The development of the political power of Florence, now fully conscious of its importance, was coincident with an increase in material wealth and with an awakening of intellectual life. Arnolfo had the good fortune to be born in the period when that great movement began, which, furthered rather than hindered by the animosity of civil strife, led to a remarkable revival in Italy of literature and art. It must be remembered that the way to it was paved by the age of the Hohenstaufen.
The great poet who is so much identified with this eventful time[19] saw the foundations laid for the palace of the Signory and the new Cathedral, Sta. Maria del Fiore, Sta. Croce, and Sto. Spirito; he witnessed the construction of the Corn Exchange of Or San Michele, and the gloomy prison which still recalls the memory of party-strife.[20] In his banishment he thought of his beautiful San Giovanni, and in order to picture the steep ascent in Purgatory drew a comparison with the straight path, that now no longer exists, leading to the church of San Miniato, which looked down on the Rubaconte bridge, and commanded a view of the city.[21] Beside it in his time Bishop Andrea de’ Mozzi had begun to build the first embattled episcopal palace, which was completed by his successor, Antonio d’Orso, the same who instigated the populace to rise against the Emperor Henry IV. Dante was a witness of the indefatigable zeal with which corporation and citizens emulated each other in the erection of churches, great public buildings, the city-wall and defensive castles for the environs. No will was held valid unless a legacy was left by it towards the expenses of building the wall, while immunity from taxes was granted to the architect of the cathedral in gratitude for his excellent work. Benevolence had long been engaged in relieving human misery, and now with increase of means it was still more displayed. Folco Portinari, the father of him whose name has become celebrated far and wide through Dante Alighieri, founded the hospital of Sta. Maria, now one of the largest in any country, by extending a charitable institution commenced by Mona Tessa, a servant of his house. The corporation built the hospital at the Porto al Prato and took under their superintendence the one long since founded by a pious citizen at Porta San Gallo. The hospital of San Jacopo and that of Sta. Maria della Scala were annexed later. Contributions were everywhere given for churches and convents, for that of the Camaldulensians in the Angeli, the Servites in Cafaggio, the Silvestrines in San Marco, and others. An especial magistrate was appointed for the care of the streets and sewers, and the Carraia bridge was rebuilt.
In the midst of this activity, in June 1304, a conflagration laid a great part of the city in ashes, during a violent feud between the populace and the nobility. It is said that 1,700 noblemen’s palaces, towers, and houses of citizens were destroyed, besides incalculable wealth, and many monuments of the old town. The prior of San Piero Scheraggio, Ser Freri Abbati, was the incendiary. As an example of the ferocity of the manners of the times it may be here mentioned that in the year 1307 the belfry of the Benedictine abbey was partially demolished because the monks had rung the alarm-bell during a quarrel which had arisen respecting taxation of the clergy. Activity in construction was not, as we have said before, confined to the defence and adornment of the city itself, for at this period the building of numerous forts was determined upon for the protection of the environs, the completion of which was afterwards vigorously carried on. Such defences were necessary in times of perpetual warfare, like the feuds of the communes; and the marches upon Rome led by Henry of Luxembourg and Louis of Bavaria, with the enterprises of Uguccione della Faggiuola and Castruccio Castracane, in connection with these, gave immediate occasion for them. In much later times they were still an effectual protection, for the art of besieging was still in its infancy when the art of defence had already made important progress, and armies under celebrated generals were stayed for months by inconsiderable villages, as the history of the second half of the fifteenth century will show.
