Part 15

It is not any new vision of Madonna you will see in that quiet country church, full of afternoon sunshine and wayside flowers, but the same half-weary maiden of whom Botticelli has told us so often, whose honour is too great for her, whose destiny is more than she can bear. Already she has been overwhelmed by our praise and petitions; she has closed her eyes, she has turned away her head, and while the Jesus Parvulus lifts his tiny hands in blessing, she is indifferent, holding Him languidly, as though but half attentive to those priceless words which St. John, with the last light of a smile still lingering round his eyes, notes so carefully in his book. Something of the same eagerness, graver, and more youthful, you may see in the figure of St. Sebastian, who, holding three arrows daintily in his hand, has suddenly looked up at the sound of that Divine childish voice. Two other figures, S. Lorenzo and perhaps S. Roch, listen with a sort of intent sadness there under that splendid portico, where Mary sits on a throne, she who was the carpenter's wife, with so little joy or even surprise. Below, in the predella, you may see certain saints' heads, S. Lorenzo giving alms, the death of S. Lorenzo, the risen Christ.

[Illustration: BADIA AL SETTIMO]

But though Montelupo possesses such a treasure as this picture, for me at least the fairest thing within her keeping is the old fortress, ruined now, on her high hill, and the view one may have thence. For, following that stony way which brought me to S. Giovanni, I came at last to the walls of an old fortress, that now houses a few peasants, and turning there saw all the Val d'Arno, from S. Miniato far and far away to the west, to little Vinci on the north, where, as Vasari says, Leonardo was born; while below me, beside Arno, rose the beautiful Villa Ambrogiana, with its four towers at the corners; and then on a hill before me, not far away, a little town nestling round another fortress, maybe less dilapidated than Montelupo, Capraja, that goat which caused Montelupo to be built. For in the days when Florence disputed Val d'Arno and the plains of Empoli with many nobles, the Conti di Capraja lorded it here, and, as the Florentines said:

"Per distrugger questa Capra non ci vuol altro che un Lupo."

To-day Montelupo is but a village; yet once it was of importance not only as a fortress, for that she ceased to be almost when the Counts of Capraja were broken, and certainly by 1203, when Villani tells us that the Florentines destroyed the place because it would not obey the commonwealth; but as a city of art, or at any rate of a beautiful handicraft. Even to-day the people devote themselves to pottery, but of old it was not merely a matter of commerce, but of beauty and craftsmanship.

It was through a noisy gay crowd of these folk, the young men lounging against the houses, the girls talking, talking together, arm in arm, as they went to and fro before them, with a wonderful sweet air of indifference to those who eyed them so keenly and yet shyly too, and without anything of the brutal humour of a northern village, that in the later afternoon I again sought the highway. And before I had gone a mile upon my road the whole character of the way was changed; no longer was I crossing a great plain, but winding among the hills, while Arno, noisier than before, fled past me in an ever narrower bed among the rocks and buttresses of what soon became little more than a defile between the hills. Though the road was deep in dust, there was shadow under the cypresses beside the way, there was a whisper of wind among the reeds beside the river, and the song of the cicale grew fainter and the hills were touched with light; evening was coming.

And indeed, when at last I had left the splendid villa of Antinori far behind, evening came as I entered Lastra, and by chance taking the wrong road, passing under a most splendid ilex, huge as a temple, I climbed the hill to S. Martino a Gangalandi. Standing there in the pure calm light just after sunset, the whole valley of Florence lay before me. To the left stood Signa, piled on her hill like some fortress of the Middle Age; then Arno, like a road of silver, led past the Villa delle Selve to the great mountain Monte Morello, and there under her last spurs lay Florence herself, clear and splendid like some dream city, her towers and pinnacles, her domes and churches shining in the pure evening light like some delectable city seen in a vision far away, but a reality, and seen at last. Very far off she seemed in that clear light, that presently fading fled away across the mountains before the advance of night, that filled the whole plain with its vague and beautiful shadow.

