Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

other garments which they thought might have been charmed; Domenico

consented, went into the palace of the Signory, and changed clothes

with another friar. The Franciscans urged that he should be

forbidden to approach Savonarola, lest he be re-enchanted; Domenico

submitted to being surrounded by Franciscans. They objected to his

carrying either a crucifix or a consecrated Host into the fire; he

surrendered the crucifix but kept the Host, and a long theological

discussion ensued between Savonarola and the Franciscans as to whether

Christ would be burned along with the appearances of bread.

Meanwhile the Franciscan champion remained in the palace, begging

the Signory to save him by any ruse. The priors allowed the

discussions to go on till darkness fell, and then announced that the

ordeal could no longer take place. The crowd, cheated of blood,

attacked the palace, but was repulsed; some Arrabiati tried to seize

Savonarola, but his guard protected him. The Dominicans returned to

San Marco, jeered by the populace, though apparently the Franciscans

had been the chief cause of delay. Many complained that Savonarola,

after claiming that he was inspired by God and that God would

protect him, had allowed Domenico to represent him in the ordeal,

instead of facing it himself. These thoughts spread through the

city, and almost overnight the prior's following faded away.

On the morrow, Palm Sunday, a mob of Arrabiati and others

marched to attack the monastery of San Marco. On the way they killed

some Piagnoni, including Francesco Valori; his wife, drawn to a

window by his cries, was shot through with an arrow; his house was

pillaged and burned; one of his grandchildren was smothered to

death. The bell of San Marco toned to call the Piagnoni to the

rescue, but they did not come. The friars prepared to defend

themselves with swords and clubs; Savonarola in vain bade them lay

down their arms, and himself stood unarmed at the altar, awaiting

death. The friars fought valiantly; Fra Enrico wielded his sword

with secular delight, accompanying each blow with a lusty cry, Salvum

fac populum tuum, Domine - "Save thy people, Lord!" But the hostile

crowd was too numerous for the friars; Savonarola finally prevailed

upon them to lay down their arms; and when an order came from the

Signory for his arrest and that of Domenico, the two surrendered,

and were led through a mob that jeered, struck, kicked, and spat

upon them, to cells in the Palazzo Vecchio. On the following day Fra

Silvestro was added to the prisoners.

The Signory sent to Pope Alexander an account of the ordeal and

arrest, begged his absolution for the violence committed on an

ecclesiastic, and asked his authorization to subject the prisoners

to trial, and, if necessary, to torture. The Pope urged that the three

friars should be sent to Rome to be tried before an ecclesiastical

court; the Signory refused, and the Pope had to be content with having

two papal delegates share in examining the accused. `050534 The

Signory was resolved that Savonarola should die. As long as he lived

his party would live; only his death, they thought, could heal the

strife of factions that had so divided the city and its government

that alliance with Florence had become worthless to any foreign power,

and Florence lay open to internal conspiracy or external attack.

Following the custom established by the Inquisition, the examiners

put the three friars to torture on various occasions between April 9

and May 22. Silvestro succumbed at once, and answered so readily as

the examiners wished that his confession was too facile to be

useful. Domenico resisted to the last; tortured to the verge of death,

he continued to avow that Savonarola was a saint without guile or sin.

Savonarola, high-strung and exhausted, soon collapsed under torture,

and gave whatever replies were suggested to him. Recovering, he

retracted the confession; tortured again, he yielded again. After

three ordeals his spirit broke, and he signed a confused confession

that he had no divine inspiration, that he had been guilty of pride

and ambition, that he had urged foreign and secular powers to call a

general council of the Church, and that he had plotted for the

deposition of the Pope. On charges of schism and heresy, of

revealing confessional secrets as pretended visions and prophecies, of

causing faction and disorder in the state, the three friars were

condemned to death by the united sentence of state and Church.

Alexander graciously sent them absolution.

On May 23, 1498, the parricide Republic executed its founder and his

comrades. Unfrocked and barefoot, they were led to the same Piazza

della Signoria where twice they had burned the "vanities." As then,

and as for the trial by ordeal, a great crowd gathered for the

sight; but now the government supplied it with food and drink. A

priest asked Savonarola, "In what spirit do you bear this

martyrdom?" He answered, "The Lord has suffered much for me." He

kissed the crucifix that he carried, and did not speak again. The

friars walked bravely to their doom, Domenico almost joyfully, singing

a Te Deum in gratitude for a martyr's death. The three men were

hanged from a gibbet, and boys were allowed to stone them as they

choked. A great fire was lighted under them, and burned them to ashes.

