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
Finally there are Van Dyck's very charming portrait of Charles
I of England and Henrietta, a most deft and distinguished work,
and Raphael's famous portrait of Leo X with two companions: rather
dingy, and too like three persons set for the camera, but powerful and
deeply interesting to us, because here we see the first Medici pope,
Leo X, Lorenzo de' Medici's son Giovanni, who gave Michelangelo the
commission for the Medici tombs and the new Sacristy of S. Lorenzo;
and in the young man on the Pope's right hand we see none other
than Giulio, natural son of Giuliano de' Medici, Lorenzo's brother,
who afterwards became Pope as Clement VII. It was he who laid siege
to Florence when Michelangelo was called upon to fortify it; and it
was during his pontificate that Henry VIII threw off the shackles
of Rome and became the Defender of the Faith. Himself a bastard,
Giulio became the father of the base-born Alessandro of Urbino,
first Duke of Florence, who, after procuring the death of Ippolito
and living a life of horrible excess, was himself murdered by his
cousin Lorenzino in order to rid Florence of her worst tyrant. In
his portrait Leo X has an illuminated missal and a magnifying glass,
as indication of his scholarly tastes. That he was also a good liver
his form and features testify.
Of this picture an interesting story is told. After the battle of
Pavia, in 1525, Clement VII wishing to be friendly with the Marquis
of Gonzaga, a powerful ally of the Emperor Charles V, asked him what
he could do for him, and Gonzaga expressed a wish for the portrait
of Leo X, then in the Medici palace. Clement complied, but wishing
to retain at any rate a semblance of the original, directed that the
picture should be copied, and Andrea del Sarto was chosen for that
task. The copy turned out to be so close that Gonzaga never obtained
the original at all.
In the next room--the Sala di Venere, and the last room in the long
suite--we find another Raphael portrait, and another Pope, this time
Julius II, that Pontiff whose caprice and pride together rendered
null and void and unhappy so many years of Michelangelo's life,
since it was for him that the great Julian tomb, never completed, was
designed. A replica of this picture is in our National Gallery. Here
also are a wistful and poignant John the Baptist by Dossi, No. 380;
two Dürers--an Adam and an Eve, very naked and primitive, facing
each other from opposite walls; and two Rubens landscapes not equal
to ours at Trafalgar Square, but spacious and lively. The gem of the
room is a lovely Titian, No. 92, on an easel, a golden work of supreme
quietude and disguised power. The portrait is called sometimes the
Duke of Norfolk, sometimes the "Young Englishman".
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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