Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1906-11-17

me piazza outside the Church of
the Santissima Annunziata, where for
four and a half centuries childhood
depicted in its most beautiful and at
the same time its most pathetic as
pect has looked down upon the busy
life forever hurrying by, is perhaps
the place of all others in Florence
where the inyeterate loafer unwilling
to leave the sunshine and satiated for
the moment with the treasures of
church and picture gallery may feel
justified in lingering. 1t may be
added that the steps under the
graceful arcade which faces the Inno-
cent? Hospital offer an obvious and
desirable resting place. An incessant
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 q
couple of hundred yards, for nobody
in Florence walks II 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
atmosphere of repose. Possibly it is
because the tramo never Passes Va a'-
verges from its course to disturb the
- rather ike
stream flowing through quiet mead
ow. At least this is how I have
found it on weekdays. On Sundays
and on festas, when the fashionable
world flocks to the Church of the
Annunziata and to the Chapel of the
Innocent, it is another matter.
A few children are generally play
ing, but in a quiet and orderly fash
ion, about the bronze and marble sea
monsters of Tacca, which serve as
fountains. Upon the right the great
bronze statue of Duke Ferdinand the
First seated on his horse gazes for
ever at a blank window in the pal
ace, where once the bust of his lady
smiled back at him. Theirs was
surely meritorious dilatoriness, for
had the wooing been conducted with
the heat and fervor extolled by youth
another bloody crime would have
been added to the domestic history of
Florence. So there he stands, a
mighty monument to the negative
virtue of delay! But 1t is the lovely
facade of the Founding Hospital, the
Spedale degl' Innocent. which gives
its chief beauty and character to the
piazza. To all those who know Flor
ence it is sufficiently familiar. The
long harmonious lines of Brunelles-
chi's design, suggesting a rare COM
bination of strength and simplicity,
the wide shallow steps, the rounded
columns, and, above the arches, the
della Robbia medallions of the swad-
died babies, the blue of the porcelain
contrasting very graciously with the
sad gray of the stone. Each exquis-
lite representation of helpless infancy
differs from the other, each instinct
with life and grace and pathos. For
more than 400 years the coloring OF
these medallions has withstood wind
and weather, for did not 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 deco
ration which could safely be used
dove sono acque? In the courtyard
of the hospital, over the round arches
of the cloisters, the design of the
swaddled babies is repeated; but
here, though the delicate blue and
gray coloring is the same, the babies
are only painted upon plaster. Above
them, on the upper story. painted in
the same manner, are the instru-
ments of the passion, the cock of the
Bigallo, and repeated at intervals
the porta, the gate, which is the
badge of the Guild of Silk Workers.
The building of the Spedale degl'
Innocent, which may we'll, both for
age and beauty as we'll as for scien-
tific development, stand before all the
founding hospitals of the world, is
not so old as the actual society, for
manuscripts containing lists of reg
ulations for such a society for the
protection of founding children
dated in the twelfth century exist
among the archives of Florence. But
in the fifteenth century, in 1921.
owing to the eloquent appeal of
Leonardo Bruni, the famous scholar
and secretary of the republic, who, as
his monument in Santa Croce tells
us, enjoyed the sunshine of favor
in the palace of Cosimo de- Medici,"
the hospital as we see it to-day was
actually founded. There is perhaps
no stronger testimony to the Floren-