CHAPTER IX.

_The Palazzo Riccardi--San Lorenzo--San Marco._

Per molti, donna, anzi per mille amanti, creata fusti, e d'angelica forma.

Or par che'n ciel si dorma, s'un sol s'appropria quel ch'e dato a tanti.

(_Michelangelo Buonarroti_).

The Via dei Martelli leads from the Baptistery into the Via Cavour, formerly the historical Via Larga. Here stands the great Palace of the Medici, now called the Palazzo Riccardi from the name of the family to whom the Grand Duke Ferdinand II. sold it in the seventeenth century.

The palace was begun by Michelozzo for Cosimo the Elder shortly before his exile, and completed after his return, when it became in reality the seat of government of the city, although the Signoria still kept up the pretence of a republic in the Palazzo Vecchio. Here Lorenzo the Magnificent was born on January 1st, 1449, and here the most brilliant and cultured society of artists and scholars that the world had seen gathered round him and his family.[44] Here, too, after the expulsion of Lorenzo's mad son, Piero, in 1494, Charles VIII. of France was splendidly lodged; here Piero Capponi tore the dishonourable treaty and saved the Republic, and here Fra Girolamo a few days later admonished the fickle king. On the return of the Medici, the Cardinal Giovanni, the younger Lorenzo, and the Cardinal Giulio successively governed the city here; until in 1527 the people drove out the young pretenders, Alessandro and Ippolito, with their guardian, the Cardinal Pa.s.serini. It was on this latter occasion that Piero's daughter, Madonna Clarice, the wife of the younger Filippo Strozzi, was carried hither in her litter, and literally slanged these boys and the Cardinal out of Florence. She is reported, with more vehemence than delicacy, to have told her young kinsmen that the house of Lorenzo dei Medici was not a stable for mules. During the siege, the people wished to entirely destroy the palace and rename the place the Piazza dei Muli.

[44] It should be observed that Lorenzo was not specially called the "Magnificent" by his contemporaries. All the more prominent members of the Medicean family were styled _Magnifico_ in the same way.

After the restoration Alessandro carried on his abominable career here, until, on January 5th, 1537, the dagger of another Lorenzo freed the world from an infamous monster. Some months before, Benvenuto Cellini came to the palace, as he tells us in his autobiography, to show the Duke the wax models for his medals which he was making.

Alessandro was lying on his bed, indisposed, and with him was only this Lorenzino or Lorenzaccio, _quel pazzo malinconico filosafo di Lorenzino_, as Benvenuto calls him elsewhere. "The Duke," writes Benvenuto, "several times signed to him that he too should urge me to stop; upon which Lorenzino never said anything else, but: 'Benvenuto, you would do best for yourself to stay.' To which I said that I wanted by all means to return to Rome. He said nothing more, and kept continually staring at the Duke with a most evil eye. Having finished the medal and shut it up in its case, I said to the Duke: 'My Lord, be content, for I will make you a much more beautiful medal than I made for Pope Clement; for reason wills that I should do better, since that was the first that ever I made; and Messer Lorenzo here will give me some splendid subject for a reverse, like the learned person and magnificent genius that he is.' To these words the said Lorenzo promptly answered: 'I was thinking of nothing else, save how to give thee a reverse that should be worthy of his Excellency.' The Duke grinned, and, looking at Lorenzo, said: 'Lorenzo, you shall give him the reverse, and he shall make it here, and shall not go away.'

Lorenzo replied hastily, saying: 'I will do it as quickly as I possibly can, and I hope to do a thing that will astonish the world.'

The Duke, who sometimes thought him a madman and sometimes a coward, turned over in his bed, and laughed at the words which he had said to him. I went away without other ceremonies of leave-taking, and left them alone together."

On the fatal night Lorenzino lured the Duke into his own rooms, in what was afterwards called the Strada del Traditore, which was incorporated into the palace by the Riccardi. Alessandro, tired out with the excesses of the day, threw himself upon a bed; Lorenzino went out of the room, ostensibly to fetch his kinswoman, Caterina Ginori, whose beauty had been the bait; and he returned with the bravo Scoroncocolo, with whose a.s.sistance he a.s.sa.s.sinated him. Those who saw Sarah Bernhardt in the part of "Lorenzaccio," will not easily forget her rendering of this scene. Lorenzino published an Apologia, in which he enumerates Alessandro's crimes, declares that he was no true offspring of the Medici, and that his own single motive was the liberation of Florence from tyranny. He fled first to Constantinople, and then to Venice, where he was murdered in 1547 by the agents of Alessandro's successor, Cosimo I., who transferred the ducal residence from the present palace first to the Palazzo Vecchio, and then across the river to the Pitti Palace.

