Annunziata and the Spedale Degli Innocenti Chapter XX

Annunziata, but first let us just take a few steps down the Via Cavour, in order to pass the Casino Medici, since it is built on the site of the old Medici garden where Lorenzo de' Medici established Bertoldo, the sculptor, as head of a school of instruction, amid those beautiful antiques which we have seen in the Uffizi, and where the boy Michelangelo was a student.

Andrea painted her often, notably in the fresco of the "Nativity of the Virgin," to which we shall soon come at the Annunziata: a fine statuesque woman by no means unwilling to have the most popular artist in Florence as her slave.

Annunziata and the Spedale degli Innocenti Andrea del Sarto againFranciabigio outragedAlessio BaldovinettiPiero de' Medici's churchAn Easter Sunday congregationAndrea's "Madonna del Sacco""The Statue and the Bust"Henri IVThe Spedale degli InnocentiAndrea della RobbiaDomenico GhirlandaioCosimo I and the EtruscansBronzes and tapestriesPerugino's triptychS. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi"Very sacred human dust".

From S. Marco it is an easy step, along the Via Sapienza, to the Piazza dell' Annunziata, where one finds the church of that name, the Palazzo Riccardi-Mannelli, and opposite it, gay with the famous della Robbia reliefs of swaddled children, the Spedale degli Innocenti.

The Annunziata is famous for its music, and on the great occasions people crowd there as nowhere else.

At the Carmine and the Annunziata the cloisters are free.

Annunziata, in which once again the babies who hold the circular landscape are the best part.

Thence she was removed to the convent of Santa Caterina di Siena, back to the nuns of Santa Lucia once more, and then handed over to the charge of the noble convent of S. Annunziata delle Murate until 1525, when her aunt, Madonna Clarice de' Medici, wife of Messer Filippo negli Strozzi, was constituted her guardian and instructress.

Annunziata, where they heard Mass, and they then rode on to the renovated Palazzo Medici.

He placed her first with the Benedictine nuns of the Vergine dell' Annunziata delle Murate, and then in the noble sanctuary of Santa Monica, not with her poor cousin Eleanora degli Albizzi away at Foligno!

He told the truth to thy secretary, for I am the son of poor Annunziata Altieri, who was once thought worthy to attract thy passing notice.

The principal churches are: first, the Cathedral, which is not far from the Ducal Palace; it is richly ornamented and incrusted with black marble; the church of the Annunziata and that of St Sire.

It is well known how the Prior of S. Maria delle Grazie complained that Lionardo stood for days looking at his fresco, and for weeks never came near it; how the monks of the Annunziata at Florence were cheated out of their painting, for which elaborate designs had yet been made; how Leo X., seeing him mix oils with varnish to make a new medium, exclaimed, "Alas!

He was buried honourably, and a funeral oration was pronounced above his bier in the Chapter House of the Annunziata.

[401] Franciabigio's and Rosso's frescoes stand beside Del Sarto's in the atrium of the Annunziata at Florence.

Far away to the left Ischia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky, and Naples was coldly white against the hills, and before us was Vesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering at last towards the south, and the ruins of Torre dell' Annunziata and Castellammare glittering and near.

This beautiful composition should be compared with those of Ghirlandajo and Andrea del Sarto in the Annunziata at Florence; it yields to neither as a conception and is wholly different.

On one side of the altar, the Angel Gabriel floating invery majestic and angelic; on the other side the Virgin Annunziata, with that attitude and expression so characteristic of the Siena School, as if shrinking from the apparition.

La B. Vergine Annunziata.

It is not here the Annunciation, but the "Sacratissima Annunziata" we see before us.

Benvenuto died on December 13, 1569, and was buried by his own direction in the Chapter House of the Church of the Annunziata, Florence, with great pomp.

"On the day when she did not work with him," says Mrs. Meynell, "she copied passages from the frescoes in the cloisters of the Annunziata, masterpieces of Andrea del Sarto and Franciabigio, making a special study of the drapery of the last-named painter.

In and out among the rose trees near at hand, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and businesslike competitors, the bees.