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During this time Andrea obtained a commission through Antonio Brancacci, to paint some pictures in the convent of S. Piero at Luco in Mugello, where he retired with his wife and her relations, and his pupil Raffaelo. They spent a very pleasant summer: the nuns made much of his wife and her sisters, and he passed his time in earnest painting.
Sumner, Malcom, Margery, Barbara, and Bettina had gloriously enjoyed the walk out of the city through Porta Gallo, along the banks of the Mugello, up the first slope of the hill, past Villa Palmieri, and upward to San Domenico, church and monastery, which stands about half way to the top.
No more notable or distinct figure than Giotto is in all the history of Florence. He was born a peasant, in the village of Vespignano in the Mugello, the same district which afterward gave birth to Fra Angelico. Giotto had at least part of his professional training in the great cathedral at Assisi built over the bones of St.
Cosimo de' Medici also built, with the advice and design of Michelozzo, the Palace of Cafaggiuolo in Mugello, giving it the form of a fortress with ditches round it; and he laid out farms, roads, gardens, fountains with groves round them, fowling-places, and other appurtenances of a villa, all very splendid; and at a distance of two miles from the said palace, in a place called the Bosco a' Frati, with the advice of Michelozzo, he carried out the building of a convent for the Frati de' Zoccoli of the Order of S. Francis, which is something very beautiful.
I wish I could here transcribe the most beautiful passage from Ruskin's Giotto and his Works in Padua, pp. 11, 12, describing the contrast between the landscape of Valdarno and the landscape of the hills of the Mugello district. I can only refer readers to the book, printed for the Arundel Society, 1854. See Trucchi, Poesie Italiane Inedite, vol. ii. p. 8.
Thence I followed the way to Dicomano by Sieve, at the foot of the Consuma, and then up stream to Borgo S. Lorenzo, the capital of the Mugello, and so by the winding road above the valley under the hills to Fiesole, to Florence, wrapped in rain, through which an evening sun was breaking. FOOTNOTES: Now in S. Trinit
Fra Angelico the sweetest of all the Florentine painters was a monk of Fiesole, whose real name was Guido Petri da Mugello, but becoming a Dominican he called himself Giovanni, and now through the sanctity and happiness of his brush is for all time Beato Angelico. He was born in 1390, nearly sixty years after Giotto's death, when Chaucer was fifty, and Richard II on the English throne.
His magnificence is evident from the number of public edifices he erected; for in Florence are the convents and churches of St. Marco and St. Lorenzo, and the monastery of Santa Verdiana; in the mountains of Fiesole, the church and abbey of St. Girolamo; and in the Mugello, he not only restored, but rebuilt from its foundation, a monastery of the Frati Minori, or Minims.
Francesco, Count di Poppi, was in the army of Niccolo, having deserted the Florentines, with whom he was in league, when the enemy entered the Mugello; and though with the intention of securing him as soon as they had an idea of his design, they increased his appointments, and made him commissary over all the places in his vicinity; still, so powerful is the attachment to party, that no benefit or fear could eradicate the affection he bore toward Rinaldo and the late government; so that as soon as he knew Niccolo was at hand he joined him, and with the utmost solicitude entreated him to leave the city and pass into the Casentino, pointing out to him the strength of the country, and how easily he might thence harass his enemies.
Twenty thousand Romans encountered the forces of Totila, near Faenza, and on the hills of Mugello, of the Florentine territory. The ardor of freedmen, who fought to regain their country, was opposed to the languid temper of mercenary troops, who were even destitute of the merits of strong and well-disciplined servitude.
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