Domenico

“ Domenico lived in Savona till 1484. At that time his wife and his son Giovanni were dead, Giacomo was an apprentice, learning the weaver's trade, Christopher and Bartholomew had long been domiciled in Portugal, the daughter had married a cheese merchant in Genoa, and to that city Domenico returned in the autumn of 1484, and lived there until his death, at a great age, in 1499 or 1500. He was always in pecuniary difficulties, and died poor and in debt, though his sons seem to have sent him from Portugal and Spain such money as they could spare. ”

“ Fra Domenico was seen coming out of the Palace again, and returning to his brethren. He had changed all his clothes with a brother monk, but he was guarded on each flank by a Franciscan, lest coming into the vicinity of Savonarola he should be enchanted again.
"Ah, then," thought the distant spectators, a little less conscious of cramped limbs and hunger, "Fra Domenico is not going to enter the fire. It is Fra Girolamo who offers himself after all. We shall see him move presently, and if he comes out of the flames we shall have a fine view of him!" ”

“ And they told him that a faintness had come over him as would often happen in the pulpit, and that so insensible he had been brought to the Convent.
“Truly,” said Frà Domenico, with love beaming in his eyes, “this was the day of your glory–for all the vanities in Florence were burnt to ashes–yes, even to nothingness was all that wantonness reduced.”
Girolamo Savonarola looked at Frà Domenico, then at his own body.
“To ashes, to nothingness!” he murmured. “Oh, God, make the spirit strong!” ”

“ Domenico, meanwhile, led Anina out of the house, to the verge of the hill, inquiring whether she intended to go. On her saying to Albano, he observed, “That were hardly safe; be guided by me, I entreat you: take these piastres, hire the first conveyance you find, hasten to Rome, to the convent of Santa Chiara: for pity’s sake, do not linger in this neighbourhood.”
“I will obey your injunctions, Domenico,” she replied, “but I cannot take your money; it has cost you too dear: fear not, I shall arrive safely at Rome without that ill-fated silver.” ”

“ And besides the weaving of wool and pouring of wine and buying and selling of land, there were more human occupations, which Domenico was not the man to neglect. He had married, about the year 1450, one Susanna, a daughter of Giacomo of Fontana-Rossa, a silk weaver who lived in the hamlet near to Terra-Rossa. Domenico’s father was of the more consequence of the two, for he had, as well as his home in the valley, a house at Quinto, where he probably kept a felucca for purposes of trade with Alexandria and the Islands. ”

“ Padre Domenico has had his cross to bear with us, all this time; it is not like what usually makes crosses for people. He mourns over having plenty to eat, having windows which keep the weather out, having chairs to sit on, and tables to sit at, and longs to be in his house, which I suppose will not have much of all this to trouble him. ”

“ Here Domenico has shown the water, flowing as a river throughout the whole length of the frieze, and from this the people are drinking in attitudes which are varied to infinity, exhibiting a vivacity and animation so pleasing and so lifelike that no figures could possibly display more graceful, more beautiful, or more elegant movements than we find in this story. ”

“ As he lay ill, the Tornabuoni sent him a hundred ducats of gold as a gift, proving their regard and particular friendship for Domenico in return for his unceasing labours in the service of Giovanni and of his house. Domenico lived forty-four years, and he was buried with beautiful obsequies in S. Maria Novella by his brothers David and Benedetto and his son Ridolfo, amid much weeping and sorrowful regrets. The loss of so great a man was a great grief to his friends; and many excellent foreign painters, hearing that he was dead, wrote to his relatives lamenting his most untimely death. ”

“ We were so unfortunate as to possess an excellent steward,—Domenico by name, Neapolitan by birth,—who, with the most earnest endeavours to do right, and with the most anxious activity in so doing, always contrived to understand everything à travers, and who, therefore, by his misplaced zeal and energy, often drove us to the verge of distraction by his well-intentioned but unlucky efforts. ”

