SANTA CROCE

Built by Arnolfo, then fifty-four years of age, by order of the Friars of St. Francis, this venerable temple was raised upon the piazza called Santa Croce, where formerly stood a small church belonging to the order of Franciscan monks. They had resolved to embellish and enlarge their church, and Cardinal Matteo D'Acquasparta, general of the Franciscan Order, proclaimed an indulgence to all contributors towards the undertaking. The church was far enough advanced in 1320 for services to be held in it, though the facade was then, as until a very recent period it remained, a plain brick wall, without facing or any other ornament. Santa Croce was not singular in this respect, for San Lorenzo and many other Florentine churches have never been decorated externally.

In 1442 Cardinal Bessarion, the founder of St. Mark's Library at Venice, was delegated to perform the ceremony of consecration. Donatello and Ghiberti, incomplete as was the facade, executed some statues and a stained-glass window for it, but it is only within the last few years that the city of Florence completed the work, leaving untouched the grand piazza which had been the scene of so many fetes and intestine quarrels, and upon which is now erected a statue to Dante.

The interior is striking from its vast size, the church being built in the shape of a Latin cross, with nave, aisles, and transepts, each of the seven pointed arches being supported on an octagonal column. Opposite the front entrance is the high altar, while all around the walls and between the side altars erected in 1557 by Vasari by order of Cosimo L are the monuments of the illustrious dead. First of all on the left there is Domenico Sestini, a celebrated numismatist, whose bust was carved by Pozzetti. While in the first chapel on the right is the tomb of Michael Angelo, who died at Rome on the 17th of February, 1564; the monument was designed by Vasari, the bust was executed by Battista Lorenzo. Two contemporary sculptors, Valerio Cioli and Giovanni Dell'Opera, did the allegories of Sculpture and Architecture, the frescoes around the monument being by Battista Naldini. A nobler tomb might well have been raised to the memory of Michael Angelo. The body was deposited in the church on the 12th of March, 1564, and lay in state, for the people of Florence to come and pay him the last tribute of respect.

The next tomb is only commemorative, for it does not contain the ashes of Dante, in whose honor it was erected in 1829 by Ricci, as a tardy homage on the part of Florence to one who suffered so much for her sake in life.

After Dante comes Victor Alfieri, whose name has been borne with distinction by his descendants. This monument was erected by Canova in 1807. Coin-pared with the monuments of the fifteenth century and of the Renaissance, which are to be seen in such splendid profusion in Florence, these tombs seem so inferior that it is impossible not to wonder how the decadence was brought about. It is not at Florence alone that this feeling manifests itself; for at Venice, in the splendid temple of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, beside the tombs of doges and condottieri of the fifteenth century there stands that wretched monument upon which the great name of Titian has been traced. This is evidently the result of an inevitable law to which humanity is subject. Genius comes into the world, grows, spreads, and covers the earth with its shadow : then slowly the sap runs back from the verdant trunk, the tree yields less luscious fruit and flowers not so fair, until at last the branches wither and the tree dies.

Close beside Alfieri is buried Machiavelli, his tomb, like so many of the others, being of modern erection, and consequently less beautiful than if it had been the work of a sculptor who had studied in the school of Ghiberti or Donatello. By the side of Machiavelli rests Luigi Lanzi, a name less generally known, though celebrated in his time as an historiographer of painting, or an art critic as we should now call him. His friend, Chevalier Ornofrio Boni, prepared the design for his tomb, which was executed at public cost. The pulpit a fine specimen of fifteenth-century sculpture, carved by Benedetto da Maiano at the cost of Pietro Mellini, who presented it to the church is well worth close inspection ; and close by, between the tombs of Lanzi and Leonardo Bruni, is a group in freestone, representing the Annunciation. This was one of the first of Donatello's works, and gave an earnest of his future genius.

The tomb of Leonardo Bruni Aretino is one of the five or six greatest works of this nature which ever left the sculptor's hands ; it has been -used as a model by the sculptors of all the tombs in Santa Maria del Popolo at Rome. Born in 1369, Leonardo died at Florence in 1443; he was a man of letters, a savant, and an adroit diplomatist, though his favorite study was the law, his reputation as a jurisconsult being of the highest. For a long time, however, he was so attached to literature that he abandoned politics for it ; was a thorough Greek scholar and a decided partisan of the doctrines of Aristotle. He had served as Apostolic Secretary under four popes, and when John XXIII. was driven into exile he followed him from Constance. The Papal bulls of the early part of the fifteenth century, noted for the excellence of their Latin, were drawn up by him. It was not until towards the end of his life that he could be induced to abandon his post at the Vatican and come to live at Florence, where he fulfilled several very difficult missions, and died Chancellor of the Republic. He was eulogized in the most extravagant terms by his contemporaries, and his epitaph records that "the Muses, when they learnt the death of Leonardo, could not restrain their tears, and were dumb."He left behind him a History of Florence from its foundation until 1404, and this work seems to have been highly appreciated at the time, for there are manuscripts of it in nearly every important library throughout Italy. The monument to Leonardo Bruni is the highest expression of sculptural art, combining all the taste of ancient Greece with the grace, the power, the calm, the supreme harmony, and the perfection which genius alone confers, its tranquil and subdued beauty comparing favorably with the theatrical effect and garish splendor of the monuments in St. John Lateran and St. Peter's at Rome. The superb mausoleums of Leopardi and of the Lombardi at Venice are, perhaps, equally beautiful ; but I am inclined to give the preference to the work of Bernardo Rossellini. He became acquainted with Leonardo Bruni at the Papal Court, where be, as well is Leo Battista Alberti, was a director of the pontifical works. The Madonna let into the upper part of the monument is by Andrea Verocchio.

