THIRD PART.THE FINE ARTS.CHAPTER XII.COSIMO AND PIERO DE’ MEDICI IN THEIR RELATION TO ART.Theearly years of Cosimo de’ Medici were passed during the great revolution in art by which realism, united with reminiscences of the antique, enforced its claims, and, superseding the Gothic and Pisan styles in architecture and sculpture, restricted that of Giotto, in painting, to a narrow circle of recognised types. Art had struck out for itself these new paths before Cosimo became ruler of the whole state; but he influenced its rapid development by his active sympathy and by a liberality rarely equalled by private individuals or even by princes. Independently of the encouragement he afforded to talent in his princely capacity, he gave honourable commissions to artists from his own resources. In personal intercourse with them he united a thorough knowledge of art with a sympathetic affability which did equal honour to them and to himself. His two favourite architects, Brunelleschi and Michelozzo, have been already mentioned. The former died eighteen years before him, the latter survived him about six years. He justly valued their genius, and promoted a friendly understanding between them while employing both on important works. It wasBrunelleschi who continued the building of the church of San Lorenzo and the abbey of Fiesole.After the days of Giovanni di Bicci both branches of the Medici seem to have been reunited. The church of San Lorenzo was the parish church of Cosimo’s branch, and the burial-place of both. As early as 1415 there had been a talk of enlarging this sacred edifice, which dated from the earliest years of Christianity. Three years later a street at the back, the Via de’ Preti—a name ill-suited to the occupations of its inhabitants—was assigned to the Chapter for the purpose of enlargement. They began to rebuild the choir in 1419.[119]With other members of wealthy families, Giovanni de’ Bicci, having pledged himself to build some chapels, undertook the sacristy, which, for harmony of proportions, both in its cupola and ground-plan, and for the excellence of its decorations, claims the highest admiration. What the father had begun the son continued on a larger scale. On September 23, 1440—while the building of the new church was proceeding under the direction of Brunelleschi, the older one still being in use—Cosimo buried his brother Lorenzo there. Upon this occasion Pope Eugene IV. sent the cardinals and prelates of his court with the banner of the church and his own, and 100 wax candles. Two years later Cosimo proceeded to complete the choir and cupola on condition of gaining the right of patronage for himself and his heirs, in return for which privilege he gave the chapter a state bond for 40,000 florins towards the expenses of the building. On May 15, 1457, the court of the Canonica was begun; it was finished, as well as the high altar and those in the transepts, four years after, and finally the high altar was consecrated by Archbishop Orlando Bonarli on August 9, 1461. Two years before, a college for young clergy had been opened near the church, which retains its chapter tothis day.[120]San Lorenzo is a basilica with columns. It has arches resting on an entablature laid on the capitals, a square end to the choir, a cupola, a flat roof, and chapels of no great depth. A walk through the cloisters of the Canonica recalls times long gone by. Two ranges of arcades enclose the quadrangle and lead to the little dwellings of the canons and to the famous library, which, in its present form, is a work of later days. The mighty dome of the cathedral and the bell-tower of Giotto look down into these cloisters, the stillness of which contrasts with the din of the busy streets around; while its whole appearance reminds the spectator of the homely simplicity, the frugality, and noble generosity which prevailed at the time of its erection.The work said to have been executed for Cosimo at Fiesole by Brunelleschi was scarcely less important. At the foot of the hill there, in the valley of the Mugnone, lay the old abbey church, believed to be the original cathedral of the Etruscan city. In 1439, by command of Pope Eugene IV., it was handed over by the Benedictines to the regular canons of St. Augustine; and Cosimo de’ Medici, who was a friend of the Prior—Don Timoteo of Verona—began the new building. The church still retains the middle compartment of its original façade, belonging to the præ-Gothic period. Containing a nave and chapels of considerable dimensions, the building is simple and artistic. Doubts have been thrown on Vasari’s assertion that it is really Brunelleschi’s, it being quite unlike his other works.[121]The building of the convent presented many difficulties on account of the slope of the ground, and was finished by Cosimo’s son in 1466. It haslong been diverted from its original use, but continued to be the domicile of the founder and his family, whose arms were carved upon it, at a later period. Here the Platonic Academy held its meetings, and here a great-grandson of Cosimo donned the purple as cardinal, and another—Giuliano, Duke of Nemours—drew his last breath. In later days the church was enriched with many beautiful works of art; but in vain do we look round the great building, which neither Brunelleschi nor Cosimo lived to see completed, for the learned men and the collection of books that were once in a double sense its best ornaments.[122]Brunelleschi’s work in the neighbourhood of the city was surpassed in grandeur by a building of Michelozzo’s within the walls. In 1436 the Medici brothers obtained from Pope Eugene IV. the cession of the Silvestrine[123]convent of San Marco to the Dominicans of Fiesole, who had just settled beside the little church of San Giorgio, on the left bank of the Arno. In the following year the rebuilding of the convent and restoration of the church was begun; not without difficulties on the part of the former owners, who actually entered a protest at the Council of Basle. The cost of reconstruction was borne mainly by the Medici, with some assistance from the community. The church was consecrated on the feast of the Epiphany, 1442, by Cardinal Acciapacci, Archbishop of Capua, in presence of the Pope and his court.[124]A considerable portion of the convent was finished in 1443; but the whole was not completed till eight years later. The traces of Michelozzo’s hand are no longer to be seen in the church; the choir and apse were rebuilt two hundred years after him.It is impossible to walk through the great courts, the broad vaulted corridors, the endless rows of cells openinginto the passages, and the noble library, without remembering that this convent was the scene of many famous events in peace and war that influenced the fate of the city, and left their mark in the history not of Italy only, but of the human mind.[125]Cosimo was continually employing Michelozzo, who, besides the family palace, built for him the Noviciate of Sta. Croce and the adjoining chapel; remodelled the villas at Careggi, Cafaggiuolo, and Trebbio, and executed other works, some of them beyond the Tuscan border. Among the latter was the decoration of the palace at Milan, entrusted to him by Francesco Sforza, for which purpose Michelozzo visited that city. Here also he built for Pigello Portinari, director of the Medicean bank, a chapel in Sant’ Eustorgio after the model of that of the Pazzi in Sta. Croce. Cosimo’s sons employed him likewise. He is commonly believed to have designed for Piero the elegant chapel of the Annunziata, over whose altar hangs the thirteenth century picture of the Annunciation, which gave rise to the building of the church. This building, a quadrangular open chapel, with fluted Corinthian columns of marble supporting a richly decorated entablature, and enclosed by an elegant brass trellis, was executed by Pagno di Lapo Partigiani, a sculptor of Fiesole, and consecrated by Cardinal Guillaume d’Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen, on Christmas day, 1452.[126]About the same time, Michelozzo executed for Piero the marble tabernacle destined to contain a figure of Christ in the nave of the basilica of San Miniato. It consists of a canopy supported on composite marble columns and pilasters, the interior richly decorated with rose-coloured ornaments of glazed earth in square panels. On the frieze is the Medicean device, the three feathers with the diamond ring and the mottoSemper, on the arch the escutcheon of the Calimala guild, in relief. Inside the tabernacle stands the altar with painting andpredella.[127]For Giovanni, Cosimo’s younger son, Michelozzo built on the heights of Fiesole a villa, visible from a great distance, which afterwards passed to the Mozzi family. The architect was also employed by connections of the Medici. For Giovanni Tornabuoni he built the great palace near Sta. Trinità, which still gives its name to the street. To gain more space, it afterwards became necessary to demolish the front part of this palace, which, with its ground floor of rustic-work and its plain arched windows, had a somewhat sombre effect.While Michelozzo’s time was chiefly taken up by the Medici, Brunelleschi was active in other quarters. The progress and final completion of his great work, the dome of the cathedral, has already been mentioned. On August 30, 1436, the roofing-in was celebrated by the pealing of all the bells in the city and the chanting of aTe Deum. Eight years later the scaffolding was raised for building the lantern, which was begun in 1446, shortly before the death of the great master, who was succeeded by Michelozzo.[128]His beautiful arcade at the Foundling Hospital has been mentioned.The similar loggia of San Paolo was placed opposite Sta. Maria Novella, at the southern end of the piazza. He built a chapel for the Pazzi family in the front court of the convent of Sta. Croce. Its walls are covered with Corinthian pilasters, high niches, and terra-cotta alto-rilievos; the cupola rests on two side-arches richly panelled and decorated with designs in glazed earth; the pendants being ornamented with terra-cotta rilievos of the Evangelists. Decoration and colour are here kept just within the limits of good taste. Andrea de’ Pazzi began the building, which was finished by his son Jacopo, so that Brunelleschi can hardly have lived to see its completion.[129]The official residence of the Capitani di parte Guelfa in the Via delle Terme, rebuilt by Brunelleschi, still exists, though with many alterations. The architect saw only the beginnings of his second greatest work, the palace of Luca Pitti. In Vasari’s time, when Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence, purchased the unfinished building—appropriately called, by an art-writer of those days,muraglia—the original plan was no longer to be found. Many alterations were made in succeeding centuries down to the present, when the extensive wings, intended as halls, were built. But the façade has kept its original stamp, and Vasari’s words remain true—that Tuscan architecture has produced no richer or grander creation. This grandeur is united with the greatest simplicity; and it is the absence of all ornament upon the three stages of rustic-work, with their gigantic bow-windows, crowned with galleries, which gives the building its peculiar character. The palace is said to have been begun in 1440, long before the time of Luca Pitti’s ephemeral greatness.[130]His villa at Rusciano was begun about the time of Brunelleschi’s death, so that the great artist saw little of the execution of his plan, which was carried on by Luca Fancelli. While Brunelleschi here aimed at attaining the whole effect by the majesty and harmony of the proportions, in the palace of Jacopo de’ Pazzi he allowed more play to decoration.It is doubtful whether Cosimo de’ Medici employed the most learned artist of the time, Leon Batista Alberti. His chief works in Florence, with one exception, were executed for the Rucellai. Among them may be mentioned the palace, the loggia, the upper part of the façade of Sta. Maria Novella, finished in 1470; and the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at San Pancrazio, an imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.[131]The Rucellai palace, in which are retained the bow-windows divided by small columns, points to the days of Bramante. It exhibits a combination of flat decorative pilasters of various orders with smooth rustic-work, antique ornaments on the rectangular doors, and traces of the square form in the bow-windows. Alberti also made designs for another work, which has given occasion to so many objections that its defects have been attributed to alterations by another hand. This is the choir of the Annunziata, commenced in 1451 by Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who, as victorious commander-in-chief of the Republic, desired to found a memorial at once of his piety and his thankfulness. A quarter of a century elapsed before the building was finished by Luca Fancelli. The exterior is octagonal, the interior round, with several chapels in irregular order, and numerous windows round the base of the large cupola, which is closed, and was ornamented in the seventeenth century with figures in fresco. In our own day redecorationhas given to the choir as well as the rest of this dazzlingly-gilt church a thoroughly modern appearance.[132]Sculpture, no less than architecture, was in full activity. Here also we find in the foremost rank those artists whom the Medici had attached to themselves; among whom Donatello stood first, while his pupils benefited by the favour shown to him. The Medici mansion was full of Donatello’s works. Over the arches in the front court are eight medallions by him, with reliefs in marble; and he restored many of the antique heads over the doors. His other works are all scattered. During Cosimo’s exile, the bronze David with his foot on the head of Goliath was taken away and set up in the palace-yard of the Signoria. The owner seems to have been shy of reclaiming it, and finally, in May 1476, his grandsons sold it to the municipality.[133]During the second exile of the Medici, another work of Donatello’s was taken from their house and placed at the great gate of the same palace, with an inscription recalling the events of 1494.[134]This is the group of Judith and Holofernes, full of expression, but forced and offending against the rules of plastic composition. A loss to be regretted is that of the bronze bust of Madonna Contessina, which Donatello executed for her husband.San Lorenzo still contains many of his works, placed there by the indefatigable benefactor of this church. Besides the decorations of the sacristy, &c., there are the reliefs on the pulpits; artistically they are in fault by their superabundance and want of repose, but the fault is one of aman of talent. In point of technical execution, they show a distinct retrogression when compared with contemporary works. It was not only in works of this kind that Donatello displayed an extravagance that belies the sense of beauty. He did so even in the dancing children executed in marble relief for the organ at Sta. Maria del Fiore.Vespasiano da Bisticci describes Cosimo’s attachment to this man. ‘He was,’ says he,[135]‘a great friend of Donatello, and of all painters and sculptors. Finding there was little work for the latter, and not liking Donatello to remain inactive, he entrusted to him the pulpits and the doors of the sacristy at San Lorenzo; giving orders that whatever he needed for his own requirements and those of his four assistants should be paid to him weekly from the Medici bank.’ As Donatello did not dress to Cosimo’s liking, the latter presented him with a cloak and hood, an upper garment to wear under the cloak, and a whole suit, sending all this to him on the morning of a feast day. Donatello put the new things on a few times only, declining to wear them any longer, lest ‘people should think he had grown effeminate.’ How thoroughly Donatello was regarded as belonging to the Medici household is shown by the fact that the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga once asked Cosimo to send the artist to Mantua to execute a shrine modelled in 1450, to be set up during the expected visit of Pope Pius II.[136]Many other artists were on confidential terms with Cosimo and his family. Michelozzo’s two sons belonged almost to the family circle. In the last years of Cosimo, Donatello could no longer work, so his generous patron maintained him, and recommended him to his son Piero. The latter gave him a farm, as he said, ‘to provide him with bread and wine.’ The artist, however, gave back the gift in legal form, not wishing to embitter his life with household cares; whereupon Pierohad the value of the produce assigned to him at the bank. In 1462 Piero granted him space for a vault in San Lorenzo, near the sacristy; and here, where so many of his works are to be seen, he was buried in 1468, not far from those who had so valued him during life.