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Here a Madonna and Child by Simone Ferrucci once stood, but, owing to a rumour current in the seventeenth century, that Madonna sometimes moved her eyes, the statue was placed inside the church, so that the crowd which always collected to see this miracle might no longer stop the way. In the next niche the Furriers placed a statue of St.
Clear-sighted as he was, he could not discern the flame of liberty which burned in Savonarola's soul. Savonarola, the democratic party leader, was a force in politics as incalculable beforehand as Ferrucci the hero. On August 1, 1490, the monk ascended the pulpit of S. Mark's, and delivered a tremendous sermon on a passage from the Apocalypse.
It was begun in 1560 and still so far fulfils its original purpose as to contain the general post office, while it also houses certain Tuscan archives and the national library. A glance at Piero di Cosimo's portrait of Ferrucci in our National Gallery will show that an ordinary Florentine street preceded the erection of the Uffizi.
Close by, against the west wall, is the great font of Andrea Ferrucci, the disciple of Bernardo Rossellino, with five reliefs of the story of St. John Baptist. Opposite Cino's monument is the tomb of Cardinal Fortiguerra. For long this disappointing monument, so full of gesticulation, passed as the work of Verrocchio; it is to-day attributed rather to Lorenzetto, his disciple.
See above, p. 238, for what Giannotti says of the heroic Ferrucci. The part played by Filippo Strozzi in this last drama of the liberties of Florence is feeble and discreditable, but at the same time historically instructive, since it shows to what a point the noblest of the Florentines had fallen.
If we want to know what the Palazzo Vecchio looked like at the time David was placed there, a picture by Piero di Cosimo in our National Gallery tells us, for he makes it the background of his portrait of Ferrucci, No. 895.
If great vices emerged more openly than they did elsewhere in Europe, great qualities also had the opportunity of free development in heroes like Ferrucci, in saints like Savonarola, in artists like Michael Angelo.
In spite of the hopelessness of the attempt, we cannot now read without emotion how bravely and desperately those last champions of freedom fought, to maintain the independence of their city at any cost, and in the teeth of overwhelming opposition. The memory of Savonarola was the inspiration of this policy. Ferrucci was its hero. It failed.
The siege lasted for ten months, in which the city was most ably defended by Ferrucci, that gallant soldier whose portrait by Piero di Cosimo is in our National Gallery No. 895 and then came a decisive battle in which the Emperor and Pope were conquerors, a thousand brave Florentines were put to death and others were imprisoned.
Even as it was, the energy of their fanaticism prolonged the siege until resistance seemed no longer physically possible. The hero developed by the crisis was Francesco Ferrucci, a plebeian who had passed his youth in manual labour, and who now displayed rare military genius. He fell fighting outside the walls of Florence.
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