Entering the Church through the unpleasing modern façade (which is, however, said to have followed the design of Cronaca himself, the architect of the exceedingly graceful convent of San Salvadore al Monte on the other side of the river), we catch a glow of colour from the east end, from the stained glass and frescoes in the choir. The vast and spacious nave of Arnolfo–like his Palazzo Vecchio, partly spoiled by Vasari–ends rather abruptly in the line of ten chapels with, in the midst of them, one very high recess which represents the apse and choir, thus giving the whole the T shape which we find in the Italian Gothic churches which were reared for the friars preachers and friars minor. The somewhat unsightly appearance, which many churches of this kind present in Italy, is due to the fact that Arnolfo and his school intended every inch of wall to be covered with significant fresco paintings, and this coloured decoration was seldom completely carried out, or has perished in the course of time. Fergusson remarks that "an Italian Church without its coloured decoration is only a framed canvas without harmony or meaning."
Santa Croce is, in the words of the late Dean of Westminster, "the recognised shrine of Italian genius." On the pavement beneath our feet, outstretched on their tombstones, lie effigies of grave Florentine citizens, friars of note, prelates, scholars, warriors; in their robes of state or of daily life, in the Franciscan garb or in armour, with arms folded across their breasts, or still clasping the books they loved and wrote (in this way the humanists, such as Leonardo Bruni, were laid out in state after death); the knights have their swords by their sides, which they had wielded in defence of the Republic, and their hands clasped in prayer. Here they lie, waiting the resurrection. Has any echo of the Risorgimento reached them? In their long sleep, have they dreamed aught of the movement that has led Florence to raise tablets to the names of Cavour and Mazzini upon these walls? The tombs on the floor of the nave are mostly of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the second from the central door is that of Galileo dei Galilei, like the other scholars lying with his hands folded across the book on his breast, the ancestor of the immortal astronomer: "This Galileo of the Galilei was, in his time, the head of philosophy and medicine; who also in the highest magistracy loved the Republic marvellously." About the middle of the nave is the tomb of John Catrick, Bishop of Exeter, who had come to Florence on an embassy from Henry V. of England to Pope Martin V., in 1419. But those on the floor at the end of the right aisle and in the short right transept are the earliest and most interesting to the lover of early Florentine history; notice, for instance, the knightly tomb of a warrior of the great Ghibelline house of the Ubaldini, dated 1358, at the foot of the steps to the chapel at the end of the right transept; and there is a similar one, only less fine, on the opposite side. Larger and more pretentious tombs and monuments of more recent date, to the heroes of Italian life and thought, pass in series along the side walls of the whole church, between the altars of the south and north (right and left) aisles.
SANTA CROCE
Over the central door, below the window whose stained glass is said to have been designed by Ghiberti, is Donatello's bronze statue of King Robert's canonised brother, the Franciscan Bishop St. Louis of Toulouse. This St. Louis, the patron saint of the Parte Guelfa, had been ordered by the captains of the Party for their niche at San Michele in Orto, from which he was irreverently banished shortly after the restoration of Cosimo dei Medici, when the Parte Guelfa was forced to surrender its niche. On the left of the entrance should be noticed with gratitude the tomb of the historian of the Florentine Republic, the Italian patriot, Gino Capponi.
In the right aisle are the tomb and monument of Michelangelo, designed by Giorgio Vasari; on the pillar opposite to it, over the holy water stoop, a beautiful Madonna and Child in marble by Bernardo Rossellino, beneath which lies Francesco Nori, who was murdered whilst defending Lorenzo dei Medici in the Pazzi conspiracy; the comparatively modern monument to Dante, whose bones rest at Ravenna and for whom Michelangelo had offered in vain to raise a worthy sepulchre. Two sonnets by the great sculptor supply to some extent in verse what he was not suffered to do in marble: I quote the finer of the two, from Addington Symonds' excellent translation:–
From Heaven his spirit came, and, robed in clay,
The realms of justice and of mercy trod:
Then rose a living man to gaze on God,
That he might make the truth as clear as day.
For that pure star, that brightened with its ray
The undeserving nest where I was born,
The whole wide world would be a prize to scorn:
None but his Maker can due guerdon pay.
I speak of Dante, whose high work remains
Unknown, unhonoured by that thankless brood
Who only to just men deny their wage.
Were I but he! Born for like lingering pains,
Against his exile coupled with his good
I'd gladly change the world's best heritage.
Then comes Canova's monument to Vittorio Alfieri, the great tragic dramatist of Italy (died 1803); followed by an eighteenth century monument to Machiavelli (died 1527), and the tomb of Padre Lanzi, the Jesuit historian of Italian art. The pulpit by a pillar in the nave is considered the most beautiful pulpit in Italy, and is, perhaps, Benedetto da Maiano's finest work; the bas-reliefs in marble represent scenes from the life of St. Francis and the martyrdom of some of his friars, with figures of the virtues below. Beyond Padre Lanzi's grave, over the tomb of the learned Franciscan Fra Benedetto Cavalcanti, are two exceedingly powerful figures of saints in fresco, the Baptist and St. Francis; they have been ascribed to various painters, but are almost certainly the work of Domenico Veneziano, and closely resemble the figures of the same saints in his undoubtedly genuine picture in the Sala di Lorenzo Monaco in the Uffizi. The adjacent Annunciation by Donatello, in pietra serena, was also made for the Cavalcanti; its fine Renaissance architectural setting is likewise Donatello's work. Above it are four lovely wooden Putti, who seem embracing each other for fear of tumbling off from their height; originally there were six, and the other two are preserved in the convent. M. Reymond has shown that this Annunciation is not an early work of the master's, as Vasari and others state, but is of the same style and period as the Cantoria of the Duomo, about 1435. Lastly, at the end of the right aisle is the splendid tomb of Leonardo Bruni (died 1444), secretary of the Republic, translator of Plato, historian of Florence, biographer of Dante,–the outstretched recumbent figure of the grand old humanist, watched over by Mary and her Babe with the Angels, by Bernardo Rossellino. A worthy monument to a noble soul, whose memory is dear to every lover of Dante. Yet we may, not without advantage, contrast it with the simpler Gothic sepulchres on the floor of the transepts,–the marble slabs that cover the bones of the old Florentines who, in war and peace, did the deeds of which Leonardo and his kind wrote.
The tombs and monuments in the left aisle are less interesting. Opposite Leonardo Bruni's tomb is that of his successor, Carlo Marsuppini, called Carlo Aretino (died 1453), by Desiderio da Settignano; he was a good Greek scholar, a fluent orator and a professed Pagan, but accomplished no literary work of any value; utterly inferior as a man and as an author to Leonardo, he has an even more gorgeous tomb. In this aisle there are modern monuments to Vespasiano Bisticci and Donatello; and, opposite to Michelangelo's tomb, that of Galileo himself (died 1642), with traces of old fourteenth century frescoes round it, which may, perhaps, symbolise for us the fleeting phantoms of mediæval thought fading away before the advance of science.