Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second EditionHutton, Edward
History
Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition
Hutton, Edward
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Genoa (Italy) -- History; Tuscany (Italy) -- Description and travel
There are but six figures in the whole picture, and it is just this
spaciousness, perhaps, earth and sky counting for so much, that makes
this work so delightful. For it is not from the figures at all that we
receive the profoundly religious impression that this picture makes upon
all who look unhurriedly upon it; but from the earth and sky, where in
the infinite clear space God dwells, no longer hanging upon a Cross
tortured by men who have unthinkably made so terrible a mistake, but
joyful in His heaven, moving in every living thing He has made; visible
only in the invisible wind that passes over the streams suddenly at
evening, or subtly makes musical the trees at dawn, walking as of old in
His garden, where one day maybe we shall meet Him face to face.
Turning down Via di Pinti to the left, and then to the right along Via
Alfani, we pass another desecrated monastery in S. Maria degli Angioli,
once a famous house of the monks of Camaldoli. This monastery has
suffered many violations, and is scarcely worth a visit, perhaps, unless
it be to see the fresco of Andrea del Castagno in the cloister, and to
remind ourselves that here, in the fifteenth century, Don Ambrogio
Traversari used to lecture in the humanities, a cynical remembrance
enough to-day.
If we take the second street to the right, Via de' Servi, we shall come
at once into the beautiful Piazza della Santissima Annunziata. Before us
is the desecrated convent of the Servites, now turned into a school, and
the Church of SS. Annunziata itself, now the most fashionable church in
Florence. On the left and right are the beautiful arcades of
Brunellesco, decorated by the della Robbia; the building on the left is
now used for private houses, that on the right is the Ospedale degli
Innocenti. The equestrian statue was made by Giovanni da Bologna, and
represents Ferdinando I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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