And so, when morning was come, I went again to S. Martino a Gangalandi, but Florence was hidden in light. In my heart I knew I must seek her at once, that even the fairest things were not fair, since she was hidden away. Not without a sort of reluctance I heard Mass in S. Martino, spent a moment before the beautiful Madonna of that place, a picture of the fifteenth century, and looked upon the fortifications of Brunellesco. Everywhere the women sitting in their doorways were plaiting straw, and presently I came upon a whole factory of this craft, the great courtyard strewn with hats of all shapes, sizes, and colours, drying in the sun. Signa, too, across the river as I passed, seemed to be given up to this business. Then taking the road, hot and dusty, I set out--not by Via Pisana, but by the byways, which seemed shorter--for Florence. For long I went between the vines, in the misty morning, all of silver and gold, till I was weary. And at last houses began to strew the way, herds of goats led by an old man in velveteen and a lad in tatters, one herd after another covered me with dust, or, standing in front of the houses, were milked at the doorways, where still the women, their brown legs naked in the sun, plaited the straw. Then at a turning of the way, as though to confirm me in any fears I might have of the destruction of the city I had come so far to see, a light railway turned into the highway between the houses, where already there was not room for two carts to pass. How may I tell my anger and misery as I passed through that endless suburb, the great hooting engine of the train venting its stench, and smoke, and noise into the very windows of the houses, chasing me down the narrow way, round intricate corners, over tiny piazzas, from the very doors of churches. Yet, utterly weary at last, covered with dust, it was in this brutal contrivance that I sought refuge, and after an hour of agony was set down before the Porta al Prato. The bells were ringing the Angelus of midday when I came into Florence.

X. FLORENCE

Florence is like a lily in the midst of a garden gay with wild-flowers; a broken lily that we have tied up and watered and nursed into a semblance of life, an image of ancient beauty--as it were the _memento mori_ of that Latin spirit which contrived the Renaissance of mankind. As of old, so to-day, she stands in the plain at the foot of the Apennines, that in their sweetness and strength lend her still something of their nobility. Around her are the hills covered with olive gardens where the corn and the wine and the oil grow together between the iris and the rose; and everywhere on those beautiful hills there are villas among the flowers, real villas such as Alberti describes for us, full of coolness and rest, where a fountain splashes in an old courtyard, and the grapes hang from the pergolas, and the corn is spread in July and beaten with the flail. And since the vista of every street in Florence ends in the country, it is to these hills you find your way very often if your stay be long, fleeing from the city herself, perhaps to hide your disappointment, in the simple joy of country life. More and more as you live in Florence that country life becomes your consolation and your delight: for there abide the old ways and the ancient songs, which you will not find in the city. And indeed the great treasure of Florence is this bright and smiling country in which she lies: the old road to Fiesole, the ways that lead from Settignano to Compiobbi, the path through the woods from S. Martino a Mensola, that smiling church by the wayside, to Vincigliata, to Castel di Poggio, the pilgrimage from Bagno a Ripoli to the Incontro. There, on all those beautiful gay roads, you will pass numberless villas whispering with summer, laughing with flowers; you will see the _contadini_ at work in the _poderi_, you will hear the _rispetti_ and _stornelli_ of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries sung perhaps by some love-sick peasant girl among the olives from sunrise till evening falls. And the ancient ways are not forgotten there, for they still reap with the sickle and sing to the beat of the flail; while the land itself, those places "full of nimble air, in a laughing country of sweet and lovely views, where there is always fresh water, and everything is healthy and pure," of which Leon Alberti tells us, are still held and cultivated in the old way under the old laws by the _contadino_ and his _padrone_. This ancient order, quietness, and beauty, which you may find everywhere in the country round about Florence, is the true Tuscany. The vulgarity of the city, for even in Italy the city life has become insincere, blatant, and for the most part a life of the middle class, seldom reaches an hundred yards beyond the _barriera_: and this is a charm in Florence, for you may so easily look on her from afar. And so, if one comes to her from the country, or returns to her from her own hills, it is ever with a sense of loss, of sadness, of regret: she has lost her soul for the sake of the stranger, she has forgotten the splendid past for an ignoble present, a strangely wearying dream of the future.

Yet for all her modern ways, her German beer-houses, her English tea-shops, her noisy trams on Lung' Arno, her air as of a museum, her eagerness to show her contempt for the stranger while she sells him her very soul for money, Florence remains one of the most delightful cities of Italy to visit, to live with, to return to again and again. Yet I for one would never live within her walls if I could help it, nor herd with those barbarian, exclamatory souls who in guttural German or cockney English snort or neigh at the beauties industriously pointed out by a loud-voiced cicerone, quoting in American all the appropriate quotations, Browning before Filippo Lippi, Ruskin in S. Croce, Mrs. Browning at the door of S. Felice, Goethe everywhere.