[137]After Donatello, most closely connected with the Medici, father and son, were two masters who, while fairly admitting the claims of the realistic principle, carried it out in a different spirit and in more ideal forms. Lorenzo Ghiberti, who finished the second door of the Baptistery in 1452, with the help of his son Vettorio, and in spite of his seventy-two years, undertook the commission for a third. He continued till the later years of Cosimo busily engaged on the rich silver reredos, in which Michelozzo, Verocchio, Bernardo Cennini, Antonio Pollaiuolo, and others, had a share. He also designed the great rose-window of Sta. Maria del Fiore, at which Francesco di Domenico Livi of Gambassi, who learned glass-painting in Germany, was working in 1436, and Bernardo di Francesco in 1443. Glass-painting in the true sense of the word was then just beginning to flourish; until that time coloured windows had been produced by simply putting variously tinted glass together in mosaic patterns. Many trod in the steps of Francesco Livi: notably Ser Guasparre da Volterra, who worked in the cathedral at Siena; while in Florence, Pisa, and Arezzo, the art was practised by the Jesuates of the order of the B. Giovanni Colombini, who were established in Florence in 1438, in the convent of San Giusto before Porta Pinti, and there built the great church which was pulled down in 1529. It was chiefly by them that Sta. Maria del Fiore, Sta. Croce,San Michele, and other buildings, were glazed with coloured windows.[138]In 1440 Ghiberti finished for the cathedral the shrine of St. Zanobi, one of his finest works. To Piero de’ Medici he furnished goldsmith’s work which brought him great admiration and commissions from Pope Eugene IV. Besides this master, now growing old, the Medici employed a younger one, Luca della Robbia. His style is graceful rather than grand; full of tender and lively expression of feeling, and pleasing execution in drapery and grouping. His works in the cathedral show equal fertility of invention and technical skill. One is the marble relief for the organ gallery, representing a boy and girl playing and dancing, executed in 1438 as a companion-piece to that of Donatello;[139]and the other, not so good, is the door of the sacristy, finished in 1463, with its bronze reliefs of the Madonna, the Evangelists, and the Fathers of the Church.[140]The monument to Benozzo Federighi, Bishop of Fiesole[141](who died in 1450), with the figure lying on the bier, displays his capabilities in this direction. But Luca della Robbia is less distinguished by his sculptures in marble and brass than by the reliefs in glazed earth which, called after him, were supplied by his descendants for 100 years. They still abound in Florence and the whole of Tuscany, even to the mountain convents of the Apennines and the modest churches of remote towns, while numbers of them have wandered into foreign lands. Anyone taking a walk in Florence may enjoy these charming creations: lunettes or groups above the doors of churches and houses, medallions of infants on the portico of theFoundling Hospital, heads of saints, tabernacles, heraldic escutcheons, some plain white on a blue ground, some with a judicious mixture of colours and a rich border of entwined leaves and fruit. These works form an almost inexhaustible treasury, with a marked character of graceful earnestness and truth to nature; a help to architecture as long as the decorative element kept its place in the old manner, which in the fourteenth century employed both glass and colour. But they were invaluable for interior decoration, for which Brunelleschi used work in ‘Terra della Robbia’ in the Pazzi chapel. Luca himself decorated for Cosimo de’ Medici a room in his palace and the buildings in Sta. Croce, and for Piero the tabernacle in San Miniato; in the latter church he also assisted in giving to the chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal the charm of harmonious perfection.In the last years of Cosimo de’ Medici grew up a whole generation of younger sculptors. Their most important works are sepulchral monuments, which became richer and grander as time went on. Formerly people had, as a rule, been content with sarcophagi more or less decorated, like that of Noferi, the father of Palla Strozzi, who died in 1418 and is buried in the sacristy of Sta. Trinità, beneath an arch resting on elegant corbels, and on the edges of which are seen pretty genii playing. Twenty or thirty years later these simple monuments were still the most usual, even for men of importance. Neri Capponi lies in the church of the Santo Spirito in a marble coffin bearing on the front his portrait in relief between two genii; Orlando de’ Medici rests in that of the SS. Annunziata in a sarcophagus ornamented with his coat of arms, and occupying with rich architectural accessories the whole side of a chapel. These were both works of Simone, whom tradition makes a brother of Donatello.[142]But talented artists soon attempted greater things. Desiderio da Settignano (so called after the pleasantlysituated little village, two miles east of the city, where Michel Angelo was nursed by a stonemason’s wife) was a pupil of Donatello, and thus came into contact with the Medici, who employed him in San Lorenzo. In the Strozzi palace may be seen his fine thoughtful marble bust of Marietta, daughter of Filippo Strozzi the elder and Fiammetta Adimari. His masterpiece is the monument of Carlo Marsuppini in Sta. Croce, a figure of the dead man resting on the sarcophagus in a niche crowned by a lunette, with a Madonna in relief.[143]Notwithstanding some overloading in the accessories, it shows what he might have become had he not died in 1464, at the early age of thirty-six. The sarcophagus, resting on lions’ claws and richly adorned with flowers, leaves, and streaming ribands, is one of the most beautiful productions of decorative sculpture. Desiderio had many emulators, to whom we owe some of the finest monuments of this kind. Among them were the brothers Bernardo and Antonio Rossellino. The former, who worked a good deal out of Florence as architect to the Popes, does not seem to have been employed by the Medici. The only thing he is said to have done for them is a marble fountain, decorated with children and dolphins, in one of the courts of their palace; and of its fate nothing is known. But the city contains excellent works by both, exhibiting a similarity to Della Robbia’s style. Two of Bernardo’s works are the graceful monument to Beata Villana in Sta. Maria Novella, and that of Leonardo Bruni in Sta. Croce.[144]The conception,proportions, and technical finish of these works entitle them to rank among the best productions of a period rich in monuments. The most perfect work of the kind, however, is that by Antonio Rossellino to the Cardinal of Portugal, in San Miniato al Monte. James of Portugal, nephew of King Alfonso V., had come in bad health to Florence, where he died in 1459 aged twenty-six. In the basilica, then belonging to the Olivetans, where he was buried, was built a chapel, unrivalled in symmetry of form and beauty of detail. The roof is set off with reliefs in glazed earth, the walls are inlaid with marble, the altar, the bishop’s throne, and the floor ofopus Alexandrinumare admirable. What was formerly the altar-piece—by Pollaiuolo—is now in the Uffizi. The monument stands in a large niche, with a curtain slightly drawn back. The sarcophagus is an imitation of the coffer afterwards used for the tomb of Pope Clement XII. in the Lateran. The figure of the departed, wearing his mitre, rests on a pall held by two seated boys; an architectural wall-drapery is terminated by a cornice, at each end of which is a kneeling angel bearing a crown and a palm-branch; in the arch above are the Virgin and Child surrounded by a rich garland and upheld by angels in relief. The figure of the cardinal surpasses all else of its kind in grace, dignity, and beauty, while in technical work it is perfection. The head and the folded hands were modelled from nature.[145]A blessed peace seems diffused over the whole figure, which realizes what Vespasiano da Bisticci says of the departed, whom he had known in life: ‘He was outwardly handsome, but his soul was more beautiful than his body; and by the holiness of his life and conversation he was fitted to stand beside the saints of old.’[146]To these artists must be added Mino da Fiesole, who, though a pupil of Desiderio da Settignano—his senior onlyby a few years—seemed to have formed himself more on the model of Donatello. His groups of figures in relief, of which the chief are at Rome, are not always happy; his monumental statues, of which the two most remarkable in Florence are of later date, have great dignity and beauty. In his portrait-heads there is a peculiar delicacy and truth, indicating careful study of nature, and of which the bust of Bishop Leonardo Salutati, in the cathedral of Fiesole, is an excellent example.[147]In the Medici house were busts by him of Piero and his wife, the former of which is now in the Uffizi. In ornamentation, particularly in arabesque, Mino is inferior to none; and it is impossible to mistake his influence in this respect at Rome, where, from the time of Nicolas V., the number of monuments rapidly increased. The works of Giuliano da Majano in Florence, where he was occupied in 1463-1465 with inlaid woodwork for San Domenico, near Fiesole, and the sacristy of Sta. Maria del Fiore, are of much less importance. Neither he nor Antonio Filarete, founder of the great door of St. Peter’s, are known to have done any work for the Medici. That the latter was one of theirprotégés, however, may be seen not only by the dedication to Piero of his treatise on architecture, but also by a letter addressed by him to Piero from Milan, December 20, 1451, thanking him for a recommendation to Francesco Sforza: ‘I am at your service for whatever I can do. Dispose of me as you please. Commend me to his Excellency your father, and your brother Giovanni. With God’s help, I hope to do honour here both to myself and you; I say to you, because for your sake and in consequence of your recommendation his Lordship shows me great favour. He thinks of appointing me chief architect to the cathedral, which naturally meets with opposition, I being a stranger; but I hope they will yield to their lord’s desire.’[148]The goldsmith’s art, which in the preceding century hadreached great perfection in Tuscan cities and was closely connected with sculpture, attained through niello-work to engraving on copperplate. The name of Maso Finiguerra, who executed the celebrated pyx for the Baptistery in 1452, is inseparable from the history of the Medicean splendour.For painting, whether in its general development or its particular productions, the period under consideration is less important than for the sister arts, at least as far as the Medici are concerned. The two greatest masters, in different lines, of the first half of the century, Masaccio and Fra Angelico, continued to adorn Florence with their works. The former, at his death in 1443, left unfinished the Brancacci chapel in San Pietro del Carmine, the high school of all later works of the kind. Unluckily, the fresco has perished in which he represented the consecration of the church in 1422, with a group of remarkable men of the time: Giovanni d’Averardo de’ Medici, Niccolò da Uzzano, Baccio Valori, Lorenzo Ridolfi, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masolino da Panicale, and others. Fra Angelico decorated the chapter-house, corridors, and cells of the convent of San Marco with his wall-pictures, which represent religious art in its loveliest bloom, a free modification of the principles of Giotto’s school. He was busy here till Eugene IV. called him to Rome, where he painted the two chapels in the Vatican for this Pope and his successor, Nicolas V. He died in 1455. His greatest pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, followed his master from Rome to Orvieto, and in 1459 painted the private chapel of the Medici, his most pleasing work. The ‘Adoration of the Angels’ is here represented amid a rich landscape, with choirs of angels, numerous spectators, and festive scenes, painted with a cheerful colouring that recalls Gentile da Fabriano. Later, when painting in San Gemignano and at Pisa, Gozzoli was still connected with the Medici, and in his first fresco in the Campo Santo, the ‘Curse of Ham,’ a group in the foreground represents the members of the family as he had known them in earlier years.The realistic tendency exhibited by Masaccio grew more prominent in Paolo Uccello, who was evidently influenced by sculpture, especially by Donatello. In some of his most important frescoes, those in Sta. Maria Novella, representing the history of the Creation, and the figure of John Hawkwood in Sta. Maria del Fiore,[149]the very colouring, grey upon grey, aims at producing the effect of sculpture. This painter’s study of perspective made him exaggerate that branch of his art. The austerity of Andrea dal Castagno’s style is not softened by the colouring. The repulsive expression of his group of St. John and St. Francis in Sta. Croce supports the legend of the murder of Domenico Veneziano, which has adhered to Andrea’s name till our own day, though he died four years before his supposed victim.[150]The most important works he has left are the figures of sibyls and of famous men, executed in a hall of the villa formerly belonging to the Pandolfini at Legnaia, but now removed to the National Museum at the Palace of the Podestà. The characteristic figures, among whom are Nicola Acciaiuolo and Pippo Spano, produce a great effect. Neither Andrea nor Uccello seems to have been employed by the Medici, who did, however, engage Domenico Veneziano, Andrea’s fellow-worker on the lost frescoes in Sta. Maria Nuova, a painter much influenced by Fra Angelico. The repeated occurrence of the Medici’s patron saints, Cosmo and Damian, in pictures of which the origin cannot be clearly traced, points tothe conclusion that they were commissions from the family or their friends. But the painter most highly favoured by Cosimo and his sons was Fra Filippo Lippi, whose manners and conversation were as great a scandal to the Carmelite order as Fra Angelico’s whole life was an ornament to that of St. Dominic. Disorderly, loose in morals, always in difficulties and need of money, he yet gained patrons by his undeniable talent, which unites force and animation to Angelico’s intensity of feeling. Lippi’s grouping and composition is various, free, and rich, showing a realistic study of nature. He worked a great deal for the Medici, who made presents of his pictures to the Pope and King Alfonso, and procured him commissions abroad. His greatest work, the frescoes in the chapel in the choir of the Collegiate Church of Prato, was finished for the Provost Carlo de’ Medici, whose likeness may be seen in the representation of the burial of St. Stephen. It was through Cosimo, who had many connections in Umbria, that Fra Filippo went to Spoleto, where he executed in the cathedral the scenes from the history of the Madonna which were finished after his death in 1469 by his assistant Fra Diamante.Among the painters employed by Cosimo and his sons were the two Peselli, Giuliano d’Arrigo, and his grandson Pesellino; the former followed the artistic tendencies represented by Giotto, the latter was an earnest disciple of the realistic school. Much of the Medici furniture was painted by them, according to a fashion of the time, continued till the middle of the sixteenth century. Presses and coffers (cassoni) were ornamented with compositions of small figures, taken from history, sacred or profane, animals, hunting-scenes, &c. In the Florentine collections are many paintings of this kind, even down to Andrea del Sarto and his friends and pupils, the original destination of which is shown by their form. They were not all Florentines who painted for the Medici. A Veronese, Matteo de’ Pasti, wrote to Piero in 1441, that he trusted to send him works such as hehad never before seen.[151]He probably alluded to the convex tablets (now in the Uffizi collection) representing scenes from Petrarca’s triumphs, which were doubtless intended to decorate a room. The various dealings of the Medici with Flanders, from the time of Cosimo, contributed to draw attention in Florence to the Van Eyck school of painting, which influenced Italian art in the fifteenth century, particularly in point of technicalities. It was through Tommaso Portinari, director of the Medici bank at Bruges, that the church of the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova—an old foundation of the family—obtained the most important work of the Flemish school to be found in Tuscany. This was the masterpiece of Hugo van der Goes, the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds,’ containing portraits of the members of the donor’s family.