With the exception of the chapel, the interior of the Palazzo Riccardi is not very suggestive of the old Medicean glories of the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent. There is a fine court, surrounded with sarcophagi and statues, including some of the old tombs which stood round the Baptistery and among which Guido Cavalcanti used to linger, and some statues of Apostles from the second facade of the Duomo.

Above the arcades are eight fine cla.s.sical medallions by Donatello, copied and enlarged from antique gems. The rooms above have been entirely altered since the days when Capponi defied King Charles, and Madonna Clarice taunted Alessandro and Ippolito; the large gallery, which witnessed these scenes, is covered with frescoes by Luca Giordano, executed in the early part of the seventeenth century. The Chapel--still entirely reminiscent of the better Medici--was painted by Benozzo Gozzoli shortly before the death of Cosimo the Elder, with frescoes representing the Procession of the Magi, in a delightfully impossible landscape. The two older kings are the Patriarch Joseph of Constantinople, and John Paleologus, Emperor of the East, who had visited Florence twenty years before on the occasion of the Council (Benozzo, it must be observed, was painting them in 1459, after the fall of Constantinople); the third is Lorenzo dei Medici himself, as a boy. Behind follow the rest of the Medicean court, Cosimo himself and his son, Piero, content apparently to be led forward by this mere lad; and in their train is Benozzo Gozzoli himself, marked by the signature on his hat. The picture of the Nativity itself, round which Benozzo's lovely Angels--though very earthly compared with Angelico's--seem still to linger in attendance, is believed to have been one by Lippo Lippi, now at Berlin.

In the chapter _Of the Superhuman Ideal_, in the second volume of _Modern Painters_, Ruskin refers to these frescoes as the most beautiful instance of the supernatural landscapes of the early religious painters:--

"Behind the adoring angel groups, the landscape is governed by the most absolute symmetry; roses, and pomegranates, their leaves drawn to the last rib and vein, twine themselves in fair and perfect order about delicate trellises; broad stone pines and tall cypresses overshadow them, bright birds hover here and there in the serene sky, and groups of angels, hand joined with hand, and wing with wing, glide and float through the glades of the unentangled forest. But behind the human figures, behind the pomp and turbulence of the kingly procession descending from the distant hills, the spirit of the landscape is changed. Severer mountains rise in the distance, ruder prominences and less flowery vary the nearer ground, and gloomy shadows remain unbroken beneath the forest branches."

Among the ma.n.u.scripts in the _Biblioteca Riccardiana_, which is entered from the Via Ginori at the back of the palace, is the most striking and plausible of all existing portraits of Dante. It is at the beginning of a codex of the Canzoni (numbered 1040), and appears to have been painted about 1436.

From the palace where the elder Medici lived, we turn to the church where they, and their successors of the younger line, lie in death. In the Piazza San Lorenzo there is an inane statue of the father of Cosimo I., Giovanni delle Bande Nere, by Baccio Bandinelli. Here, in June 1865, Robert Browning picked up at a stall the "square old yellow Book" with "the crumpled vellum covers," which gave him the story of _The Ring and the Book_:--

"I found this book, Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just, (Mark the predestination!) when a Hand, Always above my shoulder, pushed me once, One day still fierce 'mid many a day struck calm, Across a square in Florence, crammed with booths, Buzzing and blaze, noon-tide and market-time, Toward Baccio's marble--ay, the bas.e.m.e.nt ledge O' the pedestal where sits and menaces John of the Black Bands with the upright spear, 'Twixt palace and church--Riccardi where they lived, His race, and San Lorenzo where they lie.

