The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-04-29
MANY OLD WORKS OF ART
fl YISIT PAID FAMOUS oLD PLACES
 IN FLORENCE.

The Residence of Michael Angelo Was
 Visited aud in all the Rooms Were Seen
 His Sketches and Paintings Just as He
 Left Them Hundreds of Years Ago.
 Dresden, April 15, 1895.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 As I have recently written quite at
 length concerning Florence and It's
 chief attractions, some of my readers
 may be asking why no mention has
 been made of such places as I'll Bargel-
 To-" Church of St. Croee" and the
 Academia delle Belle Arti." These att
 tractive places I designedly left to be
 mentioned in the very last letter to be
 written about Florence. All the places
 of interest cannot possibly be detailed
 in few letters; many of course must
 necessarily be omitted; in fact letters
 and books about foreign countries and
 cities give the reader just an idea only
 about those foreign countries and c1ties'
 and the idea is as circumscribed as the
 view obtained by looking through a spy
 glass. To get a perfect understanding
 of Florence for instance, one must visit
 it and walk through it's streets at noon
 day and in the quiet of a moonlight
 night; he must work, and work hard,
 too, to thoroughly locate intensely his-
 toric places and buildings in his mind
 sightseeing is a delight, but there are often many inconvenience attending
 the study of city, but as 1t is said. person who has once ended sea voy- age soon forgets his spasms of sea-sick- ness; so traveller from one country to another loses all remembrances of hardships undergone in sightseeing and travelling. I suffered many hard and inconvenient things while travelling in Egypt Arabia, Syria and Asia Mi nor, but I never think of those awful in conveniences. I rejoice in the results obtained, One of the English poets of the last century once wrote: Pleasure is ever bought with pain"
 However that may be, that magnif- cent building over wonder (we are now walking along the Via Proconsolo) is O peculiarly Tuscan structure and rises grandly over all the buildings in the street. This is 'Il Bargello" and it's foundations were laid very long ago. in fact work was begun upon it in 1255, and it was long the residence of the Podesta, or chief magistrate of the city of Florence; it has served as palace and fortress in it's day, and during the in ternecine struggles of the fourteenth century 1t was often fired and sadly in- jured.
 For three hundred years, down to 1860, Il Bargello was used for city prison and residence of the chief officer of the police, and grand one it made.
 The building is now used as nation al museum, and it is filled with very many fine works in marble, terra-cotta, wax, bronze, &c., Sc. It is a grand col- lection, which well illustrates the me- diaeval and modern history of Italian culture and art. As we enter the great portal we come upon a fine collection of arms, armor and weapons which once belonged to the powerful Medici fami ly; these are very beautifully made and show the perfection which the art of making weapons had reached in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In one of the halls is seen a magnificent bronze cannon of huge size, which was cast in Florence in 163S; it is beautiful ly ornamented, and such workmanship as is seen in it's decorations could not possibly be surpassed at the present day A grand fourteenth century stair case leads from the court to the apart ments above; this stair is known to all who visit Florence and is unsurpassed for it's exquisite design and has well been styled ian eloquent picture of the spirit of the fourteenth century" Tn one of the colonnades, among many 1 things of interest, is seen the frame work from the organ loft of the Duomo; 1 this is the handiwork of Donatello and 1 Luca della Robbia. Those two wonder | ful men (and the Florentines are well | proud of then) are well represented by | the results which they achieved and | many of their works are to be seen in 1 ''Il BaPgello."
 The ten bas reliefs of singing and | dancing boys and girls, which were for the decoration of the organ in the ca- thedral were executed by Luca, della | over four hundred and sixty | years ago. and what a beautiful work is this! And then there are ten bas re- llGlS OL uetdtClilB 0eutl py DOudCellOB de- signed for the cathedral organ loft, ex- ecuted in 1433. No words of mine can give even faint idea or impression even of this work. One room contains a number of great bells; one of these was cast in 1184 and four others are nearly as old. One room contains very many works of the great Donatello, also and bronzes of Michael Angelo, Giovanni di Bologna and Bandinelli- names which were on all lips in Flor ence five hundred years ago. In one of the apartments is a fine collection of carved Italian furniture (these carvings are marvelous), rock crystal, also splendid collection of faience of the six ,eenth century; here are also number 1f life-hke representations in wax (hor- id to look at, but showing great skill 1f execution) of the horrors of the olagues which in the sixteenth and sev- centuries devastated Italy and There is the greatest amount ,f detail seen in these wax models
 There is to be seen here an old chap I where service was wont to be per- ormed in the fourteenth century, and which later became dreadful prison: ,n it's walls are a number of frescoes ror,1 fbe hand of CTiotth naintad O bo,7+ $