The style of palaces and houses remained faithful to the older traditions. The public palaces were like castles. For centuries those of the Podestà and the Signory, for example, had been carefully strengthened and kept in a state of defence. From the towers, the bells of which summoned the citizens, there was a wide prospect over the city and its environs. The battlements, of the square form customary among the Guelfs, were adapted for defensive purposes. The windows on the ground storey were few and narrow, the gates were strengthened by double doors. The building material, consisting of heavy stones, or macigni, was furnished by the neighbouring stone-quarries of the hills of Fiesole and Golfolina on the Arno, at the spot where the river forces a narrow passage from the Florentine to the broad lower valley.[22] Great blocks of freestone, rough-hewn and gradually blackened by exposure to the air, formed those massive walls that seemed as though built for eternity. These walls have stamped their character on the later Florentine architecture; for the fifteenth and even the sixteenth century remained faithful to this opus rusticum, which has been transmitted down to our own days—modified, it is true, in its harsher features, but essentially unchanged. The windows of the upper storeys, divided first by slender marble columns, and then by various ornaments in the spaces of the pointed arch, relieve the gloominess of the fortress. The halls of the guilds and the palaces of the nobility exhibit the same style, though in them the embossments are partly or entirely smoothed away, and the windows are quite plain. Many of them are still preserved in the older quarters of the city, in the Borgo Sant’Apostolo, in the Via delle Terme, in the Mercato Nuovo, in the Via de’ Cerchi and Condotta, in the narrow streets behind the Old Palace in Via de’ Neri and de’ Rustici, and in Piazza Peruzzi, where they have even nestled in the Roman amphitheatre and elsewhere. The former palace of the Spini, between the Arno and the Piazza of Santa Trinità, the restoration of which has been undertaken by the present municipal authorities, presents, with its massive crown of battlements, the severe character of a fortress. The houses of the Mozzi at the south end of the Rubaconte bridge, and those of the Manelli on the Ponte Vecchio, among others, represent, in spite of change, the age of Dante; some, indeed, are now, after a lapse of six centuries, occupied by descendants of the very families that then possessed them.[23] The ground floors often show the traces of walled-up loggie, an indication of more peaceful days, for this style of building was continued even when party quarrels were fought out more by change of constitution and by proscription than by force of arms.
The numerous religious institutions show of themselves how important a field was offered to ecclesiastical architecture. At the most flourishing period of German architecture, Sta. Maria Novella furnishes the first example of the endeavour to obtain as wide and slight an arching to the vault as possible, by employing antique pilasters, composed of semi-columns and pillar corners. This attempt has met with comparative success in Sta. Maria del Fiore, in which plain pillars adorned with more developed capitals composed of acanthus leaves have been used, while for the gigantic central nave of Sta. Croce the vaulting is relinquished, and the open principle of the Christian basilica of Rome adopted. The same plan is also to be seen in San Miniato al Monte. If, however, the management of the material in Sta. Maria del Fiore exhibits extraordinary skill, a certain baldness was, on the other hand, scarcely to be avoided; and this forms a contrast with the awkwardly set cupola of the choir and transept—a fault, perhaps, less to be charged upon the first architect than is generally assumed. The exterior marble facing of the first two of these churches was similar to that of San Giovanni, but displayed a greater tendency to picturesque effect, which was increased by the additions of later times. The marble was supplied from native quarries, those of Prato and the Maremma, and after 1343 particularly from Carrara.[24] The craft of the painter was and remained combined with that of the architect, as a fine art, distinguished in fact only by the employment of different materials. That same painter, to whom art history—which in the fifteenth century was just awakening, and in the next, although not yet critical, reached descriptive perfection—has given, following tradition, a higher position than belongs to him, painted both with the brush and with coloured pastilles, and his most distinguished pupil adorned the city with its most graceful architecture. Dante has extolled them both, the one as a setting and the other as a rising star. The legend derives the ancient family name of Borgo Allegri from the popular rejoicing which accompanied Charles of Anjou on his way to inspect the great Madonna picture in the studio of Giovanni Cimabue, which now adorns the church of Sta. Maria Novella. It was Giotto di Bondone who broke through the narrow circle of typical painting in the Byzantine style, and, both in single figures of Madonnas and Saints and in grand historico-allegorical compositions, opened a way to freer spiritual development, in which he was followed by a large school. Although, as was natural, considering the large number of its followers, its original principles did not continue unmodified, this school in all essentials became the authority for the fourteenth century. No new creative peculiarity, however, was evinced, and constant repetition of the same motive can be observed in form of face, drapery, architecture, and colouring. The admiration that Giotto’s works, which adorned all Italy, had excited in his native city, the talents that were ascribed to him outside the art to which he had especially devoted himself, are shown by a decree passed by the Signory on April 12, 1334,[25] in concert with the Buonuomini—an act redounding no less to the honour of the State than of the painter. By this decree Giotto was nominated architect of the Sta. Maria del Fiore, of the boundary wall, and of the other architectural undertakings of the Corporation. ‘Let it be done,’ so it ran, ‘in order that the public works may progress effectually and in fitting manner, which can only be the case if a practised and celebrated man conduct the management of them, and for this purpose no one can be found in the whole world able to do more excellently in this, as in many other things, than Master Giotto di Bondone of Florence, painter, whom, as a great artist, his native city will lovingly receive and honour.’ Giotto lived two years after his praises were thus proclaimed. After death he was honoured with the erection in the cathedral, with the building of which he had been entrusted, of a monument adorned by one of the finest inscriptions of the Renaissance period.
