The Story of Florence. Gardner Edmund G.

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СКАЧАТЬ of Ricci and Albizzi kept up the inevitable factions, much as the Buondelmonti and Uberti, Cerchi and Donati had done of old; and an iniquitous system of "admonishing" those who were suspected of Ghibelline descent (the ammoniti being excluded from office under heavy penalties) threw much power into the hands of the captains of the Parte Guelfa, whose oppressive conduct earned them deadly hatred. "To such arrogance," says Machiavelli, "did the captains of the Party mount, that they were feared more than the members of the Signoria, and less reverence was paid to the latter than to the former; the palace of the Party was more esteemed than that of the Signoria, so that no ambassador came to Florence without having commissions to the captains."

      Pope Gregory XI preceded his return to Rome by an attempted reconquest of the States of the Church, by means of foreign legates and hireling soldiers, of whom the worst were Bretons and English; although St. Catherine of Siena implored him, in the name of Christ, to come with the Cross in hand, like a meek lamb, and not with armed bands. The horrible atrocities committed in Romagna by these mercenaries, especially at Faenza and Cesena, stained what might have been a noble pontificate. Against Pope Gregory and his legates, the Florentines carried on a long and disastrous war; round the Otto della Guerra, the eight magistrates to whom the management of the war was intrusted, rallied those who hated the Parte Guelfa. The return of Gregory to Rome in 1377 opens a new epoch in Italian history. Echoes of this unnatural struggle between Florence and the Pope reach us in the letters of St Catherine and the canzoni of Franco Sacchetti; in the latter is some faint sound of Dante's saeva indignatio against the unworthy pastors of the Church, but in the former we are lifted far above the miserable realities of a conflict carried on by political intrigue and foreign mercenaries, into the mystical realms of pure faith and divine charity.

      In 1376, the Loggia dei Priori, now less pleasantly known as the Loggia dei Lanzi, was founded; and in 1378 the bulk of the Duomo was practically completed. This may be taken as the close of the first or "heroic" epoch of Florentine Art, which runs simultaneously with the great democratic period of Florentine history, represented in literature by Dante and Boccaccio. The Duomo, the Palace of the Podestà, the Palace of the Priors, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, Or San Michele, the Loggia of the Bigallo, and the Third Walls of the City (of which, on the northern side of the Arno, the gates alone remain), are its supreme monuments in architecture. Its heroes of greatest name are Arnolfo di Cambio, Giotto di Bondone, Andrea Pisano, Andrea di Cione or Orcagna (the "Archangel"), and, lastly and but recently recognised, Francesco Talenti.

      "No Italian architect," says Addington Symonds, "has enjoyed the proud privilege of stamping his own individuality more strongly on his native city than Arnolfo." At present, the walls of the city (or what remains of them)–le mura di Fiorenza which Lapo Gianni would fain see inargentate– and the bulk of the Palazzo Vecchio and Santa Croce, alone represent Arnolfo's work. But the Duomo (mainly, in its present form, due to Francesco Talenti) probably still retains in part his design; and the glorious Church of Or San Michele, of which the actual architect is not certainly known, stands on the site of his Loggia.

      Giovanni Cimabue, the father of Florentine painting as Arnolfo of Florentine architecture, survives only as a name in Dante's immortal verse. Not a single authentic work remains from his hand in Florence. His supposed portrait in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella is now held to be that of a French knight; the famous picture of the Madonna and Child with her angelic ministers, in the Rucellai Chapel, is shown to be the work of a Sienese master; and the other paintings once ascribed to him have absolutely no claims to bear his name. But the Borgo Allegro still bears its title from the rejoicings that hailed his masterpiece, and perhaps it is best that his achievement should thus live, only as a holy memory:–

