The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-17
CHILDREN OF FLoRENC NCE.

The Hospital of the Innocent, the Most Famous Founding Institution,
 The piazza outside the Church of the santissima Annunziata where for four and half centuries childhood depicted in it's most beautiful and at the same time it's most pathetic aspect has look ed down upon the busy life forever hurrying by, is perhaps the place of all others in Florence where the inveter- ate ate loafer unwilling to leave the sunshine and satlated for the moment with the treasures of church and pie ture gallery may fee Justified in ling ering. It may be added that the steps under the graceful arcade which faces the Innocent Hospital offer an obvious and desirable resting place. An inces- sant stream of life flows daily through the piazza, trans laden with country people returning from market bound for the heights of Fiesole, and with city folk also, perhaps only going a couple of hundred of yards, for nobody in Florence walks If he can drive; while long carts of the country rattle after them carrying twice as much of humanity as they are intended to hold. And yet this square. one of the busiest in the city, retains a curious atmos- phere of repose. Possibly 1t Is because the traffice never passes nor dixerges from its course to dlsturbb the har- mony about it, but is rather like a stream flowing through quiet mead ow. At least this Is how I have found 1t on weekdays. On Sundays and on festas, when the fashionable world hocks to the Church of the Annunziata and to the Chapel of the Innocent, it is another matter.
 A few children are generally playing but in a quiet and orderly fashion about the bronze and marble sea holsters of Tacca, which serve as fountains. Upon the right the great bronze statute of Duke Ferdinand the First seated on his horse gazes for ever at blank window in the palace where once the bust of his lady smiled
 
 ltorlous dilatoriness, for had the WOOL ing been conducted with the heat and fervor extolled by youth another bloody crime would have been added to the dometic history of Florence. So there he stands, a mighty monument to the negative virtue of delay! But it is the lovely facade of the Founding Hospital, the Spedale degr Innocent, which gives it's chief beauty and char acter to the piazza. To all those who know Florence it is sufficiently famil- far. The long, harmonious lines of Brunellesehi's design, suggesting a rare combination of strength and simplicity the wide shallow steps, the rounded columns and, above the arches, the della Robbia medallions of the swad- dled babies, the blue of the procelain contrasting very graciously with the sad gray of the stone. Each exquisite representation of helpless infancy dif- fens from the other. each instinct with life and grace and pathos. For more than 400 years the coloring of these nedallions has withstood wind and weather, for did nit Luca find out the secret-which he transmitted to his nephew Andrea, among whose early work the medallions have been classed of beauty in external decoration which could safely be used dove sono acoue? In the courtyard of the hos pital, over the round arches of the cloisters, the design of the swaddled babies is repeated; but here, though thee delicate blue and gray coloring is the same, the babies are only paint ed upon plaster. Above them, on the upper story, pained in the same man, ner, are the instruments of the passion, the cock of the Bigallo. and repeated at intervals the porta, thhe gate. which Is inc badge of the Guild of Silk Work CTS,