The fresco at the steps, by Sebastiano Mainardi, inscribed S. Geminianus Silviaci Populi Gubernator, is a masterpiece of municipal sentiment. The Saint sits enthroned as bishop, while the three local worthies kneel before him to receive his blessing; Mattia Lupi, the bald-headed poet with his crown of laurel, who wrote in Latin verse the annals of the town and died in 1468; Domenico Mainardi, a noble-looking, grey-haired ecclesiastic, a distinguished canonist, who lectured at Bologna, Florence and Siena, was chaplain to Pope Martin V., and died in 1422; Nello de’ Cetti, a writer on civil law who died in 1430. The fresco is dated 1487. The heads are fine, almost worthy of Ghirlandaio, but they have been somewhat restored. Below it lies Fra Domenico Strambi, “Parisian Doctor,” the patron of Benozzo and Pollaiuolo, who died in the following year. In the chapel to the left of the choir is the Nativity of Mary, a curiously archaic picture by Tamagni, and in the chapel to the right are two frescoes representing her birth and death, ascribed to Bartolo di Fredi.
The frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli in the choir, begun for Fra Domenico Strambi in 1463 and finished in 1465, are among the supreme achievements of Florentine painting in the third quarter of the Quattrocento. They set forth the chief events in the life of St Augustine, partly drawn from the Confessions. The first fresco, in which the little Augustine is taken to school by his parents, Patritius and Monica, is admirable for the freshness and naiveté with which the whole comedy of school-life, past and present, is treated. The drastic methods adopted by the schoolmaster in dealing with the little idler are specially referred to in the Confessions, where Augustine seems to remember his floggings with a curious sense of injury and injustice.[192] In the next (partly obliterated), we have his admission to the University of Carthage at the age of nineteen—that season of lawless loves and Manichaean errors so inimitably described at the beginning of the third Book. On the window wall, much damaged and restored, are St Monica praying for him, his crossing the sea and arrival in Italy. Next, we see him teaching philosophy and rhetoric in Rome, the usual composition of the lecturer and his pupils which we find elsewhere in the art of the fifteenth century, with those splendid portrait heads that make the modern student realise the wonderful intellectual vigour of these Florentines of the Renaissance. Then comes the journey from Rome to Milan, whither Augustine is sent by the Roman prefect Symmachus, in answer to the Milanese request for a teacher of rhetoric; even so might young Pico della Mirandola have looked when he first came to Florence. This somewhat, indeed, recalls the style of the Procession of the Magi in the Palazzo Riccardi, but is naturally in a more chastened style. Above, two white-robed, green-winged Angels bear a scroll in honour of Fra Domenico Strambi, who—it is expressly stated—at his own cost had bidden Benozzo paint here; it is dated 1465. Then Augustine arrives at Milan, makes the acquaintance
of Ambrose, is received by the Emperor Theodosius. After this he listens to St Ambrose preaching, St Monica kneels before the latter (whom, writes the Saint, she loved as an Angel of God), and Augustine begins to be convinced. On the window wall we have the wonderful scene in the garden, where Augustine and Alypius are finally and simultaneously converted by the reading of the Epistle to the Romans—after Augustine has heard the child’s voice singing again and again from the neighbouring house: Tolle, lege; tolle, lege, “Take and read: take and read.”[193] This is followed by his Baptism. Next Augustine, black-robed and aureoled, is among the monks, and meets the little child by the shore who rebukes him for attempting to penetrate into the mystery of the Trinity. After this comes perhaps the finest picture of the whole series, the Death of St Monica, with, at the window high up on the left, the famous conversation at Ostia which preceded it;[194] the youth standing behind Augustine with clasped hands is his son Adeodatus, ex me natus carnaliter, de peccato meo. Monica is sitting up in her bed to receive the Christ Child in the Host, and above her soul is being carried up to Paradise in the usual little cloud (the nubiletta bianchissima of Dante’s Vita Nuova) by Angels. On the right of the fresco, Augustine is returning to Africa. In the four remaining frescoes of the lunettes and on either side of the window, Augustine as Bishop of Hippo blesses his people, he confutes the heretic Fortunatus, has a vision of the glory of St Jerome in Paradise, and at last follows him. This last fresco, representing the death and apotheosis of Augustine, is also an admirable work. Full of expression and excellently composed, it is one of those traditional death scenes which, in their ultimate analysis, proceed from Giotto’s Death of St Francis. The Evangelists on the ceiling, the eight Saints on the pilasters are also by Benozzo. In these frescoes he was assisted by pupils and apprentices, chief among whom was a certain Giusto di Andrea, who had previously worked with Fra Lippo Lippi.
Also in the Piazza Sant’ Agostino is the small church of San Pietro, which has the peculiar distinction of depending upon the bishopric of Volterra, while all the other churches of the town are subject to the Bishop of Colle. It contains several fragments of frescoes of the fourteenth century, still partly under whitewash. Over the altar on the right is a frescoed Madonna and Child with the Baptist and St Paul, of the school of Lippo Memmi, in which—a rather unusual motive—the Child is running to the Mother, clasping her hand in one and holding a fruit in the other hand.
In the Via Venti Settembre, on the left, is Santa Chiara. The altarpiece is a good work of the chief Florentine painter of the seventeenth century, Matteo Rosselli. It represents Christ enthroned upon the clouds, between the Madonna and the Baptist; below are St Francis and St Louis of France on our left, while on our right—a motive equally happy in conception and execution—St Clare is bringing Santa Fina into the celestial company. There are several pictures ascribed to Rosselli in the town, but this is the only one in the least degree worthy of the painter of the David of the Pitti. Further on, on the right, are the Hospitals, including the Spedale di Santa Fina, founded shortly after her death by the Commune, partly from the alms of pilgrims. In 1274 two special officers, Esortatori, were appointed to visit sick persons, to beg alms or legacies for the institution. In the entrance hall, formerly the chapel, are frescoes by Mainardi; four Saints in lunettes and, over the door, a Madonna and Child blessing those that enter. In the chapel is preserved the tavola, the board upon which Fina made her hard bed of expiation for the sins of the world, and which blossomed out into flowers when her sacrifice was accomplished.[195] Beyond is San Girolamo, a church belonging to a convent of Vallombrosan nuns, with an altarpiece by Vincenzo Tamagni of 1522, with an upper part added by a later hand. At the end, connected with the former convent by a covered way across, is the church of San Jacopo, which belonged to the Knights Templars before the nuns had it; it is a building of the eleventh century (said to have been built in 1096 by the Sangimignanesi who returned from the Crusades), lovely in its ruin, in a little inclosed plantation of olive trees. The ornamented terra-cotta window and the curious coloured plates on the façade are noteworthy. Within are old frescoes, apparently of the Sienese school of the fourteenth century. Mr Berenson ascribes the St James on the pilaster to Pier Francesco. Then we pass out, through a breach in the walls, to the olive trees that clothe them, and to the sweeping view of the valley beyond.
At Santa Chiara, the Via della Fonte leads down between vineyards and old walls to the Porta della Fonte, over which is a chapel. Outside, over the gate, a statue of St Geminianus records the attempt of the Ardinghelli and their allies to capture the town for the Duke of Athens at this point, in 1342. The wonderfully picturesque fountains below, where the women linger over their washing and carry up pitchers to the houses, were constructed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A little to the left, among the olives, flaming poppies and purple foxgloves, where a few oaks still remind us of the woods of old, there is a superb view of the “Castello della Selva” right above us, with eight of its towers visible.