A Wanderer in Florence | Page 7

di Michelino, the portrait
of Dante being prepared for him by Alessio Baldovinetti, who probably
took it from Giotto's fresco in the chapel of the Podestá at the Bargello.
In this picture Dante stands between the Inferno and a concentrated
Florence in which portions of the Duomo, the Signoria, the Badia, the
Bargello, and Or San Michele are visible. Behind him is Paradise. In
his hand is the "Divine Comedy". I say no more of the poet here,
because a large part of the chapter on the Badia is given to him.
Near the Dante picture in the left aisle are two Donatellos--the massive
S. John the Evangelist, seated, who might have given ideas to
Michelangelo for his Moses a century and more later; and, nearer the
door, between the tablets to De Fabris and Squarciaparello, the
so-called Poggio Bracciolini, a witty Italian statesman and Humanist
and friend of the Medici, who, however, since he was much younger
than this figure at the time of its exhibition, and is not known to have
visited Florence till later, probably did not sit for it. But it is a powerful
and very natural work, although its author never intended it to stand on
any floor, even of so dim a cathedral as this. The S. John, I may say,
was brought from the old façade--not Arnolfo's, but the committee's

façade--where it had a niche about ten feet from the ground. The
Poggio was also on this façade, but higher. It was Poggio's son, Jacopo,
who took part in the Pazzi Conspiracy, of which we are about to read,
and was very properly hanged for it.
Of the two pictures on the entrance wall, so high as to be imperfectly
seen, that on the right as you face it has peculiar interest to English
visitors, for (painted by Paolo Uccello, whose great battle piece
enriches our National Gallery) it represents Sir John Hawkwood, an
English free-lance and head of the famous White Company, who after
some successful raids on Papal territory in Provence, put his sword, his
military genius, and his bravoes at the service of the highest bidder
among the warlike cities and provinces of Italy, and, eventually passing
wholly into the employment of Florence (after harrying her for other
pay-masters for some years), delivered her very signally from her
enemies in 1392. Hawkwood was an Essex man, the son of a tanner at
Hinckford, and was born there early in the fourteenth century. He
seems to have reached France as an archer under Edward III, and to
have remained a free-booter, passing on to Italy, about 1362, to engage
joyously in as much fighting as any English commander can ever have
had, for some thirty years, with very good pay for it. Although, by all
accounts, a very Salomon Brazenhead, Hawkwood had enough dignity
to be appointed English Ambassador to Rome, and later to Florence,
which he made his home, and where he died in 1394. He was buried in
the Duomo, on the north side of the choir, and was to have reposed
beneath a sumptuous monument made under his own instructions, with
frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi and Giuliano d'Arrigo; but something
intervened, and Uccello's fresco was used instead, and this, some sixty
years ago, was transferred to canvas and moved to the position in which
it now is seen.
Hawkwood's life, briskly told by a full-blooded hand, would make a
fine book. One pleasant story at least is related of him, that on being
beset by some begging friars who prefaced their mendicancy with the
words, "God give you peace," he answered, "God take away your alms";
and, on their protesting, reminded them that such peace was the last
thing he required, since should their pious wish come true he would die

of hunger. One of the daughters of this fire-eater married John Shelley,
and thus became an ancestress of Shelley the poet, who, as it chances,
also found a home for a while in this city, almost within hailing
distance of his ancestor's tomb and portrait, and here wrote not only his
"Ode to the West Wind," but his caustic satire, "Peter Bell the Third".
Hawkwood's name is steeped sufficiently in carnage; but we get to the
scene of bloodshed in reality as we approach the choir, for it was here
that Giuliano de' Medici was assassinated, as he attended High Mass,
on April 26th, 1478, with the connivance, if not actually at the
instigation, of Christ's Vicar himself, Pope Sixtus IV. Florentine history
is so eventful and so tortuous that beyond the bare outline given in
chapter V, I shall make in these pages but little effort to follow it,
assuming a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the reader; but
it must be stated here that