No, I will live a little way out of the city on the hillside, perhaps towards Settignano, not too far from the pine woods, nor too near the gate. And my garden there shall be a vineyard, bordered with iris, and among the vines shall be a garden of olives, and under the olives there shall be the corn. And the yellow roses will litter the courtyard, and the fountain will be full of their petals, and the red roses will strew the paths, and the white roses will fall upon the threshold; and all day long the bees will linger in the passion-flowers by the window when the mulberry trees have been stripped of leaves, and the lilies of Madonna, before the vines, are tall and like ghosts in the night, the night that is blue and gold, where a few fire-flies linger yet, sailing faintly over the stream, and the song of the cicale is the burden of endless summer.

Then very early in the morning I will rise from my bed under the holy branch of olive, I will walk in my garden before the sun is high, I will look on my beloved city. Yes, I shall look over the near olives across the valley to the hill of cypresses, to the poplars beside Arno that tremble with joy; and first I shall see Torre del Gallo and then S. Miniato, that strange and beautiful place, and at last my eyes will rest on the city herself, beautiful in the mist of morning: first the tower of S. Croce, like a tufted spear; then the tower of Liberty, and that was built for pride; and at last, like a mysterious rose lifted above the city, I shall see the dome, the rosy dome of Brunellesco, beside which, like a slim lily, pale, immaculate as a pure virgin, rises the inviolate Tower of the Lowly, that Giotto built for God. Yes, often I shall thus await the Angelus that the bells of all the villages will answer, and I shall greet the sun and be thankful. Then I shall walk under the olives, I shall weigh the promised grapes, I shall bend the ears of corn here and there, that I may feel their beauty, and I shall bury my face in the roses, I shall watch the lilies turn their heads, I shall pluck the lemons one by one. And the maidens will greet me on their way to the olive gardens, the newly-married, hand in hand with her husband, will smile upon me, she who is heavy with child will give me her blessing, and the children will laugh and peep at me from behind the new-mown hay; and I shall give them greeting. And I shall talk with him who is busy in the vineyard, I shall watch him bare-foot among the grapes, I shall see his wise hands tenderly unfold a leaf or gather up a straying branch, and when I leave him I shall hear him say, "May your bread be blessed to you." Under the myrtles, on a table of stone spread with coarse white linen, such we see in Tuscany, I shall break my fast, and I shall spill a little milk on the ground for thankfulness, and the crumbs I shall scatter too, and a little honey that the bees have given I shall leave for them again.

So I shall go into the city, and one will say to me, "The Signore must have a care, for the sun will be hot, in returning it will be necessary to come under the olives." And I shall laugh in my heart, and say, "Have no fear, then, for the sun will not touch me." And how should I but be glad that the sun will be hot, and how should I but be thankful that I shall come under the olives?

And I shall come into the city by Porta alla Croce for love, because I am but newly returned, and presently through the newer ways I shall come to the oldest of all, Borgo degli Albizzi, where the roofs of the beautiful palaces almost touch, and the way is cool and full of shadow. There, amid all the hurry and bustle of the narrow, splendid street, I shall think only of old things for a time, I shall remember the great men who founded and established the city, I shall recall the great families of Florence. Here in this Borgo the Albizzi built their towers when they came from Arezzo, giving the city more than an hundred officers, Priori and Gonfalonieri, till Cosimo de' Medici thrust them out with the help of Eugenius IV. The grim, scornful figure of Rinaldo seems to haunt the old palace still. How often in those September days must he have passed to and fro between his palace and the Bargello close by, the Palace of the Podestà: but the people, fearing they knew not what, barricaded the place so that Rinaldo was persuaded to consult with the Pope in S. Maria Novella. At dawn he dismissed his army, and remained alone. Then the friends of Cosimo in exile went to the Pope and thanked him, thus, as some have thought, surprising him into an abandonment of Rinaldo. However that may be, Rinaldo was expelled, leaving the city with these words, "He is a blind man without a guide, who trusts the word of a Pope." And what figure haunts Palazzo Altovite, the home of that fierce Ghibelline house loved by Frederick II, if not that hero who expelled the Duke of Athens. Palazzo Pazzi and Palazzo Nonfinito at the Canto de' Pazzi where the Borgo degli Albizzi meets Via del Proconsolo, brings back to me that madman who first set the Cross upon the walls of Jerusalem in 1099, and who for this cause was given some stones from Christ's sepulchre by Godfrey de Bouillon, which he brought to Florence and presented to the Republic. They were placed in S. Reparata, which stood where the Duomo now is, and, as it is said, the "new fire" was struck from them every Holy Saturday, and the clergy, in procession, brought that sacred flame to the other churches of the city. And the Pazzi, because of their gift, gave the guard of honour in this procession: and this they celebrated with much pomp among themselves; till at last they obtained permission to build a _carro_, which should be lighted at the door of S. Reparata by some machine of their invention, and drawn by four white oxen to their houses. And even to this day you may see this thing, and to this day the car is borne to their canto. But above all I see before that "unfinished" palace the ruined hopes of those who plotted to murder Lorenzo de' Medici with his brother at the Easter Mass in the Duomo. Even now, amid the noise of the street, I seem to hear the shouting of the people, _Vive le Palle, Morte ai Pazzi_.