"That memorable day, (June was the month, Lorenzo named the Square) I leaned a little and overlooked my prize By the low railing round the fountain-source Close to the statue, where a step descends: While clinked the cans of copper, as stooped and rose Thick-ankled girls who brimmed them, and made place For market men glad to pitch basket down, Dip a broad melon-leaf that holds the wet, And whisk their faded fresh."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TOMB OF GIOVANNI AND PIERO DEI MEDICI BY ANDREA VERROCCHIO (In San Lorenzo)]

The unsightly bare front of San Lorenzo represents several fruitless and miserable years of Michelangelo's life. Pope Leo X. and the Cardinal Giulio dei Medici commissioned him to make a new facade, in 1516, and for some years he consumed his time labouring among the quarries of Carrara and Pietrasanta, getting the marble for it and for the statues with which it was to be adorned. In one of his letters he says: "I am perfectly disposed (_a me basta l'animo_) to make this work of the facade of San Lorenzo so that, both in architecture and in sculpture, it shall be the mirror of all Italy; but the Pope and the Cardinal must decide quickly, if they want me to do it or not"; and again, some time later: "What I have promised to do, I shall do by all means, and I shall make the most beautiful work that was ever made in Italy, if G.o.d helps me." But nothing came of it all; and in after years Michelangelo bitterly declared that Leo had only pretended that he wanted the facade finished, in order to prevent him working upon the tomb of Pope Julius.

"The ancient Ambrosian Basilica of St. Lawrence," founded according to tradition by a Florentine widow named Giuliana, and consecrated by St.

Ambrose in the days of Zen.o.bius, was entirely destroyed by fire early in the fifteenth century, during a solemn service ordered by the Signoria to invoke the protection of St. Ambrose for the Florentines in their war against Filippo Maria Visconti. Practically the only relic of this Basilica is the miraculous image of the Madonna in the right transept. The present church was erected from the designs of Filippo Brunelleschi, at the cost of the Medici (especially Giovanni di Averardo, who may be regarded as its chief founder) and seven other Florentine families. It is simple and harmonious in structure; the cupola, which is so visible in distant views of Florence, looking like a smaller edition of the Duomo, unlike the latter, rests directly upon the cross. This appears to be one of the modifications from what Brunelleschi had intended.

The two pulpits with their bronze reliefs, right and left, are the last works of Donatello; they were executed in part and finished by his pupil, Bertoldo. The marble singing gallery in the left aisle (near a fresco of the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, by Bronzino) is also the joint work of Donatello and Bertoldo. In the right transept is a marble tabernacle by Donatello's great pupil, Desiderio da Settignano.

Beneath a porphyry slab in front of the choir, Cosimo the Elder, the Pater Patriae, lies; Donatello is buried in the same vault as his great patron and friend. In the Martelli Chapel, on the left, is an exceedingly beautiful Annunciation by Fra Filippo Lippi, a fine example of his colouring (in which he is decidedly the best of all the early Florentines); Gabriel is attended by two minor Angels, squires waiting upon this great Prince of the Archangelic order, who are full of that peculiar mixture of boyish high spirits and religious sentiment which gives a special charm of its own to all that Lippo does.

The _Sagrestia Vecchia_, founded by Giovanni di Averardo, was erected by Brunelleschi and decorated by Donatello for Cosimo the Elder. In the centre is the marble sarcophagus, adorned with _putti_ and festoons, containing the remains of Giovanni and his wife Piccarda, Cosimo's father and mother, by Donatello. The bronze doors (hardly among his best works), the marble bal.u.s.trade before the altar, the stucco medallions of the Evangelists, the reliefs of patron saints of the Medici and the frieze of Angels' heads are all Donatello's; also an exceedingly beautiful terracotta bust of St. Lawrence, which is one of his most attractive creations. In the niche on the left of the entrance is the simple but very beautiful tomb of the two sons of Cosimo, Piero and Giovanni--who are united also in Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi as the two kings--and it serves also as a monument to Cosimo himself; it was made by Andrea Verrocchio for Lorenzo and Giuliano, Piero's sons. The remains of Lorenzo and Giuliano rested together in this sacristy until they were translated in the sixteenth century. In spite of a misleading modern inscription, they were apparently not buried in their father's grave, and the actual site of their former tomb is unknown. They now lie together in the _Sagrestia Nuova_. The simplicity of these funereal monuments and the _pietas_ which united the members of the family so closely, in death and in life alike, are very characteristic of these earlier Medicean rulers of Florence.

