Now whether Villani is strictly right in his chronicle matters little or nothing. We know that Fiesole was an Etruscan city, that with the rise of Rome, like the rest, she became a Roman colony; all this too her ruins confirm. With the fall of Rome, and the barbarian invasions, she was perfectly suited to the needs of the Teutonic invader. What hatred Florence had for her was probably due to the fact that she was a stronghold of the barbarian nobles, and the fact that in 1010, as Villani says, the Fiesolani were content to leave the city and descend to Florence, while the citadel held out and had to be dealt with later, goes to prove that the fight was rather between the Latin commune of Florence and the pirate nobles of Fiesole than between Florence and Fiesole itself. Certainly with the destruction of the alien power at Fiesole the city of Florence gained every immediate security; the last great fortress in her neighbourhood was destroyed.
To-day Fiesole consists of a windy Piazza, in which a campanile towers between two hills covered with houses and churches and a host of narrow lanes. In the Piazza stands the Duomo, founded in 1028 by Bishop Jacopo Bavaro, who no doubt wished to bring his throne up the hill from the Badia, where of old it was established. Restored though it is, the church keeps something of its old severity and beauty, standing there like a fortress between the hills and between the valleys. It is of basilica form, with a nave and aisles flanked by sixteen columns of sandstone. As at S. Miniato, the choir is raised over a lofty crypt. There is not perhaps much of interest in the church, but over the west door you may see a statue of S. Romolo, while in the choir in the Salutati Chapel there is the masterpiece of Mino da Fiesole, the tomb of Bishop Salutati, who died in 1465, and opposite a marble reredos of Madonna between S. Antonio and S. Leonardo, by the same master. The beautiful bust of Bishop Leonardo over his tomb is an early work, and the tomb itself is certainly among the most original and charming works of the master. If the reredos is not so fine, it is perhaps only that with so splendid a work before us we are content only with the best of all.
But it is not to see a church that we have wandered up to Fiesole, for in the country certainly the churches are less than an olive garden, and the pictures are shamed by the flowers that run over the hills. Lounging about this old fortress of a city, one is caught rather by the aspect of natural things—Val d'Arno, far and far away, and at last a glimpse of the Apennines; Val di Mugnone towards Monte Senario, the night of cypresses about Vincigliata, the olives of Maiano—than by the churches scattered among the trees or hidden in the narrow ways that everywhere climb the hills to lose themselves at last in the woodland or in the cornlands among the vines. You wander behind the Duomo into the Scavi, and it is not the Roman Baths you go to see or the Etruscan walls and the well-preserved Roman theatre: you watch the clouds on the mountains, the sun in the valley, the shadows on the hills, listen to a boy singing to his goats, play with a little girl who has slipped her hand in yours looking for soldi, or wonder at the host of flowers that has run even among these ruins. Even from the windows of the Palazzo Pretorio, which for some foolish reason you have entered on your way to the hills, you do not really see the statues and weapons of these forgotten Etruscan people, but you watch the sun that has perhaps suddenly lighted up the Duomo, or the wind that, like a beautiful thought, for a moment has turned the hills to silver. Or if it be up to S. Francesco you climb, the old acropolis of Fiesole, above the palace of the bishop and the Seminary, it will surely be rather to look over the valley to the farthest hills, where Val di Greve winds towards Siena, than to enter a place which, Franciscan though it be, has nothing to show half so fair as this laughing country, or that Tuscan cypress on the edge of that grove of olives.
