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
Passing out of the SS. Annunziata into S. Maria degli Innocenti, we come
to a beautiful picture by Domenico Ghirlandajo in the great altarpiece,
the Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1488. Though scarcely so lovely as
the Adoration of the Shepherds in the Accademia, perhaps spoiled a
little by over cleaning and restoration, it is one of the most simple
and serene pictures in Florence. The predella to this picture is in the
Ospedale; it represents the Marriage of the Virgin, the Presentation in
the Temple, the Baptism and Entombment of Our Lord. There, too, is a
replica of the Madonna of Lippo Lippi in the Uffizi.
The Ospedale degli Innocenti was founded in 1421 by the Republic, urged
thereto by that Leonardo Bruni who is buried in S. Croce in the tomb by
Rossellino. It appears to have been already open in 1450, and was
apparently under the government of the Guild of Silk, for their arms are
just by the door. It is said to have been the first of its kind in
Europe; originally meant for the reception of illegitimate
children--Leonardo da Vinci, for instance--it is to-day ready to receive
any poor little soul who has come unwanted into the world; it cares for
more than a thousand of such every year.
Passing out of Piazza degli SS. Annunziata through Via di Sapienza into
Piazza di S. Marco, we pass the desecrated convent of the Dominicans,
where Savonarola, Fra Antonino, and Fra Angelico lived, now a museum on
the right; and passing to the right into Via Cavour, come at No. 69 to
the Chiostro dello Scalzo. This is a cloister belonging to the
Brotherhood of St. John, which was suppressed in the eighteenth century.
The Brotherhood of St. John seems to have come about in this way. When
Frate Elias, who succeeded S. Francesco as Minister of the Franciscan
Order, began to rule after his own fashion, the Order was divided into
two parts, consisting of those who followed the Rule and those who did
not. The first were called Observants, the second Conventuals. The
Osservanti, or Observants, remained poor, and observed all the fasts;
perhaps their greatest, certainly their most widely known Vicar-General
was S. Bernardino of Siena. In France the Osservanti were known as the
Recollects, and the reform there having been introduced by John de la
Puebla, a Spaniard, about 1484, these brethren were known as the
Brotherhood of John, or Discalced Friars. In Italy they were called
Riformati. All this confusion is now at an end, for Leo XIII, in the
Constitution "Felicitate quadam," in 1897 joined all the Observants into
one family, giving them again the most ancient and beautiful of their
names, the Friars Minor.
Here, where these little poor men begged or prayed, Andrea del Sarto was
appointed to paint in grisaille scenes from the life of John the
Baptist. They have been much injured by damp, and in fact are not
altogether Andrea's work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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