The Story of Florence

by Edmund G. Gardner

Finally, on the façade in the Via Calzaioli, the first shrine is that of the Arte di Calimala or Arte dei Mercatanti, who carried on the great commerce in foreign cloth, the chief democratic guild of the latter half of the thirteenth century, but which, together with the Arte della Lana, began somewhat to decline towards the middle of the Quattrocento; their bronze St. John Baptist is Ghiberti's, but hardly one of his better works (1415). The large central tabernacle was originally assigned to the Parte Guelfa, the only organisation outside of the Guilds that was allowed to share in this work; for them, Donatello made a bronze statue of their patron, St. Louis of Toulouse, and either Donatello himself or Michelozzo prepared, in 1423, the beautiful niche for him which is still here. But, owing to the great unpopularity of the Parte Guelfa and their complete loss of authority under the new Medicean regime, this tabernacle was taken from them in 1459 and made over to the Università dei Mercanti or Magistrato della Mercanzia, a board of magistrates who presided over all the Guilds; the arms of this magistracy were set up in the present medallion by Luca della Robbia in 1462; Donatello's St. Louis was sent to the friars minor; and, some years later, Verrocchio cast the present masterly group of Christ and St. Thomas. Landucci, in his diary for 1483, tells us how it was set up, and that the bronze figure of the Saviour seemed to him the most beautiful that had ever been made. Last of all, the bronze statue of St. Luke was set up by Giovanni da Bologna in 1601, for the Judges and Notaries, who, like the silk-merchants, discarded an earlier marble. It must be observed that the substitution of the Commercial Tribunal for the tyrannical Parte Guelfa completes the purely democratic character of the whole monument.

Entering the interior, we pass from the domains of the great commercial guilds and their patrons to those of the Laudesi of Santa Maria. It is rich and subdued in colour, the vaults and pilasters covered with faded frescoes. It is divided into two parts, the one ending in the Shrine of the Blessed Virgin, the other in the chapel and altar of St. Anne, her mother and the deliveress of the Republic. These two record the two great events of fourteenth century Florentine history–the expulsion of the Duke of Athens and the Black Death. It was after this great plague that, in consequence of the Compagnia having had great riches left to them, "to the honour of the Holy Virgin Mary and for the benefit of the poor," the Captains of Orsanmichele, as the heads of these Laudesi were called, summoned Orcagna, in 1349, to the "work of the pilaster," as it was officially styled, to enclose what remained of the miraculous picture in a glorious tabernacle. He took ten years over it, finishing it in 1359, while the railing by Pietro di Migliore was completed in 1366. It was approximately at this epoch that it was decided to find another place for the market, and to close the arcades of the loggia, per adornamento e salvezza del tabernacolo di Nostra Donna.

It is goldsmith's work on a gigantic scale, this marble reliquary of the archangelic painter. "A miracle of loveliness," wrote Lord Lindsay, "and though clustered all over with pillars and pinnacles, inlaid with the richest marbles, lapis-lazuli, and mosaic work, it is chaste in its luxuriance as an Arctic iceberg–worthy of her who was spotless among women." The whole is crowned with a statue of St. Michael, and the miraculous picture is enclosed in an infinite wealth and profusion of statues and arabesques, angels and prophets, precious stones and lions' heads. Scenes in bas-relief from Our Lady's life alternate with prophets and allegorical representations of the virtues, some of these latter being single figures of great beauty and some psychological insight in the rendering–for instance, Docilitas, Solertia, Justitia, Fortitudo–while marble Angels cluster round their Queen's tabernacle in eager service and loving worship. At the back is the great scene beneath which, to right and left, the series begins and ends–the death of Madonna and her Assumption, or rather, Our Lady of the Girdle, the giving of that celestial gift to the Thomas who had doubted, the mystical treasure which Tuscan Prato still fondly believes that her Duomo holds. This is perhaps the first representation of this mystery in Italian sculpture, and is signed and dated: Andreas Cionis pictor Florentinus oratorii archimagister extitit hujus, 1359. The figure with a small divided beard, talking with a man in a big hat and long beard, is Orcagna's own portrait. The miraculous painting itself is within the tabernacle. The picture in front, the Madonna and Child with goldfinch, adored by eight Angels, is believed to be either by Orcagna himself or Bernardo Daddi[33]; it is decidedly more primitive than their authenticated works, probably because it is a comparatively close rendering of the original composition.

On the side altar on the right is the venerated Crucifix before which St. Antoninus used to pray. At one time the Dominicans were wont to come hither in procession on the anniversary of his death. In his Chronicle of Florence, Antoninus defends the friars from the accusations of Villani with respect to their scepticism about the miraculous picture. On the opposite side altar is the marble statue of Mother and Child from the tabernacle of the Medici e Speziali. It was executed about the year 1399; Vasari ascribes it to a Simone di Firenze, who may possibly be Simone di Francesco Talenti.

