We took leave of our kind guide here, going, as he had advised, to Santa Maria Novella—famous, as its architecture was so prized by Michael Angelo. Hollowed in the wall, which joins its façade, are niches, which the Italians call sepulchres, and which served for pillories to expose the condemned prisoners of the Inquisition, when the members of its tribunal were Dominican friars. The church is divided into three aisles, whose arches diminish as they recede, giving it an appearance of extent it does not possess in reality. In one of its chapels is an ancient picture of the Virgin and Child, surrounded with Angels, by Cimabue, so prized at the period of its execution, that, having been exhibited like a treasure to Charles of Anjou, it was borne in procession to the place it now occupies.
Having examined the monuments and pictures, some deserving of far more attention than is yielded in a flying visit like ours, we passed out from the church by a door of the left hand aisle, into a cloister once a cemetery; for round the walls, still covered with faded frescoes, and under our feet, were old inscriptions and gravestones, and in the centre, among cabbages and high grass, which partly conceal it, an ancient tomb. The windows of the fine chapel, which, in 1566, received the name of Cappella degli Spagnuoli, look beneath the arches of the cloister on this desolate view. It was ceded to the Spaniards, then filling places at court, and occupied in commerce. The workmen, employed in placing ornaments for some festival, good-naturedly desired we would enter to view the frescoes of its walls. Some are by Memmi, who was the friend of Petrarch, and among the figures of his composition has placed him beside a knight of Rhodes; and his fair Laura, conversing with some seated females, and representing “The Will”—(la Volontà)—is distinguished by a small flame which burns on her breast, and a green vest scattered over with violets.
Near the portal, by which we had issued from the church, there is an arched corridor, leading to another cloister, now encumbered with rubbish. Following down it a few steps, we passed before several low portals, apparently of underground prisons, and a curious little chapel, hollowed in the wall, and going to ruin; for on this side, lumber, and accumulated filth, and a company of oxen, who were tied to the pillars, eating hay, stopped our further progress; and my curiosity being yet unsatisfied, and in search of the second cloister described by guide-books, we returned to and quitted the church once more, and from its entrance on the Place passed into a court, where a comfortable looking friar in white was watching the arrival of some casks. As his occupation was sufficiently worldly, I thought his presence no hindrance, and was about to penetrate on forbidden ground, when he called me back with “Non è permesso, signora,” not uttered, however, with the due horror of a Dominican, but laughing with all his heart.
We had still some time for sight seeing, and therefore proceeded towards the manufacture of “Pietre Dure” at the Belli Arti, having carried away from the Cappella an admiration of their beauty, which made us desire to see the work in progress. As we walked along the street in which it stands, a gentleman accosted us, and, looking up, we saw the good-natured old priest again. “In all the years he had lived in Florence,” he said, “he had never visited the manufactory, and as our questions concerning it had excited his curiosity, he was going thither now;” and he offered us his aid and company, which we gladly accepted, and found him even more efficient as a guide than before, and more agreeable as a companion also, for this second meeting placed us on the footing of old acquaintances.
