I

Augustus J.C. Hare

Augustus J.C. Hare (1834–1903) was born in Rome and adopted by his aunt after his parents relinquished all parental rights and responsibilities toward their son. Raised and educated in England, Hare graduated from University College, Oxford, in 1857. A prolific writer, his works include a multivolume autobiography, biographies of otherwise forgotten individuals, and many travel books. Notable among the latter is Florence, which first appeared in 1876 in the third volume of Cities of Northern and Central Italy. In 1884 Florence was revised and republished as a stand-alone book and continued to be updated through 1925 in at least 9 English editions and numerous American ones as well. When Hare died in 1903, Welbore St. Clair Baddeley took over commencing with the 6th edition, which appeared in 1904 and is the basis of this current edition.

Pier Leone Ghezzi, Dr. James Hay as Bear Leader, c. 1725 (British Museum)

Before considering Florence, a few general comments on British travel to the continent are in order. The 18th century was the heyday of the Grand Tour when the sons of aristocratic families were sent abroad to acquire a patina of culture through first-hand acquaintance with the marvels of Italy. These young “scholars” were typically accompanied by a “bear-leader,” who was both knowledgeable and served in loco parentis, although many, if not most, of these erudite chaperones failed to keep their charges on the straight and narrow when confronted with the charms of the native women. Often the Grand Tour extended over several years during which time the Englishmen would attempt to purchase antiquities and paintings with which to furnish their manors back home. Needless to say these well-heeled visitors underpinned a thriving market in fakes and forgeries.

Italy in the 18th century also saw an influx of artists and architects eager to learn from Roman remains, classical sculpture, and the masters of the Italian Renaissance. The excavations at Pompeii, which began in earnest in 1748, greatly furthered interest in the antique as well. Reliable guidebooks to the attractions, however, were typically unavailable and certainly not plentiful despite the existence of Francesco Bocchi’s Le Bellezze della città di Fiorenza,¹An English translation by Thomas Frangenberg and Robert Williams entitled The Beauties of the City of Florence: A Guidebook of 1591 appeared in 2006 published by Harvey Miller, London. The translators noted that “It is not exactly the first guidebook, nor is it entirely an art guidebook in the modern sense of the word, but it marks an important step in the history of guidebook literature, perhaps the definitive step in the formation of the modern genre.” p. 3. which had appeared at the end of the 16th century. When the British architect John Soane (1753–1837), later Sir John, made his first Italian sojourn in 1788, he relied on Anna Miller’s Letters from Italy, which had appeared in 1777.

With its unrivaled treasures, Italy was the ultimate goal, but getting there was an ordeal. One could either travel to Genoa or Leghorn by boat, hugging the shoreline for protection against the sudden Mediterranean storms or the rapacious pirates, frequently from Barbary, who preyed on travelers. Piracy was a well-established trade in the area, and one recalls that the youthful Julius Caesar himself was once held for ransom on the high seas. After the ransom payment, Caesar returned and killed his captors, which did nothing to slow down piracy. The other route to Italy involved crossing the treacherous Alps in either a carriage, a litter, on horseback, on foot, or a combination of these various transportation modes. In addition to narrow icy paths, the intrepid traveller was likely to encounter bandits. Outside of cities, accommodations were spartan at best, and frequently squalid with flea-infested beds shared with strangers, primitive sanitary facilities, and unpalatable victuals. Innkeepers often practiced thievery along with hospitality. Travel, in other words, was not for the faint of heart.

In the latter quarter of the 18th century, British travel to the continent declined in part due to civil unrest, especially the French Revolution which began in 1787 and continued until the end of the century. The 19th century saw a revival of interest in traveling, which also became more commodious with improved means of transportation (roads, rail, and steamboats) and periods of relative political stability after the Napoleonic wars (1803–15) and before and after the Franco-German War (1870–71). Significantly, Continental travel ceased to be the exclusive provenance of “m’lords” and became accessible to the English middle class. Responding to this new market, the travel agency founded by Thomas Cook packaged tours and the publisher John Murray aimed publications to the newly emerging mass market.

Hare’s intended audience, on the other hand, were members of the “gentlemen class”: British, upper-middle class, and well educated, who possessed, at the least, a reading knowledge of Latin and one or two Continental languages. Consequently, he includes numerous quotations throughout in their original language, excepting quotes from German authors, which were translated to English, reflecting, perhaps, a certain prejudice against a non-Romance language.

