Florence
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12. The Palazzo di Parte Guelfa stands in the tiny Piazza di Parte Guelfa between its church, Santa Maria Sovraporta, now deconsecrated, and the PALAZZO CANACCI. The Guelphs held meetings in the church until the late thirteenth century. Their headquarters are divided by two clear styles: the medieval part of the palace and the Renaissance extension, which was commissioned from Brunelleschi in 1430. There are also the remains of a small part of an extension which was almost completely demolished to make way for Brunelleschi's work. At ground-floor level, on the medieval side, there were shops, probably rented out to members of the Silk Guild, whose offices were also in the square. A covered staircase leads to the piano nobile. Over the door are the Guelph coats of arms and beyond the door the Guelph council hall with its mullioned windows.
Brunelleschi's extension is unfinished, since Guelph power rapidly diminished, and funds ran out. Over the huge round-arched windows the oculi are bricked in. It is not clear whether Bru-nelleschi intended to place terracotta tondi here, or windows.
By 1558, the party had lost all authority, and the building was turned over to the Monte, the governing body of pawnbroking and bonds, whose emblem, six little hills, a pun on the name, is over a door next to Brunelleschi's extension, above an inscription bearing Cosimo I's name. Inside Vasari's balcony over this door are the Medici palle.
13. For example in the 1490s, Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine merchant and navigator who gave his name to America, worked in the Medici branch in Seville, which was mainly occupied in the outfitting of ships. Niccolò Acciaiuoli worked in Naples; Niccolò di Jacopo degli Alberti in Avignon; the historian, Giovanni Villani, in Bruges; and the Medici's Geneva branch was opened by Francesco Sassetti, who commissioned the frescoes of the life of St Francis by Ghirlandaio in the SASSETTI CHAPEL in SANTA TRINITA and appears, with Lorenzo il Magnifico, in the lunette above the altar. It was Tommaso Portinari, a member of the family of Dante's Beatrice, who, while working in Bruges, commissioned from Hugo van der Goes the immense, magnificent and influential triptych of the Adoration of the Shepherds, now in the UFFIZI, in which various members of the Portinari family are depicted on the side pieces.
CHAPTER 4 (pages 27–34)
1. The Palazzo dell'Arte della Lana was built at the end of the thirteenth century, bought by the guild at the beginning of the fourteenth and heavily restored in 1905. The Tabernacolo della Tromba inside is by Jacopo del Casentino (c. 1335). The heraldic devices on the façade include the Arte's Agnus Dei. At the base of the tower is the fourteenth-century oratory of Santa Maria della Tromba, which was brought here from the MERCATO VECCHIO.
2. The medieval buildings in Via Por Santa Maria were destroyed in 1944 before the Allies entered the city. The church of Santo Stefano al Ponte, in a little piazza off the southern end of the street, was originally built in the tenth century. The decoration of the façade was finished in 1233. The interior, which is now used for concerts, was remodelled by Ferdinando Tacca in the seventeenth century; it incorporates altar steps by Buontalenti, which came from SANTA TRINITA, and a high altar by Giambologna from SANTA MARIA NUOVA. In the nearby Casa dell' Orafo (‘House of the Goldsmith’) are several jewellers' workshops.
3. The Palazzo dell'Arte dei Beccai in Via Orsanmichele was the headquarters of the guild until 1534. Their emblem, a goat, is on the façade together with other medallions of three interlocking circles and the Florentine lily. The building is now occupied by the ACCADEMIA DEL DISEGNO.
CHAPTER 5 (pages 35–60)
1. Dante is said to have been born either in the Casa di Dante in Via Dante Alighieri or in a house in Via Alighieri. He is also said to have been married to Gemma Donati in the church of Santa Margherita de' Cerchi, a twelfth-century foundation which contains a fine altar-piece by Neri di Bicci. The parish church of Dante's family and that of the Donati was on the site of the chapel of San Martino del Vescovo. This was originally built in the tenth century and rebuilt in the fifteenth. It was the headquarters of the charitable brotherhood, the Compagnia dei Buonuomini di San Martino, founded in 1442 by St Antonio, Archbishop of Florence, whose bust, attributed to Verrocchio, is in the chapel. The frescoes of the life of St Martin in San Martino del Vescovo are from the workshop of Ghirlandaio. There is also a painting of the Madonna by Niccolò Soggi, a follower of Perugino.
