Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  Shrews, though comparatively seldom seen by incurious eyes, abound by myriads in most parts of England. Every summer they increase sevenfold; but as autumn approaches, and food grows scarce, they die off in their thousands from cold and hunger, as I gather. So many of them then strew the footpaths in sandy districts that country people have a quaint superstition about them; they say a shrew cannot cross a church-path without dying instantly. What constitutes a church-path is somebody having once gone to church along it. The truth is, dead shrews abound equally in the grass and thickets; but, of course, only those are seen which happen to die in the open. This is but one out of many hundred odd superstitions about the shrew, which may be regarded, indeed, as the most wizard-like animal now left in England.

  THE END

  Florence

  CONTENTS

  VOLUME I.

  INTRODUCTION.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  VOLUME II.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  VOLUME I.

  MICHAEL ANGELO. — DAVID.

  INTRODUCTION.

  The object and plan of this book is somewhat different from that of any other guides at present before the public. It does not compete or clash with such existing works; it is rather intended to supplement than to supplant them. My purpose is not to direct the stranger through the streets and squares of an unknown town toward the buildings or sights which he may desire to visit; still less is it my design to give him practical information about hotels, cab fares, omnibuses, tramways, and other everyday material conveniences. For such details, the traveller must still have recourse to the trusty pages of his Baedeker, his Joanne, or his Murray. I desire rather to supply the tourist who wishes to use his travel as a means of culture with such historical and antiquarian information as will enable him to understand, and therefore to enjoy, the architecture, sculpture, painting, and minor arts of the towns he visits. In one word, it is my object to give the reader in a very compendious form the result of all those inquiries which have naturally suggested themselves to my own mind during thirty-five years of foreign travel, the solution of which has cost myself a good deal of research, thought, and labour, beyond the facts which I could find in the ordinary handbooks.

  For several years past I have devoted myself to collecting and arranging material for a book to embody the idea I had thus entertained. I earnestly hope it may meet a want on the part of tourists, especially Americans, who, so far as my experience goes, usually come to Europe with an honest and reverent desire to learn from the Old World whatever of value it has to teach them, and who are prepared to take an amount of pains in turning their trip to good account which is both rare and praiseworthy. For such readers I shall call attention at times to other sources of information.

  The general plan pursued will be somewhat as follows. First will come the inquiry why a town ever gathered together at all at this particular spot — what induced the aggregation of human beings rather there than elsewhere. Next, we shall consider why this town grew to social or political importance and what were the stages by which it assumed its present shape. Thirdly, we shall ask why it gave rise to that higher form of handicraft which we know as Art, and toward what particular arts it especially gravitated. After that, we shall take in detail the various strata of its growth or development, examining the buildings and works of art which they contain in historical order, and, as far as possible, tracing the causes which led to their evolution. In particular, we shall lay stress upon the origin and meaning of each structure as an organic whole, and upon the allusions or symbols which its fabric embodies.

  A single instance will show the method upon which I intend to proceed better than any amount of general description. A church, as a rule, is built over the body or relics of a particular saint, in whose special honour it was originally erected. That saint was usually one of great local importance at the moment of its erection, or was peculiarly implored against plague, foreign enemies, or some other pressing and dreaded misfortune. In dealing with such a church, then, I endeavour to show what were the circumstances which led to its erection, and what memorials of these circumstances it still retains. In other cases it may derive its origin from some special monastic body — Benedictine, Dominican, Franciscan — and may therefore be full of the peculiar symbolism and historical allusion of the order who founded it. Wherever I have to deal with such a church, I try as far as possible to exhibit the effect which its origin had upon its architecture and decoration; to trace the image of the patron saint in sculpture or stained glass throughout the fabric; and to set forth the connection of the whole design with time and place, with order and purpose. In short, instead of looking upon monuments of the sort mainly as the product of this or that architect, I look upon them rather as material embodiments of the spirit of the age — crystallisations, as it were, in stone and bronze, in form and colour, of great popular enthusiasms.

  By thus concentrating attention on what is essential and important in the town, I hope to give in a comparatively short space, though with inevitable conciseness, a fuller account than is usually given of the chief architectural and monumental works of the principal art-cities. Whatever I save from description of the Cascine and even of the beautiful Viale dei Colli (where explanation is needless and word-painting superfluous), I shall give up to the Bargello, the Uffizi, and the Pitti Palace. The passing life of the moment does not enter into my plan; I regard the town I endeavour to illustrate mainly as a museum of its own history.

  For this reason, too, I shall devote most attention to what is locally illustrative, and less to what is merely adventitious and foreign. I shall deal rather with the Etruscan remains, with Giotto and Fra Angelico, with the Duomo and the Campanile, than with the admirable Memlincks and Rubenses of the Uffizi and the Pitti, or with the beautiful Van der Goes of the Hospital of Santa Maria. I shall assign a due amount of space, indeed, to the foreign collections, but I shall call attention chiefly to those monuments or objects which are of entirely local and typical value.