The cloisters of San Lorenzo, haunted by needy and dest.i.tute cats, were also designed by Brunelleschi. To the right, after pa.s.sing Francesco da San Gallo's statue of Paolo Giovio, the historian, who died in 1559, is the entrance to the famous Biblioteca Laurenziana.

The nucleus of this library was the collection of codices formed by Niccol Niccoli, which were afterwards purchased by Cosimo the Elder, and still more largely increased by Lorenzo the Magnificent; after the expulsion of Piero the younger, they were bought by the Friars of San Marco, and then from them by the Cardinal Giovanni, who transferred them to the Medicean villa at Rome. In accordance with Pope Leo's wish, Clement VII. (then the Cardinal Giulio) brought them back to Florence, and, when Pope, commissioned Michelangelo to design the building that was to house them. The portico, vestibule and staircase were designed by him, and, in judging of their effect, it must be remembered that Michelangelo professed that architecture was not his business, and also that the vestibule and staircase were intended to have been adorned with bronzes and statues. It was commenced in 1524, before the siege. Of the numberless precious ma.n.u.scripts which this collection contains, we will mention only two cla.s.sical and one mediaeval; the famous Pandects of Justinian which the Pisans took from Amalfi, and the Medicean Virgil of the fourth or fifth century; and Boccaccio's autograph ma.n.u.script of Dante's Eclogues and Epistles.

This latter codex, shown under the gla.s.s at the entrance to the Rotunda, is the only ma.n.u.script in existence which contains Dante's Epistles to the Italian Cardinals and to a Florentine Friend. In the first, he defines his att.i.tude towards the Church, and declares that he is not touching the Ark, but merely turning to the kicking oxen who are dragging it out of the right path; in the second, he proudly proclaims his innocence, rejects the amnesty, and refuses to return to Florence under dishonourable conditions. Although undoubtedly in Boccaccio's handwriting, it has been much disputed of late years as to whether these two letters are really by Dante. There is not a single autograph ma.n.u.script, nor a single sc.r.a.p of Dante's handwriting extant at the present day.

From the Piazza Madonna, at the back of San Lorenzo, we enter a chilly vestibule, the burial vault of less important members of the families of the Medicean Grand Dukes, and ascend to the _Sagrestia Nuova_, where the last male descendants of Cosimo the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent lie. Although the idea of adding some such mausoleum to San Lorenzo appears to have originated with Leo X., this New Sacristy was built by Michelangelo for Clement VII., commenced while he was still the Cardinal Giulio and finished in 1524, before the Library was constructed. Its form was intended to correspond with that of Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy, and it was to contain four sepulchral monuments. Two of these, the only two that were actually constructed, were for the younger Lorenzo, t.i.tular Duke of Urbino (who died in 1519, the son of Piero and nephew of Pope Leo), and the younger Giuliano, Duke of Nemours (who died in 1516, the third son of the Magnificent and younger brother of Leo). It is not quite certain for whom the other two monuments were to have been, but it is most probable that they were for the fathers of the two Medicean Popes, Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother the elder Giuliano, whose remains were translated hither by Duke Cosimo I. and rediscovered a few years ago. Michelangelo commenced the statues before the third expulsion of the Medici, worked on them in secret while he was fortifying Florence against Pope Clement before the siege, and returned to them, after the downfall of the Republic, as the condition of obtaining the Pope's pardon. He resumed work, full of bitterness at the treacherous overthrow of the Republic, tormented by the heirs of Pope Julius II., whose tomb he had been forced to abandon, suffering from insomnia and shattered health, threatened with death by the tyrant Alessandro. When he left Florence finally in 1534, just before the death of Clement, the statues had not even been put into their places.

Neither of the ducal statues is a portrait, but they appear to represent the active and contemplative lives, like the Leah and Rachel on the tomb of Pope Julius II. at Rome. On the right sits Giuliano, holding the baton of command as Gonfaloniere of the Church. His handsome sensual features to some extent recall those of the victorious youth in the allegory in the Bargello. He holds his baton somewhat loosely, as though he half realised the baseness of the historical part he was doomed to play, and had not got his heart in it. Opposite is Lorenzo, immersed in profound thought, "ghastly as a tyrant's dream." What visions are haunting him of the sack of Prato, of the atrocities of the barbarian hordes in the Eternal City, of the doom his house has brought upon Florence? Does he already smell the blood that his daughter will shed, fifty years later, on St.