That love of country life, no longer characteristic of the Florentines, which we are too apt to consider almost wholly English, was long ago certainly one of the most delightful traits of the Tuscan character; for Siena was not behind Florence in her delight in the life of the villa. [ [131] ] It is perhaps in the Commentaries of Pius II that a love of country byways, the lanes and valleys about his home, through which, gouty and old, he would have himself carried in a litter, is expressed for the first time with a true understanding and appreciation of things which for us have come to mean a good half of life. No such lovely descriptions of scenery may be found perhaps in any Florentine writer before Lorenzo Magnifico, unless indeed it be in the verse of Sacchetti. Yet the Florentine burgess of the fifteenth century, the very man whose simple and hard common-sense got him wealth, or at least a fine competence, and, as he has told us, a good housewife, and made him one of the toughest traders in Europe, would become almost a poet in his country house. Old Agnolo Pandolfini, talking to his sons, and teaching them his somewhat narrow yet wholesome and delightful wisdom, continually reminds himself of those villas near Florence, some like palaces,—Poggio Gherardo for instance,—some like castles,—Vincigliata perhaps,—"in the purest air, in a laughing country of lovely views, where there are no fogs nor bitter winds, but always fresh water and everything pure and healthy." Certainly Cosimo de' Medici was not the first Florentine to retire from the city perhaps to Careggi, perhaps to S. Domenico, perhaps farther still; for already in Boccaccio's day we hear the praise of country life,—his description of Villa Palmieri, for instance, when at the end of the second day of the Decamerone those seven ladies and their three comrades leave Poggio Gherardo for that palace "about two miles westward," whither they came at six o'clock of a Sunday morning in the year 1348. "When they had entered and inspected everything, and seen that the halls and rooms had been cleaned and decorated, and plentifully supplied with all that was needed for sweet living, they praised its beauty and good order, and admired the owner's magnificence. And on descending, even more delighted were they with the pleasant and spacious courts, the cellars filled with choice wines, and the beautifully fresh water which was everywhere round about.... Then they went into the garden, which was on one side of the palace and was surrounded by a wall, and the beauty and magnificence of it at first sight made them eager to examine it more closely. It was crossed in all directions by long, broad, and straight walks, over which the vines, which that year made a great show of giving many grapes, hung gracefully in arched festoons, and being then in full blossom, filled the whole garden with their sweet smell, and this, mingled with the odours of the other flowers, made so sweet a perfume that they seemed to be in the spicy gardens of the East. The sides of the walks were almost closed with red and white roses and with jessamine so that they gave sweet odours and shade not only in the morning but when the sun was high, so that one might walk there all day without fear. What flowers there were there how various and how ordered, it would take too long to tell, but there was not one which in our climate is to be praised, which was not to be found there abundantly. Perhaps the most delightful thing therein was a meadow in the midst, of the finest grass and all so green that it seemed almost black, all sprinkled with a thousand various flowers, shut in by oranges and cedars, the which bore the ripe fruit and the young fruit too and the blossom, offering a shade most grateful to the eyes and also a delicious perfume. In the midst of this meadow there was a fountain of the whitest marble marvellously carved, and within—I do not know whether artificially or from a natural spring—it threw so much water and so high towards the sky through a statue which stood there on a pedestal, that it would not have needed more to turn a mill. The water fell back again with a delicious sound into the clear waters of the basin, and the surplus was carried away through a subterranean way into little waterways most beautifully and artfully made about the meadow, and afterwards ran into others round about, and so watered every part of the garden; it collected at length in one place, whence it had entered the beautiful garden, turning two mills, much to the profit, as you may suppose, of the signore, and pouring down at last in a stream clear and sweet into the valley."
If this should seem a mere pleasaunce of delight, the vision of a poet, the garden of a dream, we have only to remember how realistically and simply Boccaccio has described for us that plague-stricken city, scarcely more than a mile away, to be assured of its truthfulness: and then listen to Alberti—or old Agnolo Pandolfini, is it?—in his Trattato del Governo della Famiglia, one of the most delightful books of the fifteenth century. He certainly was no poet, yet with what enthusiasm and happiness he speaks of his villa, how comely and useful it is, so that while everything else brings labour, danger, suspicion, harm, fear, and repentance, the villa will bring none of these, but a pure happiness, a real consolation. Yes, it is really as an escape from all the care and anxiety of business, of the wool or silk trade, which he praised so much, that he loves the country. "La Villa, the country, one soon finds, is always gracious, faithful, and true; if you govern it with diligence and love, it will never be satisfied with what it does for you, always it will add [**Transcriber's Note: undecipherable] to recompense. In the spring the villa gives you continual delight; green leaves, flowers, odours, songs and in every way makes you happy and jocund: all smiles on you and promises a fine harvest, filling you with good hope, delight, and pleasure. Yes indeed, how courteous is the villa! She gives you now one fruit, now another, never leaving you without some of her own joy. For in autumn she pays you for all your trouble, fruit out of all proportion to your merit, recompense, and thanks; and how willingly and with what abundance—twelve for one: for a little sweat, many barrels of wine, and for what is old in the house, the villa will give you new, seasoned, clear, and good. She fills the house the winter long with grapes, both fresh and dry, with plums, walnuts, pears, apples, almonds, filberts, giuggiole, pomegranates, and other wholesome fruits, and apples fragrant and beautiful. Nor in winter will she forget to be liberal; she sends you wood, oil, vine branches, laurels, junipers to keep out snow and wind, and then she comforts you with the sun, offering you the hare and the roe, and the field to follow them...." Nor are the joys of summer less, for you may read Greek and Latin in the shadow of the courtyard where the fountains splash, while your girls are learning songs and your boys are busy with the contadini, in the vineyards or beside the stream. It is a spirit of pure delight, we find there in that old townsman, in country life, simple and quiet, after the noise and sharpness of the market-place. And certainly, as we pass from Fiesole down the new road where the tram runs, turning into the lanes again just by Villa Galetta, on our way to Maiano, we may fancy we see many places where such a life as that has always been lived, and, as I know, in some is lived to-day. Everywhere on these hills you find villas, and every villa has a garden, and every garden has a fountain, where all day long the sun plays with the slim dancing water and the contadine sing of love in the vineyards.