“ Neither did it occur to Domenico's mind that the existence of the old gods might be a mere invention, or a mere delusion of the heathen. For all their classic culture, the men of the fifteenth century, as the men of the thirteenth for all their scholasticism, were in an intellectual condition such as we rarely meet with nowadays among educated persons; and Domenico, a mere handicraftsman, had not learned from the study of Cicero and Plato to examine and understand the difference between reality and fiction. ”

“ But let us say something of Domenico, before we come to the work of the said chapel. Before coming to Florence, Domenico had painted some pictures with much grace in the Sacristy of S. Maria at Loreto, in company with Piero della Francesca; which pictures, besides what he had wrought in other places (such as an apartment in the house of the Baglioni in Perugia, which is now in ruins) , had made his fame known in Florence. ”

“ Take care and do not tempt Heaven; remember the flesh is weak." Father Domenico withdrew his hand quickly. "Do not say that," he cried; "the flesh is strong!" and turned away his face. His eyes were glistening and he shook all over. "Some quinine," I ordered. But I felt it was no case for quinine. Prayers might be more useful, and could I have given them he should not have wanted. Last night I was suddenly sent for to Father Domenico's monastery above Montemirto: they told me he was ill. I ran up through the dim twilight of moonbeams and olives with a sinking heart. ”

“ Other works have been performed by Domenico, in Verona, Vicenza, and Venice, but it shall suffice me to have mentioned the above. He is an upright man and an excellent artist, well versed, not in painting only, but in music also; Domenico is indeed an accomplished musician, and among the most distinguished members of the truly noble Academy of the Philharmonists in Verona. ”

“ But at this moment the remembrance of this fact came as a great light into Domenico's soul. For what were these statues save the idols of the heathens; and what wonder they should be divinely beautiful, when those who made them might see the gods in visions?
This explanation, which to us must sound far-fetched and fantastic, knowing, as we do, the real reason that made a people of athletes into a people of sculptors, savoured of no strangeness to a man of the Middle Ages. ”

“ This chapel was held to be a very beautiful work, grand, ornate, and lovely, through the vivacity of the colours, through the masterly finish in their application on the walls, and because very little retouching was done on the dry, not to mention the invention and the composition of the subjects. And in truth Domenico deserves the greatest praise on all accounts, particularly for the liveliness of the heads, which, being portrayed from nature, present to every eye most lifelike effigies of many distinguished persons. ”

“ Did I ever mention to you Father Domenico of Casoria, the confessor of our Convent of the Stigmata? A young man, tall, emaciated with fasts and vigils, but handsome like the monk playing the virginal in Giorgione's "Concert," and under his brown serge still the most stalwart fellow of the country all round? One has heard of men struggling with the tempter. Well, well, Father Domenico had struggled as hard as any of the Anchorites recorded by St. ”

“ To this Fra Francesco replied that he would enter fire with Fra Domenico; that he fully expected to be burnt, but that he would willingly suffer if he could disabuse the people of their false idol. Popular excitement rose to such a height that the Signoria sent for both disputants, and made them sign a written agreement to undergo the ordeal. In this Fra Francesco wisely provided that, although he was willing to enter fire with Savonarola himself, if Domenico was to act he would only produce a champion, who was readily found in the person of Fra Giuliano Rondinelli. ”

“ The abbot, who had already gone to bed, arose on hearing the clamour, believing the monastery to be falling down, and finding the monk in a bad condition, began to reproach David. But the latter replied in a fury, bidding him begone from his sight, and declaring the talents of Domenico to be worth more than all the hogs of abbots of his sort that had ever inhabited the monastery. The abbot being thus brought to his senses, did his best from that moment to treat them like honourable men as they were. ”

“ Meanwhile Sebastiano della Seta, the Warden of Works of the Duomo, having heard from Cervelliera of the qualities and abilities of Domenico, and being desirous to finish the work so long delayed by Giovanni Antonio Sogliani, allotted two of the pictures for that recess to Domenico, to the end that he might execute them at Siena and send them finished to Pisa; and so it was done. In one is Moses, who, having found that the people had sacrificed to the Golden Calf, is breaking the Tables; and in this Domenico painted some nudes that are figures of great beauty. ”