So I shall come into the Proconsolo beside the Bargello, where so many great and splendid people are remembered, and she, too, who is so beautiful that for her sake we forget everything else, Vanna degli Albizzi, who married Lorenzo de' Tornabuoni, whom Verrocchio carved and Ghirlandajo painted. Then I shall follow the Via del Corso past S. Margherita, close to Dante's mythical home, into Via Calzaioli, the busiest street of the city, and I shall think of the strange difference between these three great ways, Via del Proconsolo, Via Calzaioli, and Via Tornabuoni, which mark and divide the most ancient city. I shall turn toward Or San Michele, where on St. John's Day the banners of the guilds are displayed above the statues, and for a little time I shall look again on Verrocchio's Christ and St. Thomas. Then in this pilgrimage of remembrance I shall pass up Via Calzaioli, past the gay cool caffè of Gilli, into the Piazza del Duomo. And again, I shall fear lest the tower may fall like a lopped lily, and I shall wish that Giotto had made it ever so little bigger at the base. Then I shall pass to the right past the Misericordia, where for sure I shall meet some of the _confraternità_, past the great gazing statue of Brunellesco, till, at the top of Via del Proconsolo, I shall turn to look at the Duomo, which, seen from there, seems like a great Greek cross under a dome, that might cover the world. And so I shall pass round the apse of the Cathedral till I come to the door of the Cintola, where Nanni di Banco has marvellously carved Madonna in an almond-shaped glory: and this is one of the fairest things in Florence. And I shall go on my way, past the Gate of Paradise to the open door of the Baptistery, and returning find the tomb of Baldassare Cossa, soldier and antipope, carved by Donatello: and here, in the most ancient church of Florence, I shall thank St. John for my return.

Out in the Piazza once more, I shall turn into Borgo S. Lorenzo, and follow it till I come to Piazza di S. Lorenzo, with its bookstalls where Browning found that book, "small quarto size, part print, part manuscript," which told him the story of "The Ring and the Book." There I shall look once more on the ragged, rugged front of S. Lorenzo, and entering, find the tomb of Piero de' Medici, made by Verrocchio, and thinking awhile of those other tombs where Michelangelo hard by carved his Night and Day, Twilight and Dawn, I shall find my way again into the Piazza del Duomo, and, following Via Cerretani, that busy street, I shall come at last into Piazza S. Maria Novella, and there on the north I shall see again the bride of Michelangelo, S. Maria Novella of the Dominicans.

Perhaps I shall rest there a little before Duccio's Madonna on her high altar,[85] and linger under the grave, serene work of Ghirlandajo; but it may be the sky will be too fair for any church to hold me, so that passing down the way of the Beautiful Ladies, and taking Via dei Serpi on my left, I shall come into Via Tornabuoni, that smiling, lovely way just above the beautiful Palazzo Antinori, whence I may see Palazzo Strozzi, but without the great lamp at the corner where the flowers are heaped and there are always so many loungers. Indeed, the whole street is full of flowers and sunshine and cool shadow, and in some way, I know not what, it remains the most beautiful gay street in Florence, where past and present have met and are friends. And then I know if I follow this way I shall come to Lung' Arno,--I may catch a glimpse of it even from the corner of Via Porta Rossa over the cabs, past the Column of S. Trinità.

[Illustration: PONTE VECCHIO]