[152]The Flemish pictures mentioned by Vasari as being in the possession of the Medici (one of them, a portrait of Tommaso Portinari, is now in the Pitti Palace), prove the interest awakened by these works, great as was their difference in conception from Italian art.It is easy to imagine that other branches of artistic industry were furthered by this artistically inclined family at a period of such varied activity, and that their house kept constantly filling with treasures of all kinds. For it was the pride of the princes and rich citizens—and even of such as had to deny themselves many of the comforts of life in order to satisfy a noble passion—to surround themselves with ancient and modern works, to decorate halls, staircases, and courts with marbles and other antiquities; to collect old coins and intaglios; to deck their rooms with statues and sculptures by living artists, with handsome furniture, silver plate, rich silken hangings and carpets.Among the records of the Rinuccini family are notes of the cost of goldsmiths’ work furnished by Finiguerra andPollaiuolo.[153]Cosimo’s love for these things was shared by his brother Lorenzo and both his sons. An inventory of the antique coins, cameos, gems, mosaic tablets; and enamels preserved in the house in the Via Larga, mentions 100 gold and 503 silver coins, a number of intaglios set as seals and rings, Greek and Roman mosaic tablets, valuable vases, precious stones to the value of more than thirty thousand gold florins.[154]The silver plate here, as well as at the villas, was not reckoned in. Mention has already been made of the travelling antiquaries who carried about with them manuscripts and objects of art, and were at once scholars and colporteurs. But purchases were also made for the Medici abroad. Antiquities came from Rome, Naples, Viterbo, and other places. Donatello was accustomed to restore injured antique marbles, a custom which was later carried to extremes, and led to mischief. Worked carpets (Arazzi) came from Flanders, where Bruges was the chief emporium for works of art, though Antwerp fairs were often visited.[155]A letter of Carlo de’ Medici to his half-brother Giovanni, written from Rome, apparently in the autumn of 1451,[156]shows that Cardinal Barbo, afterwards Pope Paul II., was in competition with the Medici, and was not above a little gentle compulsion: ‘I bought some time ago about thirty silver medals from an assistant cf Pisanello, who is lately dead. I know not how Monsignore di San Marco heard of it, but, meeting me accidentally in the church of the Santi Apostoli, he took me by the hand, and would not let me go till he had got me to his house and taken all I had about me—rings and coins to the value of about twenty florins. There was no getting them back, and in the end I have had to let him keep the things, after a vain appeal tothe Pope.’ The complaint is repeated in a letter of 1455. As we shall see, however, such losses were more than made up to the Medici at the death of Paul II.Such were the relations of Cosimo and his sons to art-life in Florence. The great movement had begun before they took the helm of the state; but they exercised great and beneficial influence on its development, and always set a praiseworthy example to their fellow-citizens. In this respect they thoroughly understood their time. The tone and manner of their relations with artists is particularly attractive; it was inspired by true refinement of feeling. Merchant princes as they were, whose help was generally coveted, they kept up a confidential intercourse with men of talent, as among friends and equals. In the requests addressed to them there is no tone of servility; the traditions of free citizenship continued in all social relations. So it was also at a later period, when Cosimo’s grandson had attained the position of a ruling prince; Lorenzo’s bearing was the same, and contributed not a little to his powerful influence over his fellow-men. In many cases, as with Antonio Squarcialupi, the musician and organ-builder, he merely continued a connection begun by his father, uncle, and grandfather. Antonio, who in his writings adopted the pseudonym Degli Organi, belonged to an old family who had once been ‘Signori’ at Poggibonzi in the Elsa valley, and who on account of their rank were long excluded from office. It was not till 1453 that Antonio became a member of one of the smaller guilds, though before that time he was intimate with the Medici household. After spending some time at Naples with King Alfonso, in 1450, he wrote from Siena on November 26 to Giovanni de’ Medici at Volterra, as follows:[157]‘Dearest gossip, dutiful greeting and salutation! As you doubtless know, it is now about a month since I returned from Naples. Since then it has never ceased raining, or Ishould have come to see you. The bad weather has hindered me not only from coming, but also from writing, as I kept waiting for the sky to clear. Now, God be thanked for all things. If I were to tell you about Naples, and the majesty of the king and his court, there would be so much to say that I must needs take all the scriveners in Rome into my employ for five days. So for the present I will say nothing about it, and will only tell you that Cardinal Sta. Maria sets great store by his organ; wherein he is quite right, for truly it deserves it. I promise you on your return the satisfaction of hearing one which cannot fail to please you. It is destined for Antonio di Migliorino, who I trust will not object to my letting you see and hear it. Now I will trouble you no further. Commend me above all to Madonna Contessina, Messer Piero, and all the rest.’In the spring of 1438, Domenico Veneziano wrote from Perugia to Piero as follows:[158]‘Noble and honoured sir, greeting. I have to inform you that by God’s grace I am in good health, and hope to see you well and happy. I have made inquiries after you at various times, and never received any news save through Manno Donati, who told me that you were at Ferrara in very good health, which gave me great pleasure. Had I known your place of abode sooner, I would have written to you, both for my own satisfaction and as it is fitting. My position is in truth far below yours, but my hearty attachment to you and all yours gives me boldness to write to you, to whom I owe so much.’ One-and-twenty years later this same Piero, then at Careggi, was thus addressed by Benozzo Gozzoli, who was painting the chapel in the Medici house at Florence:[159]‘My dearest friend, I informed your Magnificence in a previous letter that I am in need of forty florins, and begged you to advance them to me; for now is the time to buy corn and many other things that I want, whereby I shall save, and get ridof a heavy load of care. I had resolved to ask nothing of you till you had seen my work, but I now find myself compelled to ask this favour. Therefore, be indulgent; God knows I am endeavouring to please you. I also reminded you to send to Venice for some ultramarine, for in the course of this week one wall will be finished, and for the other I shall need ultramarine. The brocades and other things can then be finished as well as the figures, or even sooner. I am working with all possible diligence. I have nothing more to add save my salutations.’These confidential relations between the Medici and the artists did not prevent them from carefully settling minor details when giving an order, such as the use of ultramarine and gold, and still smaller matters. Even with regard to the actual composition remarks were not spared, not merely concerning the saints to be placed in the Madonna pictures and other votive tablets, but also as to other figures and accessories. Piero de’ Medici was not satisfied with some angels that Benozzo had introduced in the chapel; the painter defended them, but added that he could put a cloud to cover them. Needless to say that all matters of business—prices, instalments of payment and work, &c.—were settled with scrupulous exactness. This belonged to the character of the time, and to the Florentine love of order and mercantile habits; a characteristic which never fails, and remained in the Medici nature even in Cosimo’s magnificent grandson. Strict supervision was indeed necessary in the case of these colossal undertakings. It was more especially needful with a disorderly man like Filippo Lippi, who passed his whole life in want of his own making; witness his letters to Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici: ‘If there is a wretched monk in Florence, it is I!’ His protectors pitied him and judged his sins leniently, if we rightly understand the remark in one of Giovanni’s letters, to the effect that they had a laugh over Fra Filippo’s error. It refers presumably to the well-known story of the elopement of Spinetta Buti from the convent atPrato, where she was being educated; a story the details of which, as in other instances, are inaccurately given by Vasari.[160]The interest taken by the Medici in this painter descended to Lorenzo. On his return from Rome he wanted to have Fra Filippo’s mortal remains brought from Spoleto to Florence, and when this was refused, he assisted Filippo’s son in erecting a monument in Spoleto Cathedral.It was in the time of Cosimo that the written history of art began its first feeble efforts. Its forerunner was Cennino Cennini of Colle in the Elsa valley, a pupil of Angelo Gaddi apparently at Padua, where he was in the service of Francesco da Carrara. Towards the end of the fourteenth century he wrote a book on painting, which is of great value for the study of artistic practice before the victory of oil-painting over tempera, as it is also for the history of modelling, casting, plaster-work, gilding, &c.[161]This book treats merely of technicalities; but in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s commentaries an unfinished treatise on architecture and the proportion of figures is combined with notices of ancient art and also of modern, from its re-awakening in the second half of the thirteenth century down to the writer’s own time and works.[162]The latter portion is the principal source whence Giorgio Vasari drew his knowledge of past times. Ghiberti’s contemporary Filarete has given many notices, valuable for the history of art, referring to Medicean times, in his treatise on architecture, which he dedicated—in stylesdiffering according to the persons and circumstances, to two patrons, Piero de’ Medici and Francesco Sforza, in 1460.[163]These notices, as well as technical remarks, were also made use of by Vasari, whose judgment on Filarete’s confused book is just, though rather severely expressed.
THIRD PART.THE FINE ARTS.CHAPTER XII.COSIMO AND PIERO DE’ MEDICI IN THEIR RELATION TO ART.Theearly years of Cosimo de’ Medici were passed during the great revolution in art by which realism, united with reminiscences of the antique, enforced its claims, and, superseding the Gothic and Pisan styles in architecture and sculpture, restricted that of Giotto, in painting, to a narrow circle of recognised types. Art had struck out for itself these new paths before Cosimo became ruler of the whole state; but he influenced its rapid development by his active sympathy and by a liberality rarely equalled by private individuals or even by princes. Independently of the encouragement he afforded to talent in his princely capacity, he gave honourable commissions to artists from his own resources. In personal intercourse with them he united a thorough knowledge of art with a sympathetic affability which did equal honour to them and to himself. His two favourite architects, Brunelleschi and Michelozzo, have been already mentioned. The former died eighteen years before him, the latter survived him about six years. He justly valued their genius, and promoted a friendly understanding between them while employing both on important works. It wasBrunelleschi who continued the building of the church of San Lorenzo and the abbey of Fiesole.After the days of Giovanni di Bicci both branches of the Medici seem to have been reunited. The church of San Lorenzo was the parish church of Cosimo’s branch, and the burial-place of both. As early as 1415 there had been a talk of enlarging this sacred edifice, which dated from the earliest years of Christianity. Three years later a street at the back, the Via de’ Preti—a name ill-suited to the occupations of its inhabitants—was assigned to the Chapter for the purpose of enlargement. They began to rebuild the choir in 1419.[119]With other members of wealthy families, Giovanni de’ Bicci, having pledged himself to build some chapels, undertook the sacristy, which, for harmony of proportions, both in its cupola and ground-plan, and for the excellence of its decorations, claims the highest admiration. What the father had begun the son continued on a larger scale. On September 23, 1440—while the building of the new church was proceeding under the direction of Brunelleschi, the older one still being in use—Cosimo buried his brother Lorenzo there. Upon this occasion Pope Eugene IV. sent the cardinals and prelates of his court with the banner of the church and his own, and 100 wax candles. Two years later Cosimo proceeded to complete the choir and cupola on condition of gaining the right of patronage for himself and his heirs, in return for which privilege he gave the chapter a state bond for 40,000 florins towards the expenses of the building. On May 15, 1457, the court of the Canonica was begun; it was finished, as well as the high altar and those in the transepts, four years after, and finally the high altar was consecrated by Archbishop Orlando Bonarli on August 9, 1461. Two years before, a college for young clergy had been opened near the church, which retains its chapter tothis day.[120]San Lorenzo is a basilica with columns. It has arches resting on an entablature laid on the capitals, a square end to the choir, a cupola, a flat roof, and chapels of no great depth. A walk through the cloisters of the Canonica recalls times long gone by. Two ranges of arcades enclose the quadrangle and lead to the little dwellings of the canons and to the famous library, which, in its present form, is a work of later days. The mighty dome of the cathedral and the bell-tower of Giotto look down into these cloisters, the stillness of which contrasts with the din of the busy streets around; while its whole appearance reminds the spectator of the homely simplicity, the frugality, and noble generosity which prevailed at the time of its erection.The work said to have been executed for Cosimo at Fiesole by Brunelleschi was scarcely less important. At the foot of the hill there, in the valley of the Mugnone, lay the old abbey church, believed to be the original cathedral of the Etruscan city. In 1439, by command of Pope Eugene IV., it was handed over by the Benedictines to the regular canons of St. Augustine; and Cosimo de’ Medici, who was a friend of the Prior—Don Timoteo of Verona—began the new building. The church still retains the middle compartment of its original façade, belonging to the præ-Gothic period. Containing a nave and chapels of considerable dimensions, the building is simple and artistic. Doubts have been thrown on Vasari’s assertion that it is really Brunelleschi’s, it being quite unlike his other works.[121]The building of the convent presented many difficulties on account of the slope of the ground, and was finished by Cosimo’s son in 1466. It haslong been diverted from its original use, but continued to be the domicile of the founder and his family, whose arms were carved upon it, at a later period. Here the Platonic Academy held its meetings, and here a great-grandson of Cosimo donned the purple as cardinal, and another—Giuliano, Duke of Nemours—drew his last breath. In later days the church was enriched with many beautiful works of art; but in vain do we look round the great building, which neither Brunelleschi nor Cosimo lived to see completed, for the learned men and the collection of books that were once in a double sense its best ornaments.[122]Brunelleschi’s work in the neighbourhood of the city was surpassed in grandeur by a building of Michelozzo’s within the walls. In 1436 the Medici brothers obtained from Pope Eugene IV. the cession of the Silvestrine[123]convent of San Marco to the Dominicans of Fiesole, who had just settled beside the little church of San Giorgio, on the left bank of the Arno. In the following year the rebuilding of the convent and restoration of the church was begun; not without difficulties on the part of the former owners, who actually entered a protest at the Council of Basle. The cost of reconstruction was borne mainly by the Medici, with some assistance from the community. The church was consecrated on the feast of the Epiphany, 1442, by Cardinal Acciapacci, Archbishop of Capua, in presence of the Pope and his court.