The monument to Dante outside the church of SANTA CROCE is by Enrico Pazzi (1865). The
Orsanmichele
cenotaph inside the church is by Stefano Ricci (1829). A column from the tomb of Dante's teacher, Brunetto Latini, survives in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, an eighth- or ninth-century foundation on the corner of Viade' Cerretani and Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore, rebuilt in the late thirteenth century.
The thirteenth-century Palazzo Cerchi is at No. 52 Vicolo dei Cerchi. The TORRE CERCHI is on the corner of Via dei Cerchi and Canto alla Quarconia. The Torre dei Donati stands almost opposite SANTA MARGHERITA IN SANTA MARIA DE' RICCI. The Palazzo Donati, formerly the Palazzo Neroni, is at No. 7 Via de' Ginori. The coats of arms of both families are on the porch of Santa Margherita de' Cerchi.
2. The Vallombrosan abbey buildings at San Salvi house a collection of sixteenth-century altarpieces and reliefs by Benedetto da Rovezzano from the tomb of San Giovanni Gualberto. Andrea del Sarto's masterly Last Supper is in the refectory.
3. The existing church of Orsanmichele was built as a market in 1337 by Francesco Talenti, Benci di Cione and Neri di Fioravante. The windows enclosing the arcades, soon after bricked up, were finished in 1380 to the designs of Simone Talenti. The upper storey, the granary, was completed in 1404. For the statues see Chapter 7, note 26; for the tabernacle, see below, note 5.
4. The Confraternity of the Laudesi was founded in c. 1245 by St Peter Martyr, who is depicted in a celebrated painting by Fra Angelico in SAN MARCO with a wounded head and a finger to his lips. The Cappella dei Bardi Ilarioni in SANTA MARIA NOVELLA was formerly theirs. For it, in 1285, they commissioned from Duccio the Madonna Enthroned which was moved to the CAPPELLA RUCELLAI before being taken to the UFFIZI in 1948.
5. Orcagna's tabernacle at ORSANMICHELE was finished in 1359. Made of marble, lapis lazuli, gold and stained glass, it cost 86,000 florins. The money had been left to the church by victims of the plague and by the plague's grateful survivors, who had prayed to the miraculous Virgin for salvation. The iconography is obscure and has been much debated, but it seems generally to concern the path to salvation through the intercession of the Virgin.
6. Sant'Ambrogio, in the Piazza Sant'Ambrogio, is one of the earliest Christian foundations in the city, probably dating from the fifth century. Rebuilt in the late thirteenth century, it has undergone a few modifications. The present façade is a nineteenth-century addition. On the south side is a Sacra Conversazione by a follower of Orcagna. In the chapel to the left of the high altar is a tabernacle by Mino da Fiesole which contains a miraculous relic. A fresco by Cosimo Rosselli depicts the people of Florence marvelling at this relic in the piazza. On the north side, at the fourth altar, is Verrocchio's tomb. Cronaca and members of the Del Tasso family are also buried in this church, as well as Mino da Fiesole. Alesso Baldovinetti and his pupil, Graffione, painted the Nativity; and Agnolo Gaddi probably painted the Martyrdom of St Sebastian on the west wall.
7. The Acciaiuoli palace on the Arno was destroyed in 1944. The family had other palaces in BORGO SANTI APOSTOLI (Nos. 3–10). These were rebuilt in the fifteenth century. The family came from Brescia, settling in Florence in the middle of the twelfth century. Before going into banking and the wool trade, they dealt in metal, hence their name (acciaio, steel). Niccolò di Acciaiuolo Acciaiuoli, who died in 1365, was an official at the Angevin court in Naples. He founded the Certosa (charterhouse) of Galluzzo, south of Florence, the emblem of which can be seen on the tower of No. 8 Borgo Santi Apostoli.
8. The basilican design of the Duomo (Santa Maria del Fiore), with its three polygonal tribunes, is traditionally attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio. The building was
enlarged in the mid fourteenth century by Francesco Talenti and others; and Brunelleschi's dome was completed in 1436. After Brunelleschi's death, Michelozzo crowned the dome with its lantern and Ver-rocchio added the bronze ball and cross. Between 1857 and 1887 the façade was almost completely replaced by Emilio de Fabris and Augustino Conti, except for the lower register of the south flank.
