But here, where the procession was to pause, the magnificent city, with its ingenious Cecca, had provided another tent than the sky; for the whole of the Piazza del Duomo, from the octagonal baptistery in the centre to the façade of the cathedral and the walls of the houses on the other sides of the quadrangle, was covered, at the height of forty feet or more, with blue drapery, adorned with well-stitched yellow lilies and the familiar coats of arms, while sheaves of many-coloured banners drooped at fit angles under this superincumbent bluea gorgeous rainbow-lit shelter to the waiting spectators who leaned from the windows, and made a narrow border on the pavement, and wished for the coming of the show.
One of these spectators was Tito Melema. Bright, in the midst of brightness, he sat at the window of the room above Nellos shop, his right elbow resting on the red drapery hanging from the window-sill, and his head supported in a backward position by the right-hand, which pressed the curls against his ear. His face wore that bland liveliness, as far removed from excitability as from heaviness or gloom, which marks the companion popular alike amongst men and womenthe companion who is never obtrusive or noisy from uneasy vanity or excessive animal spirits, and whose brow is never contracted by resentment or indignation. He showed no other change from the two months and more that had passed since his first appearance in the weather-stained tunic and hose, than that added radiance of good fortune, which is like the just perceptible perfecting of a flower after it has drunk a mornings sunbeams. Close behind him, ensconced in the narrow angle between his chair and the window-frame, stood the slim figure of Nello in holiday suit, and at his left the younger CenniniPietro, the erudite corrector of proof-sheets, not Domenico the practical. Tito was looking alternately down on the scene below, and upward at the varied knot of gazers and talkers immediately around him, some of whom had come in after witnessing the commencement of the procession in the Piazza della Signoria. Piero di Cosimo was raising a laugh among them by his grimaces and anathemas at the noise of the bells, against which no kind of ear-stuffing was a sufficient barricade, since the more he stuffed his ears the more he felt the vibration of his skull; and declaring that he would bury himself in the most solitary spot of the Valdarno on a festa, if he were not condemned, as a painter, to lie in wait for the secrets of colour that were sometimes to be caught from the floating of banners and the chance grouping of the multitude.
Tito had just turned his laughing face away from the whimsical painter to look down at the small drama going on among the checkered border of spectators, when at the angle of the marble steps in front of the Duomo, nearly opposite Nellos shop, he saw a mans face upturned towards him, and fixing on him a gaze that seemed to have more meaning in it than the ordinary passing observation of a stranger. It was a face with tonsured head, that rose above the black mantle and white tunic of a Dominican friara very common sight in Florence; but the glance had something peculiar in it for Tito. There was a faint suggestion in it, certainly not of an unpleasant kind. Yet what pleasant association had he ever had with monks? None. The glance and the suggestion hardly took longer than a flash of lightning.
Nello! said Tito, hastily, but immediately added, in a tone of disappointment, Ah, he has turned round. It was that tall, thin friar who is going up the steps. I wanted you to tell me if you knew aught of him?
One of the Frati Predicatori, said Nello, carelessly; you dont expect me to know the private history of the crows.
I seem to remember something about his face, said Tito. It is an uncommon face.
What? you thought it might be our Fra Girolamo? Too tall; and he never shows himself in that chance way.
Besides, that loud-barking hound of the Lord4 is not in Florence just now, said Francesco Cei, the popular poet; he has taken Piero de Medicis hint, to carry his railing prophecies on a journey for a while.
The Frate neither rails nor prophesies against any man, said a middle-aged personage seated at the other corner of the window; he only prophesies against vice. If you think that an attack on your poems, Francesco, it is not the Frates fault.
Ah, hes gone into the Duomo now, said Tito, who had watched the figure eagerly. No, I was not under that mistake, Nello. Your Fra Girolamo has a high nose and a large under-lip. I saw him oncehe is not handsome; but this man
Truce to your descriptions! said Cennini. Hark! see! Here come the horsemen and the banners. That standard, he continued, laying his hand familiarly on Titos shoulder,that carried on the horse with white trappingsthat with the red eagle holding the green dragon between his talons, and the red lily over the eagleis the Gonfalon of the Guelf party, and those cavaliers close round it are the chief officers of the Guelf party. That is one of our proudest banners, grumble as we may; it means the triumph of the Guelfs, which means the triumph of Florentine will, which means triumph of the popolani.