[124]A considerable portion of the convent was finished in 1443; but the whole was not completed till eight years later. The traces of Michelozzo’s hand are no longer to be seen in the church; the choir and apse were rebuilt two hundred years after him.It is impossible to walk through the great courts, the broad vaulted corridors, the endless rows of cells openinginto the passages, and the noble library, without remembering that this convent was the scene of many famous events in peace and war that influenced the fate of the city, and left their mark in the history not of Italy only, but of the human mind.[125]Cosimo was continually employing Michelozzo, who, besides the family palace, built for him the Noviciate of Sta. Croce and the adjoining chapel; remodelled the villas at Careggi, Cafaggiuolo, and Trebbio, and executed other works, some of them beyond the Tuscan border. Among the latter was the decoration of the palace at Milan, entrusted to him by Francesco Sforza, for which purpose Michelozzo visited that city. Here also he built for Pigello Portinari, director of the Medicean bank, a chapel in Sant’ Eustorgio after the model of that of the Pazzi in Sta. Croce. Cosimo’s sons employed him likewise. He is commonly believed to have designed for Piero the elegant chapel of the Annunziata, over whose altar hangs the thirteenth century picture of the Annunciation, which gave rise to the building of the church. This building, a quadrangular open chapel, with fluted Corinthian columns of marble supporting a richly decorated entablature, and enclosed by an elegant brass trellis, was executed by Pagno di Lapo Partigiani, a sculptor of Fiesole, and consecrated by Cardinal Guillaume d’Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen, on Christmas day, 1452.[126]About the same time, Michelozzo executed for Piero the marble tabernacle destined to contain a figure of Christ in the nave of the basilica of San Miniato. It consists of a canopy supported on composite marble columns and pilasters, the interior richly decorated with rose-coloured ornaments of glazed earth in square panels. On the frieze is the Medicean device, the three feathers with the diamond ring and the mottoSemper, on the arch the escutcheon of the Calimala guild, in relief. Inside the tabernacle stands the altar with painting andpredella.[127]For Giovanni, Cosimo’s younger son, Michelozzo built on the heights of Fiesole a villa, visible from a great distance, which afterwards passed to the Mozzi family. The architect was also employed by connections of the Medici. For Giovanni Tornabuoni he built the great palace near Sta. Trinità, which still gives its name to the street. To gain more space, it afterwards became necessary to demolish the front part of this palace, which, with its ground floor of rustic-work and its plain arched windows, had a somewhat sombre effect.While Michelozzo’s time was chiefly taken up by the Medici, Brunelleschi was active in other quarters. The progress and final completion of his great work, the dome of the cathedral, has already been mentioned. On August 30, 1436, the roofing-in was celebrated by the pealing of all the bells in the city and the chanting of aTe Deum. Eight years later the scaffolding was raised for building the lantern, which was begun in 1446, shortly before the death of the great master, who was succeeded by Michelozzo.[128]His beautiful arcade at the Foundling Hospital has been mentioned.The similar loggia of San Paolo was placed opposite Sta. Maria Novella, at the southern end of the piazza. He built a chapel for the Pazzi family in the front court of the convent of Sta. Croce. Its walls are covered with Corinthian pilasters, high niches, and terra-cotta alto-rilievos; the cupola rests on two side-arches richly panelled and decorated with designs in glazed earth; the pendants being ornamented with terra-cotta rilievos of the Evangelists. Decoration and colour are here kept just within the limits of good taste. Andrea de’ Pazzi began the building, which was finished by his son Jacopo, so that Brunelleschi can hardly have lived to see its completion.[129]The official residence of the Capitani di parte Guelfa in the Via delle Terme, rebuilt by Brunelleschi, still exists, though with many alterations. The architect saw only the beginnings of his second greatest work, the palace of Luca Pitti. In Vasari’s time, when Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence, purchased the unfinished building—appropriately called, by an art-writer of those days,muraglia—the original plan was no longer to be found. Many alterations were made in succeeding centuries down to the present, when the extensive wings, intended as halls, were built. But the façade has kept its original stamp, and Vasari’s words remain true—that Tuscan architecture has produced no richer or grander creation. This grandeur is united with the greatest simplicity; and it is the absence of all ornament upon the three stages of rustic-work, with their gigantic bow-windows, crowned with galleries, which gives the building its peculiar character. The palace is said to have been begun in 1440, long before the time of Luca Pitti’s ephemeral greatness.[130]His villa at Rusciano was begun about the time of Brunelleschi’s death, so that the great artist saw little of the execution of his plan, which was carried on by Luca Fancelli. While Brunelleschi here aimed at attaining the whole effect by the majesty and harmony of the proportions, in the palace of Jacopo de’ Pazzi he allowed more play to decoration.It is doubtful whether Cosimo de’ Medici employed the most learned artist of the time, Leon Batista Alberti. His chief works in Florence, with one exception, were executed for the Rucellai. Among them may be mentioned the palace, the loggia, the upper part of the façade of Sta. Maria Novella, finished in 1470; and the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at San Pancrazio, an imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.[131]The Rucellai palace, in which are retained the bow-windows divided by small columns, points to the days of Bramante. It exhibits a combination of flat decorative pilasters of various orders with smooth rustic-work, antique ornaments on the rectangular doors, and traces of the square form in the bow-windows. Alberti also made designs for another work, which has given occasion to so many objections that its defects have been attributed to alterations by another hand. This is the choir of the Annunziata, commenced in 1451 by Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who, as victorious commander-in-chief of the Republic, desired to found a memorial at once of his piety and his thankfulness. A quarter of a century elapsed before the building was finished by Luca Fancelli. The exterior is octagonal, the interior round, with several chapels in irregular order, and numerous windows round the base of the large cupola, which is closed, and was ornamented in the seventeenth century with figures in fresco. In our own day redecorationhas given to the choir as well as the rest of this dazzlingly-gilt church a thoroughly modern appearance.[132]Sculpture, no less than architecture, was in full activity. Here also we find in the foremost rank those artists whom the Medici had attached to themselves; among whom Donatello stood first, while his pupils benefited by the favour shown to him. The Medici mansion was full of Donatello’s works. Over the arches in the front court are eight medallions by him, with reliefs in marble; and he restored many of the antique heads over the doors. His other works are all scattered. During Cosimo’s exile, the bronze David with his foot on the head of Goliath was taken away and set up in the palace-yard of the Signoria. The owner seems to have been shy of reclaiming it, and finally, in May 1476, his grandsons sold it to the municipality.[133]During the second exile of the Medici, another work of Donatello’s was taken from their house and placed at the great gate of the same palace, with an inscription recalling the events of 1494.[134]This is the group of Judith and Holofernes, full of expression, but forced and offending against the rules of plastic composition. A loss to be regretted is that of the bronze bust of Madonna Contessina, which Donatello executed for her husband.San Lorenzo still contains many of his works, placed there by the indefatigable benefactor of this church. Besides the decorations of the sacristy, &c., there are the reliefs on the pulpits; artistically they are in fault by their superabundance and want of repose, but the fault is one of aman of talent. In point of technical execution, they show a distinct retrogression when compared with contemporary works. It was not only in works of this kind that Donatello displayed an extravagance that belies the sense of beauty. He did so even in the dancing children executed in marble relief for the organ at Sta. Maria del Fiore.Vespasiano da Bisticci describes Cosimo’s attachment to this man. ‘He was,’ says he,[135]‘a great friend of Donatello, and of all painters and sculptors. Finding there was little work for the latter, and not liking Donatello to remain inactive, he entrusted to him the pulpits and the doors of the sacristy at San Lorenzo; giving orders that whatever he needed for his own requirements and those of his four assistants should be paid to him weekly from the Medici bank.’ As Donatello did not dress to Cosimo’s liking, the latter presented him with a cloak and hood, an upper garment to wear under the cloak, and a whole suit, sending all this to him on the morning of a feast day. Donatello put the new things on a few times only, declining to wear them any longer, lest ‘people should think he had grown effeminate.’ How thoroughly Donatello was regarded as belonging to the Medici household is shown by the fact that the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga once asked Cosimo to send the artist to Mantua to execute a shrine modelled in 1450, to be set up during the expected visit of Pope Pius II.[136]Many other artists were on confidential terms with Cosimo and his family. Michelozzo’s two sons belonged almost to the family circle. In the last years of Cosimo, Donatello could no longer work, so his generous patron maintained him, and recommended him to his son Piero. The latter gave him a farm, as he said, ‘to provide him with bread and wine.’ The artist, however, gave back the gift in legal form, not wishing to embitter his life with household cares; whereupon Pierohad the value of the produce assigned to him at the bank. In 1462 Piero granted him space for a vault in San Lorenzo, near the sacristy; and here, where so many of his works are to be seen, he was buried in 1468, not far from those who had so valued him during life.[137]After Donatello, most closely connected with the Medici, father and son, were two masters who, while fairly admitting the claims of the realistic principle, carried it out in a different spirit and in more ideal forms. Lorenzo Ghiberti, who finished the second door of the Baptistery in 1452, with the help of his son Vettorio, and in spite of his seventy-two years, undertook the commission for a third. He continued till the later years of Cosimo busily engaged on the rich silver reredos, in which Michelozzo, Verocchio, Bernardo Cennini, Antonio Pollaiuolo, and others, had a share. He also designed the great rose-window of Sta. Maria del Fiore, at which Francesco di Domenico Livi of Gambassi, who learned glass-painting in Germany, was working in 1436, and Bernardo di Francesco in 1443. Glass-painting in the true sense of the word was then just beginning to flourish; until that time coloured windows had been produced by simply putting variously tinted glass together in mosaic patterns. Many trod in the steps of Francesco Livi: notably Ser Guasparre da Volterra, who worked in the cathedral at Siena; while in Florence, Pisa, and Arezzo, the art was practised by the Jesuates of the order of the B. Giovanni Colombini, who were established in Florence in 1438, in the convent of San Giusto before Porta Pinti, and there built the great church which was pulled down in 1529. It was chiefly by them that Sta. Maria del Fiore, Sta. Croce,San Michele, and other buildings, were glazed with coloured windows.[138]In 1440 Ghiberti finished for the cathedral the shrine of St. Zanobi, one of his finest works. To Piero de’ Medici he furnished goldsmith’s work which brought him great admiration and commissions from Pope Eugene IV. Besides this master, now growing old, the Medici employed a younger one, Luca della Robbia. His style is graceful rather than grand; full of tender and lively expression of feeling, and pleasing execution in drapery and grouping. His works in the cathedral show equal fertility of invention and technical skill. One is the marble relief for the organ gallery, representing a boy and girl playing and dancing, executed in 1438 as a companion-piece to that of Donatello;[139]and the other, not so good, is the door of the sacristy, finished in 1463, with its bronze reliefs of the Madonna, the Evangelists, and the Fathers of the Church.[140]The monument to Benozzo Federighi, Bishop of Fiesole[141](who died in 1450), with the figure lying on the bier, displays his capabilities in this direction. But Luca della Robbia is less distinguished by his sculptures in marble and brass than by the reliefs in glazed earth which, called after him, were supplied by his descendants for 100 years. They still abound in Florence and the whole of Tuscany, even to the mountain convents of the Apennines and the modest churches of remote towns, while numbers of them have wandered into foreign lands. Anyone taking a walk in Florence may enjoy these charming creations: lunettes or groups above the doors of churches and houses, medallions of infants on the portico of theFoundling Hospital, heads of saints, tabernacles, heraldic escutcheons, some plain white on a blue ground, some with a judicious mixture of colours and a rich border of entwined leaves and fruit. These works form an almost inexhaustible treasury, with a marked character of graceful earnestness and truth to nature; a help to architecture as long as the decorative element kept its place in the old manner, which in the fourteenth century employed both glass and colour. But they were invaluable for interior decoration, for which Brunelleschi used work in ‘Terra della Robbia’ in the Pazzi chapel. Luca himself decorated for Cosimo de’ Medici a room in his palace and the buildings in Sta. Croce, and for Piero the tabernacle in San Miniato; in the latter church he also assisted in giving to the chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal the charm of harmonious perfection.In the last years of Cosimo de’ Medici grew up a whole generation of younger sculptors. Their most important works are sepulchral monuments, which became richer and grander as time went on. Formerly people had, as a rule, been content with sarcophagi more or less decorated, like that of Noferi, the father of Palla Strozzi, who died in 1418 and is buried in the sacristy of Sta. Trinità, beneath an arch resting on elegant corbels, and on the edges of which are seen pretty genii playing. Twenty or thirty years later these simple monuments were still the most usual, even for men of importance. Neri Capponi lies in the church of the Santo Spirito in a marble coffin bearing on the front his portrait in relief between two genii; Orlando de’ Medici rests in that of the SS. Annunziata in a sarcophagus ornamented with his coat of arms, and occupying with rich architectural accessories the whole side of a chapel. These were both works of Simone, whom tradition makes a brother of Donatello.[142]But talented artists soon attempted greater things. Desiderio da Settignano (so called after the pleasantlysituated little village, two miles east of the city, where Michel Angelo was nursed by a stonemason’s wife) was a pupil of Donatello, and thus came into contact with the Medici, who employed him in San Lorenzo. In the Strozzi palace may be seen his fine thoughtful marble bust of Marietta, daughter of Filippo Strozzi the elder and Fiammetta Adimari. His masterpiece is the monument of Carlo Marsuppini in Sta. Croce, a figure of the dead man resting on the sarcophagus in a niche crowned by a lunette, with a Madonna in relief.