CHAPTER VII

MACUGNAGA

125. WHEN first I saw Florence, in 1840, the great street leading into the Baptistery square from the south had not been rebuilt, but consisted of irregular ancient houses, with far projecting bracketed roofs. I mourned over their loss bitterly in 1845; but for the rest, Florence was still, then, what no one who sees her now could conceive.

For one great feature, an avenue of magnificent cypress and laurel ascended, unbroken, from the Porta Romana to Bellosguardo, from whose height one could then wander round through lanes of olive, or through small rural vineyards, to San Miniato, which stood deserted, but not ruinous, with a narrow lawn of scented herbage before it, and sweet wild weeds about its steps, all shut in by a hedge of roses.¹ The long ascending causeway, between smaller cypresses than those of the Porta Romana, gave every conceivably loveliest view of the Duomo, and Cascine forest, and passing away of Arno towards the sunset.

126. In the city herself, the monasteries were still inhabited, religiously and usefully; and in most of them, as well as among the Franciscans at Fésole, I was soon permitted to go wherever I liked, and draw whatever I chose.² But my time was passed chiefly in the sacristy and choir of Santa Maria Novella, the sacristy of Santa Croce, and the upper passage of San Marco. In the Accademia I

¹ [See Ruskin’s sketch of this date, here reproduced; Plate XXIV.]

² [Compare Ruskin’s account of his work in Florence in the Epilogue of 1883 to the second volume of Modern Painters, Vol. IV. pp. 351-352; and his letters both in that volume (p. xxxii.) and in Vol. XXXVI.]

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