  As regards the character of the information given, it will be mainly historical, antiquarian, and, above all, explanatory. I am not a connoisseur — an adept in the difficult modern science of distinguishing the handicraft of various masters, in painting or sculpture, by minute signs and delicate inferential processes. In such matters, I shall be well content to follow the lead of the most authoritative experts. Nor am I an art-critic — a student versed in the technique of the studios and the dialect of the modelling-room. In such matters, again, I shall attempt little more than to accept the general opinion of the most discriminative judges. What I aim at rather is to expound the history and meaning of each work — to put the intelligent reader in such a position that he may judge for himself of the æsthetic beauty and success of the object before him. To recognise the fact that this is a Perseus and Andromeda, that a St. Barbara enthroned, the other an obscure episode in the legend of St. Philip, is not art-criticism, but it is often an almost indispensable prelude to the formation of a right and sound judgment. We must know what the artist was trying to represent before we can feel sure what measure of success he has attained in his representation.

  For the general study of Christian art, alike in architecture, sculpture, and painting, no treatises are more useful for the tourist to carry wit
h him for constant reference than Mrs. Jameson’s “Sacred and Legendary Art,” and “Legends of the Madonna.” For works of Italian art, both in Italy and elsewhere, Kugler’s “Italian Schools of Painting” is an invaluable vade-mecum. These books should be carried about by everybody everywhere. Other works of special and local importance will occasionally be noticed under each particular city, church, or museum.

  Wherever in the text paintings or other objects are numbered, the numbers used are always those of the latest official catalogue. Individual works of merit are distinguished by an asterisk; those of exceptional interest and merit have two asterisks.

  CHAPTER I.

  ORIGINS OF FLORENCE.

  Only two considerable rivers flow from the Apennines westward into the Mediterranean. The Tiber makes Rome; the Arno makes Florence.

  In prehistoric and early historic times, the mountainous region which forms the basin of these two rivers was occupied by a gifted military race, the Etruscans, who possessed a singular assimilative power for Oriental and Hellenic culture. Intellectually and artistically, they were the pick of Italy. Their blood still runs in the veins of the people of Tuscany. Almost every great thing done in the Peninsula, in ancient or modern times, has been done by Etruscan hands or brains. The poets and painters, in particular, with few exceptions, have been, in the wide ethnical sense, Tuscans.

  The towns of ancient Etruria were hill-top strongholds. Florence was not one of these; even its neighbour, Fiesole (Faesulae), did not rank among the twelve great cities of the Etruscan league. But with the Roman conquest and the Roman peace, the towns began to descend from their mountain peaks into the river valleys; roads grew important, through internal trade; and bridges over rivers assumed a fresh commercial value. Florence (Florentia), probably founded under Sulla as a Roman municipium, upon a Roman road, guarded the bridge across the Arno, and gradually absorbed the population of Fiesole. Under the later empire, it was the official residence of the “Corrector” of Tuscany and Umbria. During the Middle Ages, it became for all practical purposes the intellectual and artistic capital of Tuscany, inheriting in full the remarkable mental and æsthetic excellences of the Etruscan race.

  The valley of the Arno is rich and fertile, bordered by cultivable hills, which produce the famous Chianti wine. It was thus predestined by nature as the seat of the second city on the west slope of Italy. Florence, however, was not always that city. The seaport of Pisa (now silted up and superseded by Leghorn) first rose into importance; possessed a powerful fleet; made foreign conquests; and erected the magnificent group of buildings just outside the town which still form its chief claim upon the attention of tourists. But Florence with its bridge commanded the inland trade, and the road to Rome from Germany. After the destruction of Fiesole in 1125, it grew rapidly in importance; and, Pisa having sustained severe defeats from Genoa, the inland town soon rose to supremacy in the Arno basin. Nominally subject to the Emperor, it became practically an independent republic, much agitated by internal quarrels, but capable of holding its own against neighbouring cities. Its chief buildings are thus an age or two later than those of Pisa; it did not begin to produce splendid churches and palaces, in emulation of those of Pisa and Siena, till about the close of the thirteenth century. To the same period belongs the rise of its literature, under Dante, and its painting under Giotto. This epoch of rapid commercial, military, and artistic development forms the main glory of early Florence.

  The fourteenth century is chiefly interesting at Florence as the period of Giottesque art, finding its final crown in Fra Angelico. With the beginning of the fifteenth, we get the dawn of the Renaissance — the age when art set out once more to recover the lost perfection of antique workmanship. In literature, this movement took the form of humanism; in architecture and sculpture, it exhibited itself in the persons of Alberti, Ghiberti, Della Robbia, and Donatello; in painting, it showed itself in Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, and Verrocchio. I shall not attempt to set forth here the gradual stages by which these arts advanced to the height at length attained by Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael; I shall take it for granted that my readers will read up such questions for themselves in Kugler and Layard or other high-class authorities. Nor shall I endeavour to trace the rise of the dynasty of the Medici, whose influence was so great upon the artistic expression of their country; the limits of space which I have imposed upon myself here render such treatment impossible. I will rather proceed at once to my detailed examination of the chief existing monuments of Florence in roughly chronological order, leaving these other facts to exhibit themselves piecemeal in their proper place, in connection with the buildings or pictures of the city. For in Florence more than elsewhere I must beg the reader to excuse the needful brevity which the enormous mass of noble works to be explained in this richest of art-cities inevitably entails upon me.