Close by the tomb of Bruni is that of P. A. Micheli, a celebrated botanist, who died at the age of fifty in 1737; and the last monument on this side of the nave before reaching the transept is that of Leopoldo Nobili, who died at Florence in 1833. These are but second-rate works compared with those which precede them, but the names of the artists have been kept alive, Leopoldo Veneziani having prepared the designs, and Francesco Pozzi carved the bas-reliefs, in which the genius of science is seen lifting the veil of nature, which is being held up by the allegorical figure of Tuscany. Not far from these is the mausoleum which Bartolini, one of the best modern sculptors in Florence, erected to the memory of Leo Battista Alberti, who as writer, architect, sculptor, and medallionist, was one of the leading men of his day (1404-1472). His death attracted but little notice, and he was buried without pomp at Rome, and no tomb was raised to his memory.

The mausoleums against the opposite wall of the main nave are those of the Senator Giovanni Vineenzio Alberti ; of Antonio Cocchi, an antiquary, who died in 1773; and of Carlo Marsuppini, Secretary of the Republic, who died in 1453.

This last-named mausoleum is one of the most beautiful of the works fashioned by human hands, and it is by the creation of monuments like this that Florence has taken rank immediately after Athens in regard to intellectual culture.

There are some artists, just as there are some poets, who, dying at an age when life seems to be opening joyously before them, leave behind them an impression of tender melancholy which may even be traced in their works. Desiderio da Settignano, the author of the tomb of Carlo Marsuppini, who died at the age of five-and-thirty, was one of these. He was born in 1428, and his father, Bartolomeo di Francesco, a stone-cutter at Settignano, was a friend of Raphael's father, who, in his " Cronaca Rimata," refers to the boy as "I1 bravo Decider si dolce e hello," these two adjectives seeming to imply that he was a handsome youth. Of the work itself it is difficult to give an adequate description, the dead body reposing upon the sarcophagus, and the angelic faces of the two children on either side, striking one, as it were, dumb with admiration. This monument has not the overawing effect of the Sistine Chapel ; it is not pompous and theatrical, like the Lateran chapels 3 nor is it merely elegant, noble, and exquisite, like those of Leopardi or Lombardi; but there is something more human and more tender about it ; so much so, that after a long study of the painters and sculptors of the fifteenth century, one is liable not to do full justice to their successors who brought about a revolution in art, and gave expression to new ideas. If the great sculptor Donatello had left no other work scored to his credit save his pupil Desiderio, his name would still be gratefully remembered.

Carlo Marsuppini, to whom this monument was erected, has already been referred to as the Secretary of the Republic, and one of the most illustrious of Florentine citizens. The son of a distinguished jurisconsult, who is himself buried by the side of his son, he was the pupil of Giovanni of Ravenna, and of Emanuel Chrysoloras a man of profound learning, who derived great pleasure in teaching Greek to the young men of Ravenna. The father of Carlo, who had been for a short time Governor of Genoa, was likewise secretary to Charles VI. of France, and the son was also employed in the public service, his first mission being to accompany Cosimo de' Medici to Parma : thence he passed into the service of Pope Eugenius IV., and then he came to Florence and acted as secretary to the Republic. He several times represented the city as ambassador, and at his death the people honored his memory by one of the grand funeral ceremonies then in vogue. Upon the 24th of April, 1453, the body was placed upon a state bed, robed in silk, around which streamed banners from the Pope, the King of France, the towns of Florence and Arezzo, and each of the communities and associations of the city. Matteo Palmieri, one of the most learned men of the day, placed a laurel wreath upon his brow and pronounced a funeral eulogy.

After the tomb of the Secretary comes that of one less illustrious, Angiolo Tavanti, secretary to the Emperor Francis, husband of Marie Therese, who died in 1782. This monument is by Spinazzi, who also carved that erected to Giovanni Lanni, who though now somewhat forgotten, rendered no little service to Florentine literature by his many classical publications. Lanni was born in 1698 and died in 1770.