Cesare mio, perchè non m’accompagne?”
Purg. Canto 6.
the audience forgot the “Divina Commedia” and the actors, and loudly cheered the King, who was present at the representation, and had been received with loud and continuous cheers when he entered his box.
But although the Dante festival is over, I cannot leave Florence without telling a little more about it, for the recollection of that charming town is one of the most pleasing of my journey.
Florence means, as everybody knows, the flowery, the blooming; but only those that have seen it in the month of May, can know how well it deserves so fair a name. The beautiful Tuscan valleys, in the most lovely of which Florence lies, may well be regarded as the garden of the temperate zone. It certainly seems to me the most perfect representation of it. Naples has a touch of the tropics; cacti, aloes, and palm trees, are not of our clime. We meet with nothing new or strange at Florence. We are quite at home, all among old friends, wearing a new and more beautiful dress than we were wont to see them in, and they please us more than ever.
The trees are not gigantic, but perfect in form and size. The meadows and fields, though a pleasant sight, are somewhat monotonous at home; here they have a perfectly different look. They are planted with rows of pretty young trees of all kinds, such as poplars, planes, may, mountain ashes, etc., which are not allowed to grow beyond the size of an ornamental garden tree, in order to prevent their giving too much shade. Round every stem twines a vine, that hangs gracefully from its supporting branches, and meets some other vine from a neighbouring tree, thus forming elegant festoons.
And how well the figures that animate this delightful landscape, harmonize with it. The women of Tuscany have not the stately beauty of the Roman matrons, nor the coquetish okay webster’s] grace of their sisters of Milan and Venice. Their eyes have not the fire that burns in those of the Neapolitan girls, nor is their skin so fair as that of the Genoese; but I do not know if, after all, they are not the best looking in Italy. Their eyes have a soft lustre, which is very charming; their features are regular and very pleasing.
We stayed a few days after the festival under the false pretence of resting ourselves, but who could rest when there was so much to be seen and enjoyed?
I spent one day in the famous Gallery of the Uffizi, saw a splendid marble copy of Laocoon, and knew then what I never understood before, why that group is so much admired; saw the eternal ideal of Beauty, in the Venus of Medicis, and those wonderful beings which the brush of Titian has immortalised. But how can I venture to attempt enumerating all that I saw there? Another day was spent in the Palazzo Pitti, where some of Raphael’s most charming works are treasured up. The “Madonna del Cardellino,” the “Madonna del Baldacchino,” which although very lovely, I hardly looked at, because I could not turn my eyes away from those two winged darlings that stand at her feet, and sing her praise; and there was above all my much beloved and revered “Madonna della Sedia.”
I visited of course the churches, the interiors of which are mostly of a sombre grey, that blends with a lighter shade of the same colour, and with white. It produces a simple and serious effect. In striking contrast to the simple grandeur of the interior of these churches, is the Medicean chapel, belonging to the Church of St. Lorenzo, which is gorgeous in the extreme, the walls being entirely covered with costly marbles, and precious stones; a fit monument of the overbearing pride and vanity of that famous family. It astonished me much, this monument of their untold wealth and great power; I could not help contrasting with it the comparative simplicity and modesty of the Mausoleums of the great Sovereigns of our time, and felt that the most powerful and ambitious of them, could not build one for himself like the chapel of the Medici. In the sacristia of the same church, I saw the monuments on the tombs of Lorenzo and Giugliano dei Medici, by Michael Angelo. Of the six figures that compose the two monuments, the one of Lorenzo, made the deepest impression upon me. The whole figure, especially the face, has an expression of deep inconsolable grief. He looks as if sorrowing for ever that he robbed a great and noble people of its liberty; as if come to a full knowledge of his guilt, and the sins and follies of his past life. I think some people say the expression of this sad, mournful figure sitting upon his own tomb, is one of meditation. Rogers writes “he scowls at us.” It did not seem to me that he looks at any thing present at all, he looks with a vacant stare, his sight is turned inwardly, lost in the contemplation of the past.