On the south side, next to the tribune, is the Porta dei Canonici, which was decorated in the late fourteenth century by Lorenzo d'Ambrogio and Piero di Giovanni Tedesco. Opposite it on the north side is the Porta della Mandorla, called after the almond-shaped aureole which frames Nanni di Banco's Assumption of the Virgin. The young Donatello, then Ghiberti's assistant on the BAPTISTERY doors, carved the prophet and sybil on either side of the gable. The Annunciation in the lunette is by Domenico and Davide Ghirlandaio. Inside, Baccio d'Agnolo and Francesco da Sangallo, among others, designed the marble pavement, Ghiberti the stained-glass roundels in the west wall, on which there is a mosaic of the Coronation of the Virgin attributed to Gaddo Gaddi. The fresco of angels with four musicians is by Santi di Santo. Uccello painted the great twenty-four-hour clock. The statue of the melancholic Antonio d'Orso is by Tino da Camaino. In a tondo in the south aisle is a bust of Brunelleschi by his adopted son, Buggiano, and close by it a bust of Giotto by Benedetto da Maiano. Brunelleschi's tomb was discovered here in 1972 when excavations of the older SANTA REPATA were taking place.
The stained-glass windows between the Porta del Campanile and the Porta dei Canonici are by Agnolo Gaddi, the bust of Marsilio Ficino just to the west of the Porta dei Canonici by Andrea Ferrucci. The dome is covered with a fresco by Vasari and Federico Zuccari of the Last Judgement (concealed for restoration at the time of writing). The stained-glass windows in the drum are, starting from the east window, by Donatello (Coronation of the Virgin); by Ghiberti (Ascension, Agony in the Garden and Presentation in the Temple); by Uccello (Nativity); by Castagno (Pietà); and by Uccello (Resurrection). In the last of these the skewed tomb is the first known example of perspective in stained glass.
Duomo (Santa Maria del Fiore)
At the piers below are sixteenth-century statues of eight apostles, including works by Jacopo Sansovino, Benedetto da Rovezzano, Bandinelli, Bandini, Andrea Ferrucci and Vicenzo de' Rossi. The marble sanctuary is by Bandinelli and has a wooden crucifix by Benedetto da Maiano. The stained-glass windows in the chapels of the three tribunes were designed by Ghiberti.
A lunette of the Ascension in the South Sacristy, between the south and east tribunes, is by Luca della Robbia, who also executed the angels on the altar of the third chapel of the east tribune. In this chapel is a bronze urn by Ghiberti, containing relics of St Zenobius. Here once stood Donatello's choir loft, or singing gallery, now in the MUSEO DELL'OPERA. Luca, with Michelozzo's help, also designed the bronze doors of the North Sacristy, as well as the Resurrection lunette over them. This was the original location of Luca's choir loft, also now in the Museo dell'Opera. It was to this sacristy that Lorenzo il Magnifico escaped on the day of his brother's murder. The intarsia cupboards here were made under the supervision of Giuliano da Maiano in the 1460s.
In the north aisle are two stained-glass windows by Agnolo Gaddi, and beyond these the two famous EQUESTRIAN MURALS OF SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD and NICCOLÒ DA TOLENTINO. At the last altar before the west door is a statue of Joshua, by either Donatello or Nanni di Bartolo, which is said to be a likeness of the humanist scholar, Poggio Bracciolini.
Campanile
9. Work on the Campanile began in 1334. Upon Giotto's death in 1337, Andrea Pisano assumed the role of capomaestro, and, when he died in 1352, Francesco Talenti was appointed to the office, which he held until the free-standing bell-tower was completed in 1359. At 280 feet, it was a lofty exception to the law of 1324 which limited the height of towers, long a symbol of secular power in Florence. Apart from the Seven Sacraments and the scenes from Genesis, the reliefs on the four faces of the tower use non-Christian images. Pisano himself and his workshop carved the Genesis reliefs, the Seven Planets, the mythological inventors, the Platonic Virtues, the arts, industries and sciences; and Alberto Arnoldi or Maso di Banco carved the Seven Sacraments. In the next century Luca della Robbia carved the Liberal Arts. In the niches of the second storey are statues of prophets and sybils, notably three by Donatello.