The altar of St. Anne at the east end of the left half of the nave is one of the Republic's thank-offerings for their deliverance from the tyranny of Walter de Brienne. Public thanksgiving had been held here, before Our Lady's picture, as early as 1343, while the "Palatium" was still in building; but in the following year, 1344, at the instance of the captains of Or San Michele and others, the Signoria decreed that "for the perpetual memory of the grace conceded by God to the Commune and People of Florence, on the day of blessed Anne, Mother of the glorious Virgin, by the liberation of the city and the citizens, and by the destruction of the pernicious and tyrannical yoke," solemn offerings should be made on St. Anne's feast day by the Signoria and the consuls of the Arts, before her statue in Or San Michele, and that on that day all offices and shops should be closed, and no one be subject to arrest for debt. The present statue on this votive altar, representing the Madonna (here perhaps symbolising her faithful city of Florence) seated on the lap of St. Anne, who is thus protecting her and her Divine Child, was executed by Francesco da Sangallo in 1526, and replaces an older group in wood; although highly praised by Vasari, it will strike most people as not quite worthy of the place or the occasion. The powerful and expressive head of St. Anne is the best part of the group.

The beneficent energies of these Laudesi and their captains spread far beyond the limits of this church and shrine. The great and still existing company of the Misericordia was originally connected with them; and the Bigallo for the foundling children was raised by them at the same time as their Tabernacle here. They contributed generously to the construction of the Duomo, and decorated chapels in Santa Croce and the Carmine. Sacchetti and Giovanni Boccaccio were among their officers; and it was while Boccaccio was serving as one of their captains in 1350 that they sent a sum of money by his hands to Dante's daughter Beatrice, in her distant convent at Ravenna. They appear to have spent all they had in the defence of Florentine liberty during the great siege of 1529.

The imposing old tower that rises opposite San Michele in the Calimala is the Torrione of the Arte della Lana, copiously adorned with their arms–the Lamb bearing the Baptist's cross. It was erected at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century, and in it the consuls of the Guild had their meetings. It was stormed and sacked by the Ciompi in 1378. The heavy arch that connects the tower with the upper storey of Or San Michele, and rather disfigures the building, is the work of Buontalenti in the latter half of the sixteenth century. The large vaulted hall into which it leads, intended originally for the storage of grain and the like, is now known as the Sala di Dante, and witnesses the brilliant gatherings of Florentines and foreigners to listen to the readings of the Divina Commedia given under the auspices of the Società Dantesca Italiana.

This is the part of the city where the Arts had their wealth and strength; the very names of the streets show it; Calimala and Pellicceria, for instance, which run from the Mercato Vecchio to the Via Porta Rossa. The Mercato Vecchio, the centre of the city both in Roman and mediæval times, around which the houses and towers of the oldest families clustered–Elisei, Caponsacchi, Nerli, Vecchietti, and the rest of whom Dante's Paradiso tells–is now a painfully unsightly modern square, with what appears to be a triumphal arch bearing the inscription: L'antico centro della città da secolare squallore a vita nuova restituita(!). Passing down the Calimala to the Via Porta Rossa and the Mercato Nuovo, near where the former enters the Via Calzaioli, the site is still indicated of the Calimala Bottega where the government of the Arts was first organised, as told in chapter i. Near here and in the Mercato Nuovo, the Cavalcanti had their palaces. In the Via Porta Rossa the Arte della Seta had their warehouses; the gate from which they took their second name, and which is represented on their shield, is of course the Por Santa Maria, Our Lady's Gate of the old walls or Cerchia Antica, which was somewhere about the middle of the present Via Por Santa Maria. The Church of Santa Maria sopra la Porta, between the Mercato Nuovo and the Via delle Terme, is the present San Biagio (now used by the firemen); adjoining it is the fine old palace of the dreaded captains of the Parte Guelfa. The Via Porta Rossa contains some mediæval houses and the lower portions of a few grand old towers still standing; as already said, in the first circle of walls there was a postern gate, at the end of the present street, opposite Santa Trinità. In the Mercato Nuovo, where a copy of the ancient boar–which figures in Hans Andersen's familiar story–seems to watch the flower market, the arcades were built by Battista del Tasso for Cosimo I. Here, too, modernisation has destroyed much. Hardly can we conjure up now that day of the great fire in 1304, when the nobles of the "black" faction galloped through the crowd of plunderers, with their blazing torches throwing a lurid glow on the steel-clad Podestà with his soldiers drawn up here idly to gaze upon the flames! A house that once belonged to the Cavalcanti is still standing in Mercato Nuovo, marked by the Cross of the People; the branch of the family who lived here left the magnates and joined the people, as the Cross indicates, changing their name from Cavalcanti to Cavallereschi.