Florentines

“ The Fiesolani are not Florentines, people of the valley, but Etruscans, people of the hills, and that you may see in half an hour any day in their windy piazzas and narrow climbing ways. Rough, outspoken, stark men little women keen and full of salt, they have not the assured urbanity of the Florentine, who, while he scorns you in his soul as a barbarian, will trade with you, eat with you, and humour you, certainly without betraying his contempt. ”

“ Of all the legacies for which we have to thank Florence, none are so well known and so universally recognized as the treasures of art created by her sons, many of which yet remain within her walls, the marvel and delight of all who behold them. As the Florentines were ready to try experiments in politics, manufactures, and commerce, so also in all branches of the fine arts they tried experiments, left the old, beaten paths of their forefathers, and created something original, useful, and beautiful for themselves. ”

“ The Florentines in fact did exercise their will upon their art more than any other modern artists, more, perhaps, than any other artists known to us, and their painting and sculpture were the greatest of the modern world. Yet the fact remains that Florentine art declined suddenly and irresistibly, and that all the Florentine intellect, which still remained remarkable and produced men of science like Galileo, could not arrest that decline. ”

“ Your things all have their death even as ye; but it is concealed in some that last long, while lives are short. And as the revolution of the heaven of the Moon covers and uncovers the shores without a pause, so fortune does with Florence. Wherefore what I shall tell of the high Florentines, whose fame is hidden by time, should not appear to thee a marvellous thing. ”

“ The Florentines, on the other hand, had a great enthusiasm for ancient history. They were proud of their descent, and gloried in looking back to a long Etruscan civilisation. When one visits Florence, there is no difficulty in gathering knowledge concerning her great men of any period. Their shadows walk in her streets; their memories will never fade. You meet them everywhere—the painters, the monks, the gallants, the statesmen,—the individualities of the men who were the makers of Florence. The Venetians had no sympathy with the Florentines. ”

“ It being established, therefore, definitely, beyond doubt or cavil, that something had happened, the next great question for the expectant Florentines was, What thing had happened? But the answer to this question was not yet, and in the meantime the expectant Florentines had another matter of interest to consider and to discuss. Through all the noise and babble and brawling of that agitated morning there came a whisper, at first of the very faintest, which breathed insidiously and with much mystery a very amazing piece of news. ”

“ It is rare to find a whole nation possessed of all in an equal measure of perfection. Such, however, were the Florentines. [1] The mere sight of the city and her monuments would suffice to prove this. But we are not reduced to the necessity of divining what Florence was by the inspection of her churches, palaces, and pictures. That marvelous intelligence which was her pride, burned brightly in a long series of historians and annalists, who have handed down to us the biography of the city in volumes as remarkable for penetrative acumen as for definite delineation and dramatic interest. ”

“ Amid the universal corruption of public morals, from the depth of sloth and servitude, when the reality of liberty was lost, when fate and fortune had combined to render constitutional reconstruction impossible for the shattered republics of Italy, the intellect of the Florentines displayed itself with more than its old vigor in a series of the most brilliant political writers who have ever illustrated one short but eventful period in the life of a single nation. ”

“ Here, therefore, and here alone, was created a public capable instinctively of comprehending what is beautiful in art and humane in letters, a race of craftsmen and of scholars who knew that their labours could not fail to be appreciated, and a class of patrons who sought no better bestowal of their wealth than on those arts and sciences which dignify the life of man. The Florentines, moreover, as a nation, were animated with the strongest sense-120- of the greatness and the splendour of Florence. ”

“ The study of bygone Florentines had an interest for me which was quickened by the daily and hourly study of living Florentines. It was curious to mark in them resemblances of character, temperament, idiosyncrasy, defects, and merits, to those of their forefathers who move and breathe before us in the pages of such old chroniclers as Villani, Segni, Varchi, and the rest, and in sundry fire-graven strophes and lines of their mighty poet. Dante's own local and limited characteristics, as distinguished from the universality of his poetic genius, have always seemed to me quintessentially Tuscan. ”

“ But the Florentines do not mind, for they have not the English thirst for entertainment and escape; they carry their entertainment with them and do not wish to escape—going to such places only because they are warmer than out of doors. ”

“ During the said discord among the Florentines, Pope Benedict, with good intent, sent to Florence the Cardinal da Prato as legate to set the Florentines at peace one with another, and likewise with their exiles and all the province of Tuscany; and he came to Florence, on the tenth day of the month of March, 1303, and was received by the Florentines with great honour and with great reverence, as by men who felt themselves to be divided and in evil state; and those which had the disposition and desire to live rightly, loved peace and concord, and it was the contrary with the others. ”

“ The many interesting works of ancient art in Florence, so riveted the attention and occupied the time of our English travellers, that the one subject engrossing the whole attention of the Florentines was for some little time unheeded. The town was full of the unrivalled success of a young sculptor, who had burst into fame, no one knew how or where. He had been studying the last two years, amidst the superb specimens of art, in the galleries of Florence, but so silently, so unassumingly, that he was only known as famous. ”

“ Hence it is said that one day Pope Boniface VIII., seeing that the ambassadors sent to him from different parts of the world were one and all Florentines, quietly remarked, "You Florentines are the fifth element in creation."
It was in the midst of these political conflicts, of this ferment of the human mind, that art and literature rose to such splendour, that the whole world was, as it were, illuminated by the radiance shed by Italian cities, and351 shining most brightly from Florence. The far-reaching energy of this city of commerce and trade was felt almost everywhere ”