The ashes were thrown into the Arno, lest they be worshiped as the

relics of saints. Some Piagnoni, braving incrimination, knelt in the

square and wept and prayed. Every year until 1703, on the morning

after the 23rd of May, flowers were strewn on the spot where the hot

blood of the friars fell. Today a plaque in the pavement marks the

site of the most famous crime in Florentine history.

-

Savonarola was the Middle Ages surviving into the Renaissance, and

the Renaissance destroyed him. He saw the moral decay of Italy under

the influence of wealth and a declining religious belief, and he stood

bravely, fanatically, vainly against the sensual and skeptical

spirit of the times. He inherited the moral fervor and mental

simplicity of medieval saints, and seemed out of place and key in a

world that was singing the praises of rediscovered pagan Greece. He

failed through his intellectual limitations and a forgivable but

irritating egotism; he exaggerated his illumination and his

capacity, and naively underestimated the task of opposing at once

the power of the papacy and the instincts of men. He was

understandably shocked by Alexander's morals, but intemperate in his

denunciations and intransigeant in his policy. He was a Protestant

before Luther only in the sense of calling for a reform of the Church;

he shared none of Luther's theological dissents. But his memory became

a force in the Protestant mind; Luther called him a saint. His

influence on literature was slight, for literature was in the hands of

skeptics and realists like Machiavelli and Guicciardini; but his

influence on art was immense. Fra Bartolommeo signed his portrait of

the friar, "Portrait of Girolanio of Ferrara, prophet sent by God."

Botticelli turned from paganism to piety under Savonarola's preaching.

Michelangelo heard the friar frequently, and read his sermons

devotedly; it was the spirit of Savonarola that moved the brush over

the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and traced behind the altar the

terrible Last Judgment.

The grandeur of Savonarola lay in his effort to achieve a moral

revolution, to make men honest, good, and just. We know that this is

the most difficult of all revolutions, and we cannot wonder that

Savonarola failed where Christ succeeded with so pitiful a minority of

men. But we know, too, that such a revolution is the only one that

would mark a real advance in human affairs; and that beside it the

bloody overturns of history are transient and ineffectual

spectacles, changing anything but man.

IV. THE REPUBLIC AND THE MEDICI: 1498-1534

-

The chaos that had almost nullified government in the later years of

Savonarola's ascendancy was not mitigated by his death. The brief term

of two months allowed to each Signory and gonfalonier made for a

hectic discontinuity in the executive branch, and inclined the

priors to irresponsibility and corruption. In 1502 the Council,

dominated by a triumphant oligarchy of rich men, sought to overcome

part of this difficulty by electing the gonfalonier for life, so

that while still subject to Signory and Council, he might face the

popes and the secular rulers of Italy on terms of equal tenure. The

first man to receive this honor was Pietro Soderini, a millionaire

friendly to the people, an honest patriot whose powers of mind and

will were not so eminent as to threaten Florence with dictatorship. He

enlisted Machiavelli among his advisers, governed prudently and

economically, and used his private fortune to resume that patronage of

art which had been interrupted under Savonarola. With his support

Machiavelli replaced the mercenary troops of Florence with a citizen

militia, which finally (1508) forced Pisa to yield again to a

Florentine "protectorate."

But in 1512 the foreign policy of the Republic brought on the

disaster that Alexander VI had foretold. Through all the efforts of

the "Holy League" of Venice, Milan, Naples, and Rome to rid Italy of

its French invaders Florence had persisted in its alliance with

France. When victory crowned the League it turned in revenge upon

Florence, and sent its troops to replace the republican oligarchy with

a Medicean dictatorship. Florence resisted, and Machiavelli labored

strenuously to organize its defense. Its outpost, Prato, was taken and

sacked, and Machiavelli's militia turned and fled from the trained

mercenaries of the League. Soderini resigned to avoid further

bloodshed. Giuliano de' Medici, son of Lorenzo, having contributed

10,000 ducats ($250,000) to the League treasury, entered Florence

under the protection of Spanish, German, and Italian arms; his

brother, Cardinal Giovanni, soon joined him; the Savonarolan

constitution was abolished, and the Medicean ascendancy was

restored (1512).

