The Story of Florence

by Edmund G. Gardner

In the Cappella dei Principi, gorgeous with its marbles and mosaics, lie the sovereigns of the younger line, the Medicean Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the descendants of the great captain Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Here are the sepulchral monuments of Cosimo I. (1537-1574); of his sons, Francesco (1574-1587) and Ferdinand I. (1587-1609); and of Ferdinand's son, grandson and great-grandson, Cosimo II. (1609-1621), Ferdinand II. (1627-1670), Cosimo III. (1670-1723). The statues are those of Ferdinand I. and Cosimo II.

Cosimo I. finally transformed the republic into a monarchy, created a new aristocracy and established a small standing army, though he mainly relied upon Spanish and German mercenaries. He conquered Siena in 1553, and in 1570 was invested with the grand ducal crown by Pius V.–a title which the Emperor confirmed to his successor. Although the tragedy which tradition has hung round the end of the Duchess Eleonora and her two sons has not stood the test of historical criticism, there are plenty of bloody deeds to be laid to Duke Cosimo's account during his able and ruthless reign. Towards the close of his life he married his mistress, Cammilla Martelli, and made over the government to his son. This son, Francesco, the founder of the Uffizi Gallery and of the modern city of Leghorn, had more than his father's vices and hardly any of his ability; his intrigue with the beautiful Venetian, Bianca Cappello, whom he afterwards married, and who died with him, has excited more interest than it deserves. The Cardinal Ferdinand, who succeeded him and renounced the cardinalate, was incomparably the best of the house–a man of magnanimous character and an enlightened ruler. He shook off the influence of Spain, and built an excellent navy to make war upon the Turks and Barbary corsairs. Cosimo II. and Ferdinand II. reigned quietly and benevolently, with no ability but with plenty of good intentions. Chiabrera sings their praises with rather unnecessary fervour. But the wealth and prosperity of Tuscany was waning, and Cosimo III., a luxurious and selfish bigot, could do nothing to arrest the decay. On the death of his miserable and contemptible successor, Gian Gastone dei Medici in 1737, the Medicean dynasty was at an end.

Stretching along a portion of the Via Larga, and near the Piazza di San Marco, were the famous gardens of the Medici, which the people sacked in 1494 on the expulsion of Piero. The Casino Mediceo, built by Buontalenti in 1576, marks the site. Here were placed some of Lorenzo's antique statues and curios; and here Bertoldo had his great art school, where the most famous painters and sculptors came to bask in the sun of Medicean patronage, and to copy the antique. Here the boy Michelangelo came with his friend Granacci, and here Andrea Verrocchio first trained the young Leonardo. In this garden, too, Angelo Poliziano walked with his pupils, and initiated Michelangelo into the newly revived Hellenic culture. There is nothing now to recall these past glories.

THE WELL OF S. MARCO

The church of San Marco has been frequently altered and modernised, and there is little now to remind us that it was here on August 1, 1489, that Savonarola began to expound the Apocalypse. Over the entrance is a Crucifix ascribed by Vasari to Giotto. On the second altar to the right is a much-damaged but authentic Madonna and Saints by Fra Bartolommeo; that on the opposite altar, on the left, is a copy of the original now in the Pitti Palace. There are some picturesque bits of old fourteenth century frescoes on the left wall, and beneath them, between the second and third altars, lie Pico della Mirandola and his friend Girolamo Benivieni, and Angelo Poliziano. The left transept contains the tomb and shrine of St Antoninus, the good Dominican Archbishop of Florence, with statues by Giovanni da Bologna and his followers, and later frescoes. In the sacristy, which was designed by Brunelleschi, there is a fine bronze recumbent statue of him. Antoninus was Prior of San Marco in the days of Angelico, and Vasari tells us that when Angelico went to Rome, to paint for Pope Eugenius, the Pope wished to make the painter Archbishop of Florence: "When the said friar heard this, he besought his Holiness to find somebody else, because he did not feel himself apt to govern people; but that since his Order had a friar who loved the poor, who was most learned and fit for rule, and who feared God, this dignity would be much better conferred upon him than on himself. The Pope, hearing this, and bethinking him that what he said was true, granted his request freely; and so Fra Antonino was made Archbishop of Florence, of the Order of Preachers, a man truly most illustrious for sanctity and learning."