[143]Notwithstanding some overloading in the accessories, it shows what he might have become had he not died in 1464, at the early age of thirty-six. The sarcophagus, resting on lions’ claws and richly adorned with flowers, leaves, and streaming ribands, is one of the most beautiful productions of decorative sculpture. Desiderio had many emulators, to whom we owe some of the finest monuments of this kind. Among them were the brothers Bernardo and Antonio Rossellino. The former, who worked a good deal out of Florence as architect to the Popes, does not seem to have been employed by the Medici. The only thing he is said to have done for them is a marble fountain, decorated with children and dolphins, in one of the courts of their palace; and of its fate nothing is known. But the city contains excellent works by both, exhibiting a similarity to Della Robbia’s style. Two of Bernardo’s works are the graceful monument to Beata Villana in Sta. Maria Novella, and that of Leonardo Bruni in Sta. Croce.[144]The conception,proportions, and technical finish of these works entitle them to rank among the best productions of a period rich in monuments. The most perfect work of the kind, however, is that by Antonio Rossellino to the Cardinal of Portugal, in San Miniato al Monte. James of Portugal, nephew of King Alfonso V., had come in bad health to Florence, where he died in 1459 aged twenty-six. In the basilica, then belonging to the Olivetans, where he was buried, was built a chapel, unrivalled in symmetry of form and beauty of detail. The roof is set off with reliefs in glazed earth, the walls are inlaid with marble, the altar, the bishop’s throne, and the floor ofopus Alexandrinumare admirable. What was formerly the altar-piece—by Pollaiuolo—is now in the Uffizi. The monument stands in a large niche, with a curtain slightly drawn back. The sarcophagus is an imitation of the coffer afterwards used for the tomb of Pope Clement XII. in the Lateran. The figure of the departed, wearing his mitre, rests on a pall held by two seated boys; an architectural wall-drapery is terminated by a cornice, at each end of which is a kneeling angel bearing a crown and a palm-branch; in the arch above are the Virgin and Child surrounded by a rich garland and upheld by angels in relief. The figure of the cardinal surpasses all else of its kind in grace, dignity, and beauty, while in technical work it is perfection. The head and the folded hands were modelled from nature.[145]A blessed peace seems diffused over the whole figure, which realizes what Vespasiano da Bisticci says of the departed, whom he had known in life: ‘He was outwardly handsome, but his soul was more beautiful than his body; and by the holiness of his life and conversation he was fitted to stand beside the saints of old.’[146]To these artists must be added Mino da Fiesole, who, though a pupil of Desiderio da Settignano—his senior onlyby a few years—seemed to have formed himself more on the model of Donatello. His groups of figures in relief, of which the chief are at Rome, are not always happy; his monumental statues, of which the two most remarkable in Florence are of later date, have great dignity and beauty. In his portrait-heads there is a peculiar delicacy and truth, indicating careful study of nature, and of which the bust of Bishop Leonardo Salutati, in the cathedral of Fiesole, is an excellent example.[147]In the Medici house were busts by him of Piero and his wife, the former of which is now in the Uffizi. In ornamentation, particularly in arabesque, Mino is inferior to none; and it is impossible to mistake his influence in this respect at Rome, where, from the time of Nicolas V., the number of monuments rapidly increased. The works of Giuliano da Majano in Florence, where he was occupied in 1463-1465 with inlaid woodwork for San Domenico, near Fiesole, and the sacristy of Sta. Maria del Fiore, are of much less importance. Neither he nor Antonio Filarete, founder of the great door of St. Peter’s, are known to have done any work for the Medici. That the latter was one of theirprotégés, however, may be seen not only by the dedication to Piero of his treatise on architecture, but also by a letter addressed by him to Piero from Milan, December 20, 1451, thanking him for a recommendation to Francesco Sforza: ‘I am at your service for whatever I can do. Dispose of me as you please. Commend me to his Excellency your father, and your brother Giovanni. With God’s help, I hope to do honour here both to myself and you; I say to you, because for your sake and in consequence of your recommendation his Lordship shows me great favour. He thinks of appointing me chief architect to the cathedral, which naturally meets with opposition, I being a stranger; but I hope they will yield to their lord’s desire.’[148]The goldsmith’s art, which in the preceding century hadreached great perfection in Tuscan cities and was closely connected with sculpture, attained through niello-work to engraving on copperplate. The name of Maso Finiguerra, who executed the celebrated pyx for the Baptistery in 1452, is inseparable from the history of the Medicean splendour.For painting, whether in its general development or its particular productions, the period under consideration is less important than for the sister arts, at least as far as the Medici are concerned. The two greatest masters, in different lines, of the first half of the century, Masaccio and Fra Angelico, continued to adorn Florence with their works. The former, at his death in 1443, left unfinished the Brancacci chapel in San Pietro del Carmine, the high school of all later works of the kind. Unluckily, the fresco has perished in which he represented the consecration of the church in 1422, with a group of remarkable men of the time: Giovanni d’Averardo de’ Medici, Niccolò da Uzzano, Baccio Valori, Lorenzo Ridolfi, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masolino da Panicale, and others. Fra Angelico decorated the chapter-house, corridors, and cells of the convent of San Marco with his wall-pictures, which represent religious art in its loveliest bloom, a free modification of the principles of Giotto’s school. He was busy here till Eugene IV. called him to Rome, where he painted the two chapels in the Vatican for this Pope and his successor, Nicolas V. He died in 1455. His greatest pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, followed his master from Rome to Orvieto, and in 1459 painted the private chapel of the Medici, his most pleasing work. The ‘Adoration of the Angels’ is here represented amid a rich landscape, with choirs of angels, numerous spectators, and festive scenes, painted with a cheerful colouring that recalls Gentile da Fabriano. Later, when painting in San Gemignano and at Pisa, Gozzoli was still connected with the Medici, and in his first fresco in the Campo Santo, the ‘Curse of Ham,’ a group in the foreground represents the members of the family as he had known them in earlier years.The realistic tendency exhibited by Masaccio grew more prominent in Paolo Uccello, who was evidently influenced by sculpture, especially by Donatello. In some of his most important frescoes, those in Sta. Maria Novella, representing the history of the Creation, and the figure of John Hawkwood in Sta. Maria del Fiore,[149]the very colouring, grey upon grey, aims at producing the effect of sculpture. This painter’s study of perspective made him exaggerate that branch of his art. The austerity of Andrea dal Castagno’s style is not softened by the colouring. The repulsive expression of his group of St. John and St. Francis in Sta. Croce supports the legend of the murder of Domenico Veneziano, which has adhered to Andrea’s name till our own day, though he died four years before his supposed victim.[150]The most important works he has left are the figures of sibyls and of famous men, executed in a hall of the villa formerly belonging to the Pandolfini at Legnaia, but now removed to the National Museum at the Palace of the Podestà. The characteristic figures, among whom are Nicola Acciaiuolo and Pippo Spano, produce a great effect. Neither Andrea nor Uccello seems to have been employed by the Medici, who did, however, engage Domenico Veneziano, Andrea’s fellow-worker on the lost frescoes in Sta. Maria Nuova, a painter much influenced by Fra Angelico. The repeated occurrence of the Medici’s patron saints, Cosmo and Damian, in pictures of which the origin cannot be clearly traced, points tothe conclusion that they were commissions from the family or their friends. But the painter most highly favoured by Cosimo and his sons was Fra Filippo Lippi, whose manners and conversation were as great a scandal to the Carmelite order as Fra Angelico’s whole life was an ornament to that of St. Dominic. Disorderly, loose in morals, always in difficulties and need of money, he yet gained patrons by his undeniable talent, which unites force and animation to Angelico’s intensity of feeling. Lippi’s grouping and composition is various, free, and rich, showing a realistic study of nature. He worked a great deal for the Medici, who made presents of his pictures to the Pope and King Alfonso, and procured him commissions abroad. His greatest work, the frescoes in the chapel in the choir of the Collegiate Church of Prato, was finished for the Provost Carlo de’ Medici, whose likeness may be seen in the representation of the burial of St. Stephen. It was through Cosimo, who had many connections in Umbria, that Fra Filippo went to Spoleto, where he executed in the cathedral the scenes from the history of the Madonna which were finished after his death in 1469 by his assistant Fra Diamante.Among the painters employed by Cosimo and his sons were the two Peselli, Giuliano d’Arrigo, and his grandson Pesellino; the former followed the artistic tendencies represented by Giotto, the latter was an earnest disciple of the realistic school. Much of the Medici furniture was painted by them, according to a fashion of the time, continued till the middle of the sixteenth century. Presses and coffers (cassoni) were ornamented with compositions of small figures, taken from history, sacred or profane, animals, hunting-scenes, &c. In the Florentine collections are many paintings of this kind, even down to Andrea del Sarto and his friends and pupils, the original destination of which is shown by their form. They were not all Florentines who painted for the Medici. A Veronese, Matteo de’ Pasti, wrote to Piero in 1441, that he trusted to send him works such as hehad never before seen.[151]He probably alluded to the convex tablets (now in the Uffizi collection) representing scenes from Petrarca’s triumphs, which were doubtless intended to decorate a room. The various dealings of the Medici with Flanders, from the time of Cosimo, contributed to draw attention in Florence to the Van Eyck school of painting, which influenced Italian art in the fifteenth century, particularly in point of technicalities. It was through Tommaso Portinari, director of the Medici bank at Bruges, that the church of the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova—an old foundation of the family—obtained the most important work of the Flemish school to be found in Tuscany. This was the masterpiece of Hugo van der Goes, the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds,’ containing portraits of the members of the donor’s family.[152]The Flemish pictures mentioned by Vasari as being in the possession of the Medici (one of them, a portrait of Tommaso Portinari, is now in the Pitti Palace), prove the interest awakened by these works, great as was their difference in conception from Italian art.It is easy to imagine that other branches of artistic industry were furthered by this artistically inclined family at a period of such varied activity, and that their house kept constantly filling with treasures of all kinds. For it was the pride of the princes and rich citizens—and even of such as had to deny themselves many of the comforts of life in order to satisfy a noble passion—to surround themselves with ancient and modern works, to decorate halls, staircases, and courts with marbles and other antiquities; to collect old coins and intaglios; to deck their rooms with statues and sculptures by living artists, with handsome furniture, silver plate, rich silken hangings and carpets.Among the records of the Rinuccini family are notes of the cost of goldsmiths’ work furnished by Finiguerra andPollaiuolo.[153]Cosimo’s love for these things was shared by his brother Lorenzo and both his sons. An inventory of the antique coins, cameos, gems, mosaic tablets; and enamels preserved in the house in the Via Larga, mentions 100 gold and 503 silver coins, a number of intaglios set as seals and rings, Greek and Roman mosaic tablets, valuable vases, precious stones to the value of more than thirty thousand gold florins.[154]The silver plate here, as well as at the villas, was not reckoned in. Mention has already been made of the travelling antiquaries who carried about with them manuscripts and objects of art, and were at once scholars and colporteurs. But purchases were also made for the Medici abroad. Antiquities came from Rome, Naples, Viterbo, and other places. Donatello was accustomed to restore injured antique marbles, a custom which was later carried to extremes, and led to mischief. Worked carpets (Arazzi) came from Flanders, where Bruges was the chief emporium for works of art, though Antwerp fairs were often visited.[155]A letter of Carlo de’ Medici to his half-brother Giovanni, written from Rome, apparently in the autumn of 1451,[156]shows that Cardinal Barbo, afterwards Pope Paul II., was in competition with the Medici, and was not above a little gentle compulsion: ‘I bought some time ago about thirty silver medals from an assistant cf Pisanello, who is lately dead. I know not how Monsignore di San Marco heard of it, but, meeting me accidentally in the church of the Santi Apostoli, he took me by the hand, and would not let me go till he had got me to his house and taken all I had about me—rings and coins to the value of about twenty florins. There was no getting them back, and in the end I have had to let him keep the things, after a vain appeal tothe Pope.’ The complaint is repeated in a letter of 1455. As we shall see, however, such losses were more than made up to the Medici at the death of Paul II.Such were the relations of Cosimo and his sons to art-life in Florence. The great movement had begun before they took the helm of the state; but they exercised great and beneficial influence on its development, and always set a praiseworthy example to their fellow-citizens. In this respect they thoroughly understood their time. The tone and manner of their relations with artists is particularly attractive; it was inspired by true refinement of feeling. Merchant princes as they were, whose help was generally coveted, they kept up a confidential intercourse with men of talent, as among friends and equals. In the requests addressed to them there is no tone of servility; the traditions of free citizenship continued in all social relations. So it was also at a later period, when Cosimo’s grandson had attained the position of a ruling prince; Lorenzo’s bearing was the same, and contributed not a little to his powerful influence over his fellow-men. In many cases, as with Antonio Squarcialupi, the musician and organ-builder, he merely continued a connection begun by his father, uncle, and grandfather. Antonio, who in his writings adopted the pseudonym Degli Organi, belonged to an old family who had once been ‘Signori’ at Poggibonzi in the Elsa valley, and who on account of their rank were long excluded from office. It was not till 1453 that Antonio became a member of one of the smaller guilds, though before that time he was intimate with the Medici household. After spending some time at Naples with King Alfonso, in 1450, he wrote from Siena on November 26 to Giovanni de’ Medici at Volterra, as follows:[157]‘Dearest gossip, dutiful greeting and salutation! As you doubtless know, it is now about a month since I returned from Naples. Since then it has never ceased raining, or Ishould have come to see you. The bad weather has hindered me not only from coming, but also from writing, as I kept waiting for the sky to clear. Now, God be thanked for all things. If I were to tell you about Naples, and the majesty of the king and his court, there would be so much to say that I must needs take all the scriveners in Rome into my employ for five days. So for the present I will say nothing about it, and will only tell you that Cardinal Sta. Maria sets great store by his organ; wherein he is quite right, for truly it deserves it. I promise you on your return the satisfaction of hearing one which cannot fail to please you. It is destined for Antonio di Migliorino, who I trust will not object to my letting you see and hear it. Now I will trouble you no further. Commend me above all to Madonna Contessina, Messer Piero, and all the rest.’In the spring of 1438, Domenico Veneziano wrote from Perugia to Piero as follows:[158]‘Noble and honoured sir, greeting. I have to inform you that by God’s grace I am in good health, and hope to see you well and happy. I have made inquiries after you at various times, and never received any news save through Manno Donati, who told me that you were at Ferrara in very good health, which gave me great pleasure. Had I known your place of abode sooner, I would have written to you, both for my own satisfaction and as it is fitting. My position is in truth far below yours, but my hearty attachment to you and all yours gives me boldness to write to you, to whom I owe so much.’ One-and-twenty years later this same Piero, then at Careggi, was thus addressed by Benozzo Gozzoli, who was painting the chapel in the Medici house at Florence:[159]‘My dearest friend, I informed your Magnificence in a previous letter that I am in need of forty florins, and begged you to advance them to me; for now is the time to buy corn and many other things that I want, whereby I shall save, and get ridof a heavy load of care. I had resolved to ask nothing of you till you had seen my work, but I now find myself compelled to ask this favour. Therefore, be indulgent; God knows I am endeavouring to please you. I also reminded you to send to Venice for some ultramarine, for in the course of this week one wall will be finished, and for the other I shall need ultramarine. The brocades and other things can then be finished as well as the figures, or even sooner. I am working with all possible diligence. I have nothing more to add save my salutations.’These confidential relations between the Medici and the artists did not prevent them from carefully settling minor details when giving an order, such as the use of ultramarine and gold, and still smaller matters. Even with regard to the actual composition remarks were not spared, not merely concerning the saints to be placed in the Madonna pictures and other votive tablets, but also as to other figures and accessories. Piero de’ Medici was not satisfied with some angels that Benozzo had introduced in the chapel; the painter defended them, but added that he could put a cloud to cover them. Needless to say that all matters of business—prices, instalments of payment and work, &c.—were settled with scrupulous exactness. This belonged to the character of the time, and to the Florentine love of order and mercantile habits; a characteristic which never fails, and remained in the Medici nature even in Cosimo’s magnificent grandson. Strict supervision was indeed necessary in the case of these colossal undertakings. It was more especially needful with a disorderly man like Filippo Lippi, who passed his whole life in want of his own making; witness his letters to Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici: ‘If there is a wretched monk in Florence, it is I!’ His protectors pitied him and judged his sins leniently, if we rightly understand the remark in one of Giovanni’s letters, to the effect that they had a laugh over Fra Filippo’s error. It refers presumably to the well-known story of the elopement of Spinetta Buti from the convent atPrato, where she was being educated; a story the details of which, as in other instances, are inaccurately given by Vasari.[160]The interest taken by the Medici in this painter descended to Lorenzo. On his return from Rome he wanted to have Fra Filippo’s mortal remains brought from Spoleto to Florence, and when this was refused, he assisted Filippo’s son in erecting a monument in Spoleto Cathedral.It was in the time of Cosimo that the written history of art began its first feeble efforts. Its forerunner was Cennino Cennini of Colle in the Elsa valley, a pupil of Angelo Gaddi apparently at Padua, where he was in the service of Francesco da Carrara. Towards the end of the fourteenth century he wrote a book on painting, which is of great value for the study of artistic practice before the victory of oil-painting over tempera, as it is also for the history of modelling, casting, plaster-work, gilding, &c.[161]This book treats merely of technicalities; but in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s commentaries an unfinished treatise on architecture and the proportion of figures is combined with notices of ancient art and also of modern, from its re-awakening in the second half of the thirteenth century down to the writer’s own time and works.[162]The latter portion is the principal source whence Giorgio Vasari drew his knowledge of past times. Ghiberti’s contemporary Filarete has given many notices, valuable for the history of art, referring to Medicean times, in his treatise on architecture, which he dedicated—in stylesdiffering according to the persons and circumstances, to two patrons, Piero de’ Medici and Francesco Sforza, in 1460.[163]These notices, as well as technical remarks, were also made use of by Vasari, whose judgment on Filarete’s confused book is just, though rather severely expressed.
THIRD PART.
THE FINE ARTS.
COSIMO AND PIERO DE’ MEDICI IN THEIR RELATION TO ART.
Theearly years of Cosimo de’ Medici were passed during the great revolution in art by which realism, united with reminiscences of the antique, enforced its claims, and, superseding the Gothic and Pisan styles in architecture and sculpture, restricted that of Giotto, in painting, to a narrow circle of recognised types. Art had struck out for itself these new paths before Cosimo became ruler of the whole state; but he influenced its rapid development by his active sympathy and by a liberality rarely equalled by private individuals or even by princes. Independently of the encouragement he afforded to talent in his princely capacity, he gave honourable commissions to artists from his own resources. In personal intercourse with them he united a thorough knowledge of art with a sympathetic affability which did equal honour to them and to himself. His two favourite architects, Brunelleschi and Michelozzo, have been already mentioned. The former died eighteen years before him, the latter survived him about six years. He justly valued their genius, and promoted a friendly understanding between them while employing both on important works. It wasBrunelleschi who continued the building of the church of San Lorenzo and the abbey of Fiesole.
After the days of Giovanni di Bicci both branches of the Medici seem to have been reunited. The church of San Lorenzo was the parish church of Cosimo’s branch, and the burial-place of both. As early as 1415 there had been a talk of enlarging this sacred edifice, which dated from the earliest years of Christianity. Three years later a street at the back, the Via de’ Preti—a name ill-suited to the occupations of its inhabitants—was assigned to the Chapter for the purpose of enlargement. They began to rebuild the choir in 1419.[119]With other members of wealthy families, Giovanni de’ Bicci, having pledged himself to build some chapels, undertook the sacristy, which, for harmony of proportions, both in its cupola and ground-plan, and for the excellence of its decorations, claims the highest admiration. What the father had begun the son continued on a larger scale. On September 23, 1440—while the building of the new church was proceeding under the direction of Brunelleschi, the older one still being in use—Cosimo buried his brother Lorenzo there. Upon this occasion Pope Eugene IV. sent the cardinals and prelates of his court with the banner of the church and his own, and 100 wax candles. Two years later Cosimo proceeded to complete the choir and cupola on condition of gaining the right of patronage for himself and his heirs, in return for which privilege he gave the chapter a state bond for 40,000 florins towards the expenses of the building. On May 15, 1457, the court of the Canonica was begun; it was finished, as well as the high altar and those in the transepts, four years after, and finally the high altar was consecrated by Archbishop Orlando Bonarli on August 9, 1461. Two years before, a college for young clergy had been opened near the church, which retains its chapter tothis day.[120]San Lorenzo is a basilica with columns. It has arches resting on an entablature laid on the capitals, a square end to the choir, a cupola, a flat roof, and chapels of no great depth. A walk through the cloisters of the Canonica recalls times long gone by. Two ranges of arcades enclose the quadrangle and lead to the little dwellings of the canons and to the famous library, which, in its present form, is a work of later days. The mighty dome of the cathedral and the bell-tower of Giotto look down into these cloisters, the stillness of which contrasts with the din of the busy streets around; while its whole appearance reminds the spectator of the homely simplicity, the frugality, and noble generosity which prevailed at the time of its erection.
The work said to have been executed for Cosimo at Fiesole by Brunelleschi was scarcely less important. At the foot of the hill there, in the valley of the Mugnone, lay the old abbey church, believed to be the original cathedral of the Etruscan city. In 1439, by command of Pope Eugene IV., it was handed over by the Benedictines to the regular canons of St. Augustine; and Cosimo de’ Medici, who was a friend of the Prior—Don Timoteo of Verona—began the new building. The church still retains the middle compartment of its original façade, belonging to the præ-Gothic period. Containing a nave and chapels of considerable dimensions, the building is simple and artistic. Doubts have been thrown on Vasari’s assertion that it is really Brunelleschi’s, it being quite unlike his other works.[121]The building of the convent presented many difficulties on account of the slope of the ground, and was finished by Cosimo’s son in 1466. It haslong been diverted from its original use, but continued to be the domicile of the founder and his family, whose arms were carved upon it, at a later period. Here the Platonic Academy held its meetings, and here a great-grandson of Cosimo donned the purple as cardinal, and another—Giuliano, Duke of Nemours—drew his last breath. In later days the church was enriched with many beautiful works of art; but in vain do we look round the great building, which neither Brunelleschi nor Cosimo lived to see completed, for the learned men and the collection of books that were once in a double sense its best ornaments.[122]
Brunelleschi’s work in the neighbourhood of the city was surpassed in grandeur by a building of Michelozzo’s within the walls. In 1436 the Medici brothers obtained from Pope Eugene IV. the cession of the Silvestrine[123]convent of San Marco to the Dominicans of Fiesole, who had just settled beside the little church of San Giorgio, on the left bank of the Arno. In the following year the rebuilding of the convent and restoration of the church was begun; not without difficulties on the part of the former owners, who actually entered a protest at the Council of Basle. The cost of reconstruction was borne mainly by the Medici, with some assistance from the community. The church was consecrated on the feast of the Epiphany, 1442, by Cardinal Acciapacci, Archbishop of Capua, in presence of the Pope and his court.[124]A considerable portion of the convent was finished in 1443; but the whole was not completed till eight years later. The traces of Michelozzo’s hand are no longer to be seen in the church; the choir and apse were rebuilt two hundred years after him.
It is impossible to walk through the great courts, the broad vaulted corridors, the endless rows of cells openinginto the passages, and the noble library, without remembering that this convent was the scene of many famous events in peace and war that influenced the fate of the city, and left their mark in the history not of Italy only, but of the human mind.[125]Cosimo was continually employing Michelozzo, who, besides the family palace, built for him the Noviciate of Sta. Croce and the adjoining chapel; remodelled the villas at Careggi, Cafaggiuolo, and Trebbio, and executed other works, some of them beyond the Tuscan border. Among the latter was the decoration of the palace at Milan, entrusted to him by Francesco Sforza, for which purpose Michelozzo visited that city. Here also he built for Pigello Portinari, director of the Medicean bank, a chapel in Sant’ Eustorgio after the model of that of the Pazzi in Sta. Croce. Cosimo’s sons employed him likewise. He is commonly believed to have designed for Piero the elegant chapel of the Annunziata, over whose altar hangs the thirteenth century picture of the Annunciation, which gave rise to the building of the church. This building, a quadrangular open chapel, with fluted Corinthian columns of marble supporting a richly decorated entablature, and enclosed by an elegant brass trellis, was executed by Pagno di Lapo Partigiani, a sculptor of Fiesole, and consecrated by Cardinal Guillaume d’Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen, on Christmas day, 1452.[126]
About the same time, Michelozzo executed for Piero the marble tabernacle destined to contain a figure of Christ in the nave of the basilica of San Miniato. It consists of a canopy supported on composite marble columns and pilasters, the interior richly decorated with rose-coloured ornaments of glazed earth in square panels. On the frieze is the Medicean device, the three feathers with the diamond ring and the mottoSemper, on the arch the escutcheon of the Calimala guild, in relief. Inside the tabernacle stands the altar with painting andpredella.[127]For Giovanni, Cosimo’s younger son, Michelozzo built on the heights of Fiesole a villa, visible from a great distance, which afterwards passed to the Mozzi family. The architect was also employed by connections of the Medici. For Giovanni Tornabuoni he built the great palace near Sta. Trinità, which still gives its name to the street. To gain more space, it afterwards became necessary to demolish the front part of this palace, which, with its ground floor of rustic-work and its plain arched windows, had a somewhat sombre effect.
While Michelozzo’s time was chiefly taken up by the Medici, Brunelleschi was active in other quarters. The progress and final completion of his great work, the dome of the cathedral, has already been mentioned. On August 30, 1436, the roofing-in was celebrated by the pealing of all the bells in the city and the chanting of aTe Deum. Eight years later the scaffolding was raised for building the lantern, which was begun in 1446, shortly before the death of the great master, who was succeeded by Michelozzo.[128]His beautiful arcade at the Foundling Hospital has been mentioned.The similar loggia of San Paolo was placed opposite Sta. Maria Novella, at the southern end of the piazza. He built a chapel for the Pazzi family in the front court of the convent of Sta. Croce. Its walls are covered with Corinthian pilasters, high niches, and terra-cotta alto-rilievos; the cupola rests on two side-arches richly panelled and decorated with designs in glazed earth; the pendants being ornamented with terra-cotta rilievos of the Evangelists. Decoration and colour are here kept just within the limits of good taste. Andrea de’ Pazzi began the building, which was finished by his son Jacopo, so that Brunelleschi can hardly have lived to see its completion.[129]The official residence of the Capitani di parte Guelfa in the Via delle Terme, rebuilt by Brunelleschi, still exists, though with many alterations. The architect saw only the beginnings of his second greatest work, the palace of Luca Pitti. In Vasari’s time, when Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence, purchased the unfinished building—appropriately called, by an art-writer of those days,muraglia—the original plan was no longer to be found. Many alterations were made in succeeding centuries down to the present, when the extensive wings, intended as halls, were built. But the façade has kept its original stamp, and Vasari’s words remain true—that Tuscan architecture has produced no richer or grander creation. This grandeur is united with the greatest simplicity; and it is the absence of all ornament upon the three stages of rustic-work, with their gigantic bow-windows, crowned with galleries, which gives the building its peculiar character. The palace is said to have been begun in 1440, long before the time of Luca Pitti’s ephemeral greatness.[130]His villa at Rusciano was begun about the time of Brunelleschi’s death, so that the great artist saw little of the execution of his plan, which was carried on by Luca Fancelli. While Brunelleschi here aimed at attaining the whole effect by the majesty and harmony of the proportions, in the palace of Jacopo de’ Pazzi he allowed more play to decoration.
