Basilica of Santa Croce

“ I have not yet seen a finished church, even the Duomo has no façade.
Yesterday we visited the Palazzo Mozzi to see Benvenuto's picture, "The Night after the Battle of Jena." Then several churches—the Santa Croce, which is hallowed ground: the Annonciata, celebrated for the frescos of Andrea del Sarto; and the Carmine, which pleased me by the light elegance of its architecture, and its fine alto-relievos in white marble. In this church is the chapel of the Madonna del Carmele, painted by Masuccio, and the most ancient frescos extant: they are curious rather than beautiful, and going to decay. ”

“ And indeed we are far enough away from the clustering odds and ends borrowed from every art and every province without which the ritually builded thing doesn’t trust its spell to work in Rome. The vastness, the lightness, the open spring of the arches at Santa Croce, the beautiful shape of the high and narrow choir, the impression made as of mass without weight and the gravity yet reigning without gloom—these are my frequent delight, and the interest grows with acquaintance. ”

“ It is a beautiful edifice, and can boast in the interior of it several columns and pilasters of jaune antique and of white marble. But they have a most barbarous custom in Florence of covering these columns with red cloth on jours de Fête, which spoils the elegant simplicity of the columns and makes the church itself resemble a théâtre des Marionnettes. But the Italians are dreadfully fond of gaudy colours. In the church of Santa Croce what most engaged my attention was the monument erected to Vittorio Alfieri, sculptured by Canova. It is a most beautiful piece of sculpture. ”

“ In the same church of S. Croce there are in addition a crucifix above the marble tomb of Carlo Marzuppini of Arezzo, Our Lady with St John and the Magdalene at the foot of the cross, and opposite on the other side of the building an Annunciation towards the high altar over the tomb of Lionardo Aretino, which has been restored by modern artists with great lack of judgment. In the refectory he has done the history of St Louis, a Last Supper, and a Tree of the Cross, while the presses of the sacristy are decorated with some scenes from the lives of Christ and of St Francis in small figures. ”

“ It contains a monument by Luca della Robbia, and some splendid mural paintings, depicting the career of St Francis, by Ghirlando. There are more paintings by this master in the Franciscan church of Ognissanti.
Santa Croce is a great burial-place, rich in monuments of illustrious Florentines. Michael Angelo’s tomb is here, and near to it is the resting-place of Galileo. A monument to Dante, the tomb of Alfieri, by Canova, the memorials of Machiavelli, Aretino, Cherubino, and many others are in this building. ”

“ Behind the high-altar in the monks' choir is an important picture by Girolamo da Santa Croce (1549) . It consists of ten panels. In the upper row the centre is occupied by a Madonna and Child surrounded by child angels, flanked by SS. Helena and Scolastica, beyond whom are SS. Catherine and Mary Magdalene. In the centre of the lower row is S. Francis in ecstasy, with SS. Antonio and Bernardino, flanked by S. Doimo (with the city of Spalato) and S. Louis of Toulouse, beyond whom are SS. John the Baptist and Jerome. In the gable of a much restored frame is a dove. ”

“ Lorenzo, also with a white interior and grey pillars, containing some fine oil paintings, and the chapel of the Medici, a splendid structure, decorated with costly stones, and monuments of several members of the royal family.
St. Croce, a handsome church, full of monuments of eminent men, is also called the Italian Pantheon; the sculptures are beautiful, and the paintings good. The remains of Michael Angelo rest here, and the Buonaparte family possess a vault beneath a side chapel. Another chapel of considerable size contains some exquisite statues of white marble. ”

“ All his works in the cities of North Italy, however, have perished, and it is to Florence that we must turn for the third and last remaining cycle of his frescos.
The great Franciscan church of Santa Croce had been erected in the last years of the thirteenth century, and the proudest Florentine families hastened to build chapels at their own expense as a mark of their devotion to the popular saint. Four of these chapels were decorated with frescos by Giotto's hand, but were all whitewashed in 1714, when Santa Croce underwent a thorough restoration. ”

