To the right of the first Della Robbia room, are two more rooms full of statuary, and one with a collection of medals, including that commemorating Savonarola's Vision of the Sword of the Lord. In the first room–taking merely the more important–we may see Music, wrongly ascribed to Orcagna, probably earlier (139); bust of Charles VIII. of France (164), author uncertain; bust in terra cotta of a young warrior, by Antonio Pollaiuolo (161), as grandly insolent and confident as any of Signorelli's savage youths in the Orvieto frescoes. Also, bust of Matteo Palmieri, the humanist and suspected heretic, by Antonio Rossellino (160); bust of Pietro Mellini by Benedetto da Maiano (153); portrait of a young lady, by Matteo Civitali of Lucca (142); a long relief (146) ascribed to Verrocchio and representing the death of a lady of the Tornabuoni family in child-birth, which Shelley greatly admired and described at length, under the impression that he was studying a genuine antique: "It is altogether an admirable piece," he says, "quite in the spirit of Terence." The uncompromising realism of the male portraiture of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is fully illustrated in this room, and there is at the same time a peculiar tenderness and winsomeness in representing young girls, which is exceedingly attractive.
In the next room there are many excellent portraits of this kind, named and unnamed. Of more important works, we should notice the San Giovannino by Antonio Rossellino, and a tondo by the same master representing the Adoration of the Shepherds; Andrea Verrocchio's Madonna and Child; Verrocchio's Lady with the Bouquet (181), with those exquisite hands of which Gabriele D'Annunzio has almost wearied the readers of his Gioconda; by Matteo Civitali of Lucca, Faith gazing ecstatically upon the Sacrament. By Mino da Fiesole are a Madonna and Child, and several portrait busts–of the elder Piero dei Medici (234) and his brother Giovanni di Cosimo (236), and of Rinaldo della Luna. We should also notice the statues of Christ and three Apostles, of the school of Andrea Pisano; portrait of a girl by Desiderio da Settignano; two bas-reliefs by Luca della Robbia, representing the Liberation and Crucifixion of St. Peter, early works executed for a chapel in the Duomo; two sixteenth century busts, representing the younger Giuliano dei Medici and Giovanni delle Bande Nere; and, also, a curious fourteenth century group (222) apparently representing the coronation of an emperor by the Pope's legate.
In the centre of the room are St. John Baptist by Benedetto da Maiano; Bacchus, by Jacopo Sansovino; and Michelangelo's second David (224), frequently miscalled Apollo, made for Baccio Valori after the siege of Florence, and pathetically different from the gigantic David of his youth, which had been chiselled more than a quarter of a century before, in all the passing glory of the Republican restoration.
When the Duke of Athens made himself tyrant of Florence, King Robert urged him to take up his abode in this palace, as Charles of Calabria had done, and leave the Palace of the People to the Priors. The advice was not taken, and, when the rising broke out, the palace was easily captured, before the Duke and his adherents in the Palazzo Vecchio were forced to surrender. Passing along the Via Ghibellina, we presently come on the right to what was originally the Stinche, a prison for nobles, in qua carcerentur et custodiantur magnates, so called from a castle of the Cavalcanti captured by the Neri in 1304, from which the prisoners were imprisoned here: it is now a part of the Teatro Pagliano. Later it became the place of captivity of the lowest criminals, and a first point of attack in risings of the populace. It contains, in a lunette on the stairs, a contemporary fresco representing the expulsion of the Duke of Athens on St. Anne's Day, 1343. St. Anne is giving the banners of the People and of the Commune to a group of stern Republican warriors, while with one hand she indicates the Palace of the Priors, fortified with the tyrant's towers and battlements. By its side rises a great throne, from which the Duke is shrinking in terror from the Angel of the wrath of God; a broken sword lies at his feet; the banner of Brienne lies dishonoured in the dust, with the scales of justice that he profaned and the book of the law that he outraged. In so solemn and chastened a spirit could the artists of the Trecento conceive of their Republic's deliverance. The fresco was probably painted by either Giottino or Maso di Banco; it was once wrongly ascribed to Cennino Cennini, who wrote the Treatise on Painting, which was the approved text-book in the studios and workshops of the earlier masters.
Further down the Via Ghibellina is the Casa Buonarroti, which once belonged to Michelangelo, and was bequeathed by his family to the city. It is entirely got up as a museum now, and not in the least suggestive of the great artist's life, though a tiny little study and a few letters and other relics are shown. There are, however, a certain number of his drawings here, including a design for the façade of San Lorenzo, which is of very questionable authenticity, and a Madonna. Two of his earliest works in marble are preserved here, executed at that epoch of his youth when he frequented the house and garden of Lorenzo the Magnificent. One is a bas-relief of the Madonna and Child–somewhat in the manner of Donatello–with two Angels at the top of a ladder. The other is a struggle of the Centaurs and Lapithae, a subject suggested to the boy by Angelo Poliziano, full of motion and vigour and wonderfully modelled. Vasari says, "To whoso considers this work, it does not seem from the hand of a youth, but from that of an accomplished and past master in these studies, and experienced in the art." The former is in the fifth room, the latter in the antechamber. There are also two models for the great David; a bust of the master in bronze by Ricciarelli, and his portrait by his pupil, Marcello Venusti. A predella representing the legend of St. Nicholas is by Francesco Pesellino, whose works are rare. In the third room (among the later allegories and scenes from the master's life) is a large picture supposed to have been painted by Jacopo da Empoli from a cartoon by Michelangelo, representing the Holy Family with the four Evangelists; it is a peculiarly unattractive work. The cartoon, ascribed to Michelangelo, is in the British Museum; and I would suggest that it was originally not a religious picture at all, but an allegory of Charity. The cross in the little Baptist's hand does not occur in the cartoon.