Bartholomew's day? Here he sits, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it:--

"With everlasting shadow on his face, While the slow dawns and twilights disapprove The ashes of his long extinguished race, Which never more shall clog the feet of men."

"It fascinates and is intolerable," as Rogers wrote of this statue. It is, probably, not due to Michelangelo that the niches in which the dukes sit are too narrow for them; but the result is to make the tyrants seem as helpless as their victims, in the fetters of destiny.

Beneath them are four tremendous and terrible allegorical figures: "those four ineffable types," writes Ruskin, "not of darkness nor of day--not of morning nor evening, but of the departure and the resurrection, the twilight and the dawn of the souls of men." Beneath Lorenzo are Dawn and Twilight; Dawn awakes in agony, but her most horrible dreams are better than the reality which she must face; Twilight has worked all day in vain, and, like a helpless t.i.tan, is sinking now into a slumber where is no repose. Beneath Giuliano are Day and Night: Day is captive and unable to rise, his mighty powers are uselessly wasted and he glares defiance; Night is buried in torturing dreams, but Michelangelo has forbidden us to wake her:--

"Grato mi e il sonno, e piu l'esser di sa.s.so; mentre che il danno e la vergogna dura, non veder, non sentir, m'e gran ventura; per non mi destar; deh, parla ba.s.so!"[45]

[45] "Grateful to me is sleep, and more the being stone; while ruin and shame last, not to see, not to feel, is great good fortune to me.

Therefore wake me not; ah, speak low!"

It will be remembered that it was for these two young men, to whom Michelangelo has thus reared the n.o.blest sepulchral monuments of the modern world, that Leo X. desired to build kingdoms and that Machiavelli wrote one of the masterpieces of Italian prose--the _Principe_. Giuliano was the most respectable of the elder Medicean line; in Castiglione's _Cortigiano_ he is an attractive figure, the chivalrous champion of women. It is not easy to get a definite idea of the character of Lorenzo, who, as we saw in chapter iv., was virtually tyrant of Florence during his uncle's pontificate. The Venetian amba.s.sador once wrote of him that he was fitted for great deeds, and only a little inferior to Caesar Borgia--which was intended for very high praise; but there was nothing in him to deserve either Michelangelo's monument or Machiavelli's dedication. He usurped the Duchy of Urbino, and spent his last days in fooling with a jester. His reputed son, the foul Duke Alessandro, lies buried with him here in the same coffin.

Opposite the altar is the Madonna and Child, by Michelangelo. The Madonna is one of the n.o.blest and most beautiful of all the master's works, but the Child, whom Florence had once chosen for her King, has turned His face away from the city. A few years later, and Cosimo I.

will alter the inscription which Niccol Capponi had set up on the Palazzo Vecchio. The patron saints of the Medici on either side, Sts.

Cosmas and Damian, are by Michelangelo's pupils and a.s.sistants, Fra Giovanni Angiolo da Montorsoli and Raffaello da Montelupo. Beneath these statues lie Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother, the elder Giuliano. Their bodies were removed hither from the Old Sacristy in 1559, and the question as to their place of burial was finally set at rest, in October 1895, by the discovery of their bodies. It is probable that Michelangelo had originally intended the Madonna for the tomb of his first patron, Lorenzo.

In judging of the general effect of this _Sagrestia Nuova_, which is certainly somewhat cold, it must be remembered that Michelangelo intended it to be full of statues and that the walls were to have been covered with paintings. "Its justification," says Addington Symonds, "lies in the fact that it demanded statuary and colour for its completion." The vault was frescoed by Giovanni da Udine, but is now whitewashed. In 1562, Vasari wrote to Michelangelo at Rome on behalf of Duke Cosimo, telling him that "the place is being now used for religious services by day and night, according to the intentions of Pope Clement," and that the Duke was anxious that all the best sculptors and painters of the newly inst.i.tuted Academy should work upon the Sacristy and finish it from Michelangelo's designs. "He intends," writes Vasari, "that the new Academicians shall complete the whole imperfect scheme, in order that the world may see that, while so many men of genius still exist among us, the n.o.blest work which was ever yet conceived on earth has not been left unfinished." And the Duke wants to know what Michelangelo's own idea is about the statues and paintings; "He is particularly anxious that you should be a.s.sured of his determination to alter nothing you have already done or planned, but, on the contrary, to carry out the whole work according to your conception. The Academicians, too, are unanimous in their hearty desire to abide by this decision."[46]

[46] Given in Addington Symonds' _Life of Michelangelo_.