It is doubtful whether Cosimo de’ Medici employed the most learned artist of the time, Leon Batista Alberti. His chief works in Florence, with one exception, were executed for the Rucellai. Among them may be mentioned the palace, the loggia, the upper part of the façade of Sta. Maria Novella, finished in 1470; and the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at San Pancrazio, an imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.[131]The Rucellai palace, in which are retained the bow-windows divided by small columns, points to the days of Bramante. It exhibits a combination of flat decorative pilasters of various orders with smooth rustic-work, antique ornaments on the rectangular doors, and traces of the square form in the bow-windows. Alberti also made designs for another work, which has given occasion to so many objections that its defects have been attributed to alterations by another hand. This is the choir of the Annunziata, commenced in 1451 by Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who, as victorious commander-in-chief of the Republic, desired to found a memorial at once of his piety and his thankfulness. A quarter of a century elapsed before the building was finished by Luca Fancelli. The exterior is octagonal, the interior round, with several chapels in irregular order, and numerous windows round the base of the large cupola, which is closed, and was ornamented in the seventeenth century with figures in fresco. In our own day redecorationhas given to the choir as well as the rest of this dazzlingly-gilt church a thoroughly modern appearance.[132]
Sculpture, no less than architecture, was in full activity. Here also we find in the foremost rank those artists whom the Medici had attached to themselves; among whom Donatello stood first, while his pupils benefited by the favour shown to him. The Medici mansion was full of Donatello’s works. Over the arches in the front court are eight medallions by him, with reliefs in marble; and he restored many of the antique heads over the doors. His other works are all scattered. During Cosimo’s exile, the bronze David with his foot on the head of Goliath was taken away and set up in the palace-yard of the Signoria. The owner seems to have been shy of reclaiming it, and finally, in May 1476, his grandsons sold it to the municipality.[133]During the second exile of the Medici, another work of Donatello’s was taken from their house and placed at the great gate of the same palace, with an inscription recalling the events of 1494.[134]This is the group of Judith and Holofernes, full of expression, but forced and offending against the rules of plastic composition. A loss to be regretted is that of the bronze bust of Madonna Contessina, which Donatello executed for her husband.
San Lorenzo still contains many of his works, placed there by the indefatigable benefactor of this church. Besides the decorations of the sacristy, &c., there are the reliefs on the pulpits; artistically they are in fault by their superabundance and want of repose, but the fault is one of aman of talent. In point of technical execution, they show a distinct retrogression when compared with contemporary works. It was not only in works of this kind that Donatello displayed an extravagance that belies the sense of beauty. He did so even in the dancing children executed in marble relief for the organ at Sta. Maria del Fiore.
Vespasiano da Bisticci describes Cosimo’s attachment to this man. ‘He was,’ says he,[135]‘a great friend of Donatello, and of all painters and sculptors. Finding there was little work for the latter, and not liking Donatello to remain inactive, he entrusted to him the pulpits and the doors of the sacristy at San Lorenzo; giving orders that whatever he needed for his own requirements and those of his four assistants should be paid to him weekly from the Medici bank.’ As Donatello did not dress to Cosimo’s liking, the latter presented him with a cloak and hood, an upper garment to wear under the cloak, and a whole suit, sending all this to him on the morning of a feast day. Donatello put the new things on a few times only, declining to wear them any longer, lest ‘people should think he had grown effeminate.’ How thoroughly Donatello was regarded as belonging to the Medici household is shown by the fact that the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga once asked Cosimo to send the artist to Mantua to execute a shrine modelled in 1450, to be set up during the expected visit of Pope Pius II.[136]Many other artists were on confidential terms with Cosimo and his family. Michelozzo’s two sons belonged almost to the family circle. In the last years of Cosimo, Donatello could no longer work, so his generous patron maintained him, and recommended him to his son Piero. The latter gave him a farm, as he said, ‘to provide him with bread and wine.’ The artist, however, gave back the gift in legal form, not wishing to embitter his life with household cares; whereupon Pierohad the value of the produce assigned to him at the bank. In 1462 Piero granted him space for a vault in San Lorenzo, near the sacristy; and here, where so many of his works are to be seen, he was buried in 1468, not far from those who had so valued him during life.[137]
After Donatello, most closely connected with the Medici, father and son, were two masters who, while fairly admitting the claims of the realistic principle, carried it out in a different spirit and in more ideal forms. Lorenzo Ghiberti, who finished the second door of the Baptistery in 1452, with the help of his son Vettorio, and in spite of his seventy-two years, undertook the commission for a third. He continued till the later years of Cosimo busily engaged on the rich silver reredos, in which Michelozzo, Verocchio, Bernardo Cennini, Antonio Pollaiuolo, and others, had a share. He also designed the great rose-window of Sta. Maria del Fiore, at which Francesco di Domenico Livi of Gambassi, who learned glass-painting in Germany, was working in 1436, and Bernardo di Francesco in 1443. Glass-painting in the true sense of the word was then just beginning to flourish; until that time coloured windows had been produced by simply putting variously tinted glass together in mosaic patterns. Many trod in the steps of Francesco Livi: notably Ser Guasparre da Volterra, who worked in the cathedral at Siena; while in Florence, Pisa, and Arezzo, the art was practised by the Jesuates of the order of the B. Giovanni Colombini, who were established in Florence in 1438, in the convent of San Giusto before Porta Pinti, and there built the great church which was pulled down in 1529. It was chiefly by them that Sta. Maria del Fiore, Sta. Croce,San Michele, and other buildings, were glazed with coloured windows.[138]
In 1440 Ghiberti finished for the cathedral the shrine of St. Zanobi, one of his finest works. To Piero de’ Medici he furnished goldsmith’s work which brought him great admiration and commissions from Pope Eugene IV. Besides this master, now growing old, the Medici employed a younger one, Luca della Robbia. His style is graceful rather than grand; full of tender and lively expression of feeling, and pleasing execution in drapery and grouping. His works in the cathedral show equal fertility of invention and technical skill. One is the marble relief for the organ gallery, representing a boy and girl playing and dancing, executed in 1438 as a companion-piece to that of Donatello;[139]and the other, not so good, is the door of the sacristy, finished in 1463, with its bronze reliefs of the Madonna, the Evangelists, and the Fathers of the Church.[140]The monument to Benozzo Federighi, Bishop of Fiesole[141](who died in 1450), with the figure lying on the bier, displays his capabilities in this direction. But Luca della Robbia is less distinguished by his sculptures in marble and brass than by the reliefs in glazed earth which, called after him, were supplied by his descendants for 100 years. They still abound in Florence and the whole of Tuscany, even to the mountain convents of the Apennines and the modest churches of remote towns, while numbers of them have wandered into foreign lands. Anyone taking a walk in Florence may enjoy these charming creations: lunettes or groups above the doors of churches and houses, medallions of infants on the portico of theFoundling Hospital, heads of saints, tabernacles, heraldic escutcheons, some plain white on a blue ground, some with a judicious mixture of colours and a rich border of entwined leaves and fruit. These works form an almost inexhaustible treasury, with a marked character of graceful earnestness and truth to nature; a help to architecture as long as the decorative element kept its place in the old manner, which in the fourteenth century employed both glass and colour. But they were invaluable for interior decoration, for which Brunelleschi used work in ‘Terra della Robbia’ in the Pazzi chapel. Luca himself decorated for Cosimo de’ Medici a room in his palace and the buildings in Sta. Croce, and for Piero the tabernacle in San Miniato; in the latter church he also assisted in giving to the chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal the charm of harmonious perfection.
In the last years of Cosimo de’ Medici grew up a whole generation of younger sculptors. Their most important works are sepulchral monuments, which became richer and grander as time went on. Formerly people had, as a rule, been content with sarcophagi more or less decorated, like that of Noferi, the father of Palla Strozzi, who died in 1418 and is buried in the sacristy of Sta. Trinità, beneath an arch resting on elegant corbels, and on the edges of which are seen pretty genii playing. Twenty or thirty years later these simple monuments were still the most usual, even for men of importance. Neri Capponi lies in the church of the Santo Spirito in a marble coffin bearing on the front his portrait in relief between two genii; Orlando de’ Medici rests in that of the SS. Annunziata in a sarcophagus ornamented with his coat of arms, and occupying with rich architectural accessories the whole side of a chapel. These were both works of Simone, whom tradition makes a brother of Donatello.[142]But talented artists soon attempted greater things. Desiderio da Settignano (so called after the pleasantlysituated little village, two miles east of the city, where Michel Angelo was nursed by a stonemason’s wife) was a pupil of Donatello, and thus came into contact with the Medici, who employed him in San Lorenzo. In the Strozzi palace may be seen his fine thoughtful marble bust of Marietta, daughter of Filippo Strozzi the elder and Fiammetta Adimari. His masterpiece is the monument of Carlo Marsuppini in Sta. Croce, a figure of the dead man resting on the sarcophagus in a niche crowned by a lunette, with a Madonna in relief.[143]Notwithstanding some overloading in the accessories, it shows what he might have become had he not died in 1464, at the early age of thirty-six. The sarcophagus, resting on lions’ claws and richly adorned with flowers, leaves, and streaming ribands, is one of the most beautiful productions of decorative sculpture. Desiderio had many emulators, to whom we owe some of the finest monuments of this kind. Among them were the brothers Bernardo and Antonio Rossellino. The former, who worked a good deal out of Florence as architect to the Popes, does not seem to have been employed by the Medici. The only thing he is said to have done for them is a marble fountain, decorated with children and dolphins, in one of the courts of their palace; and of its fate nothing is known. But the city contains excellent works by both, exhibiting a similarity to Della Robbia’s style. Two of Bernardo’s works are the graceful monument to Beata Villana in Sta. Maria Novella, and that of Leonardo Bruni in Sta. Croce.[144]The conception,proportions, and technical finish of these works entitle them to rank among the best productions of a period rich in monuments. The most perfect work of the kind, however, is that by Antonio Rossellino to the Cardinal of Portugal, in San Miniato al Monte. James of Portugal, nephew of King Alfonso V., had come in bad health to Florence, where he died in 1459 aged twenty-six. In the basilica, then belonging to the Olivetans, where he was buried, was built a chapel, unrivalled in symmetry of form and beauty of detail. The roof is set off with reliefs in glazed earth, the walls are inlaid with marble, the altar, the bishop’s throne, and the floor ofopus Alexandrinumare admirable. What was formerly the altar-piece—by Pollaiuolo—is now in the Uffizi. The monument stands in a large niche, with a curtain slightly drawn back. The sarcophagus is an imitation of the coffer afterwards used for the tomb of Pope Clement XII. in the Lateran. The figure of the departed, wearing his mitre, rests on a pall held by two seated boys; an architectural wall-drapery is terminated by a cornice, at each end of which is a kneeling angel bearing a crown and a palm-branch; in the arch above are the Virgin and Child surrounded by a rich garland and upheld by angels in relief. The figure of the cardinal surpasses all else of its kind in grace, dignity, and beauty, while in technical work it is perfection. The head and the folded hands were modelled from nature.[145]A blessed peace seems diffused over the whole figure, which realizes what Vespasiano da Bisticci says of the departed, whom he had known in life: ‘He was outwardly handsome, but his soul was more beautiful than his body; and by the holiness of his life and conversation he was fitted to stand beside the saints of old.’[146]
To these artists must be added Mino da Fiesole, who, though a pupil of Desiderio da Settignano—his senior onlyby a few years—seemed to have formed himself more on the model of Donatello. His groups of figures in relief, of which the chief are at Rome, are not always happy; his monumental statues, of which the two most remarkable in Florence are of later date, have great dignity and beauty. In his portrait-heads there is a peculiar delicacy and truth, indicating careful study of nature, and of which the bust of Bishop Leonardo Salutati, in the cathedral of Fiesole, is an excellent example.[147]In the Medici house were busts by him of Piero and his wife, the former of which is now in the Uffizi. In ornamentation, particularly in arabesque, Mino is inferior to none; and it is impossible to mistake his influence in this respect at Rome, where, from the time of Nicolas V., the number of monuments rapidly increased. The works of Giuliano da Majano in Florence, where he was occupied in 1463-1465 with inlaid woodwork for San Domenico, near Fiesole, and the sacristy of Sta. Maria del Fiore, are of much less importance. Neither he nor Antonio Filarete, founder of the great door of St. Peter’s, are known to have done any work for the Medici. That the latter was one of theirprotégés, however, may be seen not only by the dedication to Piero of his treatise on architecture, but also by a letter addressed by him to Piero from Milan, December 20, 1451, thanking him for a recommendation to Francesco Sforza: ‘I am at your service for whatever I can do. Dispose of me as you please. Commend me to his Excellency your father, and your brother Giovanni. With God’s help, I hope to do honour here both to myself and you; I say to you, because for your sake and in consequence of your recommendation his Lordship shows me great favour. He thinks of appointing me chief architect to the cathedral, which naturally meets with opposition, I being a stranger; but I hope they will yield to their lord’s desire.’[148]
The goldsmith’s art, which in the preceding century hadreached great perfection in Tuscan cities and was closely connected with sculpture, attained through niello-work to engraving on copperplate. The name of Maso Finiguerra, who executed the celebrated pyx for the Baptistery in 1452, is inseparable from the history of the Medicean splendour.