Almost at the end of the Via Ghibellina are the Prisons which occupy the site of the famous convent of Le Murate. In this convent Caterina Sforza, the dethroned Lady of Forlì and mother of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, ended her days in 1509. Here the Duchessina, or "Little Duchess," as Caterina dei Medici was called, was placed by the Signoria after the expulsion of the Medici in 1527, in order to prevent Pope Clement VII. from using her for the purpose of a political marriage which might endanger the city. They seem to have feared especially the Prince of Orange. The result was that the convent became a centre of Medicean intrigue; and the Signoria, when the siege commenced, sent Salvestro Aldobrandini to take her away. When Salvestro arrived, after he had been kept waiting for some time, the little Duchess came to the grill of the parlour, dressed as a nun, and said that she intended to take the habit and stay for ever "with these my reverend mothers." According to Varchi, the poor little girl–she was barely eleven years old, had lost both parents in the year of her birth, and was practically alone in the city where the cruellest threats had been uttered against her–was terribly frightened and cried bitterly, "not knowing to what glory and felicity her life had been reserved by God and the Heavens." But Messer Salvestro and Messer Antonio de' Nerli did all they could to comfort and reassure her, and took her to the convent of Santa Lucia in the Via di San Gallo; "in which monastery," says Nardi, "she was received and treated with the same maternal love by those nuns, until the end of the war."
In the centre of the oblong Piazza di Santa Croce rises the statue and monument of Dante Alighieri, erected on the occasion of the sixth centenary of his birth, in those glowing early days of the first completion of Italian unity; at its back stand the great Gothic church and convent, which Arnolfo di Cambio commenced for the Franciscans in 1294, while Dante was still in Florence–the year before he entered political life.
The great Piazza was a centre of festivities and stirring Florentine life, and has witnessed many historical scenes, in old times and in new, from the tournaments and jousts of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance to the penitential processions of the victims of the Inquisition in the days of the Medicean Grand Dukes, from the preaching of San Bernardino of Siena to the missionary labours of the Jesuit Segneri. On Christmas Day, 1301, Niccolò dei Cerchi was passing through this Piazza with a few friends on horseback on his way to his farm and mill–for that was hardly a happy Christmas for Guelfs of the white faction in Florence–while a friar was preaching in the open air, announcing the birth of Christ to the crowd; when Simone Donati with a band of mounted retainers gave chase, and, when he overtook him, killed him. In the scuffle Simone himself received a mortal wound, of which he died the same night. "Although it was a just judgment," writes Villani, "yet was it held a great loss, for the said Simone was the most accomplished and virtuous squire in Florence, and of the greatest promise, and he was all the hope of his father, Messer Corso." It was in the convent of Santa Croce that the Duke of Athens took up his abode in 1342, with much parade of religious simplicity, when about to seize upon the lordship of Florence; here, on that fateful September 8th, he assembled his followers and adherents in the Piazza, whence they marched to the Parliament at the Palazzo Vecchio, where he was proclaimed Signor of Florence for life. But in the following year, when he attempted to celebrate Easter with great pomp and luxury, and held grand jousts in this same Piazza for many days, the people sullenly held aloof and very few citizens entered the lists.
Most gorgeous and altogether successful was the tournament given here by Lorenzo dei Medici in 1467, to celebrate his approaching marriage with Clarice Orsini, when he jousted against all comers in honour of the lady of his sonnets and odes, Lucrezia Donati. There was not much serious tilting about it, but a magnificent display of rich costumes and precious jewelled caps and helmets, and a glorious procession which must have been a positive feast of colour. "To follow the custom," writes Lorenzo himself, "and do like others, I gave a tournament on the Piazza Santa Croce at great cost and with much magnificence; I find that about 10,000 ducats were spent on it. Although I was not a very vigorous warrior, nor a hard hitter, the first prize was adjudged to me, a helmet inlaid with silver and a figure of Mars as the crest."[36] He sent a long account of the proceedings to his future bride, who answered: "I am glad that you are successful in what gives you pleasure, and that my prayer is heard, for I have no other wish than to see you happy." Luca Pulci, the luckless brother of Luigi, wrote a dull poem on the not very inspiring theme. A few years later, at the end of January 1478, a less sumptuous entertainment of the same sort was given by Giuliano dei Medici; and it was apparently on this occasion that Poliziano commenced his famous stanzas in honour of Giuliano and his lady love, Simonetta,–stanzas which were interrupted by the daggers of the Pazzi and their accomplices. It was no longer time for soft song or courtly sport when prelates and nobles were hanging from the palace windows, and the thunders of the Papal interdict were about to burst over the city and her rulers.