test the David has been subjected for over three hundred years, and still, in the searching light of day, stand revealed the courage and the faith and the strength of the young man who went forth to do battle with the giant, “In the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel.” And who shall say to how many of us Michael Angelo does not preach, across the centuries, a sermon in stone, as we stand before his David?—as we recall what Giants of Doubt, of Passion, of Pride, we, too, are called upon to battle with in our day?
In a square portico, or loggia, giving upon the Piazza, is a statue of Perseus, another slayer of monsters, or, rather, a slayer of monsters in another realm. It was this Perseus to whom Pallas gave a mirror-shield of burnished brass, whom Mercury armed with an adamantine scythe, giving him also wings on his feet. It was this Perseus who slew the Gorgon Princess Medusa. In the statue, the fatal head of Medusa, with its stony stare, is held aloft by the warrior, who is trampling upon the headless trunk. This head had, in death as in life, the power of turning many men to stone, and was thus made use of by Perseus against other enemies of his. The subject of the stony-eyed Gorgon possessed, apparently, a curious fascination for artists. There is a famous head painted on wood by Leonardo da Vinci, besides this statue by Benvenuto Cellini, in the Uffizi.
How, as a child, I used to puzzle over the strange fable in both statue and picture! But, since then, I have had experience of Gorgon natures in real life; natures that chilled and repressed, stupefied all with whom they came in contact; and I wonder less at the fable, and I pass the word on to you, that you may know, when unsympathetic surroundings chill your heart and blunt your feelings, and subdue your better self, that you are being haunted by Da Vinci’s very Medusa, by Gellini’s very Medusa, snaky locks, fixed eyes, impassive deadness.
Into the great Uffizi Palace: up the wide marble stairway, into the long gallery that opens into the immense suite of rooms hung with pictures; the gallery hung with pictures, too, and set with statues.
How I wish I could make you see with my eyes! How I wish I could be to you something more than a mere traveler, telling what I have seen! That long corridor, windows on one side, statues and pictures on the other, always seems to me like a nursery for love of art. At the far end are the quaint pictures of Giotto and Cimabue. Then the reverent, religious paintings of Fra Angelico. Oh, those sweet-faced, golden-haired angels! Oh, the glimpse into the land seen by faith, inhabited by shining ones! Oh, the radiance of those pictures! The gold back-grounds, the bright faces, the happy effect of them! The artists believed them with all their souls, as Ruskin has said; so they painted pictures which recall the refrain of Bernard de Cluny’s Rhyme of the Celestial Country. Presently pictures by Perugino, Raphael’s master, and—quite at the other end of the gallery—the portrait of Raphael, painted by himself. This picture is on an easel, and stands apart. Are you familiar with Raphael’s beautiful, calm, young face? It is a face which has passed into a proverb for beauty and serenity. A velvet cap is pushed off the pure brow; the hair is long and waving; the eyes are large and dark and abstracted. I always stood before this picture as before a shrine.
All the way down the gallery are statues and busts. There are the Roman emperors, far more familiar to me through their counterfeit presentments than through the pages of history. Augustus, Diocletian, Trajan: to us girls they were studies in hair-dressing, if in nothing else. Some of them with flowing locks, some with close, short curls, some with hair parted in the middle and laid in long, smooth curls, like a woman. Of such was Heliogabulus, and of such was Vitellius.
One morning—soon after we came to Florence—we started off upon a quest—through the Uffizi—Millie, Eva and I, and our elders. The object of our quest was no less a goddess than she called of the Medici.
I remember that we wandered down the long gallery I have described, and through room after room. It was the fancy of our mamma, and the uncle who was taking care of us all, to find their way about for themselves. For instance: if we had been told that a certain picture, by a certain master, was to be found in a certain palace, we roamed in and out around the other pictures until the picture revealed itself to us. It was surprising how seldom we were deceived in this method of ours. We would pass by dozens of pictures by inferior artists, completely unmoved; then, suddenly, a thrilling vision of beauty would glow upon us, and we would acknowledge ourselves to be in a royal presence-chamber.