A workman conducted us to the laboratories, the stores of precious stones and marbles, and through the various rooms containing specimens of the art, proving its progress and present perfection; for the wreaths of fruit and flowers imitate the cunning hand of nature so well, with their brilliant tints and delicate shadows, as to outdo painting. The composition and grouping are due to the best artists of Florence, and the stones so chosen as to simulate lights and shadows. There are some fine productions of the manufactory at the Palazzo Pitti, but none to be compared to a table I saw here, whose execution occupied, to the best of my recollection, seven years. A very small one, which I should have wished to possess, was to be sold for five thousand crowns—its wreath of fruit and flowers inserted in a slab of porphyry. The grapes were each one an amethyst; the currants cornelian; the corn flowers lapis lazuli. The workmen employed in filing the stones to the necessary size and form looked pale and weary over their work. At sixty years old they retire pensioned. The work which, though not the most beautiful, our friend the abbé considered most curious from its difficulty of execution, is the sarcophagus in porphyry, (destined for the Cappella dei Principi, and to be placed over the remains of the Gran Duchessa,) inasmuch as the hard substance has been wrought to as extraordinary perfection as if it were soft alabaster. Thirty men worked at this twelve hours a-day during five years. We parted with regret from the abbé: as we are to leave Florence so soon, to attempt to cultivate his acquaintance now would be useless. I think I told you D—— has found here letters which recall us to Paris with as little delay as possible. We mentioned this to the priest, and also our intention of returning next winter; and he desired us to seek him then at San Lorenzo, which he inhabited, and where we should easily find him out by asking for Padre Francesco. We had still several hours to dispose of, and we set forward to our daily haunt, the Galleria, but passed on our way the old prison, and turned into its picturesque court, with its walls covered with carved blazonries, and its heavy, uncovered stair leading to the upper stories. Fronting the street, and from the dark wall of this gloomy building, hangs the ponderous gallows chain.
Unfortunately for our visit to the museum, there stands, on a Place near, a large church and convent, comparatively of modern date, as it appears to have been built in Louis the Fourteenth’s time. Possessed with the passion of sight-seeing, though there seemed to be nothing curious about this, I proposed going in for five minutes, and doing so by the central door, we found our way to an oratory, wherein we had certainly no right to enter. It was clean and modern, and having walked round it and discovered that to do so had been time lost, I turned to leave it by the same door, to the discontent of D——, who was tired and had seated himself on a bench, but, arrived at it, I found that we were destined to a repose longer than might be desirable, for we were certainly in the private chapel of the monastery, and the monks (unconscious of company) had barred and double locked, silently, but securely, all manner of egress—this and the half dozen other doors which we tried in vain; succeeding only so far as to arrive in a closed corridor, and at a grating through whose bars we could contemplate a little desolate yard of the convent, into which nobody came. The churches of Florence are usually closed from one to three, but how long our imprisonment here was to last was uncertain, and when an hour had passed we began to think it would prove an unpleasant sleeping chamber. Luckily for us, however, a young pale priest came gently in from the convent, and kneeled down to pray before the altar, so absorbed in his devotion as not to observe our presence during his prayer, and very nearly to escape us when it was ended; for as he was gliding away with downcast eyes, I had barely time to accost him, and say, like the starling, “I can’t get out,” whereupon he delivered us by unlocking door after door with his master-key, and stood watching our retreat, in wonder as to how we got in.
This evening to the Cascine—the promenade to which the Florentines are constant as the Parisians to the Bois de Boulogne. It has long alleys of finer trees, and better ground for riding than the latter, and a prospect of the hills which rise round Florence.
We crossed the light suspended bridge to return by the opposite shore. The view back to the city is, saving that from the Boboli gardens, the best of Florence; and that down the river the most picturesque of the Arno.
As we passed Huband’s stables on our road to the hôtel, I paid a visit to Fanny. The horses are well taken care of, but the stables confined and crowded. Fanny, who had been left alone longer than she approved of, had gnawed her cord asunder, and eaten up all the oats destined for the day’s provender of both.
Our table d’hôte party is an agreeable one. Among the rest, I found the first day a lady and her family whom I met at the Simplon Inn, and who told me there a story, not at all encouraging to lonely travellers like ourselves, of a journey which a few years back she had made hither with her father, and during which their carriage had been stopped by robbers who rifled it, held loaded muskets to their breasts, and tore from her neck the gold chain she wore. To-day, by a strange chance, there was seated next me a lady who, some years ago, before we either were married, I had often met in Paris ball-rooms, and now the widow of an officer who was taken prisoner and absolutely torn in pieces at Algiers. She is here alone with a pale child, whose extreme cleverness and delicacy would make me tremble, as it does her. His soul seems too near the surface, and his hollow cough predicts that his mother will not change her mourning.