Maiano itself is but a group of such places, among them a great villa painted in the manner of the seventeenth century, spoiled a little by modernity. You can leave it behind, passing into a lane behind Poggio Gherardo, where it is roses, roses all the way, for the podere is hedged with a hedge of roses pink and white, where the iris towers too, streaming its violet banners. Presently, as you pass slowly on your way—for in a garden who would go quickly?—you come upon the little church of S. Martino a Mensola, built, as I think indeed, so lovely it is, by Brunellesco, on a little rising ground above a shrunken stream, and that is Mensola on her way to Arno. She lags for sure, because, lost in Arno, she will see nothing again so fair as her own hills.
OUTSIDE THE GATE
S. Martino a Mensola is very old, for it is said that in the year 800 an oratory stood here, dedicated to S. Martino, and that il Beato Andrea di Scozia, Blessed Andrew of Scotland, then archdeacon to the bishopric of Fiesole, rebuilt it and endowed a little monastery, where he went to live with a few companions, taking the rule of St. Benedict. Carocci tells us that about 1550 it passed from the Benedictines to certain monks who already had a house at S. Andrea in Mercato Vecchio of Florence. In 1450 the monastery returned to Benedictines, coming into the possession of the monks of the Badia. Restored many times, the church was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, it may well be by Brunellesco; the portico, restored in 1857, was added in the sixteenth century. Within, the church is charming, having a nave and two aisles, with four small chapels and a great one, which belonged to the Zati family. And then, not without a certain surprise, you come here upon many pictures still in their own place, over the altars of what is now a village church. Over the high altar is a great ancona divided into many compartments: the Virgin with our Lord, S. Maria Maddalena, S. Niccolò, St. Catharine of Alexandria, S. Giuliano, S. Amerigo of Hungary, S. Martino, S. Gregorio, S. Antonio, and the donor, Amerigo Zati. Carocci suggests Bernardo Orcagna as the painter; whoever he may have been, this altarpiece is beautiful, and the more beautiful too since it is in its own place. In the Gherardi Chapel there is an Annunciation given to Giusto d'Andrea, while in another is a Madonna and Saints by Neri di Bicci. In the chapel of the Cecchini there is a fine fifteenth-century work attributed to Cosimo Rosselli. The old monastery is to-day partly the canonica and partly a villa. Following the stream upwards, we pass under and then round the beautiful Villa I Tatti that of old belonged to the Zati family whose altarpiece is in S. Martino, and winding up the road to Vincigliata, you soon enter the cypress woods. All the way to your left Poggio Gherardo has towered over you, Poggio Gherardo where the two first days of the Decamerone were passed. How well Boccaccio describes the place: "On the top of a hill there stood a palace which was surrounded by beautiful gardens, delightful meadows, and cool springs, and in the midst was a great and beautiful court with galleries, halls, and rooms which were adorned with paintings...." Not far away, Boccaccio himself lived on the podere of his father. You come to it if you pass out of the Vincigliata road by a pathway down to Frassignaja, a little stream which, in its hurry to reach Mensola, its sister here, leaps sheer down the rocks in a tiny waterfall. This is the "shady valley" perhaps where in the evening the ladies of the Decamerone walked "between steep rocks to a crystal brook which poured down from a little hill, and there they splashed about with bare hands and feet, and talked merrily with one another." Crossing this brook and following the path round the hillside, where so often the nightingale sings, you pass under a little villa by a stony way to Corbignano, and there, in what may well be the oldest house in the place, at the end of the street, past the miraculous orange tree, just where the hill turns out of sight, you see Boccaccio's house, Casa di Boccaccio, as it is written; and though the old tower has become a loggia, and much has been rebuilt, you may still see the very ancient stones of the place jutting into the lane, where the water sings so after the rain, and the olives whisper softly all night long, and God walks always among the vines.