During the time that the façade of this church, which was destined to undergo many a change, was building, together with its side-walls, doors, and the walls and gates of the quarter Oltr’arno; and while the belfry of the cathedral, the most graceful, rich, and perfect work of its style, arose, great efforts had to be made to clear away the last traces of the fire of 1304, and the ravages of the great inundation of November 1, 1333. Three bridges were broken up; the old bridge, with those of Santa Trinità and Carraia, and even the column before the Baptistery, which had been raised in memory of St. Zanobi, was thrown down. Every nerve was strained to the work of restoration. One of the most active among the artists was Giotto’s pupil, Taddeo Gaddi, who, in the summer of 1337, began building the new Hall of Or San Michele, on the site of the one burnt down, which was, however, no longer destined to serve the former purpose, but to be used as an Oratorium, while two upper stories were to be employed for the garnering of corn. So arose this magnificent edifice, which forms one of the most remarkable ornaments of Florence, and, seen from the neighbouring hills, towers above the clustering houses. It forms a quadrangle, of which the sides are of unequal length. The character of a hall is still visible in the ground-floor, with its wide tripartite arched windows, which are richly panelled, and in the two upper stories with their arched windows, in groups, alternately, of two and three, divided by columns; the whole being surmounted by a moulded cornice. In this cornice are niches with statues and groups of marble, which had been built at the cost of the guilds, and set on the pilasters of the older hall; and here, as on the middle storey, are placed the arms of these guilds with those of the commonwealth.[26] Two years later Taddeo Gaddi began rebuilding the old bridge in essentially the same form as at present. The palace of the Podestà had been already considerably enlarged and beautified when in 1326 it served Duke Charles of Calabria, the son of King Robert of Naples, as a residence; but in February 1332 it had suffered by fire, and in the year following by the inundation, so that a thorough restoration was necessary. The Carraia bridge was finished in 1337; that of the Trinità required several years more; the belfry of the Benedictine abbey had been rebuilt in 1330. The short reign of the Duke of Athens caused no cessation in the process of construction. A new front was built to the palace of the Signory, in which the Duke took up his residence, which did not, however, protect him from the resentment of the populace; and in the palace of the Podestà, of which the picturesque courtyard was then building, with arcades running round three sides of the ground-floor, his coats of arms bear witness to his activity. The following years were so restless and disturbed, owing to the peril the country was in from the swarms of freebooters, who, towards the middle of the century, laid all Italy under contribution, and from the fearful ravages of the Black Death, that architecture was rather called into requisition for the safety of the city than for its adornment.
The brigandage and pestilence that prevailed might well cripple constructive progress for a time, but it was soon aroused to renewed activity. If the last fearful calamity led to immorality among the lower orders, it yet induced many to relinquish the bustle of the world for grave meditations and pious works. The means of charitable institutions were considerably increased by alms and legacies. In 1349 was decreed the erection of a chapel to St. Anne, in the hall of Or San Michele, in commemoration of the expulsion of the Duke of Athens on the day of that saint. The work was conducted by Neri de’ Fioravante, who, on the occasion of that event, superintended the erection of the barricades at the Place of the Signory, and by Benci di Cione of Como. Three years later Andrea Orcagna began in the same place the rich chapel of the Madonna, which may be considered as the best work of architectural sculpture belonging to this period. The graceful loggia which, in the year 1351, were commenced opposite San Giovanni, as frontage to the Oratorium, are probably by the same artist. This Oratorium originally belonged to the brotherhood of the Misericordia, a society formed after the plague in 1326, and still in meritorious activity. It came later into the hands of another benevolent society, that of the Capitani del Bigallo.[27] The building of the Certosa, which was commenced by Nicola Acciaiuoli, in the year 1341, on the neighbouring hill of Montaguto, was carried on with vigour, and the mausoleum containing the beautiful monuments of the family belongs likewise to these years. In 1360 the building of Santa Maria del Fiore, which had been so continually interrupted, was fairly proceeded with, and four years later the cupola was commenced. In the neighbourhood of the palace of the Signory the site for the new Mint was obtained in 1361. Several churches were altered or rebuilt, and the façade of the church opposite to Or San Michele—now named after St. Charles Borromeo, but formerly dedicated to the archangel—is a monument of the graceful style of the period, though of small dimensions, and sparely ornamented. An endeavour was made in 1351 to fill the voids left by the plague in the ranks of the artists, by granting permission to strangers to carry on both sculpture and architecture. The tendency of the period towards the formation of guilds had manifested itself in the year previous by the institution of the Society of Painters, under the patronage of St. Luke, which, altered and enlarged, exists at the present day.