For painting, whether in its general development or its particular productions, the period under consideration is less important than for the sister arts, at least as far as the Medici are concerned. The two greatest masters, in different lines, of the first half of the century, Masaccio and Fra Angelico, continued to adorn Florence with their works. The former, at his death in 1443, left unfinished the Brancacci chapel in San Pietro del Carmine, the high school of all later works of the kind. Unluckily, the fresco has perished in which he represented the consecration of the church in 1422, with a group of remarkable men of the time: Giovanni d’Averardo de’ Medici, Niccolò da Uzzano, Baccio Valori, Lorenzo Ridolfi, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masolino da Panicale, and others. Fra Angelico decorated the chapter-house, corridors, and cells of the convent of San Marco with his wall-pictures, which represent religious art in its loveliest bloom, a free modification of the principles of Giotto’s school. He was busy here till Eugene IV. called him to Rome, where he painted the two chapels in the Vatican for this Pope and his successor, Nicolas V. He died in 1455. His greatest pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, followed his master from Rome to Orvieto, and in 1459 painted the private chapel of the Medici, his most pleasing work. The ‘Adoration of the Angels’ is here represented amid a rich landscape, with choirs of angels, numerous spectators, and festive scenes, painted with a cheerful colouring that recalls Gentile da Fabriano. Later, when painting in San Gemignano and at Pisa, Gozzoli was still connected with the Medici, and in his first fresco in the Campo Santo, the ‘Curse of Ham,’ a group in the foreground represents the members of the family as he had known them in earlier years.
The realistic tendency exhibited by Masaccio grew more prominent in Paolo Uccello, who was evidently influenced by sculpture, especially by Donatello. In some of his most important frescoes, those in Sta. Maria Novella, representing the history of the Creation, and the figure of John Hawkwood in Sta. Maria del Fiore,[149]the very colouring, grey upon grey, aims at producing the effect of sculpture. This painter’s study of perspective made him exaggerate that branch of his art. The austerity of Andrea dal Castagno’s style is not softened by the colouring. The repulsive expression of his group of St. John and St. Francis in Sta. Croce supports the legend of the murder of Domenico Veneziano, which has adhered to Andrea’s name till our own day, though he died four years before his supposed victim.[150]The most important works he has left are the figures of sibyls and of famous men, executed in a hall of the villa formerly belonging to the Pandolfini at Legnaia, but now removed to the National Museum at the Palace of the Podestà. The characteristic figures, among whom are Nicola Acciaiuolo and Pippo Spano, produce a great effect. Neither Andrea nor Uccello seems to have been employed by the Medici, who did, however, engage Domenico Veneziano, Andrea’s fellow-worker on the lost frescoes in Sta. Maria Nuova, a painter much influenced by Fra Angelico. The repeated occurrence of the Medici’s patron saints, Cosmo and Damian, in pictures of which the origin cannot be clearly traced, points tothe conclusion that they were commissions from the family or their friends. But the painter most highly favoured by Cosimo and his sons was Fra Filippo Lippi, whose manners and conversation were as great a scandal to the Carmelite order as Fra Angelico’s whole life was an ornament to that of St. Dominic. Disorderly, loose in morals, always in difficulties and need of money, he yet gained patrons by his undeniable talent, which unites force and animation to Angelico’s intensity of feeling. Lippi’s grouping and composition is various, free, and rich, showing a realistic study of nature. He worked a great deal for the Medici, who made presents of his pictures to the Pope and King Alfonso, and procured him commissions abroad. His greatest work, the frescoes in the chapel in the choir of the Collegiate Church of Prato, was finished for the Provost Carlo de’ Medici, whose likeness may be seen in the representation of the burial of St. Stephen. It was through Cosimo, who had many connections in Umbria, that Fra Filippo went to Spoleto, where he executed in the cathedral the scenes from the history of the Madonna which were finished after his death in 1469 by his assistant Fra Diamante.
Among the painters employed by Cosimo and his sons were the two Peselli, Giuliano d’Arrigo, and his grandson Pesellino; the former followed the artistic tendencies represented by Giotto, the latter was an earnest disciple of the realistic school. Much of the Medici furniture was painted by them, according to a fashion of the time, continued till the middle of the sixteenth century. Presses and coffers (cassoni) were ornamented with compositions of small figures, taken from history, sacred or profane, animals, hunting-scenes, &c. In the Florentine collections are many paintings of this kind, even down to Andrea del Sarto and his friends and pupils, the original destination of which is shown by their form. They were not all Florentines who painted for the Medici. A Veronese, Matteo de’ Pasti, wrote to Piero in 1441, that he trusted to send him works such as hehad never before seen.[151]He probably alluded to the convex tablets (now in the Uffizi collection) representing scenes from Petrarca’s triumphs, which were doubtless intended to decorate a room. The various dealings of the Medici with Flanders, from the time of Cosimo, contributed to draw attention in Florence to the Van Eyck school of painting, which influenced Italian art in the fifteenth century, particularly in point of technicalities. It was through Tommaso Portinari, director of the Medici bank at Bruges, that the church of the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova—an old foundation of the family—obtained the most important work of the Flemish school to be found in Tuscany. This was the masterpiece of Hugo van der Goes, the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds,’ containing portraits of the members of the donor’s family.[152]The Flemish pictures mentioned by Vasari as being in the possession of the Medici (one of them, a portrait of Tommaso Portinari, is now in the Pitti Palace), prove the interest awakened by these works, great as was their difference in conception from Italian art.
It is easy to imagine that other branches of artistic industry were furthered by this artistically inclined family at a period of such varied activity, and that their house kept constantly filling with treasures of all kinds. For it was the pride of the princes and rich citizens—and even of such as had to deny themselves many of the comforts of life in order to satisfy a noble passion—to surround themselves with ancient and modern works, to decorate halls, staircases, and courts with marbles and other antiquities; to collect old coins and intaglios; to deck their rooms with statues and sculptures by living artists, with handsome furniture, silver plate, rich silken hangings and carpets.
Among the records of the Rinuccini family are notes of the cost of goldsmiths’ work furnished by Finiguerra andPollaiuolo.[153]Cosimo’s love for these things was shared by his brother Lorenzo and both his sons. An inventory of the antique coins, cameos, gems, mosaic tablets; and enamels preserved in the house in the Via Larga, mentions 100 gold and 503 silver coins, a number of intaglios set as seals and rings, Greek and Roman mosaic tablets, valuable vases, precious stones to the value of more than thirty thousand gold florins.[154]The silver plate here, as well as at the villas, was not reckoned in. Mention has already been made of the travelling antiquaries who carried about with them manuscripts and objects of art, and were at once scholars and colporteurs. But purchases were also made for the Medici abroad. Antiquities came from Rome, Naples, Viterbo, and other places. Donatello was accustomed to restore injured antique marbles, a custom which was later carried to extremes, and led to mischief. Worked carpets (Arazzi) came from Flanders, where Bruges was the chief emporium for works of art, though Antwerp fairs were often visited.[155]A letter of Carlo de’ Medici to his half-brother Giovanni, written from Rome, apparently in the autumn of 1451,[156]shows that Cardinal Barbo, afterwards Pope Paul II., was in competition with the Medici, and was not above a little gentle compulsion: ‘I bought some time ago about thirty silver medals from an assistant cf Pisanello, who is lately dead. I know not how Monsignore di San Marco heard of it, but, meeting me accidentally in the church of the Santi Apostoli, he took me by the hand, and would not let me go till he had got me to his house and taken all I had about me—rings and coins to the value of about twenty florins. There was no getting them back, and in the end I have had to let him keep the things, after a vain appeal tothe Pope.’ The complaint is repeated in a letter of 1455. As we shall see, however, such losses were more than made up to the Medici at the death of Paul II.
Such were the relations of Cosimo and his sons to art-life in Florence. The great movement had begun before they took the helm of the state; but they exercised great and beneficial influence on its development, and always set a praiseworthy example to their fellow-citizens. In this respect they thoroughly understood their time. The tone and manner of their relations with artists is particularly attractive; it was inspired by true refinement of feeling. Merchant princes as they were, whose help was generally coveted, they kept up a confidential intercourse with men of talent, as among friends and equals. In the requests addressed to them there is no tone of servility; the traditions of free citizenship continued in all social relations. So it was also at a later period, when Cosimo’s grandson had attained the position of a ruling prince; Lorenzo’s bearing was the same, and contributed not a little to his powerful influence over his fellow-men. In many cases, as with Antonio Squarcialupi, the musician and organ-builder, he merely continued a connection begun by his father, uncle, and grandfather. Antonio, who in his writings adopted the pseudonym Degli Organi, belonged to an old family who had once been ‘Signori’ at Poggibonzi in the Elsa valley, and who on account of their rank were long excluded from office. It was not till 1453 that Antonio became a member of one of the smaller guilds, though before that time he was intimate with the Medici household. After spending some time at Naples with King Alfonso, in 1450, he wrote from Siena on November 26 to Giovanni de’ Medici at Volterra, as follows:[157]‘Dearest gossip, dutiful greeting and salutation! As you doubtless know, it is now about a month since I returned from Naples. Since then it has never ceased raining, or Ishould have come to see you. The bad weather has hindered me not only from coming, but also from writing, as I kept waiting for the sky to clear. Now, God be thanked for all things. If I were to tell you about Naples, and the majesty of the king and his court, there would be so much to say that I must needs take all the scriveners in Rome into my employ for five days. So for the present I will say nothing about it, and will only tell you that Cardinal Sta. Maria sets great store by his organ; wherein he is quite right, for truly it deserves it. I promise you on your return the satisfaction of hearing one which cannot fail to please you. It is destined for Antonio di Migliorino, who I trust will not object to my letting you see and hear it. Now I will trouble you no further. Commend me above all to Madonna Contessina, Messer Piero, and all the rest.’
In the spring of 1438, Domenico Veneziano wrote from Perugia to Piero as follows:[158]‘Noble and honoured sir, greeting. I have to inform you that by God’s grace I am in good health, and hope to see you well and happy. I have made inquiries after you at various times, and never received any news save through Manno Donati, who told me that you were at Ferrara in very good health, which gave me great pleasure. Had I known your place of abode sooner, I would have written to you, both for my own satisfaction and as it is fitting. My position is in truth far below yours, but my hearty attachment to you and all yours gives me boldness to write to you, to whom I owe so much.’ One-and-twenty years later this same Piero, then at Careggi, was thus addressed by Benozzo Gozzoli, who was painting the chapel in the Medici house at Florence:[159]‘My dearest friend, I informed your Magnificence in a previous letter that I am in need of forty florins, and begged you to advance them to me; for now is the time to buy corn and many other things that I want, whereby I shall save, and get ridof a heavy load of care. I had resolved to ask nothing of you till you had seen my work, but I now find myself compelled to ask this favour. Therefore, be indulgent; God knows I am endeavouring to please you. I also reminded you to send to Venice for some ultramarine, for in the course of this week one wall will be finished, and for the other I shall need ultramarine. The brocades and other things can then be finished as well as the figures, or even sooner. I am working with all possible diligence. I have nothing more to add save my salutations.’
These confidential relations between the Medici and the artists did not prevent them from carefully settling minor details when giving an order, such as the use of ultramarine and gold, and still smaller matters. Even with regard to the actual composition remarks were not spared, not merely concerning the saints to be placed in the Madonna pictures and other votive tablets, but also as to other figures and accessories. Piero de’ Medici was not satisfied with some angels that Benozzo had introduced in the chapel; the painter defended them, but added that he could put a cloud to cover them. Needless to say that all matters of business—prices, instalments of payment and work, &c.—were settled with scrupulous exactness. This belonged to the character of the time, and to the Florentine love of order and mercantile habits; a characteristic which never fails, and remained in the Medici nature even in Cosimo’s magnificent grandson. Strict supervision was indeed necessary in the case of these colossal undertakings. It was more especially needful with a disorderly man like Filippo Lippi, who passed his whole life in want of his own making; witness his letters to Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici: ‘If there is a wretched monk in Florence, it is I!’ His protectors pitied him and judged his sins leniently, if we rightly understand the remark in one of Giovanni’s letters, to the effect that they had a laugh over Fra Filippo’s error. It refers presumably to the well-known story of the elopement of Spinetta Buti from the convent atPrato, where she was being educated; a story the details of which, as in other instances, are inaccurately given by Vasari.[160]The interest taken by the Medici in this painter descended to Lorenzo. On his return from Rome he wanted to have Fra Filippo’s mortal remains brought from Spoleto to Florence, and when this was refused, he assisted Filippo’s son in erecting a monument in Spoleto Cathedral.
It was in the time of Cosimo that the written history of art began its first feeble efforts. Its forerunner was Cennino Cennini of Colle in the Elsa valley, a pupil of Angelo Gaddi apparently at Padua, where he was in the service of Francesco da Carrara. Towards the end of the fourteenth century he wrote a book on painting, which is of great value for the study of artistic practice before the victory of oil-painting over tempera, as it is also for the history of modelling, casting, plaster-work, gilding, &c.[161]This book treats merely of technicalities; but in Lorenzo Ghiberti’s commentaries an unfinished treatise on architecture and the proportion of figures is combined with notices of ancient art and also of modern, from its re-awakening in the second half of the thirteenth century down to the writer’s own time and works.[162]The latter portion is the principal source whence Giorgio Vasari drew his knowledge of past times. Ghiberti’s contemporary Filarete has given many notices, valuable for the history of art, referring to Medicean times, in his treatise on architecture, which he dedicated—in stylesdiffering according to the persons and circumstances, to two patrons, Piero de’ Medici and Francesco Sforza, in 1460.[163]These notices, as well as technical remarks, were also made use of by Vasari, whose judgment on Filarete’s confused book is just, though rather severely expressed.