  We start, then, with the fact that up to nearly the close of the thirteenth century (1278) Florence was a comparatively small and uninteresting town, without any buildings of importance, save the relatively insignificant Baptistery; without any great cathedral, like Pisa and Siena; without any splendid artistic achievement of any kind. It consisted at that period of a labyrinth of narrow streets, enclosing huddled houses and tall towers of the nobles, like the two to be seen to this day at Bologna. In general aspect, it could not greatly have differed from Albenga or San Gimignano in our own time. But commerce was active; wealth was increasing; and the population was seething with the intellectual and artistic spirit of its Etruscan ancestry. During the lifetime of Dante, the town began to transform itself and to prepare for becoming the glorious Florence of the Renaissance artists. It then set about building two immense and beautiful churches — Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella — while, shortly after, it grew to be ashamed of its tiny San Giovanni (the existing Baptistery), and girded itself up to raise a superb Cathedral, which should cast into the shade both the one long since finished at maritime Pisa, and the one then still rising to completion on the height of Siena.

  GENERAL VIEW OF FLORENCE.

  Florence at that time extended no further than the area known as Old Florence, extending from the Ponte Vecchio to the Cathedral in one direction, and from the Ponte alla Carraja to the Grazie in the other. Outside the wall lay a belt of fields and gardens, in which one or two monasteries had already sprung up. But Italy at that moment was filled with religious enthusiasm by the advent of the Friars, both great orders of whom, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, had already established themselves in the rising commercial city of Florence. Both orders had acquired sites for monastic buildings in the space outside the walls, and soon began to erect enormous churches. The Dominicans came first, with Santa Maria Novella, the commencement of which dates from 1278; the Franciscans were a little later in the field, with Santa Croce, the first stone not being placed till 1294. Nevertheless, though the Dominican church is thus a few years the earlier of the two, I propose to begin my survey of the town with its Franciscan rival, because the paintings and works of art of Santa Croce are older on the whole than those of Santa Maria, and because the tourist is thus better introduced to the origins and evolution of Florentine art.

  Remember, in conclusion, that Florence in Dante’s day was a small town, with little beauty, and no good building save the (since much embellished) Baptistery; but that during Dante’s lifetime the foundations were laid of Santa Maria, Santa Croce, and the great Cathedral. We shall have to trace the subsequent development of the town from these small beginnings.

  The Roman name Florentia passed into Fiorenza in mediæval times, and is now Firenze.

  From a very early date, St. John the Baptist (to whom the original Cathedral was dedicated) has been the patron saint of Florence. Whenever you meet him in Florentine art, he stands for the city, as St. Mark does for Venice, or the figure of Britannia for our own island.

  St. Cosimo and St. Damian, the holy doctors, and therefore patron saints of the Medici family, and especially of Cosimo d
e’ Medici, also meet us at every turn. They represent the ruling family, and may be recognised by their red robes and caps, and their surgical instruments. Saint Lawrence is also a great Medici saint: in early works, he represents Lorenzo de’ Medici the elder, the brother of Cosimo (1395-1440); in later ones, he stands for Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492). Observe for yourself which of the two the dates in each case show to be intended.

  Santa Reparata, the old patroness of the city, and San Zanobi, its sainted bishop, are also frequent objects in early painting and sculpture in Florence.

  If you visit the various objects in the order here enumerated, you will get a better idea of the development of Florence and of Florentine art than you could possibly do by haphazard sightseeing. Also, you will find the earlier steps explain the later. But there can be no harm in examining the picture-galleries side by side with the churches, especially if dark or wet days confine you; provided always you begin with the Belle Arti, which contains the A B C of Tuscan and Umbrian panel-painting. From it you can go on to the Uffizi and the Pitti.

  CHAPTER II.

  SANTA CROCE AND THE FRANCISCAN QUARTER.

  St. Francis of Assisi, the Apostle of the Poor, died in 1226, and was promptly canonised in 1228. His followers spread at once over every part of Italy, choosing in each town the poorest quarters, and ministering to the spiritual and temporal needs of the lowest classes. They were representatives of Works, as the Dominicans of Faith. In 1294, — some sixteen years later than the Dominicans at Santa Maria Novella, — they began to erect a church at Florence, outside the walls, on the poorer side of the city, close by their monastery. It was dedicated under the name of Santa Croce, and shortly adorned by Giotto and his pupils with beautiful frescoes, the finest works of art yet seen in Italy. Two things must thus be specially borne in mind about this church: it is a church of the Holy Cross, whose image and history meet one in it at every turn; and it is a Franciscan church, and therefore it is largely occupied with the glorification of St. Francis and of the order he founded. Their coarse brown robes appear in many of the pictures. Look out for their great saints, Bernardino of Siena, Louis of Toulouse, Antony of Padua, etc.