“ As in Santa Croce, it is cut across by a line of chapels, thus giving the whole a T shape, and what represents the apse is merely a deeper and taller recess behind the high altar. There is nothing much to interest us here in the nave or aisles, save, by the side of the central door, one of [361] the very few extant works of Masaccio, a fresco representing the Blessed Trinity adored by the Madonna and St. John, with two kneeling donors–portraits of which no amount of restoration can altogether destroy the truth and grandeur. ”

“ In like manner this artist painted the principal chapel of the church of Santa Croce, in fresco, for the noble family of the Alberti, representing every circumstance of the discovery of the cross; and the work certainly displays considerable facility, but very little force of design, the colouring only being good and tolerably well done. ”

“ I know that your heart has never clung to earthly vanities, and that you only wait till God has called me to Himself to withdraw to the convent of Santa Maria delta Croce, founded by yourself in the hope that you might there end your days. Far be it from me to dissuade you from your sacred vocation, when I am myself descending into the tomb and am conscious of the nothingness of all human greatness. ”

“ Here there were benches and women seated, a worldly warmth and cosiness under the luxurious, gilded, carved, and painted roof, whose tawny splendour is very fine now that time has toned down the eccentricities of the decoration. But how many of the churches were empty, among them some of the most ancient and venerable, San Clemente, Sant' Agnese, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, where during the offices one saw but a few believers of the neighbourhood. Four hundred churches were a good many for even Rome to people ”

“ The scene is the interior of a temple, an altar with the statue of the god Mars: a serpent, creeping from beneath the altar, slays the attendants with his poisonous and fiery breath. The ancient fresco in his chapel at Padua, described by Lord Lindsay, is extremely animated, but far inferior to the same subject in the Santa Croce at Florence by Fra Filippo Lippi, where the dignified attitude of the apostle, and the group of the king’s son dying in the arms of the attendants, are admirably effective and dramatic. St. Philip, it must be observed, was the patron saint of the painter. ”

“ Santa Croce is, in the words of the late Dean of Westminster, "the recognised shrine of Italian genius." On the pavement beneath our feet, outstretched on their tombstones, lie effigies of grave Florentine citizens, friars of note, prelates, scholars, warriors; in their robes of state or of daily life, in the Franciscan garb or in armour, with arms folded across their breasts, or still clasping the books they loved and wrote (in this way the humanists, such as Leonardo Bruni, were laid out in state after death) ”

“ During the lifetime of Dante, the town began to transform itself and to prepare for becoming the glorious Florence of the Renaissance artists. It then set about building two [Pg 95] immense and beautiful churches—Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella—while, shortly after, it grew to be ashamed of its tiny San Giovanni (the existing Baptistery) , and girded itself up to raise a superb cathedral, which should cast into the shade both the one long since finished at maritime Pisa and the one then still rising to completion on the height of Siena. ”

“ The spring now has turned to perfect summer; there are cascades of verdure over all the walls; the early flowers are a fading memory, and the new grass knee-deep in the Villa Borghese. The winter aspect of the region about the Lateran is one of the best things in Rome; the sunshine is nowhere so golden and the lean shadows nowhere so purple as on the long grassy walk to Santa Croce. But yesterday I seemed to see nothing but green and blue. The expanse before Santa Croce was vivid green; the Campagna rolled away in great green billows, which seemed to break high about the gaunt aqueducts ”

“ The great artist is dead: let us leave him to his rest in Santa Croce, the Westminster Abbey of his city and the church of his ward.
Vasari received from Lionardo Buonarroti the commission to design the tomb for Santa Croce. He did his best to get the Pietà now in the Duomo to serve as the principal part of the monument, asserting that it had been intended by Michael Angelo for his monument. "Besides, there is an old man in the group who represents the sculptor." ”

“ The Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, on the Esquiline Hill, near the railway station, is one of the four chief Basilicas of Rome, and well repays a visit. It gives one more the idea of what a Basilica was really meant to be than any similar edifice in Rome. The richly painted panels, the interior colonnade with its long harmonious rows of pillars, the clerestory decorated en suite with small pilasters and panels, and the beautiful panelled roof, all combine to give the building an air of lofty and noble magnificence. ”

“ One of these was in the cloisters of San Benedetto, outside Florence; another was in those of Santa Croce, and represented the Flagellation of Christ. All these works are dispersed or lost, some of them being ascribed to other masters, as that of Santa Croce, for example, which is attributedal Castagno. ”