“ The front, which was designed to be the most splendid part of the edifice, is a mere plastered wall, because the builders could not decide upon anything rich enough at first, and so left it to their posterity to finish.
The Florentines seem never to sleep except from dinner-time to sunset. All night long they are in the streets, singing and pursuing their amusements. ”

“ For the monodic experiments of the Florentines were the play-things of a set of dilettantes. They were artificial and exotic. They had consciously no use for the true musical tradition, the folk-song, which was living and throbbing among the people. The body was there but the soul was missing. The Florentines were chiefly interested in decorating the lives of the aristocracy, in arranging court masques and private theatricals. Aristocracy is always weak when it exists in opposition to and at the expense of the life of the people, as it did in the decadence of Renaissance Italy. ”

“ The Englishman who visits Florence to inspect her art treasures and to bask in the sunshine of the Lung Arno or the heights of Fiesole is entirely ignorant of its curious complex society—of the blood pride of the Florentines, or of the narrow-minded prejudices of those would-be cosmopolitan Britons, mostly with double-barrelled names, who are residents. Probably there is no circle in all the world so select and so conservative as the society of the aristocratic Florentines. The majority of the princes, marquises, or counts are on the verge of bankruptcy, be it said ”

“ But there was another tradition of those earlier, more serious Florentines, of which Michelangelo is the inheritor, to which he gives the final expression, and which centres in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, as the tradition of the Creation centres in the Sistine Chapel. It has been said that all the great Florentines were preoccupied with death. Outre-tombe! Outre-tombe!—is the burden of their thoughts, from Dante to Savonarola. ”

“ Many of the company had sweet voices; some who came from Genoa, sang the romances of the Provençal minstrels; the Florentines sang the canzones of Dante, or chosen passages from the Teroretto of his master, Ser Brunetto Latini, or indeed stanzas of their own composing, for the Florentines were an ingenious race, and few among the nobles had passed the boundary between youth and age, without having indited more than one sonnet to his mistress's eyebrow: the inhabitants of each separate town had a favourite poet, whose verses they now rehearsed. ”

“ With continual wars on her hands, the101 Countess Matilda could seldom afford any help, and consequently the Florentines, although fighting in her name, were practically left to their own resources. It was this alliance of all classes of citizens, united by identity of interests and singleness of purpose against a common foe, that then constituted the strength of that Florentine people whose loyalty, purity, and valour were so fervently praised by Dante and the chroniclers. This was the moment when virtue laid the foundations of the Commune's future freedom and wealth. ”

“ No art, it would seem at first, is further away than his from all the Florentine traditions, and yet in the decorative colour values, which give distinction to his finest works, he is the child of Florence. The Renaissance attitude towards life itself was highly imaginative, so into visionary art reality was carried. Consulting the origin of all their visions, the Florentines returned imaginatively to what was real. It is the beauty of reality which is the fervour of their great designs, and as a humanist, Sargent is their descendant. ”

“ In order to keep faith with the Guelph party and avoid unnecessarily irritating the Pope or the king, the Florentines sent five hundred horse to the latter's aid; and this contingent, commanded by Count Guido di Battifolle of the Guidi house, and bearing the banner of Florence, took part in the siege of Messina. But the revolution was everywhere triumphant; the Florentines shared in the general defeat, and had to return, leaving their flag in the enemy's hands. ”

“ The Florentines, knowing themselves to be in number of their horsemen not much superior to those of the Emperor, and being without a captain, did not desire to try the fortune of battle, believing that they could hinder the Emperor by reason of the difficult pass, so that he could not get through to Florence. The Emperor seeing that the Florentines were not willing to fight, by counsel of the wise men of war, refugees from Florence, took the way of the hill above Ancisa, and by narrow and difficult ways passed the fortress and came out on the side towards Florence. ”

“ Indeed, to judge from Lord G.'s account, Florence—to use his own words—is "the most advanced city in Europe;" that is to say, the Florentines take a higher and more ample view of social philosophy than any other people. The erring individual in our country is always treated like the wounded crow,—the whole rookery is down upon him at once. Not so here; he—or she, to speak more properly—is tenderly treated and compassionated; all the little blandishments of society showered on her. She is made to feel that the world is really not that ill-natured thing sour moralists would describe it ”

“ But in the case of the Florentines, the distinction is of vital consequence, for they have been the artists in Europe who have most resolutely set themselves to work upon the specific problems of the art of figure-painting, and have neglected, more than any other school, to call to their aid the secondary pleasures of association. ”

“ Leon Battista Alberti died in Rome in 1472, and no stone marks the spot where one of the greatest Florentines lies, though one of his descendants put up a monument to him in Florence.
“He indeed might serve,” writes Symonds, “as the very type of those many-sided, precocious and comprehensive men of genius who only existed in the Renaissance. Physical strength and dexterity were given to him at birth in measure equal to his mental faculties. ”

“ Thewinter passed away, and with the summer the toils of the soldier began. Castruccio left Lucca, and joined the army of Uguccione against the Florentines. He took leave of his lady; yet she neither tied the scarf around him, nor bade him go and prosper. Florence was her native town; and love of their country was a characteristic of all Florentines. There was in that city an energy of spirit, which panting to expand itself, sought for new emotions, or exalted those that were before felt, until each sentiment became a passion. The Florentines were patriots ”