Giuliano and Giovanni behaved with moderation, and the public,

surfeited with excitement, readily accepted the change. When

Giovanni became Leo X (1513), Giuliano, having proved too gentle to be

a successful ruler, yielded the government of Florence to his nephew

Lorenzo. This ambitious youth died after six years of reckless rule.

Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, son of the Giuliano who had been slain

in the Pazzi conspiracy, now gave Florence an excellent

administration; and after he became Clement VII (1521) he ruled the

city from the papal chair. Florence took advantage of his

misfortunes to expel his representatives (1527), and for four years it

again enjoyed the trials of liberty. But Clement tempered defeat

with diplomacy, and used the troops of Charles V to avenge his

ousted relatives; an army of Spanish and German troops marched upon

Florence (1529), and repeated the story of 1512; resistance was heroic

but vain; and Alessandro de' Medici began (1531) a regime of

oppression, brutality, and lechery unprecedented in the annals of

the family. Three centuries would pass before Florence would know

freedom again.

V. ART UNDER THE REVOLUTION

-

An age of political excitement is usually a stimulant to literature;

and we shall study later two writers of the first rank- Machiavelli

and Guicciardini- who belonged to this period. But a state always

verging on bankruptcy, and engaged in almost permanent revolution,

does not favor art- and least of all architecture. Some rich men,

skilled in floating on a flood, still gave hostages to fortune by

building palaces; so Giovanni Francesco and Aristotele da Sangallo,

working on plans by Raphael, raised a palatial mansion for the

Pandolfini family. In 1520-4 Michelangelo designed for Cardinal Giulio

de' Medici a Nuova Sagrestia, or New Sacristy, for the church of San

Lorenzo- a simple quadrangle and modest dome, known to all the world

as the home of Michelangelo's finest sculptures, the tombs of the

Medici.

Among the Titan's rivals was the sculptor Pietro Torrigiano, who

worked with him in Lorenzo's garden of statuary, and broke his nose to

win an argument. Lorenzo was so incensed by this violence that

Torrigiano took refuge in Rome. He became a soldier in Caesar Borgia's

service, fought bravely in several battles, found his way to

England, and designed there one of the masterpieces of English art,

the tomb of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey (1519). Wandering

restlessly to Spain, he carved a handsome Madonna and Child for

the duke of Arcos. But the duke underpaid him; the sculptor smashed

the statue to bits; the vengeful aristocrat denounced him to the

Inquisition as a heretic; Torrigiano was sentenced to severe

punishment, but cheated his foes by starving himself to death.

Florence had never had so many great artists at one time as in 1492;

but many of them fled from her turbulence, and lent their renown to

other scenes. Leonardo went to Milan, Michelangelo to Bologna,

Andrea Sansovino to Lisbon. Sansovino took his cognomen from Monte San

Savino, and made it so famous that the world forgot his real name,

Andrea di Domenico Contucci. Born the son of a poor laborer, he

developed a passion for drawing and for modeling in clay; a kindly

Florentine sent him to the studio of Antonio del Pollaiuolo.

Maturing rapidly, he built for the church of Santo Spirito a Chapel of

the Sacrament, with statues and reliefs "so vigorous and excellent,"

said Vasari, "that they are without a flaw"; and before it he placed a

bronze grille that halts the breath with its beauty. King John II of

Portugal begged Lorenzo to send the young artist to him; Andrea

went, and labored nine years there in sculpture and architecture.

Lonesome for Italy, he returned to Florence (1500), but soon passed to

Genoa and finally to Rome. In Santa Maria del Popolo he built two

marble tombs- for Cardinals Sforza and Basso della Rovere- which won

high acclaim in a city then (1505-7) buzzing with geniuses. Leo X sent

him to Loreto, and there (1523-8) Andrea adorned the church of Santa

Maria with a series of reliefs from the life of the Virgin, so

beautiful that the angel in the Annunciation seemed to Vasari "not

marble but celestial." Soon afterward Andrea retired to a farm near

his native Monte San Savino, lived energetically as a peasant, and

died in 1529, aged sixty-eight.