Such a presence-chamber is the Tribune in the Uffizi palace. We came upon many marble Venuses before we arrived in this Tribune, a large, octagon room, with a domed ceiling, blue, flecked with gold stars; but we passed them all by—until finally we entered the reverent stillness which is kept about the Venus of Venuses. We recognized her at once. There she stood, in that silent room, the light subdued to a judicious mellowness—beautiful with the fresh, smiling beauty of perpetual youth; beautiful with the same beauty that gladdened the heart of the Greek artist who carved her, hundreds of years ago; so many hundreds of years that the marble has in consequence, the rich cream-color of old ivory.
In this same Tribune hangs the portrait of a beautiful young woman, called the Fornarina. Of her only this is known, that she was the beloved of Raphael, and that she was the daughter of a baker in Rome. Fornarina means little bakeress, or, perhaps we should say, baker-girl. But this Fornarina might be a princess. An “ox-eyed Juno” princess, dark and glowing, with a serene composure about her that one remembers as her most striking characteristic.
Raphael’s lady-love. Millie and I knew more about her than was ever written in books. Not reliable gossip—gossip of our own invention, but gossip that delighted our hearts.
Other pictures by Raphael hang here, too. How distinctly I recall them. How vivid are all the works of this great painter! The critics say that one who excelled in so many things, excelled also in expression. Yes. It is this which gives to his pictures the distinctness of photographs from life. They are dramatic. They take you at once into the spirit of the scene represented. They are full of soul, and herein lies the great difference between Raphael’s works and those of other schools, the Venetian, for instance. The painters of Venice aimed at effects of color; Raphael used color only in order to express a loftier thought.
Are you tired of the Uffizi? Come with me, for a few minutes, before we go, into the Hall of Niobe. Words fail me to relate with what mingled emotions of sympathy, distress and delight we children used to haunt this hall, and examine each sculptured form in turn. The story goes that Niobe incurred the displeasure of Diana and Apollo, who wreaked their vengeance upon the mother by killing her fourteen children. At the head of the hall stands Niobe, convulsed with grief, vainly imploring the angry brother and sister to show compassion, and at the same time protecting the youngest child, who is clinging to her. But we feel that both intercession and protection will be in vain. On the other side of the hall are her sons and daughters. Some already pierced with arrows, stiff in death; some in the attitude of flight, some staggering to the ground. It is an easy matter for the imagination to picture the supreme moment when, bereft of all her children, the mother’s heart breaks, and she is turned to stone. The legend relates that that stone wept tears. Nor was it a difficult matter for me to take this on faith. What is more, many is the time I have planted myself before the very marble Niobe in the Uffizi, firmly expecting to see the tears flow down her cheeks.
La Fornarina of the Uffizi, at Florence.
So we come out upon the streets of Florence again. Fair Florence, the narrow Arno dividing her, the purple Appennines shutting her in the Arno’s fertile valley. Flower-women stop us on the streets, and offer us flowers. Flower-women who are not as pretty as they are wont to be at fancy-dress parties; they are apt to be heavy and middle-aged, in fact, one of them, the handsomest of the band, has a scar on her face, and a tinge of romance attached to her name. It is whispered about that her lover’s dagger inflicted the scar, in a fit of jealousy. Once I myself saw a look flash into her eyes, when something was said to offend her by a passer-by on the street, which suggested the idea that she might have used her dagger in return. It was the look of a tiger aroused. And after that I never quite lost sight of the smothered fire in those black eyes of hers.
I used to wonder why I saw so few pretty faces in Florence. Moreover, how lovely the American ladies always looked in contrast with the swarthy, heavy Tuscan women. As a rule, that is. Of course, there were plain Americans and handsome Tuscans; but our countrywomen certainly bear off the palm for delicacy of feature and coloring. Still, the Tuscan peasant-girls make a fine show, with their broad flats of Leghorn straw; and when they are married they are invariably adorned with strings of Roman pearls about their necks. So many rows of pearls counts for so much worldly wealth.
I stroll on, stopping to look in at the picture stores, or coming to an enraptured pause before a cellar-way piled up with rare and fragrant flowers, such as one sees seldom out of Florence—the City of Flowers.