In the _Cappella dei Principi_, gorgeous with its marbles and mosaics, lie the sovereigns of the younger line, the Medicean Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the descendants of the great captain Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Here are the sepulchral monuments of Cosimo I. (1537-1574); of his sons, Francesco (1574-1587) and Ferdinand I. (1587-1609); and of Ferdinand's son, grandson and great-grandson, Cosimo II. (1609-1621), Ferdinand II. (1627-1670), Cosimo III. (1670-1723). The statues are those of Ferdinand I. and Cosimo II.

Cosimo I. finally transformed the republic into a monarchy, created a new aristocracy and established a small standing army, though he mainly relied upon Spanish and German mercenaries. He conquered Siena in 1553, and in 1570 was invested with the grand ducal crown by Pius V.--a t.i.tle which the Emperor confirmed to his successor. Although the tragedy which tradition has hung round the end of the d.u.c.h.ess Eleonora and her two sons has not stood the test of historical criticism, there are plenty of b.l.o.o.d.y deeds to be laid to Duke Cosimo's account during his able and ruthless reign. Towards the close of his life he married his mistress, Cammilla Martelli, and made over the government to his son. This son, Francesco, the founder of the Uffizi Gallery and of the modern city of Leghorn, had more than his father's vices and hardly any of his ability; his intrigue with the beautiful Venetian, Bianca Cappello, whom he afterwards married, and who died with him, has excited more interest than it deserves. The Cardinal Ferdinand, who succeeded him and renounced the cardinalate, was incomparably the best of the house--a man of magnanimous character and an enlightened ruler. He shook off the influence of Spain, and built an excellent navy to make war upon the Turks and Barbary corsairs. Cosimo II. and Ferdinand II. reigned quietly and benevolently, with no ability but with plenty of good intentions. Chiabrera sings their praises with rather unnecessary fervour. But the wealth and prosperity of Tuscany was waning, and Cosimo III., a luxurious and selfish bigot, could do nothing to arrest the decay. On the death of his miserable and contemptible successor, Gian Gastone dei Medici in 1737, the Medicean dynasty was at an end.

Stretching along a portion of the Via Larga, and near the Piazza di San Marco, were the famous gardens of the Medici, which the people sacked in 1494 on the expulsion of Piero. The Casino Mediceo, built by Buontalenti in 1576, marks the site. Here were placed some of Lorenzo's antique statues and curios; and here Bertoldo had his great art school, where the most famous painters and sculptors came to bask in the sun of Medicean patronage, and to copy the antique. Here the boy Michelangelo came with his friend Granacci, and here Andrea Verrocchio first trained the young Leonardo. In this garden, too, Angelo Poliziano walked with his pupils, and initiated Michelangelo into the newly revived h.e.l.lenic culture. There is nothing now to recall these past glories.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WELL OF S. MARCO]

The church of San Marco has been frequently altered and modernised, and there is little now to remind us that it was here on August 1, 1489, that Savonarola began to expound the Apocalypse. Over the entrance is a Crucifix ascribed by Vasari to Giotto. On the second altar to the right is a much-damaged but authentic Madonna and Saints by Fra Bartolommeo; that on the opposite altar, on the left, is a copy of the original now in the Pitti Palace. There are some picturesque bits of old fourteenth century frescoes on the left wall, and beneath them, between the second and third altars, lie Pico della Mirandola and his friend Girolamo Benivieni, and Angelo Poliziano. The left transept contains the tomb and shrine of St Antoninus, the good Dominican Archbishop of Florence, with statues by Giovanni da Bologna and his followers, and later frescoes. In the sacristy, which was designed by Brunelleschi, there is a fine bronze rec.u.mbent statue of him. Antoninus was Prior of San Marco in the days of Angelico, and Vasari tells us that when Angelico went to Rome, to paint for Pope Eugenius, the Pope wished to make the painter Archbishop of Florence: "When the said friar heard this, he besought his Holiness to find somebody else, because he did not feel himself apt to govern people; but that since his Order had a friar who loved the poor, who was most learned and fit for rule, and who feared G.o.d, this dignity would be much better conferred upon him than on himself. The Pope, hearing this, and bethinking him that what he said was true, granted his request freely; and so Fra Antonino was made Archbishop of Florence, of the Order of Preachers, a man truly most ill.u.s.trious for sanct.i.ty and learning."

