A Wanderer in FlorenceLucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
History
A Wanderer in Florence
Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Florence (Italy) -- Description and travel
In the room leading out of the second della Robbia room is a collection
of vestments and brocades bequeathed by Baron Giulio Franchetti, where
you may see, dating from as far back as the sixth century, designs
that for beauty and splendour and durability put to shame most of the
stuffs now woven; but the top floor of the Museo Archeologico in the
Via della Colonna is the chief home in Florence of such treasures.
There are other beautiful things in the Bargello of which I have said
nothing--a gallery of mediaeval bells most exquisitely designed, from
famous steeples; cases of carved ivory; and many of such treasures as
one sees at the Cluny in Paris. But it is for its courtyard and for the
Renaissance sculpture that one goes to the Bargello, and returns again
and again to the Bargello, and it is for these that one remembers it.
On returning to London the first duty of every one who has drunk
deep of delight in the Bargello is to visit that too much neglected
treasure-house of our own, the Victoria and Albert Museum at South
Kensington. There may be nothing at South Kensington as fine as the
Bargello's finest, but it is a priceless collection and is superior
to the Bargello in one respect at any rate, for it has a relief
attributed to Leonardo. Here also is an adorable Madonna and laughing
Child, beyond anything in Florence for sheer gaiety if not mischief,
which the South Kensington authorities call a Rossellino but Herr
Bode a Desiderio da Settignano. The room is rich too in Donatello
and in Verrocchio, and altogether it makes a perfect footnote to the
Bargello. It also has within call learned gentlemen who can give
intimate information about the exhibits, which the Bargello badly
lacks. The Louvre and the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin--but
particularly the Kaiser Friedrich since Herr Bode, who has such
a passion for this period, became its director--have priceless
treasures, and in Paris I have had the privilege of seeing the little
but exquisite collection formed by M. Gustave Dreyfus, dominated by
that mirthful Italian child which the Bargello authorities consider to
be by Donatello, but Herr Bode gives to Desiderio. At the Louvre, in
galleries on the ground floor gained through the Egyptian sculpture
section and opened very capriciously, may be seen the finest of
the prisoners from Michelangelo's tomb for Pope Julius; Donatello's
youthful Baptist; a Madonna and Children by Agostino di Duccio, whom
we saw at the Museum of the Cathedral; an early coloured terra-cotta
by Luca della Robbia, and No. 316, a terra-cotta Madonna and Child
without ascription, which looks very like Rossellino.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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