DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0233
THE MA KERS OF FLORENCE.
213
we see. The noble dome which now crowns the cathedral
was not then finished, and Giotto’s Campanile, divinely
tall, fair, and light as a lily stalk, had scarcely yet thrown
up its highest crown into mid-air; nothing but the rugged
grace of the old tower of the signoria—contrasting now
in picturesque characteristic Tuscan humanity with the
more heavenly creation that rivals it—raised up then its
protecting standard from the lower level of ancient domes
and lofty houses, soaring above the Bargello and the
Badia, in the days of the Angelical painter. But there
was enough in this, with all its summer hazes and wintry
brightness, with the shadows that flit over the wide land-
scape like some divine breath, and the broad, dazzling,
rejoicing glow of the Italian sun, and Arno glimmering
through the midst like a silver thread, and white Castellos
shining further and further off in the blue distance, up to
the very skirt of Apennine, to inspire his genius. In
those days men said little about Nature, and did not even
love her, the critics think—rather had to find out how to
love her, when modern civilization came to teach them
how. But if Fra Giovanni, pacing his solitary walk upon
that mount of vision at San Domenico, evening after
evening, year after year, did not note those lights and
shades and atmospheric changes, and lay up in his still
soul a hundred variations of sweet color, soft glooms, and
heavenly shadows, then it is hard to think where he got
his lore, and harder still that Heaven should be so prodigal
of a training which was not put to use. Heaven is still
prodigal, and Nature tints her palette with as many hues as
ever; but there is no Angelical painter at the windows of
San Domenico to take advantage of them now.
The Florence to which these monks were so eager to
return, and where eventually they came, carrying their
treasures, in procession, making the narrow hillside Ways
resound with psalms, and winding their long trains of black
213
we see. The noble dome which now crowns the cathedral
was not then finished, and Giotto’s Campanile, divinely
tall, fair, and light as a lily stalk, had scarcely yet thrown
up its highest crown into mid-air; nothing but the rugged
grace of the old tower of the signoria—contrasting now
in picturesque characteristic Tuscan humanity with the
more heavenly creation that rivals it—raised up then its
protecting standard from the lower level of ancient domes
and lofty houses, soaring above the Bargello and the
Badia, in the days of the Angelical painter. But there
was enough in this, with all its summer hazes and wintry
brightness, with the shadows that flit over the wide land-
scape like some divine breath, and the broad, dazzling,
rejoicing glow of the Italian sun, and Arno glimmering
through the midst like a silver thread, and white Castellos
shining further and further off in the blue distance, up to
the very skirt of Apennine, to inspire his genius. In
those days men said little about Nature, and did not even
love her, the critics think—rather had to find out how to
love her, when modern civilization came to teach them
how. But if Fra Giovanni, pacing his solitary walk upon
that mount of vision at San Domenico, evening after
evening, year after year, did not note those lights and
shades and atmospheric changes, and lay up in his still
soul a hundred variations of sweet color, soft glooms, and
heavenly shadows, then it is hard to think where he got
his lore, and harder still that Heaven should be so prodigal
of a training which was not put to use. Heaven is still
prodigal, and Nature tints her palette with as many hues as
ever; but there is no Angelical painter at the windows of
San Domenico to take advantage of them now.
The Florence to which these monks were so eager to
return, and where eventually they came, carrying their
treasures, in procession, making the narrow hillside Ways
resound with psalms, and winding their long trains of black