Meanwhile the della Robbia family had faithfully and skillfully

carried on the work of Luca in glazed clay. Andrea della Robbia

exceeded in longevity even the eighty-five years of his uncle, and had

time to train three sons in the art- Giovanni, Luca, and Girolamo.

Andrea's terra cottas have a brilliance of tone and a tenderness of

sentiment that snare the eye and still the feet of the museum

traveler. A room in the Bargello is rich with him, and the Hospital of

the Innocents is distinguished by his decorative lunette of the

Annunciation. Giovanni della Robbia rivaled his father Andrea's

excellence, as one may see in the Bargello and the Louvre. The della

Robbias almost confined themselves to religious subjects through three

generations; they were among the most fervent supporters of

Savonarola; and two of Andrea's sons joined the Brethren of San

Marco to seek salvation with the friar.

The painters felt Savonarola's influence most deeply. Lorenzo di

Credi learned his art from Verrocchio, imitated the style of his

fellow student Leonardo, and took the tenderness of his religious

pictures from the piety nurtured in him by Savonarola's eloquence

and fate. He spent half his life painting Madonnas; we find them

almost everywhere- in Rome, Florence, Turin, Avignon, Cleveland; the

faces poor, the robes magnificent; perhaps the best is the

Annunciation in the Uffizi. At the age of seventy-two, feeling it

time to take on the savor of sanctity, Lorenzo went to live with the

monks of Santa Maria Nuova; and there, six years later, he died.

Piero di Cosimo took his cognomen from his teacher Cosimo

Rosselli, for "he who instructs ability and promotes well-being is

as truly a father as the one who begets." `050535 Cosimo came to the

conclusion that his pupil surpassed him; summoned by Sixtus IV to

decorate the Sistine Chapel, he took Piero with him; and Piero painted

there The Destruction of Pharaoh's Troops in the Red Sea, with a

gloomy landscape of water, rocks, and cloudy sky. He has left us two

magnificent portraits, both in the Hague: of Giuliano da Sangallo

and Francesco da Sangallo. Piero was all artist, caring little for

society or friendship, loving nature and solitude, absorbed in the

pictures and scenes that he painted. He died unconfessed and alone,

having transmitted his art to two pupils who followed his example by

surpassing their master: Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto.

Baccio della Porta took his last name from the gate of San Piero

where he lived; when he became a friar he received the name Fra

Bartolommeo- Brother Bartholomew. Having studied with Cosimo

Rosselli and Piero di Cosimo, he opened a studio with Mariotto

Albertinelli, painted many pictures in collaboration with him, and

remained bound to him in a fine friendship till parted by death. He

was a modest youth, eager for instruction and receptive to every

influence. For a time he sought to catch the subtle shading of

Leonardo; when Raphael came to Florence Baccio studied perspective

with him, and better blending of colors; later he visited Raphael in

Rome and painted with him a noble Head of St. Peter. Finally he fell

in love with the majestic style of Michelangelo; but he lacked the

terrible intensity of that angry giant; and when Bartolommeo attempted

the monumental he lost in the enlargement of his simple ideas the

charm of his qualities- the rich depth and soft shading of his colors,

the stately symmetry of his composition, the piety and sentiment of

his themes.

He was deeply stirred by the sermons of Savonarola. He brought to

the burning of the vanities all his paintings of the nude. When the

enemies of the friar attacked the convent of San Marco (1498) he

joined in its defense; in the course of the melee he vowed to become a

monk if he survived; he kept his pledge, and in 1500 he entered the

Dominican monastery at Prato. For five years he refused to paint,

giving himself up to religious exercises. Transferred to San Marco, he

consented to add his masterpieces in blue, red, and black to the

rosy frescoes of Fra Angelico. There, in the refectory, he painted a

Madonna and Child and a Last Judgment; in the cloisters a St.

Sebastian; and in Savonarola's cell a powerful portrait of the

friar in the guise of St. Peter Martyr. The St. Sebastian was the

only nude that he painted after becoming a monk. Originally it was

placed in the church of San Marco, but it was so handsome that some

women confessed to having been stirred to wicked thoughts by it, and

the prior sold it to a Florentine who sent it to the king of France.

