Florence

by Christopher Hibbert

  San Marco, cloister of St Antonino

  art include an Immaculate Conception altarpiece by Vasari in the third altar of the south aisle. In the first chapel of the north aisle is the sinopia of a Virgin and Child by Paolo Schiavo; and at the end of this aisle is the tomb of Oddo Altoviti by Benedetto da Rovezzano, who also built the palace for the Altoviti family at No. 1 Piazza del Limbo. The tabernacles are by Andrea della Robbia.

  2. This ceremony is described at the end of Chapter 23.

  CHAPTER 12 (pages 136–49)

  1. Ghirlandaio was commissioned to fresco the Sassetti Chapel in SANTA TRINITA in 1483. In the scene taking place in the PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA above the altar, the Confirmation of Franciscan Rule, Luigi Pulci and Angelo Poliziano, the Medici boys' tutors, can be seen, as well as members of the Sassetti and Medici families. The miracle of the boy being brought back to life by St Francis is shown happening in the Piazza Santa Trinita. Francesco Sassetti, standing beside his wife, Nera Corsi, is also shown in the altarpiece, Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Shepherds. His tomb is attributed to Giuliano da Sangallo.

  2. According to Vasari, the site of Lorenzo's school was a garden in the Piazza San Marco. Caroline Elam has been able to document it there as belonging to Lorenzo from 1475.

  CHAPTER 13 (pages 150–63)

  1. The church and priory of San Marco were founded in 1299, but by 1436 the Sylvestrine Order had so badly neglected the buildings that Pope Eugenius IV gave them to the austere Observant branch of the Dominicans of Fiesole, for whom, through the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, Michelozzo provided new designs. In the corners of the first cloister, the Cloister of St Antonino, are frescoes by Fra Angelico, several of whose other works, many of them from Florentine churches, are in the Pilgrims' Hospice on the south side. On the east side is the Great Refectory, the end wall of which was frescoed by Sogliani depicting St Dominic being fed by angels. To the north is the chapter house containing Fra Angelico's Crucifixion with Saints; and north of this, in the corner of the second cloister, the Cloister of St Dominic, is the Small Refectory with a fresco by Domenico Ghirlandaio of the Last Supper.

  Along the east side of the cloister were the guest quarters, which now house fragments of buildings salvaged from the MERCATO VECCHIO and the GHETTO. The extensive renovation of the ground floor of the priory followed traditional patterns, but the upper floor incorporates two innovations: first, the Dominicans took advantage of the 1419 papal concession allowing monks to be accommodated in individual cells rather than communal dormitories; secondly, over the guest-rooms, Michelozzo's light, airy library breaks away from gloomy, windowless medieval tradition. At the top of the stairs to the cells is Fra Angelico's fresco of the Annunciation. The Virgin's loggia with its groin vaulting and Ionic capitals echoes Michelozzo's cloister below. The Observants held that their cells could only be decorated with images of the Virgin, the Crucifixion and St Dominic. Fra Angelico and his assistants, however, gave themselves some freedom from this rule. The church was rebuilt again in 1588 to the designs of Giambologna, who built the Chapel of St Antonino, which contains the saint's body. The church also has an eighth-century mosaic of the Virgin from Constantinople, and a Sacra Conversazione by Fra Bartolommeo, who painted the portrait of his mentor, Savonarola, in the prior's cell in the priory. This was closed for restoration at the time of writing. The tribune by Pier Francesco Silvani was added in 1678. The façade was completed in 1780.

  The statue in the garden of Piazza San Marco is of General Manfredo Fanti, a hero of the Risorgimento, who died in Florence in 1865. It is by Pio Fedi, whose studio was at No. 99 Via de' Serragli. Fedi was also responsible for the monuments to those other patriots, Gino Capponi and Giovanni Battista Niccolini, in SANTA CROCE, and for the Rape of Polyxena (1866) in the LOGGIA DEI LANZI.

  2. Leonardo had finished only a fragment of his mural of the battle of Anghiari before he left Florence for Milan in 1506. This fragment, of which no trace remains, can be seen in a painting of 1557 in the Sala di Ester on the second floor of the PALAZZO DELLA SIGNORIA. Michelangelo's cartoon for a mural of the battle of Cascina between Florence and Pisa was also incomplete when he was summoned to Rome. It, too, has been lost.

