THE ACCADEMIA AND S. MARCO

Michelangelo The David The tomb of Julius Andrea del Castagno "The Last Supper" The stolen Madonna Fra Angelico's frescoes "Little Antony" The good archbishop The Buonuomini Savonarola The death of Lorenzo the Magnificent Pope Alexander VI The Ordeal by Fire The execution The S. Marco cells The cloister frescoes Ghirlandaio's "Last Supper" Relics of old Florence Pico and Politian Piero di Cosimo Andrea del Sarto Tapestries of Eden.

THE Accademia Belle Belle Arti is in the Via Ricasoli, that street which seen from the top of the Campanile is the straightest thing in Florence, running like a ruled line from the Duomo to the valley of the Mugnone.

Before the great War of 1914-1918 (one has to be particular in this way in Italy, where there are so many reminders of the earlier struggle with Austria) the Accademia was famous equally for its Michelangelo sculpture, its Fra Angelico painting, and for Botticelli's "Primavera"; but in the rearrangement that set in after the war was over, the Fra Angelicos were removed to the Museo of S. Marco close by, and the "Primavera" to the Uffizi. The Accademia remains important chiefly for the great sculptor, and for a series of galleries in which the growth of Tuscan art can be traced more interesting perhaps to the student than to the ordinary visitor.

Since, as we have seen, the early rooms at the Uffizi are now, and with the highest selective skill, given up to the same end, I propose to leave these rooms without further comment, except to draw attention to one mature work in particular, which I reproduce from a photograph. I find this the Frate's most beautiful work. It may have details that are a little crude, and the pointed nose of the Virgin is not perhaps in accordance with the best tradition, while she is too real for an apparition; but the figure of the kneeling saint is masterly and the landscape lovely in subject and feeling.

In course of time the story of Florentine painting, begun on the ground floor of the Accademia, will be completed in the rooms upstairs, which once housed the modern pictures that now are on the way to the Pitti.

It is a simple matter to choose in such a book as this the best place in which to tell something of the life-story of, say, Giotto and Brunelleschi and the Bella Robbias ; for at a certain point their, genius is found concentrated--Donatello's and the Bella Robbins' in the Bargello and those others at the Duomo and Campanile. But with Michelangelo it is different, he is so distributed over the city his gigantic David here, the Medici tombs at S. Lorenzo, his fortifications at S. Miniato, his tomb at S. Croce, while there remains his house as a natural focus of all his activities. I have, however, chosen the Medici chapel as the spot best suited for his biography, and therefore will here dwell only on the originals that are preserved about the David. The David himself, superb and confident, is the first thing you see in entering the doors of the gallery. He stands at the end, white and glorious, with his eyes steadfastly measuring his antagonist and calculating upon what will be his next move if the sling misdirects the stone. Of the objection to the statue as being not representative of the Biblical figure I have said something in the chapter on the Bargello, where several Davids come under review. Yet, after all that can be said against its dramatic fitness, the statue remains an impressive and majestic yet strangely human thing. There it is a sign of what a little Italian sculptor with a broken nose could fashion with his mallet and chisel from a mass of marble four hundred and more years ago.

DAVID FROM THE MARBLE STATUE BY MICHELANGELO IN THE ACCADEMIA (A replica of this statue in marble is outside the Palazzo Vecchio and in bronze in the Piazzale Michelangelo)

Its history is curious. In 1501, when Michelangelo was twenty-six and had just returned to Florence from Rome with a great reputation as a sculptor, the joint authorities of the cathedral and the Arte della Lana offered him a huge block of marble that had been in their possession for thirty-five years, having been worked upon clumsily by a sculptor named Baccellino and then set aside. Michelangelo was told that if be accepted it he must carve from it a David and have it done in two years. He began in September, 1501, and finished in January, 1504, and a committee was appointed to decide upon its position, among them being Leonardo da Vinci, Perugino, Lorenzo di Credi, Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, and Andrea della Robbia. There were three suggested sites : the Loggia de' Lanzi; the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio, where Verrocchio's little boudoir David then stood (now in the Bargello) and where his Cupid and dolphin now are; and the place where it now stands, then occupied by Donatello's Judith and Holofernes. This last was finally selected, not by the committee but by the determination of Michelangelo himself, and Judith and Holofernes were moved to the Loggia de' Lanzi to their present position. The David was set up in May, 1504, and remained there for three hundred and sixty-nine years, suffering no harm from the weather but having an arm broken in the Medici riots in 1527. In 1873, however, it was decided that further exposure might be injurious, and so the statue was moved here to its frigid niche and a replica in marble afterwards set up in its place. Since this glorious figure is to be seen thrice in Florence, he may be said to have become the second symbol of the city, next the fleur-de-lis.

The Tribuna del David, as the Michelangelo salon is called, has among other originals several figures intended for that tomb of Pope Julius II (whose portrait by Raphael we have seen at the Uffizi which was to be the eighth wonder of the world, and by which the last years of the sculptor's life were rendered so unhappy. The story is a miserable one. Of the various component parts of the tomb, finished or unfinished, the best known is the Moses at S. Pietro in Vincoli at Rome, reproduced in plaster here, in the Accademia, beneath the bronze head of its author. Various other parts are in Rome too ; others here; one or two may be at the Bargello (although some authorities give these supposed Michelangelos to Vincenzo Danti) ; others are in the grotto of the Boboli Gardens ; and the Louvre has what is in some respects the finest of the "Prisoners."

The first statue on the right of the entrance of the Tribuna del David is a group called "Genio Vittorioso." Here in the old man we see rock actually turned to life; in the various "Prisoners" near we see life emerging from rock; in the David we forget the rock altogether. One wonders how Michelangelo went to work. Did the shape of the block of marble influence him, or did he with his mind's eye, the Rontgen rays of genius, see the figure within it, embedded in the midst, and hew and chip until it disclosed? On the back of the fourth statue on the left a monkish face has been incised: probably some visitor to the studio. After looking at these originals and casts, and remembering those other Michelangelo sculptures elsewhere in Florence the tombs of the Medici, the Brutus and the smaller David turn to the bronze head of the artist by Daniele da Volterra and reflect upon the author of it all: the profoundly sorrowful eyes behind which so much power and knowledge and ambition and disappointment dwelt.