The Hall of the Signory, which, since the 16th century, has been generally called the Loggia de’ Lanzi, is the most important architectural work of the latter part of the 14th century. In the architecture of this building the spirit of the Renaissance breaks boldly through the barriers of the Gothic style, without entirely renouncing it. A hall in which the whole members and friends of a family could meet was looked upon as a necessary distinction of the high rank of the owner, and, indeed, no house of any importance was without such an adjunct. This hall was afterwards gradually converted into a separate and public building. Even in the middle of the following century Leon Battista Alberti wrote thus: ‘Streets and markets will be adorned by halls in which older people may assemble to avoid the heat and discuss their business, while their presence will act as a restraint upon the young in their games.’ Even private family affairs were transacted here, and it is related of Giovanni Rucellai, a rich citizen of the 15th century, who built a new loggia opposite his house, that he arranged his daughter’s wedding there. None of these loggias are at present in complete preservation,[28] for even where the exterior form has been preserved the arches have been walled up, and the building has been diverted to other uses, the original destination being uncalled for by altered customs. Numerous traces of them, however, still exist, notably of the Loggias of the Cerchi, the Agli, the Buondelmonti, the Cavalcanti, the Tornaquinci, the Peruzzi, the Alberti, the Canigiani, Burdi, Frescobaldi, Guiccardini, in the quarter of Oltr’arno, and, of later origin, those of the Albizzi and Rucellai.
A commodious hall was naturally desired for the Signory in view of the public nature of the business transacted by them, and the unsuitableness of the Tribune of Ringhiera, which was added to the façade of their palaces in 1349 and pulled down during the domination of Napoleon. Notwithstanding, however, the utility of such a building and the practice of annexing loggias to private dwellings, when the square of the Signory was enlarged in 1356, to make room for the hall, by pulling down the church of San Romolo, a part of the Mint, and several houses, the general opinion was, that a great public hall was better fitted for a despotism than for a free city.[29]
As already mentioned, it was not until twenty years later that the hall of the Signory was commenced.[30] Benci di Cione and Simone Talenti were the architects. The former was an artist much in request, and was not only incessantly engaged in the architectural works of the city, but also in the construction of the fortifications. His death happened in 1388. The superintendence of this building was entrusted likewise to the directors of Sta. Maria del Fiore, their funds exceeding their necessities. Although the building of the loggia of the Signory is ascribed to Orcagna in error, seeing that he had died eight years before, and had not lived even to see the square cleared, the way for it was prepared by the hall of the Bigallos, which was undoubtedly by his hands. The Gothic style had, even at the end of the previous century, displayed great boldness in the treatment of the pointed arch. The circular arch was now adopted, which in bold sweeps forms three openings on the façade, and one at each side. An architrave rises above the capitals of lofty but strongly built pillars, surmounted by a boldly projecting cornice, with wide cross-vaulting inside. Antique tradition was nowhere so perceptible as in this building, the unsurpassed, nay, unattainable, model for all later ones of the kind until the present day. In the year 1380, in which Antonio di Puccio, the ancestor of the yet flourishing family of the Pucci, executed the third vaulting, the building seems to have approached its completion, but eleven years longer sculptors and painters were occupied with its adornment by numerous sculptures in high and low relief, in which mosaic and colouring were employed to heighten the effect.[31]