Near the Casa Guidi are several classic spots. On the right of the Via Maggio at the corner of the Via Marsili is the house where Bernardo Buontalenti lived when the great Tasso came from Ferrara to embrace him and thank him for the beautiful scenery painted by him which had contributed so much to the success of his "Aminta." The story runs, as told by Baldinucci, that after thanking Buontalenti and kissing him on the neck and forehead Tasso mounted his horse and rode away, leaving the painter as amazed as if he had beheld a vision from the world of spirits.
A little way beyond on the same street is the house of Bianca Capello, from whose windows her delicate, fascinating face looked forth for men's undoing. Whether or not Bianca looked out from these windows "to see the Duke go by," as Mrs. Browning says, it was from her balcony here that she attracted the admiration of her first husband, Pietro Bonaventuri, with whom she eloped, and near this house he was murdered to give place to a princely suitor. The story of Bianca's marriage with the Grand Duke Francesco, of which we found accounts in several books at the all-embracing Vieusseux's, reads like a chapter of the "Arabian Nights." Never, surely, were wrong-doing and shame so gilded and glorified!—gilded literally, as the bodies of men and women were painted with gold that they might represent the deities of Olympus in the nuptial procession of Bianca, whose own car was drawn by real lions, while to other chariots were harnessed horses and buffaloes dressed in the skins of wild animals to represent griffins, unicorns, and elephants.
At the corner of the Via Toscanella an old wall marks the site of "the darksome, sad, and silent house" where Boccaccio lived and wrote.
As we regained the Piazza Pitti and turned for one more look at the Casa Guidi windows, Angela was indiscreet enough to say what I had been thinking all the time: "After all, it does not look much like a palace, although Mrs. Browning dated some of her letters from the Palazzo Guidi. It's just like an ordinary apartment-house." Zelphine vouchsafed no word in reply to this irreverent criticism, but with a withering glance at Angela strode before us along the Via Guicciardini and across the Ponte Vecchio, her head in the air and her thoughts doubtless "commencing with the skies," which were of Italy's bluest this evening. The emotions of the day had evidently been quite too much for Zelphine. She left us abruptly after dinner, and shut herself up in her own room, "to think great thoughts," Angela said, while we more practical travellers turned to our Hare and our Baedeker to plan out a campaign for to-morrow.
I forgot to tell you that we went across the river this afternoon to the little American Church on the Piazza del Carmine, where there was a short service, after which we had quite enough daylight to study Masaccio's interesting frescoes in the Cappella Brancacci of the Church of the Carmine near by. There is something intensely realistic and hopelessly sad in Masaccio's Expulsion from Paradise. Here despair and anguish are portrayed in every feature and line; our first parents really suffer, as Masaccio represents them being driven by an avenging angel from the Paradise in which, according to Filippino Lippi's panel near by, they seem to have lived in a placid and rather dull content before the Fall.
Angela reminds me of the lateness of the hour and of our early start for Vallombrosa to-morrow, whither we have elected to spend two of Katharine's holidays, thus breaking through our resolve at the very start, you see, and leaving Florence for two whole days; but as you are already familiar with my sentiments on the subject of changes of plans, I offer no apology, especially as Katharine says that one really cannot do justice to Vallombrosa in a hurried day's journey.
XV
AN EARTHLY PARADISE
Hotel Croce di Savoia,
Vallombrosa, May 10th.