Nay, go on, Cennini, said the middle-aged man, seated at the window, which means triumph of the fat popolani over the lean, which again means triumph of the fattest popolano over those who are less fat.
Cronaca, you are becoming sententious, said the printer; Fra Girolamos preaching will spoil you, and make you take life by the wrong handle. Trust me, your cornices will lose half their beauty if you begin to mingle bitterness with them; that is the maniera Tedesca which you used to declaim against when you came from Rome. The next palace you build we shall see you trying to put the Frates doctrine into stone.
That is a goodly show of cavaliers, said Tito, who had learned by this time the best way to please Florentines; but are there not strangers among them? I see foreign costumes.
Assuredly, said Cennini; you see there the Orators from France, Milan, and Venice, and behind them are English and German nobles; for it is customary that all foreign visitors of distinction pay their tribute to San Giovanni in the train of that gonfalon. For my part, I think our Florentine cavaliers sit their horses as well as any of those cut-and-thrust northerners, whose wits lie in their heels and saddles; and for yon Venetian, I fancy he would feel himself more at ease on the back of a dolphin. We ought to know something of horsemanship, for we excel all Italy in the sports of the Giostra, and the money we spend on them. But you will see a finer show of our chief men by-and-by, Melema; my brother himself will be among the officers of the Zecca.
The banners are the better sight, said Piero di Cosimo, forgetting the noise in his delight at the winding stream of colour as the tributary standards advanced round the piazza. The Florentine men are so-so; they make but a sorry show at this distance with their patch of sallow flesh-tint above the black garments; but those banners with their velvet, and satin, and minever, and brocade, and their endless play of delicate light and shadow!Va! your human talk and doings are a tame jest; the only passionate life is in form and colour.
Ay, Piero, if Satanasso could paint, thou wouldst sell thy soul to learn his secrets, said Nello. But there is little likelihood of it, seeing the blessed angels themselves are such poor hands at chiaroscuro, if one may judge from their capo-dopera, the Madonna Nunziata.
Ay, Piero, if Satanasso could paint, thou wouldst sell thy soul to learn his secrets, said Nello. But there is little likelihood of it, seeing the blessed angels themselves are such poor hands at chiaroscuro, if one may judge from their capo-dopera, the Madonna Nunziata.
There go the banners of Pisa and Arezzo, said Cennini. Ay, Messer Pisano, it is no use for you to look sullen; you may as well carry your banner to our San Giovanni with a good grace. Pisans false, Florentines blindthe second half of that proverb will hold no longer. There come the ensigns of our subject towns and signories, Melema; they will all be suspended in San Giovanni until this day next year, when they will give place to new ones.
They are a fair sight, said Tito; and San Giovanni will surely be as well satisfied with that produce of Italian looms as Minerva with her peplos, especially as he contents himself with so little drapery. But my eyes are less delighted with those whirling towers, which would soon make me fall from the window in sympathetic vertigo.
The towers of which Tito spoke were a part of the procession esteemed very glorious by the Florentine populace; and being perhaps chiefly a kind of hyperbole for the all-efficacious wax taper, were also called ceri. But inasmuch as hyperbole is impracticable in a real and literal fashion, these gigantic ceri, some of them so large as to be of necessity carried on wheels, were not solid but hollow, and had their surface made not solely of wax, but of wood and pasteboard, gilded, carved, and painted, as real sacred tapers often are, with successive circles of figureswarriors on horseback, foot-soldiers with lance and shield, dancing maidens, animals, trees and fruits, and in fine, says the old chronicler, all things that could delight the eye and the heart; the hollowness having the further advantage that men could stand inside these hyperbolic tapers and whirl them continually, so as to produce a phantasmagoric effect, which, considering the towers were numerous, must have been calculated to produce dizziness on a truly magnificent scale.
Pestilenza! said Piero di Cosimo, moving from the window, those whirling circles one above the other are worse than the jangling of all the bells. Let me know when the last taper has passed.
Nay, you will surely like to be called when the contadini come carrying their torches, said Nello; you would not miss the country-folk of the Mugello and the Casentino, of whom your favourite Leonardo would make a hundred grotesque sketches.