Originals of the reliefs and statuary are in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, No. 9 Piazza del Duomo, where the body responsible for the fabric of the Duomo has been housed since the early fifteenth century. The museum was opened to the public in 1891. It contains works of art brought here from the Campanile and the BAPTISTERY, as well as from the cathedral. Exhibits include work by Arnolfo di Cambio, Baccio Bandinelli, Buontalenti, Giambologna, Andrea Pisano, Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio and Nanni di Banco. The Pietà on the landing is by Michelangelo, the wooden statue of St Mary Magdalen by Donatello, who was also responsible for the organ loft with a frieze of putti on the right wall of the first room on the first floor. The organ loft on the left wall opposite is by Luca della Robbia. The statues standing against the walls of this room are by, amongst others, Donatello, Nanni di Bartolo and Andrea Pisano. The reliefs in the smaller room next door are mostly by Andrea Pisano and Luca della Robbia. They were originally made for the lower storeys of the Campanile. In Room II are displayed four of Ghiberti's restored gilded bronze panels from the EAST DOORS of the Baptistery (one of these was removed for exhibition in Seville in 1992) and a silver-gilt altar, also from the Baptistery, begun in the 1360s by Florentine goldsmiths and including work by Michelozzo and Antonio del Pollaiuolo. The bust of the Grand Duke Cosimo I over the entrance to the museum is by Giovanni Bandini, who may also have been responsible for the bust of Brunelleschi in the entrance hall. Michelangelo worked on his David in the courtyard (see Chapter 15, note 1).
10. The Piazza della Signoria had more or less assumed its present dimensions by the end of the fourteenth century, when it was paved and heavy traffic was prohibited. This pedestrian area has always been the centre of Florentine political and ceremonial life. Here the popolo met, summoned by the bell in the PALAZZO DELLA SIGNORIA which juts into the eastern side of the piazza. The LOGGIA DEI LANZI stands on the south side; and, in the corner between them, is the UFFIZI. At No. 7 is the PALAZZO UGUCCIONI, and at No. 10 the Tribunale di Mercanzia, which was founded in 1308 and first occupied these premises in 1359. It commissioned the famous Seven Virtues (now in the Uffizi) from Piero del Pollaiuolo for cupboards which contained the records of its affairs. One of the Virtues was, in the event, painted by Botticelli. Like so many regulatory bodies in Florence, the Mercanzia was responsible for the upkeep of various buildings, including, jointly, the ORSANMICHELE.
A fourteenth-century MARZOCCO was the first piece of public sculpture in the piazza. Now a copy of Donatello's Marzocco stands here outside the Palazzo, as does a copy of his JUDITH SLAYING HOLOFERNES, confiscated from the PALAZZO MEDICI in 1494, and a copy of MICHELANGELO'S DAVID, commissioned by the Commune in 1501. Judith and David both served as symbols of Liberty triumphing over oppression. Giambologna made the bronze equestrian statue of Cosimo I in 1595. Cosimo himself ordered the vast FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE. Baccio Bandinelli, whose HERCULES AND CACUS stands in front of the palazzo, entered the competition for the fountain and spitefully damaged the block of marble, still in its quarry, to make the carving difficult.
11. The original Palazzo della Signoria, probably designed by Arnolfo di Cambio, was completed in 1302, its tower, the tallest in the city, in 1310. It has had many names. First known as the Palazzo dei Priori, it was later called the Palazzo
Palazzo della Signoria
del Popolo, then, in the fifteenth century, the Palazzo della Signoria. When it became the Grand Duke Cosimo I's residence, it became the Palazzo Ducale, and when the Medici took over the Palazzo Pitti in 1549, the Palazzo Vecchio. In 1848 and again in 1859, it was the seat of the provisional Italian government, and between 1865 and 1871, it housed the
Italian Foreign Ministry and Chamber of Deputies. It is now the town hall as well as a museum. The west façade is adorned with twenty coats of arms under the machicolation.
The entrance to the palace is on this side. The armless statues on either side of it are by Bandinelli and Vincenzo de' Rossi. Above the portal, two lions guard Christ's monogram. The courtyard was remodelled by Michelozzo in the mid fifteenth century. To the left is the Sala d'Arme; the main portal would originally have opened into this groin-vaulted early-fourteenth-century hall.
Vasari's ceremonial double staircase leads to the first floor and the vast SALA DEL MAGGIOR CONSIGLIO, also known as the Salone del Cinquecento. In the south-east corner of the hall is the STUDIOLO OF FRANCESCO I. Opposite this is a door leading to the Quartiere di Leone X, rebuilt by Vasari. Here are seven rooms all decorated with scenes from the life of the Medici family. In the Sala di Clement VII there is a panoramic view of Florence by Vasari. In the north-western corner of the palace is the Sala dei Dugento, named after the two hundred members of the government who met here. It was remodelled in 1477 by Benedetto and Giuliano da Maiano, who also designed the fine wooden ceiling decorated with rosettes surrounded by fleurs-de-lis.