Fra Bartolommeo continued to paint until 1517, when disease so

paralyzed his hands that he could no longer hold the brush. He died in

that year, at the age of forty-five.

His only rival for supremacy among the Italian painters of this

period was another disciple of Piero di Cosimo. Andrea Domenico

d'Agnolo di Francesco Vannuci is known to us as Andrea del Sarto

because his father was a tailor. Like most Renaissance artists he

developed quickly, beginning his apprenticeship at seven. Piero

marveled at the lad's skill in design, and noted with warm approval

how Andrea, when a holyday closed the studio, spent his time drawing

the figures in the famous cartoons made by Leonardo and Michelangelo

for the Hall of the Five Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio. When Piero

became in old age too eccentric a master, Andrea and his fellow

student Franciabigio set up their own bottega, and for some time

worked together. Andrea seems to have begun his independent career

by painting, in the court of the Annunziata Church (1509), five scenes

from the life of San Filippo Benizzi, a Florentine noble who had

founded the order of the Servites for the special worship of Mary.

These frescoes, though sorely injured by time and exposure, are so

remarkable for draughtsmanship, composition, vividness of narrative,

and the soft merging of warm and harmonious colors, that this atrium

is now one of the goals of art pilgrims in Florence. For one of the

female figures Andrea used as model the woman who in the course of

these paintings became his wife- Lucrezia del Fede, a sensuously

beautiful shrew whose dark face and raven hair haunted the artist to

all but his dying days.

In 1515 Andrea and Franciabigio undertook a series of frescoes in

the cloisters of the Scalzo fraternity. They chose as subject the life

of St. John the Baptist; but it was surely Andrea's hand that in

several figures displayed one of his specialties, picturing the female

breast in all the perfection of its texture and form. In 1518 he

accepted the invitation of Francis I to come to France; there he

painted the figure of Charity that hangs in the Louvre. But his

wife, left behind in Florence, begged him to come back; the king

granted permission on Andrea's pledge to return, and entrusted him

with a considerable sum to buy works of art for him in Italy.

Andrea, in Florence, spent the royal funds in building himself a

house, and never went back to France. Facing bankruptcy

nevertheless, he resumed his painting, and produced for the

cloisters of the Annunziata a masterpiece which, said Vasari, "in

design, grace, excellence of coloring, vivacity, and relief, proved

him far superior to all his predecessors"- who included Leonardo and

Raphael. `050536 This Madonna del Sacco - absurdly so called

because Mary and Joseph are shown leaning against a sack- is now

damaged and faded, and no longer conveys the full splendor of its

color; but its perfect composition, soft tones, and quiet presentation

of a family- with Joseph, suddenly literate, reading a book- make it

one of the great pictures of the Renaissance.

In the refectory of the Salvi monastery Andrea challenged Leonardo

with a Last Supper (1526), choosing the same moment and theme-

"One of you shall betray me." Bolder than Leonardo, Andrea finished

the face of his Christ; even he, however, fell far short of the

spiritual depth and understanding gentleness that we associate with

Jesus. But the Apostles are strikingly individualized, the action is

vivid, the colors are rich and soft and full; and the picture as

seen from the entrance of the refectory conveys almost irresistibly

the illusion of a living scene.

The Virgin Mother remained the favorite subject of Andrea, as of

most artists of Renaissance Italy. He painted her again and again in

studies of the Holy Family, as in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, or the

Metropolitan Museum in New York. He pictured her, in one of the

treasures of the Uffizi Gallery, as Madonna delle Arpie, Madonna of

the Harpies; *05020 this is the fairest of the Lucrezia Virgins,

and the Child is the finest in Italian art. Across the Arno, in the

Pitti Gallery, the Assumption of the Virgin shows Apostles and

holy women looking up in amazement and adoration as cherubim raise the

praying Madonna- again Lucrezia- to heaven. So, in Andrea's colorful

illumination, the moving epos of the Virgin is complete.

There is seldom any sublimity in Andrea del Sarto, no majesty of

Michelangelo, nor the unfathomable nuances of Leonardo, nor the

finished perfection of Raphael, nor yet the range or power of the

great Venetians. Yet he alone of the Florentines rivals the

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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