Recognizing that today language fluency among the educated is no longer as widespread as before, translations are provided in this edition. With poetry or inscriptions both the original and an English version are provided. The translations come from a variety of sources including my own renderings. The Divine Comedy is key to understanding Florentine culture and quotations from Dante appear throughout Florence. I have utilized Henry W. Longfellow’s translations because they were both highly regarded in the 19th century and remain so today.

A reviewer in The Athenaeum of Hare’s book on Paris drew a distinction between a work of literary merit and a travel guide. Florence may have begun as the latter but has become the former. Hare evokes a time when many travelers did so for educational and experience-broadening motivations. In the pre-bucket-list era, travel was slow and often immersive to a degree unheard of in our time of see-15-cities-in-10-days. It’s important to recall that two weeks was once considered the minimum time necessary for a proper visit to Florence and that many visitors took rooms for a season. The latter especially had time to savor slowly the city’s abundant delights, both physical and intellectual. In short, they read and we can do so as well.

Hare’s selections of authors to quote provide a snapshot of the intellectual environment with which an educated Edwardian might be familiar or, at the least, aware of. The range spans the classic to the contemporary, and indeed some reviewers faulted Hare for including popular writers, especially Ouida (pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé), whom the critical establishment viewed in much the same way that Danielle Steele is today. Other novelists still worth reading include George Sand (pseudonym of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin), Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, and Henry James among others.

Hare’s choice of commentators on art is especially revealing. Although he does occasionally cite Giovanni Morelli or Bernard Berenson, who became synonymous with connoisseurship—that is attributing Italian Renaissance paintings to individual “hands”—for the most part the critics quoted are concerned with a painting’s subject matter or, in the case of John Ruskin, with the work’s emotive qualities. Lamentably, we have lost much of our cultural heritage. Our knowledge of religious iconography and the lives of the saints, which play such an important role in Italian Renaissance art, tends toward the minimal. Fortunately, Hare points us to Anna Jameson, better known as Mrs. Jameson. Regarding artists and their paintings, we have the magisterial Crowe and Cavalcaselle, today mostly unread even by grad students in the field. Regarding sculpture, much can be gleamed from Charles Perkins’ work on Tuscan Sculptors.

Hare did not always quote authors exactly. For the most part he did not use ellipses as is customary in contemporary scholarship, nor did he employ square brackets to indicate that the original text was modified for clarity, brevity, or other purposes. Occasionally, the quotations contain errors: For instance Fiammetta instead of Fiametta, or Diomed and not Dioneo as in the original. I have corrected many errors and typos but have chosen not to burden the reader with notes regarding these, typically minor, adjustments. British English has been retained.

II

Florence is of course a living city. Unlike many major European cities, Florence is both compact, eminently walkable, and relatively unchanged since the end of the 19th century. With the  exception of Brunelleschi’s cathedral dome completed in 1436 (the lantern was finished in 1468), the skyline remains that of a medieval city with most of the major civic and religious buildings erected around 1300. The medieval private towers, estimated to number over 150 in the year 1180, that were built by the city’s leading families, whose internecine conflicts are legendary, have been mostly torn down or truncated. The late 19th century, however, saw a number of radical alterations to the urban fabric, and Hare indignantly condemns certain civic “improvements.” Although Florence was not subjected to widespread aerial bombing during WWII, it did suffer from the German’s retreat as the Allies pushed northward.²See Frederick Hartt, Florentine Art Under Fire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949. In their desperation to slow the advancing liberating forces, the Germans destroyed many buildings along the Lung’ Arno and all the bridges—excepting only the Ponte Vecchio. After the war, the Florentines salvaged what stones they could from the river and rebuilt. The Trinità bridge looks much the same today as it has for hundreds of years. In sum Florence has remained relatively unchanged since Florence was written, and the book can provide the curious tourist with a wealth of historical, artistic, and intellectual understanding.

In this edition I have restored Hare’s Preface and Introduction which appeared in the 1876 Cities of Northern and Central Italy but was never edited and included in the subsequent editions of Florence. Since Cities includes municipalities and towns other than Florence, I have eliminated those which are not applicable to the “most beautiful daughter of Rome,” as Dante characterized his city on the Arno. That said I have retained Hare’s observations regarding both the unification of Italy—then a recent phenomenon—and his observations regarding agricultural traditions. An understanding of the travails Italy underwent while becoming a unified nation, which it had never really been since Roman times, recognizing the vastly different cultures resident on that peninsula, and the ethnic differences among her residents helps in understanding the numerous governments that have risen and fallen since the end of WWII.