It was in the church of San Marco that Savonarola celebrated Ma.s.s on the day of the Ordeal; here the women waited and prayed, while the procession set forth; and hither the Dominicans returned at evening, amidst the howls and derision of the crowd. Here, on the next evening, the fiercest of the fighting took place. The attempt of the enemy to break into the church by the sacristy door was repulsed. One of the Panciatichi, a mere boy, mortally wounded, joyfully received the last sacraments from Fra Domenico on the steps of the altar, and died in such bliss, that the rest envied him. Finally the great door of the church was broken down; Fra Enrico, a German, mounted the pulpit and fired again and again into the midst of the Compagnacci, shouting with each shot, _Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine_. Driven from the pulpit, he and other friars planted their arquebusses beneath the Crucifix on the high altar, and continued to fire. The church was now so full of smoke that the friars could hardly continue the defence, until Fra Giovacchino della Robbia broke one of the windows with a lance. At last, when the Signoria threatened to destroy the whole convent with artillery, Savonarola ordered the friars to go in procession from the church to the dormitory, and himself, taking the Blessed Sacrament from the altar, slowly followed them.

The convent itself, now officially the _Museo di San Marco_, originally a house of Silvestrine monks, was made over to the Dominicans by Pope Eugenius IV., at the instance of Cosimo dei Medici and his brother Lorenzo. They solemnly took possession in 1436, and Michelozzo entirely rebuilt the whole convent for them, mainly at the cost of Cosimo, between 1437 and 1452. "It is believed," says Vasari, "to be the best conceived and the most beautiful and commodious convent of any in Italy, thanks to the virtue and industry of Michelozzo." Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, as the Beato Angelico was called, came from his Fiesolan convent, and worked simultaneously with Michelozzo for about eight or nine years (until the Pope summoned him to Rome in 1445 to paint in the Vatican), covering with his mystical dreams the walls that his friend designed. That other artistic glory of the Dominicans, Fra Bartolommeo, took the habit here in 1500, though there are now only a few unimportant works of his remaining in the convent. Never was there such a visible outpouring of the praying heart in painting, as in the work of these two friars. And Antoninus and Savonarola strove to make the spirit world that they painted a living reality, for Florence and for the Church.

The first cloister is surrounded by later frescoes, scenes from the life of St. Antoninus, partly by Bernardino Poccetti and Matteo Rosselli, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. They are not of great artistic value, but one, the fifth on the right of the entrance, representing the entry of St. Antoninus into Florence, shows the old facade of the Duomo. Like gems in this rather indifferent setting, are five exquisite frescoes by Angelico in lunettes over the doors; St.

Thomas Aquinas, Christ as a pilgrim received by two Dominican friars, Christ in the tomb, St. Dominic (spoilt), St. Peter Martyr; also a larger fresco of St. Dominic at the foot of the Cross. The second of these, symbolising the hospitality of the convent rule, is one of Angelico's masterpieces; beneath it is the entrance to the Foresteria, the guest-chambers. Under the third lunette we pa.s.s into the great Refectory, with its customary pulpit for the novice reader: here, instead of the usual Last Supper, is a striking fresco of St. Dominic and his friars miraculously fed by Angels, painted in 1536 by Giovanni Antonio Sogliani (a pupil of Lorenzo di Credi); the Crucifixion above, with St. Catherine of Siena and St. Antoninus, is said to be by Fra Bartolommeo. Here, too, on the right is the original framework by Jacopo di Bartolommeo da Sete and Simone da Fiesole, executed in 1433, for Angelico's great tabernacle now in the Uffizi.