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
Returning to the first room--the Sala of the Iliad--we enter the Sala
dell' Educazione di Giove, and find on the left a little gipsy portrait
by Boccaccio Boccaccino (1497-1518) which has extraordinary charm:
a grave, wistful, childish face in a blue handkerchief: quite a new
kind of picture here. I reproduce it in this volume, but it wants
its colour. For the rest, the room belongs to less-known and later
men, in particular to Cristofano Allori (1577-1621), with his famous
Judith, reproduced in all the picture shops of Florence. This work is
no favourite of mine, but one cannot deny it power and richness. The
Guido Reni opposite, in which an affected fat actress poses as
Cleopatra with the asp, is not, however, even tolerable.
We next pass, after a glance perhaps at the adjoining tapestry room
on the left (where the bronze Cain and Abel are), the most elegant
bathroom imaginable, fit for anything rather than soap and splashes,
and come to the Sala di Ulisse and some good Venetian portraits:
a bearded senator in a sable robe by Paolo Veronese, No. 216, and,
No. 201, Titian's fine portrait of the ill-fated Ippolito de'
Medici, son of that Giuliano de' Medici, Duc de Nemours, whose
tomb by Michelangelo is at S. Lorenzo. This amiable young man was
brought up by Leo X until the age of twelve, when the Pope died,
and the boy was sent to Florence to live at the Medici palace,
with the base-born Alessandro, under the care of Cardinal Passerini,
where he remained until Clarice de' Strozzi ordered both the boys to
quit. In 1527 came the third expulsion of the Medici from Florence,
and Ippolito wandered about until Clement VII, the second Medici
Pope, was in Rome, after the sack, and, joining him there, he was,
against his will, made a cardinal, and sent to Hungary: Clement's idea
being to establish Alessandro (his natural son) as Duke of Florence,
and squeeze Ippolito, the rightful heir, out. This, Clement succeeded
in doing, and the repulsive and squalid-minded Alessandro--known as
the Mule--was installed. Ippolito, in whom this proceeding caused
deep grief, settled in Bologna and took to scholarship, among other
tasks translating part of the Aeneid into Italian blank verse;
but when Clement died and thus liberated Rome from a vile tyranny,
he was with him and protected his corpse from the angry mob. That
was in 1534, when Ippolito was twenty-seven. In the following year
a number of exiles from Florence who could not endure Alessandro's
offensive ways, or had been forced by him to fly, decided to appeal
to the Emperor Charles V for assistance against such a contemptible
ruler; and Ippolito headed the mission; but before he could reach the
Emperor an emissary of Alessandro's succeeded in poisoning him. Such
was Ippolito de' Medici, grandson of the great Lorenzo, whom Titian
painted, probably when he was in Bologna, in 1533 or 1534.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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