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Romping, struggling, throwing things at one another's head, are the becoming pleasantries of the mob, but degrade a gentleman: 'giuoco di mano, giuoco di villano', is a very true saying, among the few true sayings of the Italians.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, op. cit. vol. i, 187. The Piazza di S. Croce, in which stands the great Franciscan church of Florence, is still almost as it was in the sixteenth century when the Palazzo del Borgo on the southern side was painted in fresco by the facile brush of Passignano; but whatever charm so old and storied a place might have had for us, for here Giuliano de' Medici fought in a tournament under the eyes of La Bella Simonetta, and here, too, the Giuoco del Calcio was played, it is altogether spoiled and ruined, not only by the dishonouring statue of Dante, which for some unexplained reason has here found a resting-place, but by the crude and staring façade of the church itself, a pretentious work of modern Italy, which lends to what was of old the gayest Piazza in the city, the very aspect of a cemetery.
This is a waste space of grass and a few trees, and here the children play, and here, recently, a football ground or campo di giuoco has been laid out, with a galvanized iron and pitch-pine shed called splendidly the Tribuna. One afternoon I watched a match there between those ancient enemies Venice and Genoa: ancient, that is, on the sea, as Chioggia can tell.
On high above the triumphal car was set some allegorical figure, such as Valour, Victory, or Fame. The last Giuoco del Ponte was fought in 1807. "Certain pastimes," says Signor Tribolati, "are intimately connected with certain institutions and beliefs; and when the latter cease to exist, the former also perish with them.
The Giuoco del Ponte was a relic of popular chivalry, one of the innumerable knightly games which adorned the simple, artistic, warlike life of the hundred Republics of Italy.... What have we to do with the arms and banners of the tourneys? At most we may rub the cobwebs away and shake off the dust and lay them aside in a museum."
How quiet now is this old city that once rang with the shouts of the victors home from some sea fight, or returned from the Giuoco.
The subjects of these panels are the same as those of Niccolò's pulpit in the Baptistery; one could not wish for a better opportunity of comparing the work of the two men who stand at the source of the Renaissance. Passing through the cloister, we enter the convent through a great room on the first floor, hung with the banners of the Giuoco del Ponte, and bright with service books.
It is not a dialogue: those short exclamations exploding from every side, all referring to the same thing, never repeating themselves, and yet always varying the same theme. At the end of the Novelle of Gentile Sermini of Siena, there is a chapter called Il Giuoco della pugna, the Game of Battle. Here are the first lines of it: 'Apre, apre, apre. Chi gioca, chi gioca uh, uh!
And for these I pass by the pictures by Benozzo Gozzoli, by Sodoma, and the rest, for they are as nothing. It is, however, not a work of art at all that is perhaps the most interesting thing in the Museo; but a model of the Giuoco del Ponte, with certain banners, flags, bucklers, and such, once used by the Pisans in their national game.
The teacher was a long, lank man, in a black threadbare coat, and a skull-cap exactly like the schoolmaster in "The Deserted Village." We made a pretense of asking him our way to somewhere, and went wrong, and came by accident upon a wide flat space, bare as a brick-yard, beside which was lettered on a fragment of the old city wall, "Giuoco di Palla."