“ Next, by reason of the fame of these works, there was allotted to Domenico an altar-piece that was to be placed in the Carmine, in which he had to paint a S. Michael doing vengeance on Lucifer; and he, being full of fancy, set himself to think out a new invention, in order to display his talent and the beautiful conceptions of his brain. ”

“ Domenico seems to have been a great and versatile artist, a worker in glass,12 as well as in marble, and above all famous for his skill in woodcarving and inlay. The restorations of his work here, which have evidently been frequent, have robbed it of very much of the charm, which we feel so strongly in his inlaid panels in the Palazzo Pubblico Chapel, but there is still a naïve originality about the designs, which cannot fail to show his high merit. ”

“ But to return to the beautiful works of Domenico. In the ceiling of this chapel he first painted colossal figures of the four Evangelists, and on the wall wherein is the window, he depicted stories representing San Domenico, San Pietro the Martyr, and San Giovanni, proceeding into the Wilderness, with Our Lady receiving the annunciation from the Angel: over the window are certain Saints (the patrons of Florence) on their knees, and beneath is the portrait of Giovanni Tornabuoni on the right hand, with that of his wife on the left, both said to be exact likenesses. ”

“ Her prayers are daily put up for Domenico’s soul, and she hopes, through the intercession of the Virgin, to rejoin him in the other world.
“Andrea is very old; he has outlived the memory of his sufferings; but he derives comfort from the filial attentions of his surviving daughter. But when I look at his cottage on this lake, and remember the happy laughing face of Anina among the vines, I shudder at the recollection of the passion that has made her cheeks pale, her thoughts for ever conversant with death, her only wish to find repose in the grave.” ”

“ Domenico, brother to Ruberto, was a friend of Cosimo the Elder, who employed him in many embassies, and in 1476 he was Gonfalonier of Justice, one of the nine the family gave to Florence, besides thirty Priors. His son Braccio was among the first of the adherents of the Medici to turn against them when Piero fled the city. He then became one of the Dieci di Guerra, in 1495 he was Commissary of the war against Siena, and later of the siege of Pisa. Pietro, his son, a munificent patron of men of letters, had a considerable reputation as a mathematician. ”

“ But since the crime that he had committed against Domenico, who loved him so, became known a short time after his death, it was with shameful obsequies that he was buried in S. Maria Nuova, where, at the age of fifty-six, the unhappy Domenico had also been buried. ”

“ This friendship, therefore, on the one side feigned, on the other sincere, proceeding to intimacy, Domenico, who was very fond of music, and played on the lute, passed the greater part of his evenings with Andrea, when they amused themselves in company, or went together to serenade their “inamorate;” all which greatly delighted Domenico, who sincerely regarding Andrea, instructed him in the method of painting in oil, which was at that time not known in Tuscany. ”

“ For this work, as Domenico was becoming old, he called in the aid of Capanna, a Sienese painter, and a tolerably good artist, by whom many fronts of buildings, in his native city, were decorated in chiaro-scuro, and many pictures painted. It may indeed be supposed, if we may judge from the little left by this master, that, had his life been of longer continuance, he would have done much honour to his art. [31] Domenico had painted a canopy in oil, for the brotherhood of Arezzo, an exceedingly rich and costly work. ”

“ In this work Domenico proved himself to be no less able in. sculpture than in painting; he had fixed the group above described on a platform of wood-work four braccia high, and within this had arranged a series of wheels, which, being worked by men concealed among them, caused the whole to move forward, the design of Domenico being that this horse, having been made to move as we have said, should accompany his Majesty on his entrance into the city, and having attended him even to the portal of the palace of the Signoria, should then halt and remain fixed in the centre of the Piazza. ”