Nice Statues – Shame about the Facades… 16/04/2011
Posted by florencecapital in Uncategorized.Tags: Facades, San Lorenzo, Statues
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c. 1800 relating to a visit at the end of the eighteenth century
Few cities in Europe of the same size as Florence offer so fine a field of amusement to those who are fond of churches, palaces, public buildings. But the lovers of architecture will be shocked to find several of the finest churches without fronts, which, according to some, is owing to a real deficiency of money; while others assert, they are left in this condition as a pretext for levying contributions to finish them. The chapel of St. Lorenzo is, perhaps, the finest and most expensive habitation that ever was reared for the dead. It is encrusted with precious stones, and adorned with tlic workmanship of the best modern sculptors. Some complain that it has a gloomy appearance. There seems to be no impropriety in that, considering what the building was intended for.
The statues which ornament the streets and squares of Florence amount to about one hundred and fifty; many of them of exquisite workmanship, and admired by those of the best taste. Churches, and palaces, and statues are no doubt ornamental to a city; and the princes are praiseworthy who have taken pains to rear and collect them; but the greatest of all ornaments are cheerful happy living countenances. The taste is not general; but there are some people, who, to a perfect knowledge and unaffected love of the fine arts, join a passion for a collection of this kind, who cannot without uneasiness see one face in a different style, and whose lives and fortunes are employed in smoothing the corrosions of penury and misfortune, and restoring the onginal air of satisfaction and cheerfulness ro the human countenance. Happy the people whose sovereign is inspired with this species of vertu!
Il giro in Florence 15/01/2011
Posted by florencecapital in Uncategorized.Tags: 1880-1900, Accademia, Baptism, Baptistery, Botticelli, Duomo, Flea Markets, Fra Angelico, Giotto's Campanile, Girolamo Savonarola, Palatine, Pitti, Ponte di Lima, San Lorenzo, San Marco, Santa Croce, Uffizi, Views of Florence, Weddings
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c. 1880
We have spent two mornings in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries, one in each. The latter is now called the ‘Palatine’. When I was here in 1870 admittance was free as air, whereas now, as in every museum or ancient building, a franc each is the fee. But these galleries are always crowded and, indeed, the sum is very small as compared with prices in America, and considering the richness of the collections. There are pictures in these galleries which I can shut my eyes and see, and which are a great joy to me. This time we have given more attention than ever before to Fra Angelico and Botticelli the latter on account of an article on his works in a late Harper. But your sisters have for some time been reading up for this week, which is, as the theatre people say, their ‘benefit’, and which they richly deserve. I do wish them to get the best of Italy so that in case of their removal to America they may have stored in their memories precious pictures in abundance of this land of art and beauty.
One morning was given to Santa Croce, the Westminster Abbey of Italy, and yesterday morning to San Marco, with the wonderful frescoes of Fra Angelico in the convent there, now a government museum, and the cell from which Savonarola went forth to die. It never seemed so real to me before. An hour was given also to the church of San Lorenzo, with its double-starred new sacristy and Medici chapel. Tomorrow we must go to the Academy of the Belle Arti. Of course, we have given due attention to the Duomo and Giotto’s Tower and the Baptistery. The Duomo is now resplendent in its facade completed only last year. At the Baptistery we witnessed an infant sprinkling (what a contradiction in that place!), and at San Lorenzo witnessed a bridal procession issue as we entered. There was a wealth of lovely bouquets fastened to the doors of the carriages, but the bride seemed neither young nor beautiful. Two afternoons we have sauntered on Lung’ Arno, looking at the pretty bric-a-brac in this capital of brica-bracdom, and one bright clear afternoon we rode in a carriage on the famous and beautiful ride over the hills of San Miniato, enjoying a lovely view of the city, river and encircling hills. This paper was made at Ponte di Lima, about three miles from Cutigliano, where also the government stamp paper is made.
The Cat Woman 26/12/2010
Posted by florencecapital in Uncategorized.Tags: Cats, Eccentrics, Lung'Arno Nuovo, San Lorenzo, Via Ricasoli
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c. 1890
Now an odd creature approaches, and pauses to feed the cats with a dainty morsel taken from a capacious pocket. She is the English woman so familiar to Florence, and more mad than forestieri are usually supposed to be. The cats are her sole care. Poveretta! Some affair of the heart turned her brain in early maidenhood. Let her have her own way in peace. It is all the same to cat and citizen. The insane woman has a round, white, and vacant face, curiously resembling the physiognomy of Maggy in Little Dorrit. She wears a faded gown of a bygone fashion, a hoop-skirt, a flowered shawl, and a large poke bonnet of yellow straw, with the ribbons of white watered silk floating over her shoulders. She might have emerged from a woodcut of Cruikshank, in a city where eccentric waifs of all nationalities abound. The cats receive their gifts capriciously.
The vegetable-woman smiles compassionately. Surely it is an indication of remarkable refinement in a people, that no one mocks at nor molests her footsteps with an attendant, jeering rabble of boys, as might so readily happen in the large capitals of the world. Here is a limit to the street Arab’s witticisms, who sang beneath the windows of the archiepiscopal palace, when Pope Martin V was lodged there in an hour of misfortune, that he was not worth a penny, thereby laying up a future grudge of affronted dignity for the Flower City in the mind of the pontiff. The English woman rambles on, with the purposeless movements of an unsettled mind. Doubtless she will find her way to that palace courtyard of the Lung’ Arno Nuovo, which is a startling feline nightmare, where heads peer out of the shrubbery in every stage of cathood. Nor will she return home without pausing at the cloister of the Church of San Lorenzo, where homeless animals receive municipal bounty on occasion, possibly in imitation of the hospital once existing near the Gate of Victory at Cairo.
The Statue of Lorenzo de’ Medici by James Ernest Nesmith 21/12/2010
Posted by florencecapital in Uncategorized.Tags: 1880-1900, James Ernest Nesmith, Lorenzo de' Medici (Urbino), Michaelangelo, Poems, Renaissance, San Lorenzo
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James Ernest Nesmith (obit 1898) was a nineteenth-century New England poet. This poem was published in 1894 in Philoctetes and Other Poems and Sonnets.
Mark me how still I am – The sound of feet
Unnumbered echoing through this vaulted hall,
Or voices harsh, on me unheeded fall,
Placed high in my memorial niche and seat,
In cold and marble meditation meet
Among proud tombs and pomp funereal
Of rich sarcophagi and sculptured wall,
In death’s elaborate elect retreat.
I was a Prince, this monument was wrought
That I in honor might eternal stand;
In vain, subdued by Buonarroti’s hand.
The conscious stone is pregnant with his thought;
He to this brooding rock his fame devised,
And he, not I, is here immortalized.