Urban Florentines have always maintained a tie to the countryside. And whereas the villa tradition in cinquecento Rome embraced the notion of elaborate pleasure gardens, in Tuscany villas hewed more closely to working farms. Even the most exalted Grandi was not above selling wine from his estate at his city palace, a practice Cosimo I. legalized in 1559 and which continues to this day.³See Tobias Smollett “Letter 27” written in 1765: “With all their pride, however, the nobles of Florence; are humble enough … to sell wine by retail. It is an undoubted fact, that in every palace or great house in this city, there is a little window fronting the street, provided with an iron-knocker, and over it hangs an empty flask, by way of sign-post. Thither you send your servant to buy a bottle of wine. He knocks at the little wicket, which is opened immediately by a domestic, who supplies him with what he wants, and receives the money like the waiter of any other cabaret. It is pretty extraordinary that it should not be deemed a disparagement in a nobleman to sell half a pound of figs, or a palm of ribbon or tape, or to take money for a flask of sour wine.” (vol.2, pp. 49–50.) In the quattrocento well-to-do Florentines often enjoyed the simple pleasures of country-living as an escape from the pressures of the nearby city, and for many the villeggiatura evoked the ideals expressed in the pastoral poetry of Virgil and Horace among others. The Mezzaria system whereby the landowner (padrone) and the peasants (contadini) shared the harvest, but not the expenses, under longstanding—centuries even—contracts continued up until the end of WWII. The author Iris Origo has described both the system and its demise in works that draw on her own estate, La Foce, which she shared with her husband and numerous contadini.⁴See Iris Origo, War in the Val d’Orcia: 1943–1944 and Images and Shadows: Part of a Life.

Hare’s Florence, like his other travel books, begins with a section entitled “Dull-Useful Information,” which is for the most part obsolete. In addition to hotels and restaurants, Hare includes suggestions regarding stables and booksellers, dentists and caffès, artists and photographers including the well-known Alinari Brothers. A listing of popular festivals and sights rounds out this section. Hare adds that “a week is the very least which should be given to Florence.” For the time-pressed, however, he includes a head-spinning two-day itinerary. The section ends with a brief overview of Florentine history and artistic achievements that serves more as an appetizer than a meal. In the following four chapters, really the heart of the book, Hare details four walking excursions around the city all of which begin in or near the Piazza Trinità “perhaps, the most central position in Florence.” The final two chapters cover nearby excursions outside the city proper.

For the convenience of the reader, I have divided the various walks into sections as may be seen in the Navigation Panel on the left of the screen.

The artworks in the Uffizi, Accademia, Bargello, and other locations present a special problem since many have been moved during the past one hundred-plus years. Some have been carted from their original home, say a church or convent, or moved from one institution to another, say the Botticellis from the Accademia to the Uffizi, or shuffled around within a given museum, a process ongoing today. Reflecting new scholarship, some attributions of authorship have also changed. In addition, the Uffizi Gallery Inventory of 1890 renumbered works in the collection; Hare’s numbers predate the Inventory and are no longer applicable today, nor for that matter, were they when the 6th Edition was published in 1904. Although the 8th edition (1914) retained the old inventory numbers, the 9th (1925) eliminated them. In short, the visitor may no longer find a given work where Hare says it is.

Therefore, I have decided to update the contents and locations of artworks in the Uffizi, Accademia, Bargello, Palazzo Pitti, and Museo dell’Opera del Duomo to reflect their current status. These museums typically require a prolonged visit and I believe that a separate section on each will be more useful to the visitor and eliminate the need to scroll through numerous pages while visiting.

Nonetheless, I do believe that much can be gleaned from a close study of evolving styles of presentation and interpretation. How curators prioritize works of art can greatly influence our understanding of historical events and cultural, aesthetic, and social mores. The removal of numerous artworks from their original context, whether church or convent or palace, obscures the intent of both patron and artist along with our understanding of the original meanings of any given work. Henry James put the issue nicely:

[T]he ill-mannered young kingdom…has – as “unavoidably” as you please – lifted down a hundred delicate works of sculpture from the convent-walls where their pious authors placed them.…The Bargello is full of early Tuscan sculpture, most of the pieces of which have come from suppressed religious houses; and even if the visitor be an ardent liberal he is uncomfortably conscious of the rather brutal process by which it has been collected. One can hardly envy young Italy the number of odious things she has had to do.

Henry James, Italian Hours, p. 186.