  The Sala del Maggior Consiglio, also known as the Salone dei Cinquecento, was completed in 1496. The room was transformed for the Grand Duke by Bandinelli and Ammannati, and redecorated under the direction of Vasari. On the ceiling is the Apotheosis of Cosimo I, surrounded by depictions of the history of Florence and her victories by Vasari, who also painted the monumental panels. At the north end is the Udienza, or Audience Gallery, with frescoes by Francesco Salviati, designed by Baccio Bandinelli and Giuliano di Baccio d'Agnolo. In the niches there are statues of the Medici family. Opposite the Udienza are antique Roman statues. By the east wall, left of centre, is Michelangelo's Victory. Directly opposite is Giambologna's Victory Triumphing over Vice. The other statues around the walls of the Labours of Hercules are by Vincenzo De' Rossi and were placed here in the 1590s.

  CHAPTER 14 (pages 164–72)

  1. In 1303 the first prisoners incarcerated in the Stinche, which stood on the site of the present Teatro Verdi in Via Ghibellina, were members of the Cavalcanti family. Ironically, the building had once been the Cavalcanti palace. Later the inmates were largely debtors. Over the door was an inscription, Oportet misereri, ‘We should be merciful’. But no mercy was shown to common criminals, who were frequently tortured through the streets of Florence before being publicly hanged outside the prison. In the 1780s an English visitor noted the humane ‘machine for decollation’, which severed the head at a stroke.

  2. The façade of San Felice, completed in 1458, has been attributed to Michelozzo and Antonio Manetti. The Madonna and Saints on the south side (sixth altar) is by Ridolfo and Michele Ghirlandaio. On the north side there are frescoes by Giovanni da San Giovanni (seventh altar) and a triptych by Neri di Bicci (sixth altar).

  CHAPTER 15 (pages 173–8)

  1. Michelangelo's David, completed by the twenty-nine-year-old sculptor in 1504, had been commissioned soon after Piero Soderini became Gonfaloniere in 1501. In his diary, Luca Landucci described how the wall of the Opera del Duomo had to be broken down so that it could be got out into the street. ‘It went very slowly, being bound in an erect position and suspended so that it did not touch the ground with its feet… It took four days to reach the piazza… It was moved along by more than forty men.’ Although Botticelli wanted it placed in the LOGGIA DEI LANZI, and others proposed the steps of the Duomo as a more suitable position, it was eventually placed in front of the PALAZZO DELLA SIGNORIA, where one of the arms was broken in a riot in 1527. The statue continued to stand there until 1873, when it was replaced by the copy which stands there now. The original – the gilding of the hair and the band across the chest still faintly visible – is in the GALLERIA DELL' ACCADEMIA, in the specially built tribune designed by Emilio de Fabris in 1882.

  2. The New Sacristy at SAN LORENZO, known as the Medici Chapel, was completed by Michelangelo in 1543. Lorenzo and Giuliano are buried by the Madonna and Child, near the entrance door. The sarcophagus of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, is on the right. The Duke is portrayed as an officer in the service of the Church with a male statue of Day and a sleeping female Night reclining at his feet. On the left is the tomb of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, the dedicatee of Machiavelli's The Prince, portrayed as a soldier, his eyes cast down in thought. Below him are statues of Dawn and Dusk. The decoration of the chapel was not finished when Michelangelo left Florence in 1534. Plans for tombs for Lorenzo il Magnifico and Giuliano, as well as for Pope Leo X, were never realized.

  3. Michelangelo's entrance and staircase to the BIBLIOTECA LAURENZIANA were largely finished by the time the artist left Florence. They were completed by Bartolommeo Ammannati and Giorgio Vasari in accordance with plans and instructions which Michelangelo left behind.

  4. The little town of Gavinana, surrounded by chest-nut groves, is now a holiday resort. In the piazz
a is an equestrian monument to Francesco Ferrucci There is also a small museum here dedicated to him and the battle he lost.

  5. These charcoal drawings, one of them a study for a Resurrection, were discovered in 1975. Some of them are attributed to Michelangelo's pupils, among them Tribolo.

  6. The massive Fortezza da Basso was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. The entrance in Viale Filippo Strozzi incorporates a medieval tower. When no longer needed for its original purpose, the fortress was used as a prison, then as a barracks and arsenal. It opened as an exhibition centre in 1967.