It was in the church of San Marco that Savonarola celebrated Mass on the day of the Ordeal; here the women waited and prayed, while the procession set forth; and hither the Dominicans returned at evening, amidst the howls and derision of the crowd. Here, on the next evening, the fiercest of the fighting took place. The attempt of the enemy to break into the church by the sacristy door was repulsed. One of the Panciatichi, a mere boy, mortally wounded, joyfully received the last sacraments from Fra Domenico on the steps of the altar, and died in such bliss, that the rest envied him. Finally the great door of the church was broken down; Fra Enrico, a German, mounted the pulpit and fired again and again into the midst of the Compagnacci, shouting with each shot, Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine. Driven from the pulpit, he and other friars planted their arquebusses beneath the Crucifix on the high altar, and continued to fire. The church was now so full of smoke that the friars could hardly continue the defence, until Fra Giovacchino della Robbia broke one of the windows with a lance. At last, when the Signoria threatened to destroy the whole convent with artillery, Savonarola ordered the friars to go in procession from the church to the dormitory, and himself, taking the Blessed Sacrament from the altar, slowly followed them.

The convent itself, now officially the Museo di San Marco, originally a house of Silvestrine monks, was made over to the Dominicans by Pope Eugenius IV., at the instance of Cosimo dei Medici and his brother Lorenzo. They solemnly took possession in 1436, and Michelozzo entirely rebuilt the whole convent for them, mainly at the cost of Cosimo, between 1437 and 1452. "It is believed," says Vasari, "to be the best conceived and the most beautiful and commodious convent of any in Italy, thanks to the virtue and industry of Michelozzo." Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, as the Beato Angelico was called, came from his Fiesolan convent, and worked simultaneously with Michelozzo for about eight or nine years (until the Pope summoned him to Rome in 1445 to paint in the Vatican), covering with his mystical dreams the walls that his friend designed. That other artistic glory of the Dominicans, Fra Bartolommeo, took the habit here in 1500, though there are now only a few unimportant works of his remaining in the convent. Never was there such a visible outpouring of the praying heart in painting, as in the work of these two friars. And Antoninus and Savonarola strove to make the spirit world that they painted a living reality, for Florence and for the Church.

The first cloister is surrounded by later frescoes, scenes from the life of St. Antoninus, partly by Bernardino Poccetti and Matteo Rosselli, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. They are not of great artistic value, but one, the fifth on the right of the entrance, representing the entry of St. Antoninus into Florence, shows the old façade of the Duomo. Like gems in this rather indifferent setting, are five exquisite frescoes by Angelico in lunettes over the doors; St. Thomas Aquinas, Christ as a pilgrim received by two Dominican friars, Christ in the tomb, St. Dominic (spoilt), St. Peter Martyr; also a larger fresco of St. Dominic at the foot of the Cross. The second of these, symbolising the hospitality of the convent rule, is one of Angelico's masterpieces; beneath it is the entrance to the Foresteria, the guest-chambers. Under the third lunette we pass into the great Refectory, with its customary pulpit for the novice reader: here, instead of the usual Last Supper, is a striking fresco of St. Dominic and his friars miraculously fed by Angels, painted in 1536 by Giovanni Antonio Sogliani (a pupil of Lorenzo di Credi); the Crucifixion above, with St. Catherine of Siena and St. Antoninus, is said to be by Fra Bartolommeo. Here, too, on the right is the original framework by Jacopo di Bartolommeo da Sete and Simone da Fiesole, executed in 1433, for Angelico's great tabernacle now in the Uffizi.