      "Credette Cimabue nella pittura

      tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido,

      sì che la fama di colui è oscura."14

      Of Cimabue's great pupil, Dante's friend and contemporary, Giotto, we know and possess much more. Through him mediæval Italy first spoke out through painting, and with no uncertain sound. He was born some ten years later than Dante. Cimabue–or so the legend runs, which is told by Leonardo da Vinci amongst others–found him among the mountains, guarding his father's flocks and drawing upon the stones the movements of the goats committed to his care. He was a typical Florentine craftsman; favoured by popes, admitted to the familiarity of kings, he remained to the end the same unspoilt shepherd whom Cimabue had found. Many choice and piquant tales are told by the novelists about his ugly presence and rare personality, his perpetual good humour, his sharp and witty answers to king and rustic alike, his hatred of all pretentiousness, carried to such an extent that he conceived a rooted objection to hearing himself called maestro. Padua and Assisi possess some of his very best work; but Florence can still show much. Two chapels in Santa Croce are painted by his hand; of the smaller pictures ascribed to him in churches and galleries, there is one authentic–the Madonna in the Accademia; and, perhaps most beautiful of all, the Campanile which he designed and commenced still rises in the midst of the city. Giotto died in 1336; his work was carried on by Andrea Pisano and practically finished by Francesco Talenti.

      Andrea di Ugolino Pisano (1270-1348), usually simply called Andrea Pisano, is similarly the father of Florentine sculpture. Vasari's curiously inaccurate account of him has somewhat blurred his real figure in the history of art. His great achievements are the casting of the first gate of the Baptistery in bronze, his work–apparently from Giotto's designs–in the lower series of marble reliefs round the Campanile, and his continuation of the Campanile itself after Giotto's death. He is said by Vasari to have built the Porta di San Frediano.

      There is little individuality in the followers of Giotto, who carried on his tradition and worked in his manner. They are very much below their master, and are often surpassed by the contemporary painters of Siena, such as Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Taddeo Gaddi and his son, Agnolo, Giovanni di Milano, Bernardo Daddi, are their leaders; the chief title to fame of the first-named being the renowned Ponte Vecchio. But their total achievement, in conjunction with the Sienese, was of heroic magnitude. They covered the walls of churches and chapels, especially those connected with the Franciscans and Dominicans, with the scenes of Scripture, with the lives of Madonna and her saints; they set forth in all its fullness the whole Gospel story, for those who could neither read nor write; they conceived vast allegories of human life and human destinies; they filled the palaces of the republics with painted parables of good government. "By the grace of God," says a statute of Sienese painters, "we are the men who make manifest to the ignorant and unlettered the miraculous things achieved by the power and virtue of the Faith." At Siena, at Pisa and at Assisi, are perhaps the greatest works of this school; but here, in Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, there is much, and of a very noble and characteristic kind. Spinello Aretino (1333-1410) may be regarded as the last of the Giotteschi; you may see his best series of frescoes in San Miniato, setting forth with much skill and power the life of the great Italian monk, whose face Dante so earnestly prayed to behold unveiled in Paradise.

      This heroic age of sculpture and painting culminated in Andrea Orcagna (1308-1368), Andrea Pisano's great pupil. Painter and sculptor, architect and poet, Orcagna is at once the inheritor of Niccolò and Giovanni Pisano, and of Giotto. The famous frescoes in the Pisan Campo Santo are now known to be the work of some other hand; his paintings in Santa Croce, with their priceless portraits, have perished; and, although frequently consulted in the construction of the Duomo, it is tolerably certain that he was not the architect of any of the Florentine buildings once ascribed to him. The Strozzi chapel of St Thomas in Santa Maria Novella, the oratory of the Madonna in San Michele in Orto, contain all his extant works; and they are sufficient to prove him, next to Giotto, the greatest painter of his century, with a feeling for grace and beauty even above Giotto's, and only less excellent in marble. Several of his poems have been preserved, mostly of a slightly satirical character; one, a sonnet on the nature of love, Molti volendo dir che fosse Amore, has had the honour of being ascribed to Dante.

      With the third quarter of the century, the first great epoch of Italian letters closes also. On the overthrow СКАЧАТЬ