  7. The fifteenth-century Palazzo Salviati is at No. 6 Via del Corso. In the little Courtyard of the Emperors, whose vaults were decorated by Allori with frescoes of stories from the Odyssey, stands a sixteenth-century statue of Cosimo I. The palace, which was built by the Portinari family, was bought in 1546 and enlarged by Jacopo Salviati. It is now the head office of the Banca Toscana. The Palazzo Salviati, No. 76 Borgo Pinti, was formerly celebrated for its garden. The well-preserved fourteenth-century Palazzo Salviati-Quaratesi is on the corner of Via dell'Isola delle Stinche and Via della Vigna Vecchia.

  CHAPTER 16 (pages 179–85)

  1. These obelisks of Serravezza marble in Piazza Santa Maria Novella rest on turtles by Giam-bologna. On the south side of the piazza opposite the church is the late-fifteenth-century Loggia di San Paolo, based upon the loggia of the OSPEDALE DEGLI INNOCENTI. The terracottas are by Giovanni della Robbia and the lunette of St Francis meeting St Dominic by Andrea della Robbia. Beyond the loggia, at No. 16 Via della Scala, where it has been since 1612, is the Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella, which occupies a fourteenth-century chapel decorated in the 1840s by Enrico Romoli.

  2. The Misericordia, the Venerabile Arcicon-fraternita della Misericordia di Firenze, founded by St Peter Martyr in 1244, moved to its present site on the corner of Via de' Calzaiuoli and Piazza del Duomo in 1576. It had previously been housed in the building opposite, the LOGGIA DEL BIGALLO – attributed to Alberto Arnoldi – which was built for them in the 1350s. On the wall of the Oratory of the Misericordia there is a painting of a member of the institution carrying an invalid by Pietro Annigoni. Inside the Oratory, the enamelled altarpiece is by Andrea della Robbia. The unfinished statue of St Sebastian is by Benedetto da Maiano, to whom are also attributed the wooden crucifix in the sacristy, and the Madonna and Child in the Sala di Campagnia. The museum above contains many paintings and other works of art acquired by the institution over the centuries. At the time of writing the museum was closed. The brotherhood now numbers several thousand volunteers, 300 of whom are on duty daily. ‘Our institution,’ the archivist writes, ‘accepts men and women from every social class, who wish to relieve those

  Piazza Santa Maria Novella

  who need spiritual and material help… The Misericordia is considered to be the busiest and most famous charitable institution in the world.’ Its members can still be seen in Florence going about their missions of mercy in black capes and hoods.

  The Compagnia di Santa Maria del Bigallo was founded in 1245 and amalgamated with the Misericordia in 1425. Before moving to the Piazza San Giovanni in that year, the Compagnia's headquarters were near ORSANICHELE. The three fourteenth-century statues on the loggia's façade were brought here from that building.

  The small Museo del Bigallo (closed at the time of writing) contains works by, amongst others, Bernardo Daddi and Domenico di Michelino. The fresco in the Sala dei Capitani contains the earliest known view of Florence, showing the CAMPANILE unfinished. There is also a fresco by Niccolò di Pietro Gerini and Ambrogio di Baldese depicting lost and abandoned children being handed over to foster-mothers after having been exhibited in the loggia for three days. The Bigallo is now independent of the Misericordia.

  3. Bandinelli's most prominent work in Florence is the huge statue of Hercules and Cacus (1533–4) to the right of MICHELANGELO'S DAVID. It was derided in the Grand Duke Cosimo's presence by Cellini, who called Bandinelli ‘the filthiest ruffian ever born in this world’.

  4. Cellini's Perseus, commissioned by Cosimo I, was set up in the LOGGIA DEI LANZI in 1554.

  5. Giambologna's huge statue of Appennino was restored in 1988.

  6. The Neptune Fountain was finished in 1575, the equestrian statue of the Grand Duke in 1595. Restoration of this statue was completed in 1993. A porphyry plaque in the pavement in front of the fountain marks the place where Savonarola and his fellow Dominicans were burned in 1498.

  7. Ammannati began work on the Palazzo Giugni, No. 48 Via Algani, in the early 1570s for the banker Simone da Firenzuola. Characteristically, he employed smooth stucco rather than rustication. Decoration is reserved for the portal and the coat of arms on the first floor.

  8. The Cerchi, a rich mercantile family which died out in the nineteenth century, came from Acone in the Sieve valley. The Palazzo Cerchi, now Palazzo dell'Antella, is at Nos. 21–2 PIAZZA SANTA CROCE. There is another Palazzo Cerchi dating from the thirteenth century on the corner of Vicolo dei Cerchi. The family's chapel was in what is now the MUSEO DELL'OPERA DI SANTA CROCE. It contains a glazed terracotta altarpiece by Andrea della Robbia.