No, said Piero, resolutely, I will see nothing till the car of the Zecca comes. I have seen clowns enough holding tapers aslant, both with and without cowls, to last me for my life.
Here it comes, then, Pierothe car of the Zecca, called out Nello, after an interval during which towers and tapers in a descending scale of size had been making their slow transit.
Fediddio! exclaimed Francesco Cei, that is a well-tanned San Giovanni! some sturdy Romagnole beggar-man, Ill warrant. Our Signoria plays the host to all the Jewish and Christian scum that every other city shuts its gates against, and lets them fatten on us like Saint Anthonys swine.
The car of the Zecca or Mint, which had just rolled into sight, was originally an immense wooden tower or cero adorned after the same fashion as the other tributary ceri, mounted on a splendid car, and drawn by two mouse-coloured oxen, whose mild heads looked out from rich trappings bearing the arms of the Zecca. But the latter half of the century was getting rather ashamed of the towers with their circular or spiral paintings, which had delighted the eyes and the hearts of the other half, so that they had become a contemptuous proverb, and any ill-painted figure looking, as will sometimes happen to figures in the best ages of art, as if it had been boned for a pie, was called a fantoccio da cero, a tower-puppet; consequently improved taste, with Cecca to help it, had devised for the magnificent Zecca a triumphal car like a pyramidal catafalque, with ingenious wheels warranted to turn all corners easily. Round the base were living figures of saints and angels arrayed in sculpturesque fashion; and on the summit, at the height of thirty feet, well bound to an iron rod and holding an iron cross also firmly infixed, stood a living representative of Saint John the Baptist, with arms and legs bare, a garment of tiger-skins about his body, and a golden nimbus fastened on his headas the Precursor was wont to appear in the cloisters and churches, not having yet revealed himself to painters as the brown and sturdy boy who made one of the Holy Family. For where could the image of the patron saint be more fitly placed than on the symbol of the Zecca? Was not the royal prerogative of coining money the surest token that a city had won its independence? and by the blessing of San Giovanni this beautiful sheepfold of his had shown that token earliest among the Italian cities. Nevertheless, the annual function of representing the patron saint was not among the high prizes of public life; it was paid for with something like ten shillings, a cake weighing fourteen pounds, two bottles of wine, and a handsome supply of light eatables; the money being furnished by the magnificent Zecca, and the payment in kind being by peculiar privilege presented in a basket suspended on a pole from an upper window of a private house, whereupon the eidolon of the austere saint at once invigorated himself with a reasonable share of the sweets and wine, threw the remnants to the crowd, and embraced the mighty cake securely with his right arm through the remainder of his passage. This was the attitude in which the mimic San Giovanni presented himself as the tall car jerked and vibrated on its slow way round the piazza to the northern gate of the Baptistery.
There go the Masters of the Zecca, and there is my brotheryou see him, Melema? cried Cennini, with an agreeable stirring of pride at showing a stranger what was too familiar to be remarkable to fellow-citizens. Behind come the members of the Corporation of Calimara,5 the dealers in foreign cloth, to which we have given our Florentine finish; men of ripe years, you see, who were matriculated before you were born; and then comes the famous Art of Money-changers.
Many of them matriculated also to the noble art of usury before you were born, interrupted Francesco Cei, as you may discern by a certain fitful glare of the eye and sharp curve of the nose which manifest their descent from the ancient Harpies, whose portraits you saw supporting the arms of the Zecca. Shaking off old prejudices now, such a procession as that of some four hundred passably ugly men carrying their tapers in open daylight, Diogenes-fashion, as if they were looking for a lost quattrino, would make a merry spectacle for the Feast of Fools.
Blaspheme not against the usages of our city, said Pietro Cennini, much offended. There are new wits who think they see things more truly because they stand on their heads to look at them, like tumblers and mountebanks, instead of keeping the attitude of rational men. Doubtless it makes little difference to Maestro Vaianos monkeys whether they see our Donatellos statue of Judith with their heads or their tails uppermost.
Your solemnity will allow some quarter to playful fancy, I hope, said Cei, with a shrug, else what becomes of the ancients, whose example you scholars are bound to revere, Messer Pietro? Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest.