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
We then come again to the Choir, with Ghirlandaio's urbane Florentine
pageant in the guise of sacred history, and pass on to the next chapel,
the Cappella Gondi, where that crucifix in wood is to be seen which
Brunelleschi carved as a lesson to Donatello, who received it like
the gentleman he was. I have told the story in Chapter XV.
The left transept ends in the chapel of the Strozzi family, of which
Filippo was the head in his day, and here we find Andrea Orcagna and
his brother's fresco of Heaven, the Last Judgment and Hell. It was
the two Orcagnas who, according to Vasari, had covered the Choir with
those scenes in the life of the Virgin which Ghirlandaio was allowed
to paint over, and Vasari adds that the later artist availed himself
of many of the ideas of his predecessors. This, however, is not
very likely, I think, except perhaps in choice of subject. Orcagna,
like Giotto, and later, Michelangelo, was a student of Dante, and
the Strozzi chapel frescoes follow the poet's descriptions. In the
Last Judgment, Dante himself is to be seen, among the elect, in the
attitude of prayer. Petrarch is with him.
The sacristy is by Talenti (of the Campanile) and was added in
1350. Among its treasures once were the three reliquaries painted
by Fra Angelico, but they are now at S. Marco. It has still rich
vestments, fine woodwork, and a gay and elaborate lavabo by one of
the della Robbias, with its wealth of ornament and colour and its
charming Madonna and Child with angels.
A little doorway close by used to lead to the cloisters, and a
mercenary sacristan was never far distant, only too ready to unlock for
a fee what should never have been locked, and black with fury if he got
nothing. But all this has now been done away with, and the entrance
to the cloisters is from the Piazza, just to the left of the church,
and there is a turnstile and a fee of fifty centimes. At S. Lorenzo the
cloisters are free. At the Carmine and the Annunziata the cloisters
are free. At S. Croce the charge is a lira and at S. Maria Novella
half a lira. To make a charge for the cloisters alone seems to me
utterly wicked. Let the Pazzi Chapel at S. Croce and the Spanish
Chapel here have fees, if you like; but the cloisters should be open
to all. Children should be encouraged to play there.
Since, however, S. Maria Novella imposes a fee we must pay it,
and the new arrangement at any rate carries this advantage with it,
that one knows what one is expected to pay and can count on entrance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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