  9. The Quartiere di Eleonora di Toledo, on the second floor of the PALAZZO DELLA SIGNORIA, were decorated for the Grand Duchess in the 1540s. The chapel is the work of Bronzino; the vault of the Camera Verde is by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, the ceiling of the small study by Francesco Salviati. Other artists who worked here include Vasari, Giovanni Stradano and Bernardo del Tasso. The fifteenth-century lavabo in the Sala di Ester came from the PALAZZO DI PARTE GUELFA.

  10. The Boboli Gardens were opened to the public in 1766. Just inside the arch entrance is the so-called Fountain of Bacchus, featuring Cosimo I's favourite dwarf astride a tortoise, sculpted by Valerio Cioli (1560). To the left, in the north-eastern corner of the gardens is the eccentric Grotta Grande of Buontalenti (attributed also to Ammannati). Baccio Bandinelli carved the statues of Apollo and Ceres on the façade for Vasari's niches. Copies of Michelangelo's Slaves, struggling out of their marble, stand in the corner (the originals are in the GALLERIA DELL' ACCADEMIA). Vincenzo de' Rossi carved Paris Abducting Helen in the second chamber, and beyond that, in the third, is Venus by Giambologna.

  A path continues southwards to Eleonora di Toledo's Grotticina di Madama. Further south still, before FORTE DI BELVEDERE is reached, is Zanobi del Rosso's KAFFEEHAUS.

  Immediately behind the palace is the amphitheatre by Giulio and Alfonso Parigi, in the middle of which is a granite bath from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and, supported on little turtles, the obelisk of Rameses II plundered by the Romans from Heliopolis.

  Further up the terrace is the Fountain of Neptune (1565–8) by Stoldo Lorenzi, which stands in a large pond. Beyond this, towards the southern limit of the gardens, is a large Abundance, started by Giambologna and completed by his pupil, Pietro Tacca. Above Abundance is the Museo delle Porcelane, formerly a defensive bastion built by Michelangelo and closed at the time of writing.

  Alfonso Parigi laid out the beautiful cypress avenue, the Viottolone, north-west of the museum, past the row of greenhouses. It is lined with statues by Roman sculptors and with others by Giovanni Battista Caccini. Parigi also laid out the Isolotto, or Little Island, at the end of this avenue. This is really two little islands surrounded by moats. In the middle is a copy of Giambologna's Fountain of Oceanus (the original is in the BARGELLO), and statuary by Parigi and from the school of Giambologna. To the right of the Viottolone, at the northern limits of the gardens by the Annalena Gate, is a late-eighteenth-century orangery by Zanobi del Rosso. At the northern end, outside the Porta Romana, is the Istituto d'Arte, which has a celebrated collection of casts of classical and Renaissance sculpture.

  CHAPTER 17 (pages 186–207)

  1. There has been a market on the site of the Mercato Nuovo since the early eleventh century. It is popularly known as Il Porcellino, the Piglet, after the bronze boar which stands here. Pietro Tacca cop
ied it from Ferdinando II's Roman marble boar, which is in the UFFIZI. Sellers of gold and silk plied their trade here under the new loggia which Cosimo I commissioned, as did money-changers, for this had long been the neighbourhood of the banks – seventy-two of them were counted in 1421. The market now sells such things as bags and belts and cheap souvenirs.

  2. The Palazzo Uguccioni stands at No. 7 PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA. When Cosimo I moved his family out of the PALAZZO MEDICI into the PALAZZO DELLA SIGNORIA in 1540, he conceived grand plans to renovate his new home

  Boboli Gardens, showing amphitheatre

  and the square. Various plans were rejected, including Michelangelo's to continue the arcade of the LOGGIA DEI LANZI round the piazza; and it seems that Cosimo channelled his interest in the square into the Palazzo Uguccioni. A Roman architect, Mariotto di Zanobi Folfi, was commissioned to build the new palace for Giovanni Uguccioni, one of Cosimo's courtiers. The influence of the architect's fellow-countryman, Bramante, is clear. Uguccioni was allowed to bring the façade of the palace forward on to the common pavement of the piazza, despite the objections of his neighbours. In gratitude, the bust of Francesco I by Giovanni Bandini was placed over the door. In 1993 the palace was awaiting restoration.